Computer Games Programming

Some years ago, I was studying Computer Games Programming at the University of Derby. But did I learn anything from it?

It was around 2008 when I had all but accepted my fate that a future as a writer wouldn't work out for me. The pay is poor, especially for the amount of research I was putting in. By this time, I had been published in the award winning video games magazine gamesTM, and for the four weeks or so mulling over old magazines to research a four or six page article was a good indication that it wasn't paying any of the main bills. Of course, for the time researching, I could have written many more pages, but even at the page rate, it still wasn't fantastic pay. So I feel for many writers out there. If you have a full time job and you can write on the side then this is ideal. If you can get a full time job as a staffer, then this is probably the next best thing, and of course then, do well and you have the prospect of career progression. But being freelance only is tough. I know. I did it for 12 years of my life.

So, I needed a change in career, as the two things that I liked doing, writing and being a support worker for vulnerable adults, are poorly paid, although in different ways could be highly rewarding. What else could I do? Well, I have written and reviewed video games, albeit not the modern days entertainment software. But I think I got fairly good at opining at least. I was also a keen programmer in the 1980s and some of the 1990s. So that was it, I would venture into a Computer Science course of some description with an eye on making computer games happen inside of television screens.

I actually started out on a course run by Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), and the language of choice was something called Java, a perfectly reasonable, if clunky, language. But this was the time of the ill-fated ConDem Government, which oddly decided upon some Trotskyite policies without even knowing it. Anyway, for those of us old enough to remember, there was an entirely unnecessary "emergency budget" which cut around £6bn from public expenditure, and a significant sum from Higher Education. You know, because the best way out of a recession is not to educate people to fulfil their potential, isn't it?

These cuts affected the course that I was on, because I wasn't attending a prestigious Red Brick University, I suppose. Firstly, the number of places for the second year was cut, which meant that some people who managed to pass the first year did not have a place on the second year. Luckily, I wasn't one of them somehow. But I can only imagine trying to get a job with only one year at University whilst trying to explain that I didn't just drop out. Further to these "efficiency savings" was that the third year was no longer available to us, so that meant we had to leave with 2/3rds of a Degree. But there was hope in that we could apply to other Universities in the hope that they would accept us. So, what could I do?

The degree programme at MMU was basically Computer Science focussed, but with business studies covering half of the course. And whilst I did very well at the Business aspects, I still favoured the programming side of things. I didn't want to be a manager in some soulless IT enterprise, I wanted to make some softwares. I therefore applied to the third year of the Games Programming Degree Programme at the University of Derby. But going from one institution to another isn't really how Universities work, as I found out.

After some negotiations with the head of the course at the University of Derby, I was offered a place on the 2nd year, and this meant that my planned three years of study was actually going to be five, as the course has one year in placement before the final year, and everyone has to complete the year in placement. As you can imagine, after budgeting to be a student again for three years, this was going to be extra tough, and I was going to miss yet more years of my favourite daughter's life for this, who was a toddler when I started at Derby.

Well, the 2nd year was pretty intense. Obviously, I was new, everyone else knew each other. The timetable was confusing at first. And my mathematics wasn't very good either. I mean, not bad, but just not 3D programming good. There were some aspects of the course I really did enjoy. The MIPs assembly was actually pretty easy, to my surprise, but then we were only making pixels happen in MIPs. I made a fairly basic but good enough 2D drawing API. Everything else I struggled with until I happened upon C programming for the Sony PSP. At last, there's a high level language that I could understand! It just seemed to make sense.

Sadly, it was my lack of trigonometry that let me down in the end, aside from the external pressures of family life and such like. So just before the final exams of the 2nd year I had to drop out for real. Luckily, I had learnt a lot about programming in the meantime, much more than the entire two years at MMU. Games programmers, it seemed to me, were the sort of people that obsess over making something interactive, intuitive and fun for another human. I mean, you wouldn't play any games that aren't any of those things, would you?

So, although I was not successful, I did manage to make some games type stuff happen, and with the beautiful language of C, I had a way into the industry. I found an internship at a local Birmingham start up called MetApps, and a year after, I landed my first development job. And whilst I still love programming, today I am working on fairly necessary but stale service driven applications. What I want to do is to take my programming knowledge and apply it to something outside of my usual day job. My friend Andrew Owen suggests that I write the first game specifically for the Chloe 280SE. I guess I could dust off the Z80 Tutorials that have proven popular on this blog and see how far that gets me. The good news is that I could use C wrappers around Z80 if I wanted to, like I did with some of my ZX80 and ZX81 games.

I'm sure a tutorial about actually making a game would be an interesting read to many, at least my statistics for this blog are strongly suggesting this. Those people of my age or older may remember the excellent Input magazines, which taught programming for all platforms. I'd love to recreate something similar to that but more focussed on making a game.

Sometimes, it's good not to leave the past in the past

It seems that the Internet really does archive everything, including something that I'd almost forgotten about

Back around 2005 or so, I wasn't necessarily in a good place; I had lost my first office job at Retro Gamer, and whilst steadily writing for Micro Mart I was formulating an idea for my own publication which would be both digital and in print. I thought then that unless you were printing gossip magazines, or childrens comics with free toys, physical media covering anything computering or gaming would soon be dead. Little did I know that nearly 20 years later, not only would Retro Gamer (RG) still be going, but also there would be the excellent Pixel Addict and Amiga Addict mags. So the print isn't yet dead, as I had thought.

Anyway, earlier this year I was actually interviewed for the very magazine for which I was once a staff writer (albeit not a very good one, sorry Mart), it kind of got me thinking about a time in my life that I don't usually think about. And recently I found that Retro:Bytes Lite, issue 1, was archived, but to my horror, it was the edition over which I was threatened to be sued. So I can't share the link otherwise I might get a strongly worded email from Andrew Merman. Not that I couldn't handle his guff, I just don't want to read anything from him again. Ever. Anyway, if you know how to make Internet searches, you'll know where to find it.

A quick back story: after losing my job as a staffer at RG (when it was in the Live Publishing stable), I was struggling for work. Knowing that I didn't want to go back into working for Social Services again, as the pay was even worse than my £12k salary at Live (yep, not all public sector employees are well paid you know), I had to do something.

Since the 1990s, and especially since 2002, I had built up a lot of knowledge about 8-bit computers and other related technologies. Along the way, I had some considerable contacts in the various communities. I had then three years of writing experience professionally, some in-house editorial experience, and a dream: to make my own publication as I adumbrated earlier. Retro:Bytes was my big idea, to be a community-focussed magazine for the seriously obsessed, like me, and for the more casual user, like almost everyone else. Near to the end of 2005, Reto:Bytes Lite was put out as a tester, but only digitally. And I was trying then to secure something bigger and better. Unfortunately, some external forces and my own lack of experience forbade it. Although looking at it now, it certainly had potential.

So, back then I was young and let's say not so perspicacious. And after nearly 20 years, I am no longer young. What I do have though is a pretty well paid job, over a decade experience as a software developer, so I am what one might call "upwardly mobile".

One thing that there is now, that wasn't then, is something called a KickStarter, and does Indiegogo still exist as a funding stream? You know what I'm talking about. But I wouldn't necessarily need to raise capital now from any community, I'd just need a bit of time with a word processor, find a good designer, and get some quotes to make something printed, and some webspace. Being a PHP developer with front-end experience, I don't need a GoDaddy or something either. It's almost like now is the right time to do something with the old Retro:Bytes concept. Isn't it?

With TheSpectrum launching in November 2024, the famous magazine Your Sinclair should relaunch too

The one thing that is sadly lacking is a good Sinclair ZX Spectrum magazine (yikes!). Your Sinclair should relaunch to provide a bit of colour to the Speccy community.

Starting out as a publication called Your Spectrum, which was relaunched in 1986 as Your Sinclair (YS), this magazine became iconic and a huge influence on the Speccy community, both then and now; it was certainly one of the best gaming magazines that one could purchase in the 1980s. It lasted through until 1993 ending with its famous Big Final Issue, signalling the end of commercial 8-bit gaming software in general, with the Commodore C64 being the last 8-bit home computer platform to have a significant release^[1] (which was Psygnosis's Lemmings, published in February 1994).

YS was skilfully archived by the The Your Sinclair Rock 'n' Roll Years website, something now that only the WayBack Machine can tell. Such was the appeal and legend of YS, Retro Gamer Magazine paid tribute to it in 2004 with issue 94, niftily edited by Dan Whitehead, who is by far one of the best writers I've ever worked with, and certainly one of the most perspicacious.

Almost 20 years after Retro Gamer's aforementioned issue 94 and Retro Games Limited have announced TheSpectrum, and after something of a lull in the mid to late 1990s, and the early part of the 2000s, the Speccy community has grown into something of a monolith. There isn't the unity that there might have been in the early days, when the independent 8-bit publisher Cronosoft launched, for instance. As communities grow, they can become more fractured. And the lies and propaganda over the Vega+ hand-held console certainly didn't help, causing more fracturing. The liars and charlatans were backing Retro Computers Ltd (RCL) propaganda even though it was clear to anyone paying any attention that there were quite severe issues with RCL's management, especially after two of its directors (namely Paul Andrews and Chris Smith) were illegally removed by the fraudsters who remained to drive the Vega+ into its grave. I remember before this time when the once great World of Spectrum website was a bouyant and well respected home for all Speccy fans, and anyone else who was curious about the rubber keyed wonder. Now, sensible people avoid it.

Even with all of the apparent issues in the Speccy community there is certainly enough going on for at least a bi-monthly printed matter periodical to launch. There is an abundance of new Spectrum software; there is the Omni platform and several other popular clones; there is the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next; and there are loads of emulators to choose from. And now, at a good price point, TheSpectrum is happening just in time for Christmas 2024. And although I find it odd that computering and gaming magazines still exist in printed form, people certainly seem to want them. Your Sinclair, with it's vibrant and rich history, with its mix of gaming and humour, and being crap (in a funky skillo sort of way) is what I think is needed right now, isn't it? Although, getting the tone of YS right may be a tough ask. But it's been done once before. Bring on issue 95 for a Spec-chums reunion for us old gals and geezers. You all know that you need this in your life again.

^[1] I know since this time, there has been a lot of new 8-bit games, and one might consider today to be a second commercial era for many 8-bit computers.

A small note, this is my 50th published blog post. Huzzah!