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introduction
i have only completed _two_ computer-related projects in my entire life. one, biography of a machine, an album, has its own page. the other, ultimate battle 2, a hypercard fighting game in the grand tradition of mortal kombat, was finished in 1994 and now i sadly cannot find it. it's presumably somewhere amongst the piles of disks i have here. sodbuster is a project made for a class in 8th grade, and while basically playable and complete, it's buggy and unoptimized.
the rest of my projects lie almost completed or nearly completed. there are way too many to mention every last one, but below is a chronological list of the more important ones. i didn't include any non-game related projects(such as the ill-fated myst palace). this list serves mostly to remind me of what all i've done, before my memories get replaced with more important things. the dates are approximations... i can never remember details. portions have been reproduced from an attempt to document my works in 1997. if there are any screenshots or downloads you'll find them right below the project's description.
the early years
1984-1990 : i was introduced to computers sometime when i was 3 or perhaps 4 by my frighteningly intelligent brother orion. from there to 1990 i believe i was mostly using macpaint and occasionally playing with other programs. i don't think i have anything lying around from this era.
1991-1994 : sometime early in this period i was introduced to hypercard by my brother, which would fuel my games for quite a few years. amongst my first few games: a side-scrolling batman adventure game that somehow got nuked, a mortal kombat-like fighting game called 'ultimate battle', a rpg engine that never really got anywhere, and a few other tidbits i can't quite remember. the crown jewels of this era, however, were:
Anchor : 1994
myst had a huge effect on me when i received it for my birthday. i've often found exploring more fun then blowing things up, and this game was truly fun to explore. when i finished it(with a lot of help from my frighteningly intelligent brother orion), i set to work on anchor, a true myst rip-off. in fact, sometimes i wonder if perhaps i started the whole myst rip-off craze. well, actually, no i don't, but it's a funny thought. anyway, the game was made in hypercard, and rather then featuring rendered graphics it was all hand-drawn using line tools. rather primitive, but the game was sort've interesting. it was never completed, but i did get the main island done and the beginnings of a few ages.
Ultimate Battle 2 : 1994
mortal kombat introduced me to the fighting genre, and mortal kombat 2 remains my favorite fighting game of all time. although i've fallen out of interest with the genre since, at the time i was obsessed enough to create a mortal kombat rip-off called 'ultimate battle'. the original ultimate battle was a sad affair, but it worked and the engine served as ground for ultimate battle 2. on a static background hand-drawn, two iconic characters could move freely and beat on each other. there was both a single-player and multi-player mode(two people to a keyboard). however, the game didn't really reach it's full potential. the next year(1994) i set to work on ultimate battle 2, and it turned out quite large and fantastic. it was sort've fun(especially for giggles during later stages of my life), and i even had a good long FAQ describing how to do the moves and finishing moves. the goal was to work your way up the tournament ladder to reach the ultimate evil bad-guy... pao!
1995-early 1997 : hypercard was really getting boring by the end of 1994, and so my last project was the abandoned 'ultimate battle 3' in early 1995. it was around this time i was starting to use the 'net, and connecting at great cost to aol i started downloading games. it was there that i found my favorite game of all time(even though i didn't know it yet), marathon 2. the demo was about 14 megs, and how i downloaded it over that 14.4kbps modem with it dropping all of the time i don't know. but it had a huge effect on me, and i got the full game for christmas at the end of 1995 and after discovering pfhorte on the internet started to build maps for various mini-projects. however it wasn't until i got marathon infinity in 1996(which came with tools for editing everything in the game) that i started on some massive TCs:
Bob Nukem : 1996
bob nukem was a total conversion for marathon infinity that was created to bring something a bit like duke nukem to marathon. you played bob nukem, a time-travelling wiseguy who works against pfhor in several different eras. i created several new monsters and weapons using bryce 2, a new tool for me, and some fairly innovative maps that imitated the real world. unfortunately i basically have nothing from this project anymore, where it went i'm not sure. it was deemed unfeasible by late 1996, and it was about that time i started on a new marathon infinity total conversion.
Brigt : 1996-early 1997
brigt was a fantasy tc with a strange name. it was supposed to be pronounced "bright" i believe. for this project i started off making a ton of textures and importing them into various castle testmaps. when i actually got down to creating new maps, i decided to try to make the lighting as realistic as possible, and so used an awfully frightening amount of polygons to make the lighting smooth. i drew some monsters that i thought looked nice at the time, and wrote up the plot. all in all, it was going nicely but was just too big of a project to take on. all that has survived various hard drive crashes and lost backups is a story i wrote for an early 6th grade writing assignment and a handful of drawings. a quick side note: it was near the end of brigt's life-span that i started dijit.
1997-1999
it was in mid-'97 that i finally bit the bullet and quit my flirting with programming. i had played around with basic a bit, and although my frighteningly intelligent brother, orion, had tried to ween me off of hypercard earlier so i could start using pascal earlier i didn't take at the time. after brigt was cancelled, i threw myself head-first into programming in pascal and created several cool projects. about a year later, in 1998, i switched to c and to c++ very soon after. i worked on several interesting projects during this period:
Early Programming Works : 1997
i created a series of initial simple works to get a good feel for the macintosh toolbox and programming in a real language apart from hypertalk. i've uploaded three early macintosh applications as a .sit, MunkSketch, DiJiT FPS, and the first version Shade(read below). you can download it(480k) by clicking here.
New Anchor : 1997
i decided to use my decidedly limited programming skills along with bryce to create a newer, richer version of anchor. i made the mistake of making specific references to myst however, which got me in a bit legal trouble so i made the rash choice of just cancelling the thing. i can't find any of the indoor renders, which were quite nice looking, but here are two embarrassing outdoor pics: one, two.
Shade : 1997-early 1998
my first real pascal project was shade. the idea arose after a night of playing my old snes platform scrolling games and thinking how cool it would be to turn marathon into a side-scroller. however, i decided that i didn't need any legal trouble and create the game's characters and settings myself. shade took place on a ring-shaped prison orbiting a planet(it should be noted that this was long before halo was even thought of... just in case you're worried). wrongfully imprisoned, you would have to escape onto the planet below and from there attempt to clear your name. the first engine was a buggy mess, not shocking considering it was my first real programming adventure, but it was fun to work on. around february 1998 i started a new version of the shade engine, meant to be the quake of side scrolling games. it looked quite nice, and was rather innovative. however for one reason or another i lost interest in shade altogether. later on i would create an fps engine and name it the shade fps engine, but that never really panned out either(surprised? i'm not). you can download the first version from a link above.
Wargame and Sodbuster : 1998, 1999
wargame was created for a creative project in 7th grade history. rather then do something incredibly boring like draw a picture, i decided to create a real-time strategy game based on the sioux indians(who i was studying). it turned out to be quite a bit of work, and i only got one level done, but it was sort've fun(and, might i add, greatly underappreciated by my teacher). unfortunately, i don't have a copy of it anymore. sodbuster is a game about the great west, where you as a cowboy are supposed to gather cows before you run out of time. it was made for an 8th grade history class as a creative project. it turned out fairly well, and you can download a full working version(500k) by clicking here, complete with a level editor.
more recent stuff
you can find more information on a few of my recent projects on the main project page. however i have recently worked on a few projects that haven't gotten their own page:
Brinn : 2000
the first incarnation of brinn was a small 2-d mini-multiplayer rpg. the idea was to create a world somewhat like that you would find in a mmorpg, but have it only available to 8 players over lan or tcp/ip. it was created mostly for something to amuse myself and my friends in one of our teacher's computer labs where we would spend lunch(and still do when it's available). i'll make it available for download soon.
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