Solarbabies is a classic, in its way. Any movie containing the line
“This is Terminac — a multi-capable masterpiece. He can squeeze the color from a ruby. He can pluck the eye from a living bird. And he’s been programmed to enjoy what he does.”
is not to be taken lightly.
Home for the holidays. It’s good to be back. Not much has changed except that David has taken over my room. We played a game of go. He’s seven stones stronger.
Pizza at Mario’s with David and his friend Andy. We pumped about six bucks into a three-player game called Gauntlet, which has pretty good graphics and a great appetite for quarters.
People tend to be pretty bowled over by the animation test I’ve been showing them. “Don’t you realize what you’re looking at?” Jon Menell said. “This is the light bulb.”
Macworld Expo ’86 was pretty slick. The coolest thing there was the Radius 8 ½” x 11” tall screen.
Dad called all excited because David did well in the dan tournament. I hadn’t stopped to think about it until now, but the speed of his rise has been really startling. From total beginner to shodan in nine months. If he keeps this up another year or two, he could be one of the best non-Asian go players in the history of the world.
That’s something.
The Nintendo game machine has sold a million units in the U.S. over Christmas. As of now, only a handful of cartridges are available. Nintendo is keeping a tight rein on new titles, presumably to avoid a flood of product like the one that sunk Atari a couple of years ago. Broderbund — thanks to Doug’s Japan connections — has three of the coveted slots.
Karateka would be a natural, but Doug is apparently leaning toward choosing some older titles — Castles of Dr. Creep or Spelunker or Raid on Bungeling Bay or even Choplifter — instead.
I talked to Ed and Alan with great passion, trying to convince them. This is the first time in my life I’ve had to lobby so hard for something I desperately wanted, and it’s exquisitely frustrating. It’s so painful wanting something from someone, being reduced to wishing and hoping they’ll give it to me. I hate it.
If I’m going to be a screenwriter someday, guess I better get used to it.
Progress on Prince of Persia has slowed to a snail’s crawl. I’ve been drifting in to work around eleven or twelve, and between that, the Butchery and the Sport Court, my workday is about forty-five minutes long. Ed and Gene and Lauren keep checking in to see what new and exciting stuff I’ve got up on the screen, and they go away disappointed.
Instead, I’ve been spending my time playing with my new Mac, Radius screen, and Scriptor screenplay formatting software. Shiny new toys.
Got up early for a change and put in a full day’s work on the game.
Corey talked me into switching assemblers, operating systems, and disk media (from DOS 3.3, S-C Assembler, and 5 1/4” floppies to ProDos, Merlin, and SCSI hard drive). The change should take about a week, but I think it’ll pay for itself in the end.
Roland spent the whole morning helping me switch over to Merlin and ProDOS. He sat down at my desk and, before my eyes, wrote a nifty little program to automatically translate S-C’s weird Integer BASIC source files into regular text files.
It was kind of a thrill to watch. Roland is a hacker of the old school. He’s polite and unprepossessing in his dress and demeanor, careful about money and contracts. He drives a Saab with license plate SNABBIL. But under that conservative surface is a demon – a guy who will put his day job on hold for 72 hours and sit down and reverse-engineer an Apple II conversion of Tetris, just for the pleasure of it.
Watching him do what he did for me today, I felt a little of the old joy come flooding back. I’d almost forgotten the most basic thing: programming is fun. I’ve grown middle-aged these past couple of years. Roland is 23 but he’s still young at heart.
Got to Broderbund around 8:30 and put in another solid eight hours. Converted BUILDER over to Merlin/Pro, but it’s not working. Give me another day or two to get all the bugs out.
Showed Ed the latest (Jan. 27) working version. He was gratifyingly thrilled about the 3-D box with scrolling borders.
“When do you think you’ll be finished with your game?” Lauren asked me on the way back from the Butchery.
“I’m shooting for August,” I said.
We agreed the important thing is to make it as good as possible, and that a few months earlier or later wouldn’t really make much difference.
Today, for the first time, I constructed a really large level and played around in it. It was the first time this game had ever given me the feeling of space. It was kind of thrilling. I think it’s going to be a winner. I’m going slowly this time, building on a solid foundation, and I think it’ll pay off big.
It’s great having David here. All the stuff I’d gotten jaded about suddenly seems cool when seen through my little brother’s eyes. Like having a car, being able to drive anywhere I want, a place of my own, a key to Broderbund, free video games in the lunchroom… stuff like that. I’ll miss him when he’s gone.
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