Difference between revisions of "John M. Phillips"
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Bob Hendren and I had a falling out towards the end of the project. He wanted the same girl who did the [[Parsec]] speech (her name was Aubry) to do the [[Moonmine]] speech. I wanted someone else to do it. We ended up getting Aubry to record part of the speech and another TI Lubbock employee to record the voice of the Zygonaut. Bob and my relationship was never the same after that. | Bob Hendren and I had a falling out towards the end of the project. He wanted the same girl who did the [[Parsec]] speech (her name was Aubry) to do the [[Moonmine]] speech. I wanted someone else to do it. We ended up getting Aubry to record part of the speech and another TI Lubbock employee to record the voice of the Zygonaut. Bob and my relationship was never the same after that. | ||
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| + | ===[[Hopper]]=== | ||
| + | While I was working on [[Moonmine]], my wife was working in the documentation group for TI (she wrote part of the [[Moonmine]] manual). There she met a man by the name of [[Mike Archuleta]], who was a Supervisor in the QA group. We all went to a party together and she introduced me to Mike. Mike was brilliant and really wanted to do some programming. He came up with the idea of doing a game together since he needed the technical guidance. | ||
| + | |||
| + | We went out to an arcade and found a coin-operated game called, "Pengo." It had a penguin who pushed big ice blocks around the screen. We liked the concept and decided to use it. Instead of a penguin, we chose a Kangaroo. Instead of ice blocks, we chose crates. We did a storyboard on the game and divided up the programming. We also chose the TI Mini Memory cartridge as our intended platform, since there were no quality games that would fit in the 3.5K of RAM it contained. | ||
| + | |||
| + | We coded for weeks and spent several late, late nights cutting code and optimizing code to get it to fit into the Mini Memory. Eventually, we did. I remember calling my parents at 4:00 am because I was so excited that we had finished it. We submitted to TI and they accepted it as a Class A submission. They liked the game so much, though, that they asked us to add more to it because they wanted to produce a standalone cartridge of the game. So, we added title screens, two players, more levels, a surprise level, etc. Hopper was produced and released just before TI announced they were killing the computer and both Mike and I received royalty payments for about a year and a half. | ||
==External Links== | ==External Links== | ||
Revision as of 14:33, 15 August 2018
| John M. Phillips | |
|---|---|
 John M. Phillips Sometime Before 1989 | |
| Occupation | Software Programmer |
John M. Phillips was a software programmer working for Texas Instruments (TI). He is credited with programming Hopper and Moon Mine for the TI-99/4A.
John Phillips is somewhat legendary in the TI-99/4A community for working, at least in part, on numerous games for the computer system. He is also well known for programming cheats into most of the games he worked on, allowing for players to chose the level, and often the number of lives, a player starts with.
Letter by John Phillips
John wrote the following, though the source is unknown to me. I found this information on www.99er.net.
I started working for TI in their "IS&S" division in Dallas in 1982 after graduating from Illinois State in 1982. I owned a TI-99/4 that I bought from JC Penney in 1981 and learned to program it in Basic and Extended Basic. During my on-campus interviews with TI at Illinois State, I mentioned that I really wanted to work in the Home Computer Division, but TI felt my strengths were best served elsewhere. They offered me a position in Dallas working for their "IS&S" division.
While working in Dallas, TI announced an employee submissions program that would allow employees of TI to submit software for the Home Computer. Previously, TI employees were exempt from submissions. There were two types: Class A and Class B. Class B was a one-time payment of $250 with no royalties. Class A was a 4-year royalty payment based on sales. I sent some Extended Basic games that I had written in college to Lubbock. They were accepted as class B and I received $250 apiece for 4 submissions. I called out to Lubbock and spoke with a man named Howard Hastings, who was the Development Manager for internal TI 99/4A software. I told him about my recent submissions and mentioned that I really wanted to work in Lubbock as a games programmer, but had been assigned to Dallas instead.
Howard must have pulled some strings and called me later to invite me to Lubbock to interview with the games development team. I was so young and naïve that I responded, "Sure! How far of a drive is it?" Howard chuckled and said that they'd be more than happy to fly me. He arranged a transfer from Dallas in November of 1982 (something that is generally not allowed until a TI employee had completed one year of service). I moved to Lubbock in November of 1982 and was there until June of 1994.
Currently:
I am currently the CIO of USF Processors, an industry-leading reverse logistics firm in North Dallas. I live in Plano, TX with my wife, Kay and my three boys Jordan (12), Will (7) and Christian (2). You can visit my personal website at http://members2.easyspace.com/phillipsj . Feel free to drop me a line.
John can be contacted at jphillips@USFProcessors.com
Moonmine
Moonmine was assigned to me upon my arrival in Lubbock. I worked for a Supervisor, Bob Hendren, who had done a rough design and storyboard. I already knew how to program in assembly language, but did not know the proprietary language named "GPL" (Graphics Programming Language) that TI used in their GROM chips. I learned that from Jim Dramis (Car Wars, Munch Man, Parsec). I worked on Moonmine for several months.
Bob Hendren and I had a falling out towards the end of the project. He wanted the same girl who did the Parsec speech (her name was Aubry) to do the Moonmine speech. I wanted someone else to do it. We ended up getting Aubry to record part of the speech and another TI Lubbock employee to record the voice of the Zygonaut. Bob and my relationship was never the same after that.
Hopper
While I was working on Moonmine, my wife was working in the documentation group for TI (she wrote part of the Moonmine manual). There she met a man by the name of Mike Archuleta, who was a Supervisor in the QA group. We all went to a party together and she introduced me to Mike. Mike was brilliant and really wanted to do some programming. He came up with the idea of doing a game together since he needed the technical guidance.
We went out to an arcade and found a coin-operated game called, "Pengo." It had a penguin who pushed big ice blocks around the screen. We liked the concept and decided to use it. Instead of a penguin, we chose a Kangaroo. Instead of ice blocks, we chose crates. We did a storyboard on the game and divided up the programming. We also chose the TI Mini Memory cartridge as our intended platform, since there were no quality games that would fit in the 3.5K of RAM it contained.
We coded for weeks and spent several late, late nights cutting code and optimizing code to get it to fit into the Mini Memory. Eventually, we did. I remember calling my parents at 4:00 am because I was so excited that we had finished it. We submitted to TI and they accepted it as a Class A submission. They liked the game so much, though, that they asked us to add more to it because they wanted to produce a standalone cartridge of the game. So, we added title screens, two players, more levels, a surprise level, etc. Hopper was produced and released just before TI announced they were killing the computer and both Mike and I received royalty payments for about a year and a half.
