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→Game Credits for Paul Urbanus
Pual Urbanus was a summer intern working at Texas Instruments with [[Jim Dramis]]. He helped Jim program [[Parsec]]. Paul eventually went on to work at Atarisoft and worked on the games [[Jungle Hunt]] and [[Pole Position]] for the TI-99/4A as well.
During his time as a programmer, Paul Urbanus programmed for many software publishers including Texas Instruments (TI), DaTaBiotics, Softmachine, and Atarisoft.
==Story of the Urbite==
I returned to school in the fall of 1982, but only lasted for one semester. At that time I joined with my Parsec partner, [[Jim Dramis]] and the author or [[TI Invaders]], [[Garth Dollahite]], along with two business types and we formed a company called SofMachine. Our charter was to author, produce and market game cartridges for the TI 99/4A, kind of like the TI version of Activision. White Sofmachine was in existence, we wrote three games of our own and converted two games for [[Atarisoft]]. The games we wrote during that time were:
{| class="wikitable" style="margin: auto; vertical-align:center; text-align:center;"
| Jumpy || [[Paul Urbanus]] || Sofmachine (ourselves
|-
| Pole Position || [[Garth Dollahite|Dollahite]]//[[Paul Urbanus|Urbanus]] || [[Atarisoft]]
|-
| Jungle Hunte || [[Jim Dramis|Dramis]]/[[Paul Urbanus|Urbanus]] || [[Atarisoft]]
|}
Because our business partners were unsuccessful at securing the required capital funding, combined with TI's exit from the home computer market, we were unable to manufacture and market our (Sofmachine's) three games. However, due to a sequence of events beyond our control, the Sofmachine games were pirated and eventually freely exchanged around the TI 99/4A community. A valuable lesson was learned: NEVER trust anyone with your own livelihood. Lesson number two: Don't believe what a "business" guy tells you just because they're the business guys and you're the technical guys, ESPECIALLY if it goes against your gut instincts.
All games programmed by Sofmachine used the TI 99/4A as the development platform, along with the Editor/Assembler cartridge. Two of us programmers purchased a Myarc 10 MByte hard drive to $1800 EACH! I just sold it about 6 months ago for $100. OUCH!
Wow! I intended for this to be a brief history for the purpose of lending credence to my following comments on the John Phillips article. Sorry for the long windedness, but the recollection of these times is good and I almost couldn't stop typing.
Please see below for my rebuttal to specific points.
Thanks and regards,
Paul Urbanus
the "Urbite" in [[Parsec]]
<nowiki>***</nowiki>Warning - - - Urbite ships attacking!***
==Originally Published in Lima Newsletter, April 1993==
<nowiki>*</nowiki>[[John M. Phillips|John Phillips]]
<nowiki>*</nowiki>by Bill Gaskill
<nowiki>*</nowiki>''(Italics indicate rebuttal material added by Paul Urbanus)''
I would venture a guess that most people who have owned a TI-99 for more than a couple of years have run across the name [[John M. Phillips|John Phillips]] before. He is a near legend in the TI-99/4A cartridge and assembly language programming community and can claim authorship, co-authorship or significant involvement in over a dozen cartridge programs produced for the 99/4A, not to mention numerous articles written about the inner working of the 4A's architecture.
Original article content omitted here.
<nowiki>*</nowiki>'''Hopper''' - [[Michael Archuleta]] and [[John M. Phillips|John Phillips]] co-wrote Hopper, which was the only cartridge developed entirely on the TI-99/4A Home Computer, using the Editor/Assembler cartridge for all of the programming. All of the other TI-99 cartridge software programs were developed on a TI Mini, no the 99/4 or 4A.
''All of the programs for the Mini Memory cartridge were programmed exclusively using the 99/4A and the Editor/Assembler cartridge. As noted at the beginning of this article, all 5 of the titles developed by Sofmachine were also programmed using only the 99/4A. I suspect that many of the third-party games were also programmed in this manner, but I can't say for sure.''
<nowiki>*</nowiki>'''MINI MEMORY'S LINE-BY-LINE ASSEMBLER''' - [[John Phillips|Phillips]] claims responsibility for its development, but I am not sure exactly what that means.
''I developed the Line-By-Line Assembler exclusively. [[John Phillips]] was not even working in the Home Computer division at that time. And I can't claim responsibility for writing all of the code, only for porting it from the 990/189 Unisverisyt Board single board computer. Also, I wrote the Lines program. I am not aware of ANY contributions which John made to the programs in the Mini Memory.''
<nowiki>*</nowiki>'''Moonmine''' - Programmed by [[John Phillips]] from a design by Bob Hendren. You may remember that Hendren was also the project engineer behind [[Parsec]] and the person who recruited Aubree Anderson to do the voice for the [[Parsec]] game.
''Bob Hendren had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the development of [[Parsec]] in regards to content, playability, or technical direction. With respect to his role in the recruitment of Aubree Anderson, I really don't know about that. [[Parsec]] was strictly a collaboration by [[Jim Dramis]] and myself. [[Parsec]] was not directed or defined in any way by management or anyone else. We were merely instructed to " ..get together and see what you can come up with..." Although we received much input from our coworkers as they played with [[Parsec]] was what came from our imaginations. I think I can speak for [[Jim Dramis|Jim]] when I say we are still pleased with our efforts more than 10 years later. We both hope that everyone who has played [[Parsec]] has enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed both writing AND playing it.''
==Game Credits for Paul Urbanus==
* [[Jumpy]] name changed to [[QMaze]] in 1988
* [[Jungle Hunt]] with [[Jim Dramis]] and [[Garth Dollahite]]
* [[Parsec]] with [[Jim Dramis]]
* [[Pole Position]] [[Jim Dramis]] and [[Garth Dollahite]]
* [[Vanguard]] with [[Jim Dramis]] and [[Garth Dollahite]]
[[Category:Software programmer]]
