8,732
edits
Changes
→Questions and Answers
'''GMK:''' How much of [[Car Wars]] and Munch Man did you actually do?
'''JD:''' [[Car Wars]] and Munch Man were basically my own - games that I was responsible for and did the programming on. [[Car Wars]], my first game, was one GROM; that was all programmed in GPL. Prior to actually starting work on the game, I attended GPL classes here and took a couple of weeks just to familiarize myself with the GPL manual and the arachitecture architecture of the Home Computer. Basically I learned the GPL language by doing the programming for [[Car Wars]]. Similarly, with Munch Man, I learned 9900 code [Assenbly Language].
[[image:Jim Dramis - Interview.jpg|center|800px]]
'''GMK:''' Can you give us an account of evolution of [[Car Wars]] from idea to finished program?
'''JD:''' In a lot of these games, we don't just go off in a corner and dream them up. We get good suggestions, help, and ideas from a lot of different people - even systems programmers on how to improve or write a subroutine. I had the basic game design idea, and the first thing I wanted to make sure was that GPL had enough speed to handle the motion, or whether I would have to use automotion. In this program, I did not use automotion of sprites. Those cars are double-sized, magnified sprites. I moved them one, two and four-pixel increments myself.
One of the main problems in the game was the logic. For instance, the track has all different characters that tell me whether the car can turn left, right, or change lanes. Once I got that programmed and working well, the rest of the game was really just polishing up - making the track look better, adding scoring and color, extra computer cars, etc. The whole effort took two and a half to three months of programming.
==References==
