8,732
edits
Changes
→Questions and Answers
'''GMK:''' How do you feel about yourself playing games all day for a living. . . and what about the children who play your games?
'''JD:''' Actually it might sound kind of funny, but to me, writing the game is more fun than sitting down and playing it for hours. There's a lot more that goes into designing a game then meets the eye. As for children, there was one girl I was talking to who told me she played [[Munch Man ]] hours each day and scored 294,000 points. It's a good feeling to know that someone out there likes the product that you've created.
'''GMK:''' Did you play a lot of games as a child?
'''JD:''' Yes, there's a certain tension, a certain risk-reward, and there's a goal. Son1c of these key elements you find in the actual game that you produce - you have a certain tension about doing a game because in your mind there are four or five obstacles that you know have to be overcome, and you're not sure you can; it's kind of exciting each day - you never know, how far you're going to get. There's a certain risk because you could spend six months on a project, and it could very easily be a total disaster. Sometimes there's a fine line between a great game and a total wipe-out. There's also a goal - finishing the project - that means making sure it is a marketable, bug-free product. So you're right - there is a game in creating games.
'''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 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]]
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.
'''GMK:''' Now, let's get into [[Munch Man]]. Why did you decide to do a game like that?
==References==
