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[[image:Jim Dramis - Designer's Spotlight.jpg|400px|thumb|left|An Interview with John C. Plaster - Designer and Programmer of "Tombstone City:21st Century"]]
GMK: Have you progra/1',
med many games?
JCP: Tombstone City was
the first. I've since programmed
one other, and started
work on a third.
GMK: What experiences
have you had that you think
contributed to your desire
and ability to design computer
games?
JCP: Nothing special, really.
I just had a regular childhood
... played things like
checkers, Old Maid, and poker.
I never had played any arcade
games before I designed
Tomstone City.
GMK: Are you an artistic
or creative person in other
fields or activities?
JCP: I don't know that
I'm that creative in other
areas. I have a pure math
background-that's what I
majored in in school ... so
maybe I have more of a logical-
type mind than a creative
mind.
GMK: What jobs have you
had before coming to work at
TI?
JCP: I guess I've only had
three jobs in my life. My first
job was working for my dad,
a farmer in Canyon, Texas. I
worked with him on the farm
up until the time I went to
college. I got my B.A. at Rice
University, and spent a year
at the University of Arizona
doing graduate work. I completed
my Masters and PhD
in math at Texas Tech. That
was where I worked as a TA
[ teaching assistant] . I also
spent one semester at Abilene
Christian University.
GMK: How did you start
getting involved in computer
games, and where did the idea
for Tombstone City come
from?
JCP: I just started playing
around in 9900 [Assembly
Language for the TI-99/4A]
code. I really wasn't intending
to write a game when I started
... I just drew a spaceship
on the screen and played with
it. I was probably influenced
by the fact that most of the
arcade games I was familiar
with were space oriented. As
far as the background of
Tombstone, I spent a year at
the University of Tucson in
Arizona. The saguaro cactus
found in the game comes
from my living in Arizona.
GMK: How about specif
ics of the game . .. how did
these develop?
'''JCP:''' It was really what you'd consider spontaneous. I started putting the game together in April, and got a working version of it in May. There really wasn't a whole lot of forethought to it. I started putting it on the screen as fast as I thought of it. So, from the conception of the idea, to completion of the basics, we're talking about a four-week period.
'''GMK:''' From that whirlwind timetable, it would appear that you have had quite a bit of experience in 9900 Assembly Language coding.
'''JCP:''' Actually not. I first started on 9900 coding about two weeks before I began the game, and that was because of another project-a numeric expression interpreter. Before that, I was involved in two major projects. The first was the ''Personal Real Estate'' done in GPL [Graphic Programming Language]; the second was also written in GPL, and that was the Milliken Math Series.
==Game Credits for John Plaster==
* [[Tombstone City]]
==References==
<references />
[[Category:Software programmer]]
