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I'm just curious how you all did start programming. Maybe Darkbasic is your first language, maybe not. My story is this:
A few years ago I started with QBasic with making programs that ask your name and that kind of things. With the help I learned more and more and finally I made big text adventures, so first on paper I did draw maps of the game to know from which place you could access the other places. Two years ago I started with Delphi, but I did soon realise it wasn't good for making games, but I didn't like C++ and I didn't know of darkbasic yet so I stayed with Delphi making cardgames and stuff, and programs. Now for a year I'm doing Darkbasic. I've done a few projects, but my first nearly finished project is Packageman for the Retro competition. From now on I will do one big project and a little project. So when I'm borred with the big project I can go further with the little project and thereafter go on with the big project. Only doing a big project is something I don't like, because I think you don't get result soon enough, and than I quit.

A few years ago, a kid in my school who was bragging that he could program told me about QBasic. I learned QBasic and made a few games. I also started to learn C++ (and hated it too), numerous other versions of basic, visual basic, liberty basic, first basic, etc., and a few other programming languages, But I really couldn't make good, modern games. Until I found DarkBasic.

I guess if it wasn't for that kid, I wouldn't be programming today. I didn't even know about programming untill he told me.

I started back in '99 i think. Maybe '00. Anyways, I started HACKING with the Gameshark at the "Officical GameShark Discussion Board".. Great people. The Board closed, and I went to ezBoard and started my own board. Trash ! I picked up a Scholastic Book on "How to program in BASIC" (Trash too)..I learned some HTML and went to a 2 week camp and made a site, basic stuff. Then I met a nice guy and got hosting with PHP and MySQL. So I learned PHP. Later on I learned MySQL, and I made big pro sites. I went to QBasic later on, learned alot, then went to Visual Basic while learning C/C++. I tried me hand at GameBoy making, but heck, that was harder. I stayed with what I knew. I made fun little apps, but deleted them all. Until recenrtly, I was using VisualBasic to make RPGS ( www.multi2k.net/dbzinsane )..then I met DarkBASIC. Now I know more C/C++ and even Assembly.

Hacking changed my life.

Well one day I woke up during the summer and I decided that I wanted to make a game. So i went to www.download.com to find some game makers, and came across a couple that were no good, then I found the demo of DB, and visited their site. I had a great time learning DB, and it looked like it was easy to learn, and that it can make some good stuff. I ended up getting it for my birthday and well, the rest is history, well, almost. Actually, nah exclude that whole last line

So basically, it started with me wakin up saying "You know what, it would be cool to make a game. I think Ill try that!"

RPGamer

I broke my arm so I started programming YaBasic cos I had nothing to do, I then started QuickBasic and then started to learn C. I then discovered about DB round my friends house and downloaded the demo, then I got it this Christmas just gone. I have also now started to learn HTML and Javascript, and I made my webpage with the help of them.

Ahh a section for illustrious histories within programming...
well - i'm gonna add a few extra parts in the hall of Raven's History

i can remember tinkering with programming as long as i can remember... probably around '85-86 when i had to stay at my grandma's for the summer (cause my youngest bro was being born) really is when i remember getting into it much more than just tinkering.

I started on the Acorn with 'Basic' just making simple programs, like questions ... i noticed that you could make graphics and i remember that my first real program ever was a picture creator you'd use the cursor keys to move the box with a black centre. you'd press enter to put the colour down, which you'd choose with 1-6
Red - Green - Blue - Yellow - White - Grey
you couldn't save anything but i was so happy when i finished it, i copied down what i'd done on paper and went about learning howto record the programs.

about a year later my dad showed me his new 286machine with DOS 5.0 ... which i found came with 3 games
'Nibbler' which is better known to nokia users as snake, 'Gorrila' which is more commonly known as Tank and 'Stock' which was kinda like a stock market game... i also found something called qBasic.exe which they would load up in - now the novelty of a PC was quite new to me cause although my dad had other PCs, i'd never actually used them in DOS mode before - infact i didn't even know they ran on DOS before the 286
eager to learn this new 'Basic' i got stuck in, only to notice that it was very different ... so much so that i didn't like to use it as alot of thing about it confused me, like PROCs. So for the time being i just continued to use my Acorn, which at this point i'd learn enough math that 3D things needed points and howto calculate basic objects so i had fun making Cubes, Pyramids, Hexagonal Tubes and such ... also learnt howto make them move around the screen. However i never did get the hang of howto make them rotate.

well another year and in '89 my dad got this new computer call the Amiga 500+ oh it was so exiting cause it had so many new things... but most importantly to me, it had a voice synthsiser in Workbench. That was when i used a real Paint package for the first time, called Delux Paint 3. I spent hours and hours making artwork and animations within the program ... so much so that hardly anyone else got to play on the machine apart from when i went out to make a nusense of myself with my mates or go out with my girl (^_^)

about 4months after we got the Amiga, mom bought home a new programming language called AMOS that she said that i would probably like to try as it was for the Amiga
i spent that summer learning the world of AMOS, i remember making so many simple yet enjoyable projects ... it was probably the first time i learnt about loading formats, because i remember my mom helped me to use Amos to import Delux Paint format and using one of my animations in a series of pictures which would walk across the screen.
Each X+ value on the screen = a frame up and each X- was a frame down.
That had me loving to programming creating such simple things, as it took me over the following 6weeks to get it not only walking but jumping and colliding with platforms
it was cool cause the new school term came, and i didn't want to go back cause all i wanted to do was program
(but i was forced to anyway )

well for Christmas i got a surprise when mom brough home an upgrade for Amos called Amos3D ... ohh it was so cool, you could place down 3D blocks and such to make objects - then AMOS would automatically import them with a command.
i looked through all the demo's and just had to make a simple racing game so i make a boxy looking car, and by this point my math was now just about good enough to understand basic Trig which certainly was VERY helpful when working on my 3D. After a while though i found myself less and less interested in the programming aspect but more and more interested in the 3D aspect
So i'd spend like an hour a day before i went to bed working on models which looked like things ... but AMOS3D wasn't really good for that kind of thing so i kinda gave up on the computer for a while which was just as well cause Elite2 has only just been released and dad never let anyone on to play it (though i'd sneak down in the morning before everyone got up and play on it with the sound low hehee)

That year mom got a new programming language from work called Borland C ... and i'd watch as she'd program on the PC (cause dad was obsessed with Elite2, and i really couldn blame him was/is a class game) - but i got into trying to program BorlandC, however with no manual or help it was very very hard and daunting. So i thought i'd wait until someone could be around to help me... later that year we got a CUamiga which had a demo of Caligari24 and AmigaC both of which had some starter tutorials, and with our new Amiga1200 AGA i was just learning he difference between 256colours and 24bit colour
i was going to try to learn BorlandC again that spring, however a game was released which was a 'must have' by the name of Wolfenstein3D, and my dad just so happened to aquire himself a copy - there was no hope of using the home PC which had just been upgraded to a speedy 386.
So i decided to sit down with Caligari24 for a month, when the trial ran out and i had to delete it from my HDD - i thought "I MUST HAVE THIS!" ... right there i had a true passion in life unfortunately i didn't manage to get ahold of a version of it, no matter how much pleading - however a few week later, technology obsessed dad bought himself a shiney new Video Toaster card for the A1200. And it came wth a free version of Lightwave.
I'd planned that summer to spend learning this new tool, cept i found that my mates who'd gone to different secondary school decided we should all have some fun - so we spent most of the summer hanging out, kinda over that summer they'd learnt i'd gone from being kinda a whimpy lil guy to someone who wasn't gonna take much guff (lol oh yeah i used to be a sweet an innocent)... actually that was the summer that me and some kid i knew in jnr school got into probably one of the more famous fights well atleast for our year, like the whole damn'd village of kids turned up for it and we'd gone at it for like 2hours (i mean we were two of the whimpest kids in jnr school so most thought we'd whimp out here, but we both did alot of damage to each other ... finally ended cause we were both so bloody knacked - plus i broke his nose, and sprained my ankle in the process ... so i couldnt walk and he was balling his eyes out lol)

well that aside, the following year i spent learning AmigaC and Lightwave alot more - however i never really got into AmigaC, i did finally learn howto make wireframe cubes which spun and such ... plus howto edit images in memory which was fun - also learn more about what the memory really was

I spend a few years learning lightwave and in '95 my parents decided to spit (it wasn't that amicable, still isn't lol but no need to bore with details) ... well anyways my dad had already bought me something for my Birthday, it was a copy of a new program called Maya plus a copy of Windows NT 3.51 to run it on
now if i wasn't reeling from what had happened i'd of probably got on and used it more - but i kinda literally had to get all responsible and start acting like a mature big brother ... if i didn't have Catrin to help me through it - i'd of probably been broken.

Even with her my schooling did start to suffer from the stress and everything ... well during the next year i got a step sister, who is has been like a true sister to me - and though my mom and stepdad split (i think infact the marriage was anulled or something) well anyways she was going out with a japanese guy who was studing at a local University ... and she took me to him a few times and he was into the 3D stuff and was learning Maya at the time.
So i learnt alot about the program from him, everyday i kinda stunned him what i could do so i kinda started to work alot more on my artwork fogetting about programming.
Well after that my sister broke up with him but at the same time somehow convinced my mom to let me goto the states for a few weeks holiday ... well the few weeks ended up turning into a few months, and i got to meet some new guys which i'd heard about from my dad before.
One of them was like one of dads best friends from Uni and like he'd been the one who'd put us up for a few months. And after like i was suppose to start shcool again, rather than going to a stateside school it was decided would be better that i went to work with 'uncle' Paul

so i spent a few month learning a program called 3D Studio Max for Dos and i watched a whole game being developed, it was very insightful - and i learn a lesson to never bug a programmer when he looks busy (else you end up getting sent on some errand or yelled at)

well whilst i was there i started using more regularly a language i'd begun to learn with a mate a year ago called QuakeC i got some interesting tips on howto use it and program with it. Now although i know its not even close to real C it was still a pretty cool language to learn

well when i got back, it was safe to say my mom was not greatly impressed with my sister - and she was kinda banned from comming near us again... which i felt was unfair, and with Catrin we both did a runner ... to the states again (this time LA)
we actually survived there for a good 4-5months with both of us working at a local Burger King and MacDonalds (and yeah we did lie about our ages to do it)

well after like almost 5months we were snatched up and sent back home and had to face the families again who weren't happy about our little stunt, both were told we were never to see each other ever again ... after that i decided i'd just work on my artwork (cause the schools didn't want me again) but my mom got ahold of a private tutor for me, so i ended up having to learn one subject - which i choose Math

i frequently started to see my dad again who got me a few new programs over the following year - trueSpace2 was one of them which i just loved to bits
and i discovered VRML online, which was interesting to me as it combined my love for 3D with my love for Programming (and i had ALOT of time on my hands whilst i wasn't going to school or allowed to see anyone)

like a year passed and i took my math GCSE got a respectable B (not bad for Intermediate) with this i decided, if i'm not allowed to go anywhere, see anyone, or do anything i'll do what everyone else in my family had - and i join the RAF
it took 6months for them to truely get sick of me and tell me to get lost ... but whilst i was in there i got to talk to Catrin again
and so as soon as i came out we tied the knot and we went to live with my dad whilst i got on my feet financially.

well i got into a College in Derby doing Intermediate IT GNVQ - but i still needed money to support us cause dad was really struggling, so i started a part-time job at what i thought was a small IT company being the Gopher for them i'd been outta the loop so long how was i to know that Core was a games company...

well musta spent the next few months watching them use Maya2 learning more and a new language to me Visual C++ - now i was learning Visual Basic at college, but Visual C++ was totally different and so appealing to me
pitty i couldn't afford it

but not to worry i got into the game swing of things again and in 2000 i was flicking through PCGamerUK and i notice a small advert space (no later than a personal) that simply said "DarkBasic is set to be the PC's version of AMOS for the new millennium" with a picture of the iced demo on it... "next month we will be bringing you our PCG challenge game, a game the DarkBasic team will be creating within 24hours just for us plus a WORLD exclusive demo of this brand new language"

well that was it... AMOS on the PC, god i couldn't of imagined anything better
unfortunately that month turned into horror, because of what happened at home
when the new issue of PCG came with DarkBasic i literally decided i was gonna have no social life. I cut myself off from all my friends, family (as best you can living with one of them), everyone ... and just worked with darkbasic and in Maya as well as trueSpace.

my work started to suffer throughout most of 2001 because i couldn't concentrate, i came onto the DarkBasic forums - but hardly ever said anything. I was given a chance to work on bits and bobs for the games that the guys were working on over 2000, probably more because of pitty at the time ... but i launched myself into my work, when they told me to go home i'd go out, get smashed and get laid - shower and go back to work (is not a life style i'd ever recommend)
however it showed them that i was determined to show what i could do, producing amazing results over and over again - but partly due to my growing attitude of wanting to be left my own devices and partly cause i was unknowingly breeching my contract by developing work outside, of work in Oct 2001 they decided to let me go

about 6-7months prior to being fired i finally calmed down a little to get myself a girl, which actually lasted a week or two cause she couldn't actually handle my attitude which was followed by my last ex - who was REALLY bad for me, because right before i was fired i was asked several times (and offered obscene money) to go work for Raven Software (because my uncle had passed on work most likely what i'd helped him with a few summers back) but despite the offers and me making noise i wanted to leave Core cause i don't think they'd put up with me much longer she was detemined to make me stay ... like a fool i listened to her.

whilst i was jobless i got into the 3D Studio Max scene, learning it because i knew alot of companies now used it - at the same time getting more heavily into DarkBasic as well as Visual C++ which i could now afford
i remember a month or two went by and over that christmas i worked with a few mates in Java - which was interesting.

finally i got someone to pickup my portfolio and say they wanted me, unfortunately it was another stateside company - but this time i was determined, and after what my Ex had done on holiday (which i found out about when she became pregnant) i thought ... sod this, i mean i'd stuck around first time she's played me - she lost the kid, and i stayed until march when i moved to LA

been happily living there for like a year, working at a company i love - learnt DarkBasic Pro, Visual C# and Assembly whilst there and just as hobbies at home.

and yup thats about the whole history of Raven personal computer wise
i know its a nice long read hehee

RAVEN:

My tea gone cold

Well, i found a BASIC manual for the Archamedies Acorn and started playing.


VB > DIV > DB > PHP > PERL > A small bit of C

About 4 years ago, I borrowed a book about C, learnt C, attempted to learn C++ put just couldn't (and still can't) get to grips with it, I've now got a copy of DarkBasic and thats it.

It all started for me about the time I said my first word. I was lucky in my youth to be born into a family for whome money was no object. Infact, it was a lot of objects - Binatone's, Atari's, Cinecams... My techno-junky rich folks had it all - and one day they heard of the 'new revolution in home computing' and purchased a ZX-81.

The only thing is they had no interest in it, so there I was a young lad with the choice of playing in the fields, the private wood - or staying in doors and tinkering on the ZX-81.

Well I hate to say this if any city folks are reading, but once you've seen a tree a few times, it's pretty bloody borring. So the ZX-81 won the challenge.

However there was a slight niggle with our machine, it would not load or save to tape. So instead of purchasing our games from the nearby town of 'Ware' (which is a joke in itself) if I wanted to play a game, I had to write it first.

Obviously I wasn't capable of doing this strait out of the box - but it was a major past-time in those days to type out programs from magazine listings so I took this up, and by the time the Spectrum arrived on the scene I was just about learning how to be creative on the little black wedge.

So on we moved to the Spectrum (the family rows and lawyers now having eaten much of the wealth away) and of course I immediately started programming on it - I purchased games too - but mostly I just loved to write my own. It was a natural continuation of what I had done on the ZX-81 and for the most part in the same Sinclair BASIC language.

By the time the Spectrum +2 had come out, I had already written 4 commercially released isometric 3D games, although little known and hardly profitable releases (well not for me anyway). I had a few other releases too - but nothing so technically impressive for a kid under 10 years old.

The family had by now fallen on hard times, and it was not until the Amiga 500+ came out that we could finally move in to the 16 bit realm - infact it was my brother who had just started working, and the game Formula One Grand Prix, which brought this about. (My brother and I are both die hard race fans).

There was no basic with the 500+ so this was a bit of a creative lull for us both, besides F1GP was providing one hell of a distraction. Of course that did meen by the time we purchased our first programming tool for the Amiga, EasyAMOS, we had a pretty good grasp of the machine.

It was about this time that I left school (pursued at speed by the head master, several teachers, a stinkbomb and several dozen pupils) and started working, I became a YTS Computer Engineer.

A little while later I used my new found contacts to acquire an Amiga 1200 before it was released, that along with AmosPRO around the same time led to a creative burst and many new releases - mostly to the public domain.

After the firm I was working for ceased trading I went to college and although I attained a string of A+ marks in assignments I was offered the job opportunity of a lifetime - the worlds largest Amiga software house wanted me... I left college.

During this time most of my work was corporate and limited to small utilities, however in lunch breaks I did draw the well-acclaimed animation series Harry the Slug (I saw well acclaimed because I had over 100 emails and letters saying 'great!' and i'd never had feedback before!). During this time I even had the ego-boost of giving technical support to the techie's at Commodore about their own platform...

Commodore took some marketting advice from *mind goes blank* the people who do the Conservative party marketting? Anyway it led to the CDTV and the ultimate bankruptcy of Commodore so the Amiga died and along with it many of the great software houses.

Raven mentions the Video Toaster by Newtek - it was partly because of me that Newtek went in to liquidation - but it kept Scala affloat just long enough for the PC product to arrive. We had already purchased every Amiga 4000 in Commodore's warehouses but that wasn't enough to keep us going, so I designed a computer we could build in-house if just we could get some A4000 motherboards - so Scala purchased ALL the A4000 spare parts too - leaving Newtek with nothing to sell!).

My biggest Amiga release was InfoChannel 500 Upgrade. The development team in Norway did not want to make a 400-500 upgrade product as they wanted their customers to purchase the whole product, but the UK boss saw differently so it was me who re-wrote and re-packaged the product to an upgrade system. That retailed for around £1,500.

During my Amiga days my biggest release was Space Corps, which I hope most older members of the boards here will remember, if not then just take it from me it was an all action overhead space ship shoot em up that had a blue background for space instead of black! (Gotta go for the novelty factor!)

Anyway I departed Scala and moved in to the realm of PC's, eventually I started working for Special Reserve and became one of their more competent engineers (I like to think!), certainly I was the company trouble-shooter It was whilst I was here that I made the move to the PC platform, but I tried in vein for a long time to find a language similar to AmosPRO.

Initially I continued to develop Amiga games but on the PC - using an emulator I was writting multiplayer network games, but these where not commercially viable and still just reside on my hard disk.

I wrote my first PC program (Dark Omen Control) mostly out of DOS batch files and later added a Windows GUI (using an editor) to make the front end to link it all together.

I learned C++ and hated it, C++ just isn't the right language for a one man band to write games in - I wanted a BASIC. Eventually, doing one of my regular searches for 3D Development Engines I found this thing called DarkBASIC... I purchased it online that day.

Since then i've been slowly building the quality of my games up - but technological developments keep moving the goal poasts.

Currently this is a very exciting time for the computer games player with new technologies pushing the realms of graphical possibilities further and further ahead, however this new found graphical potential is not happening from new technology alone, part of the cost is development time and because of that the industry is suffering from a lack of private and small scale ventures that used to feed new life and new ideas in to the programming community.

DBPro keeps the traditions of programming firmly in it's roots, but sadly I believe the days of the small software houses built upon teams of school friends and mates are numbered as market forces push the technology further out of the domain of the bedroom developer.

In my early years I found a interest in animation and making up storys by doodling in a blank book.
My first idea of game creation started when I got Petz II and I thought of a simaler idea but with foxez & vixenz (don't ask) though later I created 8 storys called Ultra though the first one is a bit like final fantasy 8.
I then got serious about programming and pestured my dad until I got Visual Basic 6.0 and dived straight into it.

3 or 4 months later, I began to feel that it wasn't designed to make games in the first place (I still use it now) so I went around in PC world until I found Dark Basic and looked it up on the internet and went back and got it.

I proded it around, did mini simple things like flying around a matrix and placing objects.
But when I got windows 2000, it wouldn't work properly and I got dark basic pro on my last birth day and started using that.

Raven and Pneumatic Drill should publish a biography.

Raven is the one that knows all, sees all

Well the first program i "wrote" was just a scribble on a punchcard which my mum dropped into a giant green ibm at monash uni... I ran along the length of it to see it come out the other end with some holes punched in, didn't know what those holes meant then and I'm still not sure now though i suspect it was fortran...That must've been very late 70's.
A couple of years later my grandfather showed me a new toy, a trs-80 which he taught me the rudiments of basic on. I was hooked and worked a paper round to get my first computer, zx-81, learned the zx basic and moved onto a spectrum... My uncle was more into the commodore machines and whenever i was over there i got onto the vic-20 and later the '64, then my father got a c128 for buisness but couldn't use it so I "inherited" that and got into commodore machines, they were much better supported here in australia than any other machine but i missed my speccy... There was a microbee at my primary school in the office and i used to sneak in there to get my 'fix' after my mother made me sell my speccy (to pay back stolen money spent on arcade games) none of the teacher's knew what was going on with that machine... Not many people my age were into computers at that time that I knew, and I guess those who were were unable to really contact each other except down at the local "software" shop which was really just an old milkbar which had some homemade tapes, compilations of stuff some o.k some real stoopid but all intriguing and magical at the time. I wrote a few games and made some c90's to sell for a 'couple of bucks each down at the milkbar, but got into trouble for my game "Lester the panty theif", which I may even remake in DB!! I also remember being really jealous reading about the U.K scene in crash magazine, you guys had modems and other peripherals to die for... Things like that well if you got a modem the only decent bbs' were in the U.K and it woulda meant direct dialling (couldn't see my mother being too impressed).. Even though I drifted away from programming for a good few years it's still a part of me that resurfaced every few years, though I did get into some stuff later where I taught myself c and c++ but couldn't find the enthusiasm for those languages as I'd had for basic. When my grandfather died i inherited his 286, and upgraded it to a 386. All I really had for that was qbasic and the larry series so I got into that sometimes too.
Then I messed with pov raytracer and rend386 which was an attempt at a "VR" scripting language. You could do quite a lot with that but it was veeery tedious. I kinda drifted away again and went to art school, dropped out of that to join a band and then went into audio production, then mastering which led me back into computing and ever since I've pretty much kept my computer up to scratch just for making music on, but kept my hand in at modelling.
When I thought about writing games again I realized it was like the perfect way to combine everything i'd learned over the years, and went on the hunt for a flexible language, now here I am again, happy as a pig in shizer

lmao... arn't ya'll glad i abridged it?
quite interesting to hear someone actually jelous of the UK scene, cause the computers and periphirals have always been quite steep here.

i mean really it was only the richer families until te late 80's that could really afford home computers, i have a few mags of the time like 'Computer Electronic' which one of my dad's friends wrote for (and the major mag that got Watford Electronics its first major business) selling stuff like ZX-80's for £350-400 ... which in '82/'83 was the price of a small car. So you can image, it wasn't for those with not very large incomes.

I began(in 2002) programming in Z-80(TI-83/+) for calculators and eventually a bit of C for calculators(TI-89). Suprisingly, the code for TI-BASIC is nearly identical to that of DB less the 3D support. Later I used my Z-80/C skills to do some GB work. None of which was ever cartridged. I then(in 2003) took up DB and have made some stuff like button generators for web pages but nothing much worth releasing.

raven:
Maybe I wasn't so deprived after all?!
Yeah I was lucky, we were by no means rich but my grandfather was a tech at the airport so he got cheap machines they were just gonna chuck out, that's where the trash-80 came from i think. I thought you could get the zx series in kit form though so you could save a bit if you ordered direct and built it 'yerself... Still, as a kid I was lucky there.

In my garage I actually have an apple IIc I found on the nature strip outside my warehouse one evening, disc drive AND joystick, just sitting there like it was rubbish, (well I actually thought of them as rubbish back in the day..)
I dug out some 5/4"'rs from early high school days and lo'n behold it works!! playing Choplifter & Karateka and ESPECIALLY Aztec again is soo much fun
Found a speccy in the op shop for $10 too.
Wish I'd grabbed the '64 next to it but nostalgia won...

I was forced against my will LOL anyway, started off with AmigaBASIC, AMOS , QBASIC then went on to Pascal, ANSI C, Visual Basic, ASP (VBscript), PHP.

age 9 freaking tandy computers with looping print statements
in the shop until the salesguy had to reset it because he could runstop a program.

age 10 bought my first ti 99/4a
made a 2 player game for my bro and I which was dead easy on that computer.

it was 2 cowboys and cactus all over the screen which stopped bullets from hitting u

no scores and would crash if u shot at your opponent while he touched you.

left computers for again

age 13

started illustration and cartooning and animation
spent hours playing AD&D on paper with friends
had a few computers between but mostly games boxes.
got a c64 with a cockroach turbo rom and a naughty disk copying switch so u didnt have to punch a hole in the disc.
started to raid computer store bins for spare parts and chucked out games until the security guards stepped up with padlocks and dogs.

rewired free joysticks and repaired bad sectors in game discs to be able to copy them.


left computers again until 15
then the amiga interested me and went head long into art on the amiga.

16+

started to be a real gym junkie and went up to 3 times a day until i had 3% body fat and weighed in 100kgs

got into graphic design by chance since I had exposure of a few years to drawing programs but had no idea of form or layout.

used macs and amigas for ages whilst a few friends used those ugly looking 186 286's with crappy graphics and beep beep sounds from a tiny speaker in the machine.


power and athestics was important

worked at disney as a tweener but got very bored of this.

started working in nightclubs and bars and got into bad habbits like drinking and smoking and lose women.

escaped again! started on computers once more

started to get deeper into the media industries
worked in Multimedia for ages producing videos and cdrom basically but lots of odd jobs.

today i do freelance IT and multimedia work for many clients and some large multinationals who help to pay the bills when they have a new product run.

bla bla

"looping print statements"^^^^^^
LOL yeah I remember going into Myer melbourne and doing that to every machine they had. The staff were so clueless back then, made a weedy little kid like me feel all superior like...

wow... indi is alot younger than i thought he was

30 - 35 is now age group raven ahh im no teenager anymore it seems

nostril knows what he's talking about, calculators all the way. My TI 82 was a harsh mistress, and my 83+ SE got me into hex programming and hacking the calculators...if you give me anyone's 83 or 83+ I can hack it soooo easily. There's even a glitch in the operating system...good times

Mum bought me ZX specturm 48K when I was as school. Learned BASIC inside and out and then moved onto Z80 machine code, writing sprite handling routines, typeface editors, e.t.c. I even sold a few of these!

Then 'upgraded' to Spectrum +3, which had 128K (wow!) and a really snazzy 3 inch floppy drive type thingy. New version of BASIC was great as you could just type in commands instead of all that 'symbol shift' nonsense.

Next purchase was Amiga 500 and the infamous AMOS. Then bought the AMOS Compiler (can you believe you had to buy another product just to compile progams!). Then tried AMOS 3D but it was just too confusing (and slow).

Then went for an AMIGA 1200 with hard disk and CD drive. Still carried on using AMOS. I've still got Amiga 1200 setup in bedroom and keep promising to get rid of it, but my subconcious mind won't let me.

Also bought some of those robot kits which allowed you to make robots and control them with AMOS.

During this time I went to college and took a 2 year computer programming course. This was in COBOL. Seemed a good idea at the time but was too easy and a complete waste of time in the real world.

Started my first job at age 18 programming complex database stuff on a DEC PDP-11 mainframe.

Few years later bought my first PC from now defunct ESCOM which ran at a speedy 133MHZ but there was no good programming stuff available (boo hoo).

15 years later (I'm now 33) I am still in same job writing accountancy software using COLDFUSION, ACCESS, VISUAL BASIC, JAVASCRIPT, e.t.c. I write a lot of back-end website stuff like credit card handling, e-commerce, content management software.

My home PC's have been upgraded several times so that I have actually got graphic cards that DBPro doesn't winge about when trying to move more than a handful of objects.

Trouble is, work takes up so much of my time I barely have any time to use DBPro!

Good thing about working where I am though, is the super fast leased line to the internet so I can download loads of DB demos and games, stick 'em on a CD and take home.

Oh well, better get on with some work now....

Bought DB Summer 2000.

Couldn't make anything.

Learnt Pascal early 2002.

Tried DB again.

Hooked.

Quoth; you got an 83+ SE, man are you lucky. That things got like 2 megs of flash on it. My 89 doesn't even have that (only 900Kb). There are serious glitches in the OS. ROM 1.15 is supposed to fix many of them but I still have 1.13. In your opinion, what's the best 83+ game; Mario, Asteroids, Tetris, or Virtual Poker?

Does everybody know what the nicest prank to pull on a computer store is?
*Take a screen shot of the desktop with the toolbar hidden.
*Save the pic and set it as the bg.
*Hide the icons.
*From Control Panel > Folders and File Options > View : Don't show hidden files and folders.

Man that one had the guys at Best Buy stumped for hours. It's so incredibly hilarious when they freak out because the desktop doesn't work.

asteroids is good but buggy, mario is probably the best of the list.

EF4045210000
224B84224C84
21A89DEF0A45
C9--------00

hexidecimal calculator hacking...I have that string of numbers memorized

I liked mario but it was too short, only six levels. My vote goes to Tetris. Especially when you hack the code (in Z-80, I don't understand hex much at all) to play back to original tetris music, option A of course.

Here goes at my knowledge of hex:



What that actually does is return the key press value.



That is the only hex I ever learned and the last that I ever plan on learning. If you notice the last line of "Hex" is invalid. That is due to the fact that the 89 requires an "invalid force functionallity" in order to end any program (one of those bugs Quoth was speeking of).

>however a few week later, technology obsessed dad bought
>himself a shiney new Video Toaster card for the A1200.
>And it came wth a free version of Lightwave.

Anyone else see a problem with this?

why would there be a problem with it?
A1200 AGA was setup with the ability to upgrade itself, and the Video Toaster was the first card on the market capable of doing this, only drawback was you needed to put the machine into an Amiga Desktop case.

Guys "Anyone else see a problem with this?"

Heh

The A1200 doesn't have a video slot (it was replaced with a PCMCIA slot!) and therefore there is nowhere to attach the video toaster.

Video Toaster 4000 was released a year after the A1200 launch and is the version that was bundled with a copy of Lightwave (no surprise there, same company made it) because the animations can be recorded in realtime with the switcher (very cool).

Some cases claim to add in a video slot, wether this works with a Toaster is unclear at best though.

Cheers,

Rich

I tried plugging my Russell hobbs 4 slice thick 'n' thin toaster into my Amiga 1200 but it didn't work.

lol god know, i've never been that technical with hardware thats always been my dads specialty...
all i know is the box changed to a desktop, and he upped the power to with a '030 50Mhz PowerPC + 32Mb Ram at the same time (as a raytrace scene took like 3hours for a simple ball + Cube with only one having reflections, i'd hate to know how fast it would've been normally)

ya know i always wanted that HDD for the A500+ i prefer that machine, god knows why ... just liked to have something large enough to work on i suppose.

How did I start? Ahh, my dad's finest hour as a parent.

We got a BBC Micro model B in 1983, I think it was. I was five. For a couple of years, I got the hang of playing my first computer games, Rocket Raid (CH."RAID") and Arcadians, and then Felix Meets the Evil Weevils. I had fun, but that was pretty much that. Then, around 1985, after typing in games with my dad from "BBC Micro User" (later renamed "The Micro User" because the BBC didn't like their name on a publication that didn't come from them... they should've thought of that before asking Acorn for an official BBC computer if you ask me...). Anyway, the BASIC code didn't make much sense to me, but it started to sound familiar after a while. I discovered that some computer games had loading screens that were written in BASIC, and I began looking at their code, but I didn't really know what to do next. My dad encouraged me to change a few lines and see what happened to the program. I did this a few times, mostly, I recall, to the MASTERTRONIC loading screen that came with a game called "Kane". I knew as long as I didn't save it, I couldn't do any harm. So, after a few weeks of screwing up the loading screen, I began to code myself with the aid of a kids programming book from our local library. That was in the days when programming books were about BASIC on the Speccy, BBC, PET, Vic20, etc. There used to be some nice books available that did a great job of working with several machines.

I remember my first line of code: FOR I=1 TO 20. 'I' is my default variable these days, I just got into the habit of using it from this. Heh, that's, like seventeen years or so. Blimey. Now I feel old.

I never once finished anything on the BBC. It was too slow to make the stuff I was interested in, but that didn't stop me playing with stupid random effects. I tried to learn assembler, but it was too odd and conceptually different to BASIC. And it looked like a lot of work, writing my own graphics routines, writing direect to screen memory, and stuff. The last thing I wrote on the BBC Micro was a version of "2 player superleague". The first time I actaully got really deep into a project. That must've been around 1993. Yup, I had that BBC Micro for ten god damned years. I eventually got an Acorn A3010. Fantastic, I thought, the same language, but faster and with more commands. Except that Acorn stopped being my friend. The BBC B user guide listed every BASIC command and how to use it. But Acorn didn't do that any more. The Programmers' Refernce Manual for the Achimedes series of computers was a seperate, and not inexpensive purchase. After that, I was reduced to limping along playing with the same stuff on the BBC Micro, and I eventually moved away from coding.

I've tinkered with C and Visual BASIC ever since, but I couldn't get the quick results I wanted, and got bored. Then, I saw DarkBASIC, looked at the commands list online, the feature set, and so on, and purchased it immediately. Times had changed, I had disposable income and I wasn't afraid to use it. After a few years working in Lightwave, I knew I'd have fun making models and then making games out of them. My maths has always been too weak for me to attempt writing a 3d engine, but I'd always wanted to make a cool 3d game. Now, finally, here was my chance. Except, very rapidly, I began to hit against the brick wall that was DB's limitations, as well as my own lack of experience with "large" programs. That was 2 years ago, and I've since figured out how to whip DB and myself into some form of useful shape, and finally, I'm getting somewhere. My hard disk is strewn with unfinised projects, but Galaxy At War will hopefully be "the one". It's my "2 Player Superleague" for this decade, a project that I'm actually happy to work on, and intend to finish. Of course, I never finised "2 Player Superleague", but I was younger and less disciplined then.

It's funny, back then "2 Player Superleague" wouldn't have gotten anywhere. I dreamed of owning a disk drive, for goodness sake. Today, I'm working on a game that encompasses several tapes-worth of data, (actually, I never sat down and figured that out... a 90 minute tape at 1200 baud ... how much would that store? I'm betting aroung 50k max), a website for it, and distributing it via the internet: an international computer network. To which my home computer is linked by a permanent network link. It's quite a step from a BBC Micro with a ghettoblaster (heh, no one calls them tha anymore, do they?) as a storage mechanism, and an old black and white TV for a monitor (which I still have! It works!). I used to be able to name all eight colours of the BBC Micro when displayed on a black and white screen. I still remember the colour numbers. Together now... 1: red, 2: green, 3: yellow...

Wow, that was long. And, I'm betting, dull as buckets. Heh, sorry.

Hey Rich -

Should I ask if he ran a power cord all the way from the US, since the Video Toaster was for NTSC machines only?

Erm... that might be so, but then that might be why it required a monitor rather than using the TV adapter.

even so - i'm pretty sure the UK version was PAL, and even more sure that the A1200 AGA was capable of processing PAL & NTSC because the A500+ was capable of it but only using monitors. Which i remember my dad fiddling with a few philips monitors he 'borrowed' from work to work with the Amiga RGB socket. Got one working quite well

but that all aside, whether you believe it possible or not doesn't change the fact i used one - and i don't care if the bloody machine was jerry rigged 20ways from sunday to do so, all i know is it worked ... so really can't say i care

For those technically minded souls:

The Amiga Video Toaster was an NTSC composite device. It did not require a monitor, or use the RGB output of the Amiga; it required NTSC RS-170a composite displays.

The Toaster had multiple BNC composite inputs and a BNC NTSC composite output.

Spoken as a Toaster owner.

I was playing Simcity 3000 a few years ago, and thought I wanted to make a game, and asked my dad about making games, and I found that there was different "languages", so bought a book about JavaScript (for dummies... fits me just fine ) whooops-wrong book, so I was surfing the web and ran into DarkBASIC!

Spoken as a United States Toaster owner ... i'd like to strongly add that alot of the technology that came out of the US was redeveloped in alot of cases for Europe within the UK.

Futher to this fact, the FIRST Video Toaster that hit our shores was a Graphics Card/Chip ... and perhaps this is where you're confusion is comming from Guy.

Toaster is (was?) an expansion card, no matter which version you look at, definitely not a chip. They've always been NTSC only which renders them useless for a lot of European users, but then those European users who are into genlocking will have NTSC compatible composite devices anyway so it's kinda a moot point. The Amiga itself can handle PAL or NTSC but the Toaster doesn't care because it's not the Amigas video output it relies on. There definitely was never a "European" hardware version though (simply because there was no need) but I dare say the manuals and software were translated at some point.

Pretty much anyone who had a Toaster would have installed it into an A2000/3000/4000 rather than an A500 (although this is technically possible I believe). Ironically the Toaster 4000 took up the video and Zorro slots because it was too large (it didn't actually connect to the Zorro slot!). The BNC connectors themselves sit on a removable board to the card to cope with the varying case designs of the Amiga range, quite clever really. More impressive in my books is the Toaster Flyer though which could use 3 SCSI-2 devices - one for video, one for audio and one for roll editing. How cool is that?!

Cheers,

Rich

^ Very cool, Amiga was the coolest of the "cool" machines, had 4 channel audio standard ('tho 8 bit) which was ultra useful if you were into recording. We still use ours in thr recording studio for automation, 'bars'n pipes' still comes in handy

Have been a range of chips for the original card to update on, cause the Toaster2 & 3 were available in that style but you require AmigaOS/WorkBench 3.4 with Kickstart 3.2 because it didn't recognise the BIOS update on the card if you didn't.

i don't think i'd of been possible to attach the card to the A500 - cause the expansion slot just wasn't setup for it ... but the A1200 AGA has the slots and connectors for upgrading the graphics, sound, harddisk & Ram.
Space was very restricted, but it HAD to be the AGA version not the Standard A1200 because the AGA card/chips itself were a plugin update over the original to allow for 24Bit Colour

i think if i remember right, there were 3 slots ontop of the A1200 AGA - well once you took out the AGA Card, under where the card normally sat was the TV adaptor A540 which you have to unplug and take out ... you'd then put the Toaster Sisterboard in where they both used to reside - unclip the side, becuase you'd have to put the main card itself basically on the desktop and hook it through. i think it used the SCSI adapter on the inside, because it'd slot into where the Apollo 1220 plugged in.

but as said, don't care about how it was setup - all i know is it worked, and is there much else to care about?

My story started a while back.

I think I was 5 or 7 in Moscow, Russia. It was quite a good life, I had no TV, and was an excellent student. We had good nabours, and we weren't low on cash either. Every day, I remember my dad would bring me something cool from work.

One day, he brought this weird looking keyboard, I had no idea what it was, and he told me not to touch it. I don't remember much, I think it was a casette loader, and we had a few games for it. We had no tv, so we decided to buy a color one. I am sure it cost my dad a lot of money, but even my nebours would come down and watch TV. Everything was going great, my dog kept biting me, and I didn't get much work done aroun the house.

One day, I came to my house, and noticed that my dad had a blue screen on TV, and there was a lot of wires on the floor. It wasn't till later that I found out we had a Spectrum, and he was playing around Basic.

It was around grade 3 when I actually started to programm. I remember on our 386, there was the coolest game: Duke Nukem 3D. It ran like a turtle, but I remember playing the first two levels. My eye-sight didn't help either, I had a 20-21, and every time I looked at the computer screen, my eyes hurt.

My first programm was a password screen. I think it was like this:



It could be much more complicated, but the concept was the same.

I didn't catch my attention on progamming, rather Biology was much more fun! Somone bought me a microscope, and I spent days looking at stuff.

I was drawn back to QBasic, since my bro was using it. My last discovery with QBasic was how to use point(x,y), I went on ahead.

My bro was learning Visual Basic 4, and I didn't like that much, and din't try anything with that.

When I got my new computer (P2 300 Mhz), I was flying! Any game I could run, and thought I was so cool. I played alot of games, but there was a little component missing something that inspired me so much to create a game, I couldn't breathe.

I decided to find out how to make computer games. You won't believe what I went through. So many engines, so many different types of engines, until I came across DIV. The year is now 2000, DIV was great, so many tutorials, and with very little interruption from other programming languages, it was a breathe to learn.

There were two things I didn't like about it: 256 colors, and it wouldn't run anymore on my Win2K.

Once I saw a little comercial on DIV site, it said: "Dark Basic", I decided to click it, and ended up downloading 1.06 Trial. It was so cool, I could create many things, and my favourite: 3D!!!

It was so hard to get into actually making something decent. My first "game" was a plane on a matrix, and there are walls around you. You also move forward, but the matrix didn't scroll.(Where do you think I got the Idea for my 20 Liner?)

I learned, and learned, made Pong, Made "Mazed" engine(I am up to engine 7 now), and ended up here on forums.

I found it quite helpful, since all my questions got answered, and I was welcomed!

That's my story!

Cheers.

Toaster2 is a PCI card for Windows Maybe you mean Toaster2000? (sometimes called 2.0, but not even by NewTek) but as I stated it's a card and there were never any replacement chips for it (just look at one to see why!!). As for requiring WorkBench 3.4 that'd be bloody difficult, there never was one - but hey, there never was a KickStart 3.2 either.

You're right, it won't fit an A500 even with modification (just as I thought), but nor will it fit an A1200 no matter what you do to it - the only possible way is a zorro compatible expansion card that can provide the A1200 with its missing video slot (some did, some didn't). You can do whatever you like with the TV adaptor (which is an A520 btw), an expansion board wouldn't touch it and seeing as the A520 is an external device anyway there's no way in hell it could sit underneath Alice and Lisa! Incidently all A1200's (standard or not, whatever that means) support 24-bit because all A1200's have AGA chip sets (having come from the A4000).

"but as said, don't care about how it was setup - all i know is it worked, and is there much else to care about?"

Not at all and I'm 100% happy to let this thread die providing you don't post a reply dissing what I said. I'm glad your Dad expanded your A1200 and it was a memorable machine for you, they're awesome little boxes for sure.

Cheers,

Rich

Ohh, but Rich - there are so many imaginary details to challenge

i think Workbench 3.4 was the one which became AmigaOS ... cause i'm definatly sure that Workbench 3.5 was named AmigaOS. Well no matters its the same company and same OS just different names to confuse everything really.
your probably right about the kickstart, maybe it was 2.3 ack - the numbers confuse me alot... it was 1.2 in the A500 right? or maybe i'm thinking of something else.

Toaster 2 & 3 were never greatly popular on the Amiga though, because more powerful cards were on the market and the PC was just getting into the whole 3D scene. i mean Cyberstorm3D and Picasso were capable of out performing it quite well ... really not the technical buff of the family i'm afriad.

all i know is i'd get something and it'd be all setup for me no hassle - god knows how nor would i particularly care neither hehee
just see things disappear and a few days later would appear again with everything setup and working

Ok I've answered posts like this b4, if any1s really interested search the forums - Basically I started about 15 years ago when I was 7 on a Pet CBM - got so good my parents got me a speccy and c64 - released a few commercial/cover tape games Kinda went through every major platform and programming language since, and made some seriously cool 2D projects on 16-bit systems. Never could really get to grips with 3D in C++ / Direct X though, until DB came along. Have been using it since the day it first hit the shops, and now I use and love Pro

Cheers, Sam / Kangaroo2

PS Amigas and WorkBench rock

Woah..Raven DOES know all! LOL!

I spend way too much time on the computer. I'm addicted 100% to the computer, and 30% of it is AIM! (^_~)
Ahh..the good old days when I thought BASIC was hard..hehe..Now I know it as if I could speak it..I'm very glad DarkBASIC is well, basic :p!

I started with BASIC on school-owned Apple IIes and Commodore 64s, then AmigaBasic on my very own Amiga 1000. Then AMOS and AMOS Pro on an Amiga 3000 (great machine, great language!). Got a PC a few years ago and struggled with C++ via the book Windows Game Programming for Dummies, but chucked it the second I found DB.

I also use JavaScript and Delphi, but DB is my #1 fave.

well DarkBasic realy did change the way i lived heh

started when i was 17 nrly 4 years ago now i was living in a place called Bodmin in cornwall i was doing loads of bad stuff car theft robbing people drugs etc but then i got caught on 5 charges car theft x 2 crimanal damage x 3
and it was then decided by my mum who couldnt cope with me that i should go live with my uncle in a place called Blackpool me and my uncle are realy close
at this time i was having to go back and forth as i had to go to Croun Court and the judge placed me on a 7pm till 9am curfew so i had to stay in 90% of the time i started playing with my uncles pc a 333mhz pent 2 witch was a realy good pc then i spent most my time playing Age Of Empires or in the yahoo chatrooms then i decided to go to the liberary and i saw these books on computer programming soe on c and 1 on amiga basic me comming from a poor family didnt ever have 1 of these but my other uncle did as he built pc's for a living so i got every book there was on programming lol bout 8 of them and went home but silly me dfidnt have a compiller for any of them so i was doing a search for compillers and a thing called darkbasic came up so i d/loaded the demo V1.2 at the time and learnt it while i was on my cerfew now the last day of court i was aquited of all the charges was so happy and i could have gone back to cornwall but i decided to stay in blackpool as i had no pc then i bought DBC v1.3 ltd edition cd and met a then young girl called Faye and now i have a daughter yes ive been in trouble again but not as much and also i stopped the drugs witch i found out if i did any more it would have killed me so DarkBasic Saved My life Introduced me to the women i have my little girl with stopped me from going to prisson. so big respect to lee and co who would have thought that nrly 4 years ago i nrly destroyed my life.

Damian

p.s. srry bout the grammer im dyslexic heh

Not just "programming is my life", now it's "programming saved my life"