On Mon May 4 09:29:42 1998, Glenn Saunders wrote:
>I'd like some of our new members to introduce themselves, if they'd like,
>especially if you are planning on writing some games!
Well, although I'm up for a couple of weeks now, I haven't introduced
myself yet, so here we go...
I'm Kurt Woloch. I was born on October 27th, 1971. I'm working as a
programmer (Visual Basic 3.0, C++ etc.) for the "Bundesrechenzentrum" in
Austria (see http://www.brz.gv.at) since November 12th, 1990.
My first computer was the TI-99/4A, on which I did some simplified
arcade ports in Basic, for instance Mario Brothers, Joust, Donkey Kong,
Donkey Kong Jr., Dragon's Lair, Hyper Olympic (aka Track & Field),
Summer Games (this ported from the C-64), Marble Madness, Traverse USA,
Road Fighter, Q*bert, Pole Position... Some of them were not completed.
The Atari 2600 for me was current mainly during the year 1984, before I
got the C-64. At that time, some classmates at school also had an Atari
and we exchanged our carts in order to be able to try and play more
different games. I noticed that each arcade port for the 2600 was
somehow changed to fit its graphics capabilities. I tried to figure out
what the capabilities of graphics and sound were, roughly, and did some
drawings showing some arcade games ported on the 2600 that were never
really ported, for instance, Elevator Action, Pen-Kun Wars aka Penguin
Wars or Animal Wars, Marble Madness, Donkey Kong II (the Game & Watch
one), Zaxxon (with b/w graphics, but more looking like the original one
than the real 2600 port). However, I did misunderstand some of the
constraints. For instance, I thought it would be allowed to have four
colors on one scanline of playfield if you reduced the vertical
resolution to double-scanline. This gives a rather decent looking Marble
Madness port (for the 2600, that is), which, I'm afraid isn't possible
this way.
On the C-64, I also wrote some simple games in Basic and Assembler (for
instance, ports of Stone Sling for the Odyssey^2, Bomb Jack, Crab Grab
(originally a Game & Watch) and Mario Bros (the Game & Watch)) and a 2-D
Marble Madness port). I'm also a Musician, and adapted some hit songs
for the C-64 using Chris' Huelsbecks amazing Sound-Monitor. For
instance, the title music of Crab Grab is "Knowing me, knowing you" by
Abba, while the title music of the assembler version of Stone Sling
(never completed) is "Break my stride" by Matthew Wilder. Later, I wrote
a Karaoke program which allows you to type in the lyrics (using
Printfox) of a song running on the C-64 and input the indication, when
each word should be song, via the Paddles. The C-64 would then play the
song and at the same time display the lyrics, where each word changes
color when it should be sung.
Then I moved on to the Amiga. I tried to port Q*bert (again), Space
Invaders, Toobin', Plotting and Pole Position to it, but only Plotting
was rougly completed. I also wrote the Karaoke system there (same as on
the C-64, but doesn't use Amiga music. Instead, looks like a good
Karaoke CD!) which I still use to record my own Karaoke Videos of
non-supported German and English songs, such as: Time to say goodbye and
Du entschuldige - i kenn di, only to name the most recent productions. I
also do the Karaoke musical parts by myself, if I'm unable to get them,
or only in poor quality, using Music-X (MIDI sequencer) on the Amiga and
a Technics KN-550 keyboard.
Today, I am much into Karaoke business. I play Keyboard at Villa Prater,
where there's a singer contest, for people who can't find their
favourite song in the Karaoke library, and I also play and sing in a
band, The Vienna Blues. Since two or three month, I've now got full
Internet access at work. At some point, I stumbled across the exact
technical data for the 2600, and, searching for more, across the Stella
mailing list. I reviewed the archives and looked at some of the early
stages of This Planet Sucks and Oystron, and I found that I could maybe
add something to the list. So I subscribed.
As for programming, I haven't got so much time left, but I'm sure I
could do it, in principle. As for my first demo, which is still to come,
I'm considering whether to do something like Marble Madness, Manhattan
(a game I described earlier here) or Penguin Wars, or maybe something
weird, such as a Song Contest demo, a digitized picture, or a scrolling
message.
Good luck to all new members, and I hope Biglist will keep supporting us
- or is someone else paying for this list?
Kurt Woloch
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