Last Online: 7/2/08
Stephen Parkes
Old Skool gamer which means I played Skool Daze and got all the jokes. I love remakes of old classics just as much as I enjoy a good new game, unfortunatly there aren't that many new games I consider good because most publishers seem to be pushing for more of the same with more lifelike graphics rather than improvements in gaming.
I hope to improve that situation by releasing games that are great games rather than sculptures with a slight interactivity.
Currently working on RoidRage a sort of blurry take on the classic Asteroids formula. Originally going to be in python this was scuppered by py2exe's refusal to deal with pyEggs and recoded in C++. Running fullspeed on a celeron 633 ;)
I hope to improve that situation by releasing games that are great games rather than sculptures with a slight interactivity.
Currently working on RoidRage a sort of blurry take on the classic Asteroids formula. Originally going to be in python this was scuppered by py2exe's refusal to deal with pyEggs and recoded in C++. Running fullspeed on a celeron 633 ;)
Flocci non faccio
The not (quite) as boring as it might be Career Summary
First I was born, and then we skip the boring school parts (as I was inclined to do from time to time) and jump right into college. At college I studied girls, beer and music. The lecturers insisted I was studying Science and IT but I knew better. On to University, I continued my study into girls, beer and music until my money ran out, it took 12 months.
Finding opportunities in girls, beer and music limited I started a job programming control systems and other goodies for companies such as Ford, Bae and Rover. This involved attempted to write code which didn't kill people when executed and gave results that didn't kill people when products are used. Not the perfect start for an aspiring games developer given the fact that most of the market is devoted to games where you kill things.
I don't know how this happened but somewhere along the lines I decided to go back to university to study the grand sounding Interactive Multimedia Communication. This lasted until the money ran out which again took 12 months but does give me one honour I never got less than an A in any university assignment and not many people can say that, that is unless they have done two first years like myself :)
After this I was as full time web developer for a year or so. I'd been freelancing on and off since about 1997 when everything had to have http:// in front of it even the email addresses (don't ask all I am saying is someone refused to pay me for services rendered because a friend had told him his email address was fake blah, blah, blah). While there I started another company with my two bosses specialising in the cut throat business of ringtone and logo downloads. As well as the site I developed for us we also developed dozens and dozens of sites for other operators in the business. This was just at the right time when millionaires where being created. The reason I say it's a cut throat industry is I feel like I was bled to death. Sitting in the pub with my partners having a heart to heart about how undervalued I was feeling I watched aeroplanes (something some of my software from a previous life was involved in keeping in the sky) crash into the first of the twin towers. Suddenly money didn't seem important anymore and when a few days later I decided to work closer to home and closer to the community my share in the company was worth exactly zero. Clever accounting that.
Then another smaller more personal disaster happened. After discovering that returning to university wasn't as easy as I thought I needed to take a step back. I considered returning to play school but like the Girl Guides before them they didn't take my application seriously so I returned to College. The exact same college I had left 10 years previously as a scruffy expert in girls, beer and music I returned as a world weary jaded none-expert in girls, beer and music. I returned as a lecturer.
It could have been worse they might have made me wear leather patches on my sleeves but it seemed bad enough because even despite the fact I was taught by a bunch of badly dressed hippies these same hippies had got hair cuts and insisted I did the same. I shaved off my hair (which might not have been what they wanted with hindsight), removed the visible piercings and settled into the world of teaching.
It seems teaching is a lot like studenting. There are things you want to do and things you are told to do. One of the things I was told to do was teach Visual Basic to a bunch of 17 year olds, what I wanted to do was not teach such a brain dead language and render them useless to man or beast. My opinons stood for less as a teacher on the bottom of the rung than they had as an officer in the student union 10 years previously (as an aside I was shocked just how few students even bothered joining the union these days, doesn't 10% off pizzas mean anything to the youth of today?) I had to teach vb to 17 year olds and php/mysql to the HND students (who are technically more qualified than me :) )
In my second year teaching a swap around left me with HND php/mysql and Human Computer Interaction AVCE as my main lessons. This suited me a lot more than V bloody braindead B. Unfortunatly this was not to last for ever. A shake up in the system meant I had to start taking more remedial classes as well. All of the students in these classes where wonderful, if misunderstood, kids but the lessons are boring because you never get asked the wonderful questions brighter kids do when they are inspired. It certainly wasn't the students fault they wanted inspiring but it's a little difficult when the final assignment is copy something from a piece of paper into a wordprocessor using a sheet with all the commands written on it.
As you may have guessed I speak my mind and this is possiblily due to my aspergers syndrome which makes working in highly charged political offices difficult. While in smaller software houses (where everyone has something strange about them, be it aspergers, substance abuse or ginger hair) speaking your mind is a good thing, it's not in education. So come the end of the term I decided that I wouldn't stay if they offered me anything less than A level/AVCE level classes and they decided they couldn't have another maverick on the payroll who not only doesn't do exactly as he is told he allows students to have an opinion on their education as well. I was pissed off but it seemed a hell of a lot better than the send off that the bloke who hired me got (another maverick who management thought was mellowing into middle age) when naked pictures of himself and his young wife (a former student, who now taught at another local college, tut tut) appeared on a swingers website and the newspapers found out.
Time for a rethink.
During the intervening years I had amassed a whole one child. A version two point zero a perfect copy in everyway of his father with his mothers dimples. Now I know what I put my Mother and Father through I say sorry daily. My v2.0 also has aspergers and was having a difficult time of life in general when I was working in web development and teaching what made it more difficult was SWMBO was also having difficulty coming to terms with the both of us being somewhat difficult to live with. I decided the best course of action was to be at hand supporting my son as he grows up and learns his identity.
Now a couple of years into the house husband routine v2.0 is much, much happier and I feel able to devote more time to doing the things I love. One of those things is developing games.
For almost my entire life (apart from the first ten year spent in the pre-spectrum dark ages) I have written games and toys for my own amusement. I never had the guts to share them with people because they are my personal thing. Over the past year or so I've started to share my investment in games development with other like minded people (such as Remakes United) and eventully I will finish something I am proud enough to call my own.
Coming soon a game :) fingers crossed, unless I lose my bottle again.
Finding opportunities in girls, beer and music limited I started a job programming control systems and other goodies for companies such as Ford, Bae and Rover. This involved attempted to write code which didn't kill people when executed and gave results that didn't kill people when products are used. Not the perfect start for an aspiring games developer given the fact that most of the market is devoted to games where you kill things.
I don't know how this happened but somewhere along the lines I decided to go back to university to study the grand sounding Interactive Multimedia Communication. This lasted until the money ran out which again took 12 months but does give me one honour I never got less than an A in any university assignment and not many people can say that, that is unless they have done two first years like myself :)
After this I was as full time web developer for a year or so. I'd been freelancing on and off since about 1997 when everything had to have http:// in front of it even the email addresses (don't ask all I am saying is someone refused to pay me for services rendered because a friend had told him his email address was fake blah, blah, blah). While there I started another company with my two bosses specialising in the cut throat business of ringtone and logo downloads. As well as the site I developed for us we also developed dozens and dozens of sites for other operators in the business. This was just at the right time when millionaires where being created. The reason I say it's a cut throat industry is I feel like I was bled to death. Sitting in the pub with my partners having a heart to heart about how undervalued I was feeling I watched aeroplanes (something some of my software from a previous life was involved in keeping in the sky) crash into the first of the twin towers. Suddenly money didn't seem important anymore and when a few days later I decided to work closer to home and closer to the community my share in the company was worth exactly zero. Clever accounting that.
Then another smaller more personal disaster happened. After discovering that returning to university wasn't as easy as I thought I needed to take a step back. I considered returning to play school but like the Girl Guides before them they didn't take my application seriously so I returned to College. The exact same college I had left 10 years previously as a scruffy expert in girls, beer and music I returned as a world weary jaded none-expert in girls, beer and music. I returned as a lecturer.
It could have been worse they might have made me wear leather patches on my sleeves but it seemed bad enough because even despite the fact I was taught by a bunch of badly dressed hippies these same hippies had got hair cuts and insisted I did the same. I shaved off my hair (which might not have been what they wanted with hindsight), removed the visible piercings and settled into the world of teaching.
It seems teaching is a lot like studenting. There are things you want to do and things you are told to do. One of the things I was told to do was teach Visual Basic to a bunch of 17 year olds, what I wanted to do was not teach such a brain dead language and render them useless to man or beast. My opinons stood for less as a teacher on the bottom of the rung than they had as an officer in the student union 10 years previously (as an aside I was shocked just how few students even bothered joining the union these days, doesn't 10% off pizzas mean anything to the youth of today?) I had to teach vb to 17 year olds and php/mysql to the HND students (who are technically more qualified than me :) )
In my second year teaching a swap around left me with HND php/mysql and Human Computer Interaction AVCE as my main lessons. This suited me a lot more than V bloody braindead B. Unfortunatly this was not to last for ever. A shake up in the system meant I had to start taking more remedial classes as well. All of the students in these classes where wonderful, if misunderstood, kids but the lessons are boring because you never get asked the wonderful questions brighter kids do when they are inspired. It certainly wasn't the students fault they wanted inspiring but it's a little difficult when the final assignment is copy something from a piece of paper into a wordprocessor using a sheet with all the commands written on it.
As you may have guessed I speak my mind and this is possiblily due to my aspergers syndrome which makes working in highly charged political offices difficult. While in smaller software houses (where everyone has something strange about them, be it aspergers, substance abuse or ginger hair) speaking your mind is a good thing, it's not in education. So come the end of the term I decided that I wouldn't stay if they offered me anything less than A level/AVCE level classes and they decided they couldn't have another maverick on the payroll who not only doesn't do exactly as he is told he allows students to have an opinion on their education as well. I was pissed off but it seemed a hell of a lot better than the send off that the bloke who hired me got (another maverick who management thought was mellowing into middle age) when naked pictures of himself and his young wife (a former student, who now taught at another local college, tut tut) appeared on a swingers website and the newspapers found out.
Time for a rethink.
During the intervening years I had amassed a whole one child. A version two point zero a perfect copy in everyway of his father with his mothers dimples. Now I know what I put my Mother and Father through I say sorry daily. My v2.0 also has aspergers and was having a difficult time of life in general when I was working in web development and teaching what made it more difficult was SWMBO was also having difficulty coming to terms with the both of us being somewhat difficult to live with. I decided the best course of action was to be at hand supporting my son as he grows up and learns his identity.
Now a couple of years into the house husband routine v2.0 is much, much happier and I feel able to devote more time to doing the things I love. One of those things is developing games.
Just get to the damn games already!
For almost my entire life (apart from the first ten year spent in the pre-spectrum dark ages) I have written games and toys for my own amusement. I never had the guts to share them with people because they are my personal thing. Over the past year or so I've started to share my investment in games development with other like minded people (such as Remakes United) and eventully I will finish something I am proud enough to call my own.
Coming soon a game :) fingers crossed, unless I lose my bottle again.
I've been a reviewing.
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1172922899
Bottom Line: Play it! Read this review... |
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+1
1172053927
Bottom Line: It depends. for NFS fans Read this review... |
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1172053460
Bottom Line: It depends. on if you like history lessons Read this review... |
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+2
1171991257
Bottom Line: Play it! Read this review... |
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1171990753
Bottom Line: Play it! Read this review... |
Games I consider all time greats that everybody needs to play to really understand how games work on so many levels.
Probably the best post pub entertainment that doesn't have involve a bra catch.
Classic Melbourne House adventure based on the book. Wonderful parser for the time and I am sure the world of IF would be far smaller without this inspirational title that contained a graphical adventure in under 48k
GTA 1 was excellent, GTA 2 more of the same, GTA 3 lacked character, Vice City was where the 3d GTA's really kicked off
There are many firsts in gaming, this is the first use of a colour display. Still plays and sounds excellent after all these years.
One of my earliest gaming memories is playing this with my father past bedtime. I make sure I keep my son up gaming at least once and month ;)
No not that crap last gen title the classic 8 bit arcade adventure by Denton Designs published by Ocean on 8bits. Fantastic game emulable versions on World of Spectrum
Most version where in an orange box this pong variant had several good games and a light gun. Contains some of the best two player games ever. Everybody should have owned at least one pong in their life, this one is mine.
Maaah Blog Thang
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