Your proudest programming achievement?

HonestFlames

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What was your proudest or most memorable programming achievement? Mine was many years ago, when I had my first A1200 all expanded nicely and lovingly configured with a great working environment.

I'd bought DevPac 3. Got SAS/C installed. GoldED configured to perfection and a newly purchased set of OS 3.1 developer floppies. I'd printed a good portion of the RKRM's and studied the hardware reference info.

It all came together in one little assembly program. It was a tiny little intro which took over the screen (in an OS friendly way) and displayed some text, one character at a time, per frame, whilst playing a small chip-tune. Just 1 bitplane being written to, but the screen and palette set up so that the text had a shadow effect.

Everything just came together perfectly. I knew how to set up the palette in 24-bit colour and how to tie the little mod-player into my own source. I knew it was pointless using the blitter, so used the CPU to copy each character into place (from a custom font included into the executable). It was that one, rare occasion where no debugging was needed and the thing compiled and ran on the first go. :ninja:

If only all my programming projects turned out like that :roll:
 
My proudest is also related to my saddest.. ;-)

One of the proudest I had was this really complicated randomizer routine I wrote for my first (only really) Amiga game. It was a Solitaire game, and I was pretty proud of my random 0-51 routine...
Told someone only, and he said, "Why did you just use a "modulus" for the remainder dividing by 52."..
DANG IT!!! :)

My proudest moment was actually in about 2002, which I talked to the only person I had given my game to... I was working on it when Klondike AGA came out, and that was so much nicer than mine, that I basically stopped m ine. I had it where it all worked but when you clicked the cards, it outlined them.
I hadn't worked on BOBs yet.. ;-)

Anyway, around 2002, I got back in touch with that person, and she told me she was still using my version of the Solitaire game mostly, as it was light and fast...

That was really kual...

Especially since, I'm not a programmer.. :)

desiv
 
Amateurs:D

Mine was programming a FOR...NEXT loop on the speccy that scrolled any text upward one pixel at a time....it was something like POKE 23609,n or similar...can't remember now!!
 
My best was a machine code for the ZX81 that scrolled the text to the left one character at a time for a ship game I was programming (never ended the game as I accidentally erased the tape...:banghead:).
 
My first data compression efforts :)

My first data compression efforts :)

I started programming as a child, and one thing I remember doing in those days was a basic routine to pack ascii text (since it used only 6 bits in a byte, I put 2 bit of the next byte into the previous)... it worked and I was proud of it, I think I was around 12... (y)
 
im afraid i used simple basic routines as that was all the information i had as a kid...but i made a space invaders game on the Ti99 ...and then moved to basic strategy games on the speccy and c64 but all that ended with the Amiga and the PC...i never knew were to start so i didnt bother..

years later i bought (and later sold!!(idiot)) and full ti99/4a system from a Ti programmer in france who wrote the 5 a side football game on the ti, i have his reference books still...

he told me that the Ti managers said that the Ti would never be able to do artificial intelligence routines for the opposing football team ...he proved them wrong!
 
My best was a machine code for the ZX81 that scrolled the text to the left one character at a time for a ship game I was programming (never ended the game as I accidentally erased the tape...:banghead:).

Aha.... that's the reason you started drinking then... :run:
 
Well, a good few years ago I was heavily into the dial in text based MUG (multi user game) known as "Avalon". I started playing it using "Term" on the amiga. Found it was a bit of a disadvantage having to type everything all the time, especially when in combat.

So I wrote my own terminal emulator using AMOS (of all things). Did the job nicely, with loads of macro support (including variables), adjustable menus, keyword highlighting, scroll back editor, keyboard shortcuts, compass movement commands mapped to the keypad, text capture, phone call cost calculator etc.

Unfortunately AMOS isn't really designed for large amounts of text work on screen (more graphics/game orientated), but it was fast enough to cope with line speeds at the time. It was also the first (and thinking about it - only) program other people actually used and gave me a few monitory donations for as well - I was very chuffed at that, especially as I was unemployed at the time. :D

Then line speeds got faster, then it went onto the internet - and my program wasn't really fast enough, and also had to be hacked to use "telser" for internet support. Started rewriting it in C - but after spending ages sorted out an odd bug in my send/receive routine, alternative full blown workbench native apps came out (I think zmud was one of them?) making my effort pretty much redundant. :(

Still - dug out the app/code recently and realised just how much time and effort I put into it, the kind only really possible when you haven't a normal job to contend with. :D
 
My best was a machine code for the ZX81 that scrolled the text to the left one character at a time for a ship game I was programming (never ended the game as I accidentally erased the tape...:banghead:).

Aha.... that's the reason you started drinking then... :run:

You'll drink if the work of four months was destroyed in favour of an ordinary long play disk crappy music.:banghead:
 
I got a few proud moments of programming, but my hands down best is my only released product.

It is a Point and Click adventure game written in Dark Basic for the PC in 2005 called Joe and the Basset - the Shoemaker's Magic Shoe Shortage. It was used by Hushpuppies for their back to school kids shoes promotion, where kids (or their parents) would get a free copy of my game when they bought a pair of shoes.

I did everything myself; the code, animations (tips hat to deluxe paint 4 aga), music, ingame speech for all the characters (you can hear my dog's tail banging against the radiator in some conversations cos she'd want feeding - had a sore throat for ages after doing it all), scripts. It was really cool, because I've been meaning to do another one or remake Monkey Island with the 3D stage idea I used.

I've been playing some point and click games and found that I had considered some annoying things that you find in some point and click adventures e.g. useless red-herring objects, puzzles that don't make sense, music playing over the speech, awkward inventories, uneccessarilly huge interfaces, etc.

The project took me 6 months from start to finish and that included making a 100 or so page picture book to go with it. The game didn't have save-states and instead you typed in magic words to instantly add items to your inventory and the book provided spaces for these along with introductions to the game characters and maps of the areas. I loved this project so much.

It wasn't properly finished though, between you and me. I ran out of time so I had to wrap it up and finish it so the ending was a bit odd. It was an odd game though, hahaha. Its my proudest moment, because I'm really a C programmer and had been learning to program the Gameboy and at the time of this project the Gameboy Advance, so that's what I wanted to make a game on.

I had been tinkering with a library called SDL and finding it hopelessly slow and needed an alternative. I found Blitz Max and Dark Basic, but chose Dark Basic due to having learned AMOS before. I have tried Blitz Max since though and its so much nicer and no more difficult to learn once you get your head round OO. I'm currently getting into C again and learning via the Gamesmith library for C + Tools (that I would like a pukka copy of), hoping to then start with some inline assembly before getting completely into 68020 assembly.

My current project is a twist on arkanoid and will be brilliant when its done. It will be completed and released on the Amiga 1200 before anything else and if it goes well I would like to aquire an A500/600 and make a non-AGA version.

Yarr!!

PS. I included all the source code to the game on the disc including all resourcess.
 
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What was your proudest or most memorable programming achievement? Mine was many years ago, when I had my first A1200 all expanded nicely and lovingly configured with a great working environment.

I'd bought DevPac 3. Got SAS/C installed. GoldED configured to perfection and a newly purchased set of OS 3.1 developer floppies. I'd printed a good portion of the RKRM's and studied the hardware reference info.

It all came together in one little assembly program. It was a tiny little intro which took over the screen (in an OS friendly way) and displayed some text, one character at a time, per frame, whilst playing a small chip-tune. Just 1 bitplane being written to, but the screen and palette set up so that the text had a shadow effect.

Everything just came together perfectly. I knew how to set up the palette in 24-bit colour and how to tie the little mod-player into my own source. I knew it was pointless using the blitter, so used the CPU to copy each character into place (from a custom font included into the executable). It was that one, rare occasion where no debugging was needed and the thing compiled and ran on the first go. :ninja:

If only all my programming projects turned out like that :roll:

Awesome story man. I'm longing to get into Amiga programming, but I don't know where to begin. I know bits of AMOS and played lots of Amiga games, so I have a rough idea what I can do with the machine. I have got Devpac 3 installed on my WinUAE setup, but I have yet to get round to looking at it. I'm waiting for an ethernet card to come for my a1200. I'm also thinking about getting a CF card for a harddrive for it, but I'm waiting for that spare spot of cash to come along.

Any chance of seeing your demo? Is it on youtube?
 
Over 25 years ago a good friend of mine took on the Production of Aluminium Masts for these People..

http://www.henshaw.co.uk/tinkerholding.cfm

Sadly item seems they've stopped trading.

Butr he was whizz at adapting things and I was sort of a whizz ( well in his eyes lol). at Puters ..

So with lots of wood metal stepper motors. and other odds
we built a automatic drilling machine to do the 50 holes per mast.
rotation and linear travel

All driven by a Sinclair spectrum 48k via loads of basic and an I/O port driving relays .
Thats where i came in .. a few weeks of cock ups and its was sorted. about 1200 lines of Basic .. eek!!.

But this old heap drilled all the holes for years .
around 9600 masts at 50 holes per.. magic ..

ahh those were the days ... I remember when errmm. .......zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ! :D

1zc3l9w.gif
 
Planetary atmospheres radiative transfer code in FORTRAN 77!
 
What was your proudest or most memorable programming achievement? Mine was many years ago, when I had my first A1200 all expanded nicely and lovingly configured with a great working environment.

I'd bought DevPac 3. Got SAS/C installed. GoldED configured to perfection and a newly purchased set of OS 3.1 developer floppies. I'd printed a good portion of the RKRM's and studied the hardware reference info.

It all came together in one little assembly program. It was a tiny little intro which took over the screen (in an OS friendly way) and displayed some text, one character at a time, per frame, whilst playing a small chip-tune. Just 1 bitplane being written to, but the screen and palette set up so that the text had a shadow effect.

Everything just came together perfectly. I knew how to set up the palette in 24-bit colour and how to tie the little mod-player into my own source. I knew it was pointless using the blitter, so used the CPU to copy each character into place (from a custom font included into the executable). It was that one, rare occasion where no debugging was needed and the thing compiled and ran on the first go. :ninja:

If only all my programming projects turned out like that :roll:

Awesome story man. I'm longing to get into Amiga programming, but I don't know where to begin. I know bits of AMOS and played lots of Amiga games, so I have a rough idea what I can do with the machine. I have got Devpac 3 installed on my WinUAE setup, but I have yet to get round to looking at it. I'm waiting for an ethernet card to come for my a1200. I'm also thinking about getting a CF card for a harddrive for it, but I'm waiting for that spare spot of cash to come along.

Any chance of seeing your demo? Is it on youtube?

Thread necro.... sorry, I've been away from Amibay for absolutely ages!

I no longer have any of my old Amiga stuff. I made a (stupid) executive decision, many years ago, to throw out all my disks. I don't actually recall where my customised (painted red, even the keys) A1200 went.

I bought a couple of A1200's when I started visiting Amibay and expanded one out nicely with an 030, lots of RAM and a FastIDE. Sadly, real life got in the way and I had to sell the 030 to help pay rent during a rough spot. Still haven't replaced that, but I have the CF from the A1200 and can use it with WinUAE thanks to an ExpressCard CF adapter for my laptop and card reader attached to my desktop.
 
I wrote a disassembler (in assembler!) on my Amstrad CPC about twenty years ago. I can't remember which assembler I used, but my disassembler covered all the undoccumented Z80 instructions and handled all the RST instructions with trailing addresses properly :)
 
I've been programming for ~26 years (for fun & work) but my proudest moment, without a doubt, is this:
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=2778

A labor of love for several years, learned so much during the process & made new friends.
Visited the C64 party X2001 with it & took 2nd place, an experience I'll never ever forget (my first demo party!).
I wish I had this kind of motivation today, dying to complete another demo...
 
For me the proudest moment was quite recently, when I saw on this very forum that people are still, after all these years, using FreeWheel! :)
 
I have two moments.

The first was writing my first game on the C64 that used a user defined chracter set and consisted of a helicopter navigating through a canyon rescuing pilots whilst avoiding mines.

The second, was selling my first copy of a Windows program about 12 months ago that I wrote. It's a utility that recursively scans through a directory structure, finds all the files, pulls out the metadata for each file found, including email, and saves it all nicely into a spreadsheet.

I've only been back into the Amiga scene for about 18 months but getting back into Amiga programming is something I really want to do.

Cheers

Mark
 
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