16 September 2008, 23:48 | #1 |
2 contact me: email only!
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Auckland / New Zealand
Posts: 3,187
|
Who are/were the best programmers?
I am curious as to what others think about who the best game programmers were from the 80's and early 90's (Amiga heyday!).
In the arcades, they seemed to have incredibly well written games, they rarely crashed (I can only remember a few games that hung or reset, possibly due to faulty hardware) and had pretty good AI on the whole. And usually pretty good pixel-art graphics. However, was that due to good programmers, or really good hardware? What kind of games would someone like Andrew Braybrook, in the hands of some decent hardware that allowed multiple layers of graphics to be combined in hardware have come up with? The huge games in the mid to late 80's like Out Run, Afterburner - was fast graphics hardware hiding mediocre programming? Could the guy that made Out Run in the arcades come up with anything half decent on a humble Amiga 500? Which country produced the best programmers? From the mags I read at the time, it seemed the UK programmers squeezed a lot more out of their 8-bit machines than the US guys could - with the exception of crap teams that churned out shite like Tiertex etc. US teams seemed happy to go with huge multiload titles (Accolade etc) while the UK guys would often squeeze an entire game in a single load. The Germans and Scandanavian countries seemed to always come up with slick games and effects. The few Aussie games I can think of were pretty terrible (I think of ECP products here!). Most NZ stuff was pretty well written but not technologically brilliant. The French were just weird! Are there any coders that really were legends? What the Reflections guys did with dual playfield mode on the Amiga was incredible in terms of graphics. Geoff Crammond did F1GP on a humble A500. Rainbow Arts seemed to make silky smooth 50fps games that you didn't notice were only 16 colours etc etc... |
17 September 2008, 00:03 | #2 |
Into the Wonderful
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: England
Age: 49
Posts: 2,335
|
I was always impressed by Team 17's games TECHNICALLY. They always seemed super slick and fast with loads of colour.
I also think they were soul-less and dull for the most part. |
17 September 2008, 00:19 | #3 |
Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: .
Age: 48
Posts: 5,562
|
Ian Bell and David Braben. other than them, i wouldn't know: it's easier to spot bad programmed games than the opposite
Last edited by Marcuz; 17 September 2008 at 00:58. |
17 September 2008, 00:24 | #4 |
Gets there in the end...
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Wales
Posts: 872
|
Archer Maclean, Geoff Crammond and Manfred Trenz spring to mind.
[edit] whoops, you'd mentioned two of them already! [/edit] |
17 September 2008, 01:14 | #5 |
Targ Explorer
|
Paul Woakes is my programming god!
Amiga Encounter Backlash Mercenary Escape from Targ and The Second city Damocles Mercenary III (Damocles II) Legends of Valour Sensible golf (art) |
17 September 2008, 01:31 | #6 |
Thalion Webshrine
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Oxford
Posts: 14,468
|
Michael Bittner (Most Thalion games, in particular Ambermoon 3D texture mapping)
Chris Jungen (No Second Prize 3D) If we are including demo coders : Taipan of Complex (Amazing 3D demo code, realtime bobs) Last edited by alexh; 17 September 2008 at 01:37. |
17 September 2008, 11:31 | #7 |
Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: .
Age: 48
Posts: 5,562
|
i wanna see realtime boobs!
seriously, among: http://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=1219 what is a good exemple of Taipan coding? i don't know much about demo scene, alas |
17 September 2008, 11:53 | #8 |
Thalion Webshrine
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Oxford
Posts: 14,468
|
|
17 September 2008, 13:22 | #9 |
Moderator
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: ...
Age: 52
Posts: 1,838
|
As for most arcade machines: they had way better hardware and years earlier than the Amiga could even dream of.
Even early games like OutRun runs on very powerful (for its time) dedicated hardware. That's where the money was at the time. |
17 September 2008, 13:29 | #10 |
Mostly Harmless
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Northern Ireland
Posts: 1,149
|
Andrew Braybrook and Archer Maclean for me. They're way too smart! Have you seen their code?!
|
17 September 2008, 23:35 | #11 | |
Where is my mind?
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Nürnberg, Germany
Age: 49
Posts: 129
|
Quote:
For me the best on 64 and Amiga were the programmers of Bard's Tale, Speedball, Neuromancer, Armalyte and Wasteland. And of course people working for Sensible SW, Microprose, Lucasarts... |
|
18 September 2008, 08:39 | #12 |
CaptainM68K-SPS France
|
Pierre Adane is a great coder Fernando Velez too, french
|
18 September 2008, 09:07 | #13 |
Going nowhere
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 50
Posts: 9,017
|
Fernando Velez was Spanish wasn't he?
|
18 September 2008, 12:16 | #14 |
CaptainM68K-SPS France
|
nope he is french a french demomaker..
|
18 September 2008, 12:57 | #15 |
Zone Friend
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Germany
Age: 52
Posts: 424
|
One of the greatest game designers is Peter Molyneux.
|
18 September 2008, 13:25 | #16 |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 32,007
|
SCUMM by Ron Gilbert and Aric Wilmunder is quite neat.
|
20 September 2008, 02:49 | #17 |
Banned
|
Just to name a few :
Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux, Geoff Crammond, Shigeru Miyamoto, the people at Infogrames & Electronic Arts , the people who were making games on the Spectrum platform, Liquid Design (the makers of Slam Tilt), Irem (the makers of Moon Patrol, R-Type ), Matthew Smith (for Jet Set Willy : How can such a simple game be so addictive & fascinating ), David Braben & Ian Bell (the makers of Elite), Marc Cerny... The inventor of micro-switch, applied to joysticks (although not all good joysticks had micro-switches...) Might not be exactly the kind of answer that Codetapper expected, but the time when an individual coder made a great game is long gone, inmho... I assume he's interested in coders with exploit pedigrees, operating in highly competitive areas not game designers per se. Last edited by NewDeli; 20 September 2008 at 19:46. |
20 September 2008, 03:15 | #18 |
Vegetable Lasagna
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Toronto, CANADA
Age: 54
Posts: 711
|
If memory serves, there was an article in Amiga World once that described Jez San as the best 68K machine language programmer in the world. I took that with a grain of salt. Clearly a sharp cookie but "best" is an awfully vague moniker.
|
20 September 2008, 10:16 | #19 |
The 1 who ribbits
|
the guy who gave us powerpacker and requester tools nico, dont know about the best
but were very useful |
20 September 2008, 10:34 | #20 |
Super Robot Pilot
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Modena (Italy)
Age: 49
Posts: 871
|
I'm a great fan of Chris Butler, he made very nice games on C64; later I know he worked on Super NES.
|
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
Thread Tools | |
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Are there any Amos Pro Programmers out there able to help me? | CaptainNow | Coders. General | 2 | 05 September 2011 22:27 |
for ASM programmers | meynaf | Coders. General | 29 | 05 August 2010 10:00 |
For Game Programmers... | DaphydTheBard | Retrogaming General Discussion | 46 | 26 November 2005 17:01 |
Programmers question | Tolismlf | Coders. General | 6 | 12 December 2004 09:13 |
Got Programmers? | Ian | Retrogaming General Discussion | 1 | 18 October 2001 01:57 |
|
|