I was given my first computer, a Spectrum, when I was about 5 years old. I used to spend far too much time playing games (some things never change), and I also used to try to write my own games too, although my rather limited abilities and reliance on BASIC meant the results were less than spectacular.
A few years later I moved on to an Atari ST, which I stuck with for quite a long time. I made quite a few games using STOS, which was a fancy game-oriented version of BASIC (if you have heard of AMOS for the Amiga, this was the ST-based equivalent), and released some of them through various Public Domain libraries. My most proud achievement was probably a turn-based strategy game based on Command and Conquer, which came about mainly because I was jealous of all my PC-owning buddies being able to play that game while I couldn't. There is a list of (most of) the Atari ST games I released here. Do not expect them to be amazing!
Fairly unsurprisingly, I ended up studying Computer Science when I went to university. As luck would have it, my randomly assigned second year group project was to make a game (Pacman 2000). I also chose to make a game (Metal Mittens) for my final year dissertation, ended up doing a somewhat games-related PhD, and have coded up a few odds and ends in my spare time.
I've also got information and downloads for some of my other ill-fated game projects, even if they are decidedly unfinished and quite likely to remain that way:
- Imbroglio, a remake of Chaos. Chaos is a classic turn-based strategy game originally released on the Spectrum, in which a bunch of wizards try to bump each other off by throwing spells around and summoning monsters. Imbroglio mostly works but is missing quite a lot of spells and has no AI players.
- An unnamed Asteroids remake. This is similar to the original game, except asteroids bounce off each other, there is support for up to four players at once, and there multiple ships and pilots to choose from. I wrote this as a test for some game-related tools I was working on, although neither the game nor the tools ended up being really finished.
- An unnamed Mr. Do remake. This was intended for a competition, but I got distracted long before I finished it. The idea was to implement the original game first, then add some extra polish and accessibility features to make it easier to play, but I never even finished getting the core game written.
To run the Java-based stuff, you'll need to have a Java Runtime Environment of some kind installed; try going here if you don't have one. The other stuff is for Windows systems only. 7z archives can be unpacked using 7-Zip.