DaFrog

All about DaFrog

Yeuch, I hate this stuff. In the interests of conformity, here goes.

I started out much the same as everyone else here in the Member pages. I was a young spotty kid (9 years old in fact) when my dad brought home a computer kit that we built together. Shortly thereafter we upgraded to the ubiquitous ZX81, then Sharp MZ80A, Acorn Atom, Acorn Electron, Commodore 64, and Amiga, before I finally moved into the world of PC’s and Macs.

At 14, I got involved in commercial games development with a small but growing software house down the road. That didn’t work out too well though, with my efforts and ideas promptly appearing in other products from the same company while I got left with nothing. So, under the urgings of my Dad, I went into corporate programming, still keeping a hand in the games scene though by writing the odd article and stuff.

I got a reputation as a Windows developer and began to find myself increasingly being asked to do more and more articles, more and more seminars and eventually books. I’ve now written 8 of them, and co-authored 2 others, and so far they are all International Best Sellers. Two are even recommended reading by Microsoft, if that counts for anything.

However, I always had that urge to turn my back on the pompous suits and return to the land from whence I came. So, last year I got a bunch of friends together and we started work on an online game and community called Imperion (www.dapad.co.uk) which is due to go live, for free of course, later this year. About a month ago I also ordered a Yaroze

Now, for me this is a big step. The ultimate plan is to get a job back in the games industry and stay there for the foreseeable future. However, as an established expert in a totally different field its very hard to step back to square 1. There is nothing more frustrating than being held back from the simplest of things simply because you are a newbie, even though you fought hard to not be one for years prior. But, the Yaroze community is a forgiving one and I’m learning fast. Keep an eye on the downloads page for code, utilities and other stuff, as well as the two games I’m working on, for the Yaroze, one of which will be a GDUK entry if they bring the competition back next year.

Sorry to bore you all....

My Set-up

Well, it seems as though it’s the done thing to promote one’s home PC set-up, so I thought I’d humble you all .... :)

I do all my Yaroze development on a PowerBook G3-300 connected to a flatscreen 17 inch monitor, external keyboard and mouse. See, didn’t I tell you at the start that you’d feel humbled.

Everything lives in the spare bedroom, photos at www.dapad.co.uk, and also includes a K6-200 PC with 96Mb of Ram, an 8 Meg VoodooII, Soundblaster Awe64 Gold, and a full Thrustmaster controller set-up (F22 Joystick, TQS and Pedals). That occasionally talks over the local network to a Pentium II-333 with 64 meg of ram, a standard Voodoo card, Soundblaster Awe64, and a standard set of flight sticks. It in turn occasionally shoots the breeze with the Pentium 166 server running Redhat Linux 5.2 sitting next to it, which in turn serves stunningly fast net access (via a nice thick cable drilled into the wall) to all the computers on the local network.

Just in case the mood takes us though, there’s also a 64 Meg Pentium 266 Tillamook notebook with a 14.1 inch TFT screen and a P120 notebook with a 11.3 inch TFT screen flying around here too.

For relaxation though we all tend to adjourn to the lounge to run up the N64 or the second Playstation on a nice home-cinema TV set-up.

The Yaroze itself sits pride of place, on its own desk, connected to its own shiny Mini Widescreen TV from Sony (Equally black and doubly sexy).

In the words of the kid from the Simpsons.... "haaaahaaaa"