When I was about 10, my dad introduced me to programming. He brought me VB3 and installed it for me, and I sat down and typed in the code for my first program. I decided to go for something simple. I created an image, and double-clicked on it and typed "When clicked, move slowly to the right for ten seconds.". Needless to say, nothing happened, except for a message box popping up that read "Syntax error". I had a lot to learn.
Over the course of the next two years, I made simple programs such as "Guess which pot the kitten is behind", "Guess which number I'm thinking of", and other similar programs. No animation, no real challenge. But it was a challenge for me. I was teaching myself. My dad had decided that that would be the best way for me to learn, so I was making slow progress. However, I remembered and fully understood everything I knew.
After a while, I began to get better, and I started making my first games. The first included "Boxing", "Supercar", and "Monster Invasion". They were all simple and easy to make (looking back), but for some reason, my brothers found them addictive. Their interest fueled my enthusiasm, and I began attempting ever larger programs. "Jungle Quest" came next - my first multi-platform arcade-style game. It was also my last. I was beginning to realize just how poorly VB did with moving graphics.
I wish I could show you screenshots of these older programs, but unfortunately, the programs were lost after the hard drive died.
Anyway, around when I was 15, my dad gave me a copy of VB6. I was programming on a faster computer now, and I was quite happy to have it. A began programming even larger programs, such as Starship Arena, Mapmaker, Picture Painter, and Raceway Spectrum. I had long since decided that images and pictures were not an option for Visual Basic, so all the programs I just mentioned used only the PSet method to display graphics, meaning that everything consisted of colored circles, lines, and dots.
Here's a screenshot of a map made by Mapmaker. The terrain was randomly generated, but you could choose the settings for the map - like the water amount, the land amount, lakes, islands, that kind of thing. It was tough, but I loved every second of it. I made it to go with Ensemble Studio's game, Age of Mythology, which is where the pictures are from. Mapmaker would also generate mission objectives for each player.
A screenshot of Raceway Spectrum. The user could choose to drive their "car" (just a circle of color) or let it run on autopilot. As the cars were being stamped instead of actually "moved" (to increase the frame rate), they left trails of colored circles behind them. I got rid of the problem by making black lines behind each car. The cars are AI controlled, and as you can see by the lines, they're actually pretty good drivers. Cars could bounce against each other, and hitting walls or other obstacles damaged them, and made them run more slowly. I was 16 when I made this, I think.
After a while, I decided that I wanted to make games, and unfortunately, VB couldn't do that, so I started looking for something else, which is how I found Phrogram. It looks kid-like, but it's actually pretty good, with an easy-to-use interface, and an incredibly powerful 3D graphics engine. More on that later, though.
I still use VB, from time to time. Mainly I use it for databases and UI programs. UI was the area that Phrogram most fell short. Oh, well. You can't have everything, right?
These are some of my older programs, by the way, back when Visual Basic was the main compiler that I used. Now I use Phrogram. Most of the time. VB is still good for databases, but I use Phrogram for games and graphics.
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