The first games I really played on the PC were Scorched Earth, LHX, and Stunts 4D Racing (cracked by Killefitt). They were installed (illegally) on all of my school's computers, and I remember the stroke of genius where I copied them to floppies and brought them home one day.
I used to carry around a floppy of Stunts filled with my records and custom maps. I had another with Scorch and LHX for whever I was bored and near a computer.
I got into game design when I was 10 by fiddling with the DC Games RPG engine. It had a graphical interface, but also a simple scripting language that could completely rewrite the game engine, and I wrote several little quests with it. Good times.
My first computer memory is of playing Centipede on the atari and getting my fingers stuck in the trackball.
First Programming? Quickturtle on the Mac Plus...I have no idea any more what this language was based on, but by typing commands into a shell, you could get it to draw things on the screen. I made it draw my name and also made it do a kalidiscope effect that you couldn't stop and that crashed the computer. I learned some Java in college. Learning MEL, the embedded MAYA script for writing plugins.
My household has always been a mac household. Counting all our old computers, the ratio of person to computer is almost 3 to 1.
We have recipies written on the back of old punch cards from when my pop was in college. Ha! How's that for old! I win! (not really...for having grown up with computers I still am pretty much a noob at most stuff. Scott let me watch and help build a computer a few days ago.)
The first computer I had was a Mac Plus. I remember I used to play Battle Chess and a small Star Trek:NG game on it. I learned the basic concepts of drag-n-drop, copying, and word processing from that Mac.
The second computer I got was a Windows 3.11 486DX Cyrix, running at 66MHz. It had 4 megs of RAM and I learned how to squeeze every available kilobyte of memory for games. I played X-COM into the ground with that computer.
Ah, good ol' LOGO. Long before I had any idea what computers really were, I took some classes where we used LOGO and some sort of lego adaptation of it. I also need to find the name of that old programming environment on my mac: My dad used to play with it, but i never figured it out. Of course, I was about 5 when we had that thing
My answer to this question directly correlates to an answer I supplied while filing out an application to a Christian College which asked: “Please describe how, when, and why you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior.â€
I haven’t, and may never. I am not a computer geek. I keep considering getting more into computers, but I would just rather invest my time in working on a theatrical production, hanging with friends, etc.
We didn’t get a computer until I was 13 and I basically used it for aim. I didn’t even know how to download music until I was 18.
You know, maybe I should take a few classes and/or read a few books on computers.
I am into sound technology, and thanks to my theatre background and some architecture and design classes, I can design, build and sew quite a bit. However, computers just never were my thing.
I just got reminded of Stunts, aka 4D Sports Driving, from episode 070716 (Software Piracy) on the legacy feed. That really made me think about my past with computers, although there's a hell of a lot I don't remember.
I don't remember much at all from my early days of computer use, mostly because I was rather young at the time, but I distinctly remember Stunts. I also know it must've been pretty old when I first played it, since that game is a year younger than I am. It was on a computer that had DOS and Windows 3.1 (which I recall being essentially useless); I don't remember very many other games I had back then, but I'll name some: Jazz Jackrabbit, Microprose's Forumla One Grand Prix. I also remember some flight sims, but not in great detail since it was my father who was interested in them.
My mother tells me I started using that computer when I was around 5, and that I played some game which I remember but can only identify as the "kissing monster" game - it was an isometric dungeon where the floor was a grid, and it was populated with various monsters, one of which was red and had a long sucking mouth thing, hence "kissing monster". Apparently I liked to run around the house pretending to be that monster. The computer was an Olivetti and was likely bought around 1994, but I don't remember the details of the hardware. The CRT monitor had an annoying screen filter I'd hang on it and I wasn't supposed to use the computer without it.
For some time from middle school to early in high school I extensively used an old Toshiba laptop of Dad's, but for a long time I wasn't allowed to do much with it, and so I remember little of it. I was well behind the computing curve up until I was a couple of years into high school; I think it was in 2003, when I would've been in 10th grade, when we finally bought a new desktop. Unfortunately, it was a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 and the graphics card was a GeForce 4 MX440, but I'm lucky it had at least that. I replaced it relatively soon with a GeForce FX 5900, which was a poor choice of card at the time Nonetheless, that's when I really started to care about computers, although I was stuck with dial-up for a while.
I don't remember that much of my early experience with programming. I remember some fiddling around in BASIC, but nothing of note. The most significant influence early on was probably learning MATLAB to help Dad with some of his engineering research. In high school I started programming on my graphics calculator; I remember making several decent programs, one of which would solve for unknown side lengths / angles in a triangle. Another one was a tic tac toe game, where you could have human or AI in any player slot, and the AI would never lose. I also started making a chess game, but before I could complete the movement logic of the game I remember that someone my calculator's memory. That is quite likely the only notable bullying experience I had in high school.
I took IT as a subject at school in my last two years, and in that course we used Delphi (ugh!), but the course material was already very easy for me. I would always be talking during class time, and the teacher hated that, but I got the best marks in the class anyway. For some reason I was less loud when speaking to the teacher (who was generally disliked), and I remember my friends and I would imitate the teacher saying something like "Speak up, Dimitri, I can't hear you; with the air conditioning in this room..."
The first computers I used were the Macs at school. I remember good times with the game Gizmos and Gadgets. When I was 7 or 8 years old I received a Windows 95 desktop from my grandmother, with a set of Atari games on floppies. The first computer I actually started messing around in and figuring out was a 1997 Quantex laptop, which still runs perfectly today (yay Gentoo). Unfortunately, it doesn't even have an internal modem, so it hasn't been hooked up to the internet since 2005 or so.
I remember we'd get those old Humongous Software games either by buying them or renting them from the library, mostly for my little brother because he was around the right age range for them, but I liked them too for being simple adventure games with really good animation. However, my first computer experience was in the Catholic schools I went to from 1st grade-8th. Both of them used Apple IIes well past anyone should have been using them. I graduated from 8th grade in 1999, and there was no plan to replace those ancient machines, which I believe used 5 1/2 inch floppies. We never learned programming or anything on them. Most of my time with them was spent running a math game that timed you and placed you in a "race" according to how fast you did the questions. My first real experiences with modern computers and the internet came at the local library, where I played what I think were early flash games like Tailgunner and looked up stuff about video games. I got my first computer of my very own right after graduating from 8th grade, going into a public school for the first time since kindergarten. It was a lower end HP Pavillion with a Celeron processor and Windows '98 first edition. The insane thing is that the computer still works, though I install various forms of Linux on it so it can connect to our DSL. It doesn't get much usage, but a couple of summers ago, it was all I had for a brief while when my laptop was sent out for repairs.
I've been using computers pretty much my whole life. We were one of the first people to have Internet in my town, and got it because my dad was teaching so he could get it through the college. We've went through a lot of computers through the years. I remember having one with a green-screen monitor that had dos on it, but I never really used it much. The first game I played I only vaguely remember, but it was some game where you pop balloons. Most of my computing was on windows 95 and then 98. Commander keen was the shit back then and was probably my favorite game series. I had a lot of games because my dad would buy those Cd's that had a bunch of shareware games on them. I played The first two Duke Nukem's ( before it was an fps), Raptor: Call of the shadows was one of the best shooters I'd ever played but I only had the demo, Crystal caves, Major Stryker, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Megarace, Wolfenstein, Doom, Chexquest ( a free doom clone in a box of chex), and a bunch of other games I can't remember. We always had computers around but they were always a couple of years behind at least, so the newest games never worked. I didn't really use the internet all the much unless I wanted to look up cheat codes for games.
I remember the first computer I ever used was an old IBM workstation at my grandparents house. I played sammie the snake on it. My first computer that was actually my own was a Panasonic KX-w1500 wordprocessor. I loved this thing. Word processor, speadsheet, calendar, contacts, floppy drive, and a daisywheel printer built in. I loved the green monochrome screen and how clicky the keys were... One of my favorite things to do would be to make the spreadsheet do a circular function (it had not protection against it) and let it run and run until it ran out of memory.
Then my parents told me that either I could keep that or they could give me a real computer. I took the real computer, of course, but I wish I had kept that thing. I wish I could find another one, I loved it so much. Nothing would make me happier than to get another one.
Anyway, so then I got an HP Vectra 5, and since it was my own machine, I could do with it as I pleased. The rest is history.
But then got an 'upgrade' to one of those green-screen monstrosities that Sonic posted. It had a heat-paper dot-matrix printer built into the top. It used two 5" floppy disks, one with the OS and one with the word processor on it. I could only type a few sentences before I had to save to the WP disc because the system would run out of memory. Then I had one of these I bought with money from my bar-mitzvah: Things improved from there.
My family had a really old Compaq computer that taught me how to read. We had a few of the LucasArt adventure games and Doom, and I played them to death. That's literally all I remember about my first computer. We didn't get the internet until I got into 8th grade and I got my first computer that is mine and mine alone (and Mac) about 3 years ago.
I used a lot of Apple ][ and // and Mac 512k and Mac Plus in school. The first computer in my house was an IBM Aptiva 486 DX4 100Mhz with 8MB of RAM and a quad-speed cd-rom. When I upgraded that mofo to 16MB of ram, boot disks no more!
I used a lot of Apple ][ and // and Mac 512k and Mac Plus in school. The first computer in my house was an IBM Aptiva 486 DX4 100Mhz with 8MB of RAM and a quad-speed cd-rom. When I upgraded that mofo to 16MB of ram, boot disks no more!
Oh yeah, the fucking lucasarts games that couldn't use EMS like everything else, they needed XMS. Fucking bull shit.
I lived in England when growing up, so my computers were a bit different. Let me break it down for you!
First computer in the house: Amstrad Word Processor. Also good for Basic, text adventures and chess.
A bit hazy on the order, but: Amstrad 464. Games and more Basic programming. Save your games to cassette tape!
And then I got the next model up! An Amstrad 6128, with a colour monitor and a disk drive. The games loaded sooooo fast!
That one was mine. My brother got a black and white TV, so didn't need a monitor. He got: ZX Spectrum +2
Next up, Amiga 500: This was actually usable as a word processor, for image creation, even making animated movies. Also the sound on this system was way ahead of any other system. Oh yeah... it had a mouse!
And then, Amiga 1200: This motherfucker had a HARD DRIVE! Enough to store something like 20 floppy disks worth of games for super fast loading. And 2MB of RAM. Awesome! I did my first music sequencing with this one.
To be clear, I never bought any of these new. Always second hand, so I was always a bit behind the curve.
Then I bought a 386 PC, with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. I used it to run Cubasis, a very streamlined midi sequencer which could control my keyboard. Yay.
Next was 486. It was a bit better.
Next was a Pentium computer, which was my first ever brand new computer. Windows 98! It ran the latest games, and had a 20gb Hard Drive. I put in a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live card, with a breakout port in the front slots where a CD drive would go. Now I could do audio recording, and play back multiple tracks in real time without lags and skips. I upgraded a few times, and added a DVD drive.
I then bought an all-new PC system, but only used it for a few months. I bought a Macbook for traveling, intending to use the more powerful PC when at home. It turned out that once I got used to OSX, I could never face going back to Windows XP.
As I bought the Macbook as a travel laptop, it was a bit underpowered right from the start. So a few years later I upgraded to a waaaaay more expensive MacBook Pro. 15 inch high res screen, SSD hard drive, 8 GB RAM. Super fast and works perfectly as a desktop (with an external monitor) and for traveling. I also run Windows 7. Moore's Law kind holds true for me, but I think the price went up each time too.
Comments
I used to carry around a floppy of Stunts filled with my records and custom maps. I had another with Scorch and LHX for whever I was bored and near a computer.
First Programming? Quickturtle on the Mac Plus...I have no idea any more what this language was based on, but by typing commands into a shell, you could get it to draw things on the screen. I made it draw my name and also made it do a kalidiscope effect that you couldn't stop and that crashed the computer. I learned some Java in college. Learning MEL, the embedded MAYA script for writing plugins.
My household has always been a mac household. Counting all our old computers, the ratio of person to computer is almost 3 to 1.
We have recipies written on the back of old punch cards from when my pop was in college. Ha! How's that for old! I win! (not really...for having grown up with computers I still am pretty much a noob at most stuff. Scott let me watch and help build a computer a few days ago.)
And by the way...Looking for Game Programmers. I model, rig, and texture etc.
The second computer I got was a Windows 3.11 486DX Cyrix, running at 66MHz. It had 4 megs of RAM and I learned how to squeeze every available kilobyte of memory for games. I played X-COM into the ground with that computer.
I haven’t, and may never. I am not a computer geek. I keep considering getting more into computers, but I would just rather invest my time in working on a theatrical production, hanging with friends, etc.
We didn’t get a computer until I was 13 and I basically used it for aim. I didn’t even know how to download music until I was 18.
You know, maybe I should take a few classes and/or read a few books on computers.
I am into sound technology, and thanks to my theatre background and some architecture and design classes, I can design, build and sew quite a bit. However, computers just never were my thing.
I don't remember much at all from my early days of computer use, mostly because I was rather young at the time, but I distinctly remember Stunts. I also know it must've been pretty old when I first played it, since that game is a year younger than I am. It was on a computer that had DOS and Windows 3.1 (which I recall being essentially useless); I don't remember very many other games I had back then, but I'll name some: Jazz Jackrabbit, Microprose's Forumla One Grand Prix. I also remember some flight sims, but not in great detail since it was my father who was interested in them.
My mother tells me I started using that computer when I was around 5, and that I played some game which I remember but can only identify as the "kissing monster" game - it was an isometric dungeon where the floor was a grid, and it was populated with various monsters, one of which was red and had a long sucking mouth thing, hence "kissing monster". Apparently I liked to run around the house pretending to be that monster. The computer was an Olivetti and was likely bought around 1994, but I don't remember the details of the hardware. The CRT monitor had an annoying screen filter I'd hang on it and I wasn't supposed to use the computer without it.
For some time from middle school to early in high school I extensively used an old Toshiba laptop of Dad's, but for a long time I wasn't allowed to do much with it, and so I remember little of it. I was well behind the computing curve up until I was a couple of years into high school; I think it was in 2003, when I would've been in 10th grade, when we finally bought a new desktop. Unfortunately, it was a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 and the graphics card was a GeForce 4 MX440, but I'm lucky it had at least that. I replaced it relatively soon with a GeForce FX 5900, which was a poor choice of card at the time
I don't remember that much of my early experience with programming. I remember some fiddling around in BASIC, but nothing of note. The most significant influence early on was probably learning MATLAB to help Dad with some of his engineering research.
In high school I started programming on my graphics calculator; I remember making several decent programs, one of which would solve for unknown side lengths / angles in a triangle. Another one was a tic tac toe game, where you could have human or AI in any player slot, and the AI would never lose. I also started making a chess game, but before I could complete the movement logic of the game I remember that someone my calculator's memory. That is quite likely the only notable bullying experience I had in high school.
I took IT as a subject at school in my last two years, and in that course we used Delphi (ugh!), but the course material was already very easy for me. I would always be talking during class time, and the teacher hated that, but I got the best marks in the class anyway. For some reason I was less loud when speaking to the teacher (who was generally disliked), and I remember my friends and I would imitate the teacher saying something like "Speak up, Dimitri, I can't hear you; with the air conditioning in this room..."
Edit: Man, I wish I had saved my Putt Putt floppies. Guys, I think I just nostalgia'd.
However, my first computer experience was in the Catholic schools I went to from 1st grade-8th. Both of them used Apple IIes well past anyone should have been using them. I graduated from 8th grade in 1999, and there was no plan to replace those ancient machines, which I believe used 5 1/2 inch floppies. We never learned programming or anything on them. Most of my time with them was spent running a math game that timed you and placed you in a "race" according to how fast you did the questions. My first real experiences with modern computers and the internet came at the local library, where I played what I think were early flash games like Tailgunner and looked up stuff about video games. I got my first computer of my very own right after graduating from 8th grade, going into a public school for the first time since kindergarten. It was a lower end HP Pavillion with a Celeron processor and Windows '98 first edition. The insane thing is that the computer still works, though I install various forms of Linux on it so it can connect to our DSL. It doesn't get much usage, but a couple of summers ago, it was all I had for a brief while when my laptop was sent out for repairs.
My first computer that was actually my own was a Panasonic KX-w1500 wordprocessor.
I loved this thing. Word processor, speadsheet, calendar, contacts, floppy drive, and a daisywheel printer built in. I loved the green monochrome screen and how clicky the keys were... One of my favorite things to do would be to make the spreadsheet do a circular function (it had not protection against it) and let it run and run until it ran out of memory.
Then my parents told me that either I could keep that or they could give me a real computer. I took the real computer, of course, but I wish I had kept that thing. I wish I could find another one, I loved it so much. Nothing would make me happier than to get another one.
Anyway, so then I got an HP Vectra 5, and since it was my own machine, I could do with it as I pleased. The rest is history.
Even then, was fascinated by what they could potentially do.
I remember the first time I heard a computer with sound (Proper speech kinda stuff.) which was pretty amazing.
But then got an 'upgrade' to one of those green-screen monstrosities that Sonic posted. It had a heat-paper dot-matrix printer built into the top. It used two 5" floppy disks, one with the OS and one with the word processor on it. I could only type a few sentences before I had to save to the WP disc because the system would run out of memory.
Then I had one of these I bought with money from my bar-mitzvah:
Things improved from there.
First computer in the house:
Amstrad Word Processor. Also good for Basic, text adventures and chess.
A bit hazy on the order, but:
Amstrad 464. Games and more Basic programming. Save your games to cassette tape!
And then I got the next model up! An Amstrad 6128, with a colour monitor and a disk drive. The games loaded sooooo fast!
That one was mine. My brother got a black and white TV, so didn't need a monitor. He got:
ZX Spectrum +2
Next up, Amiga 500:
This was actually usable as a word processor, for image creation, even making animated movies. Also the sound on this system was way ahead of any other system. Oh yeah... it had a mouse!
And then, Amiga 1200:
This motherfucker had a HARD DRIVE! Enough to store something like 20 floppy disks worth of games for super fast loading. And 2MB of RAM. Awesome! I did my first music sequencing with this one.
To be clear, I never bought any of these new. Always second hand, so I was always a bit behind the curve.
Then I bought a 386 PC, with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. I used it to run Cubasis, a very streamlined midi sequencer which could control my keyboard. Yay.
Next was 486. It was a bit better.
Next was a Pentium computer, which was my first ever brand new computer. Windows 98! It ran the latest games, and had a 20gb Hard Drive. I put in a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live card, with a breakout port in the front slots where a CD drive would go. Now I could do audio recording, and play back multiple tracks in real time without lags and skips. I upgraded a few times, and added a DVD drive.
I then bought an all-new PC system, but only used it for a few months. I bought a Macbook for traveling, intending to use the more powerful PC when at home. It turned out that once I got used to OSX, I could never face going back to Windows XP.
As I bought the Macbook as a travel laptop, it was a bit underpowered right from the start. So a few years later I upgraded to a waaaaay more expensive MacBook Pro.
15 inch high res screen, SSD hard drive, 8 GB RAM. Super fast and works perfectly as a desktop (with an external monitor) and for traveling. I also run Windows 7. Moore's Law kind holds true for me, but I think the price went up each time too.