Wadsworth Overcash Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 First time here. Looks like a happenin' place, at least for somebody like me for whom "happenin'" was back when Happy Days was recent nostalgia. I've read some of the interesting posts about the "early" days of Atari. I'm a veteran of those days--if you have any questions, please feel free to give me a shout. Until then,... Russ Wetmore 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinosaur Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Well Hello! What an honored guest! Do you know how far it takes me back to hear from the author of : Preppie HomePac XE Term et.al. ? I just got an E-mail from Dave Troy ( Toad Computers ) the other day. I can only say,from an OLD Atarian, : Thank you for your tremendous contibution to the Atari (8bit & ST) community! We were just discussing your XE Term. Talk about user friendly!! Please don't be a stranger here! Atari Forever! ( How I love to type that!) Ed Shepherd ( Maryland ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 You did Preppie? HELLO! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinosaur Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 For the information of younger Atarians, Russ Wetmore is probably the *BEST* ACTION programmer on the planet! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Hello Russ, Welcome! It's an immense honor to have you here -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 welcome! played Preppie a lot... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moycon Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 It seems to me I played Preppie back in the day. Somewhat reminicant of Frogger right? And also I seem to recall painting? Or mowing or something? To fill in an area? Wow So Russ programed that game? Cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Breakpack Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Hi,Doctor Nick! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devwebcl Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Hello, It's an honour for me too. I played Preppie!, Preppie II, Sea Dragon for hours. A lot of fun indeed I'd like to hear what are you doing these days or hear (well, read actually) from the old good days --devwebcl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJ Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Best avatar I've seen in a long time, Russ. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Welcome Russ! I remember playing Preppie and Preppie II with friends for hours back in the day... Is there any truth to a Preppie III that was started? -Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Russ, One of the few 8bit programmers whose games were always a notch above and fun to play - Though some of those mine fields in Sea Dragon are wicked Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted February 23, 2005 Share Posted February 23, 2005 Russ, Your games def had a 'style' to them not copied by others - I presume you had your own tools to make your games which were not shared/incorporated by other programmers? I could pick out one of your games almost from the title screen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allas Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Hi Russ!, I think the same thing, you have a unique style. - Any personal tools? - Preppie is an advanced graphic game for Atari 8 bit, even now. What games you did before preppie? - What do you think about short live for Atari 8 bit, what happens? - Why don't exist C64 versions from your games? - Any stuff you can share with us ? Really, one of the best that I remember. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Cool coincidence. I was just playing Preppie and Preppie 2 on the Atari emulator on my XBox (I still have my original Atari gear all hooked up BTW). Share any stories you can recall from back in the day - especially about what it was like developing for the machines. Stephen Anderson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 These might bring back some memories. http://www.atarimagazines.com/hi-res/index...or=Russ+Wetmore I'd love to hear your experiences with writing for Hi-Res. I love playing Preppie on my 5200. It's still a great game. Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deathtrappomegranate Posted February 25, 2005 Share Posted February 25, 2005 Welcome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wadsworth Overcash Posted February 25, 2005 Author Share Posted February 25, 2005 Thanks Ed. Wow, so many responses to my innocent little message! For XE Term, I got a lot of help from Joe Miller, who worked on the Atari OS among other things. He helped with a lot of source code and encouragement. XE Term was probably the last bit of official business I did for Star Systems Software before it folded. Joe went on to head up development at Koala Technologies and then at Sega America. Great guy. I don't do much coding nowadays, but I do promise to try and check in occasionally. --r Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wadsworth Overcash Posted February 25, 2005 Author Share Posted February 25, 2005 For the information of younger Atarians, Russ Wetmore is probably the *BEST* ACTION programmer on the planet! Ah yes. Action! was a great language. It produced nice, tight code (once you spent the time to figure out how the compiler worked) which was important back in the days where 4K was often the entire universe your programs got to play in. We also (easily) wrote run-time libraries so that we could cross-compile stuff for the Apple II and C64. Cool stuff. --r Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wadsworth Overcash Posted February 25, 2005 Author Share Posted February 25, 2005 I'd like to hear what are you doing these days or hear (well, read actually) from the old good days Doing these days? Well, at the time of the dot.com crash, I was a Partner with marchFIRST, one of the big Internet consultancies, based out of London. marchFIRST went from a $1.5 billion per year concern to nothing, seemingly overnight. I moved back to the states in 2001. Aside from a short stint with a startup that didn't pan out, I've been in semi-retirement ever since. A friend and I recently started a custom furniture design business. People's taste in technology may change, but they'll always need something to sit on. --r Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wadsworth Overcash Posted February 25, 2005 Author Share Posted February 25, 2005 Best avatar I've seen in a long time, Russ. Thanks. 10 minutes with Photoshop and ImageReady (and some drawings from my Preppie! notes) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wadsworth Overcash Posted February 25, 2005 Author Share Posted February 25, 2005 Is there any truth to a Preppie III that was started?-Chris Kinda... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wadsworth Overcash Posted February 25, 2005 Author Share Posted February 25, 2005 Your games def had a 'style' to them not copied by others - I presume you had your own tools to make your games which were not shared/incorporated by other programmers? I could pick out one of your games almost from the title screen Yeah, although much of the look was driven by the Atari's capabilities. My games were character graphics driven, which meant that one of my most important tools was a font editor. And color choices were driven by display list changes to the color palette, the music by POKEY, etc., etc. I was independent when I wrote my three Atari games, so there were no other programmers to share with. --r Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wadsworth Overcash Posted February 25, 2005 Author Share Posted February 25, 2005 I think the same thing, you have a unique style. - Any personal tools? - Preppie is an advanced graphic game for Atari 8 bit, even now. What games you did before preppie? - What do you think about short live for Atari 8 bit, what happens? - Why don't exist C64 versions from your games? - Any stuff you can share with us ? Really, one of the best that I remember. Well gee, thanks! My three games were written in assembler, but I tricked out AMAC with so many compile-time macros that the code had a higher-level language feel to it. Before the Atari, most of my programming had been on the Z-80. My TRS-80 and Sinclair stuff was not the stuff of legend by any stretch. I fell into developing on the Atari because it was, well, cool. About Atari the company, all I can say is that it got what it deserved, IMHO. It misread the market for its products across several product lines and was too slow to react to market pressures. Again, IMHO. Preppie! was rewritten for the C64 by some developers that hung me out to dry and never delivered the final product. To be fair, the C64 graphics architecture made a straight port nearly impossible. Stuff I can share? Well, not many people know this: as I said, I learned assembler on the Z-80. Lots of registers, felt comfortable. When I switched to the 650x, I hit a mental block with its three registers. I felt like I was constantly juggling hundreds of balls and keeping them all in the air (or at least, three registers.) When it finally dawned on me that zero page was like 128 extra registers (on the Atari anyway) it all suddenly made sense. Still, I dedicated several zero page locations to variables called "BC", "DE", "HL", "IX", and "IY" which helped a lot with my brain traumas. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wadsworth Overcash Posted February 25, 2005 Author Share Posted February 25, 2005 I'd love to hear your experiences with writing for Hi-Res. Hi-Res was a weird situation. Not the folks that contributed to it, but the lead conspirator Rich "Richie Rich" Richmond. I noticed that Steve Harding had some comments about Hi-Res here. The magazine only lasted a few months. As usual, I was late for every deadline. Story of my life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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