Philip Price

The original delete requester put as the search link one that requires my name and the word "programmer" and not wikipedia to show that there are no entries in internet. Now I honestly would say associating the word "programmer" would exclude many hits that are associated with me, giving a slightly wrong impression. Even when I do a personal egotistical self search I never use that word. But I would agree the atari 8 bit world of people would not be a big giant hit even with a better selection of search words looking for someone well known in it. I wonder how many of those who want deletion were in the industry at the time. I know fifteen years later I was surprised to be one of the forty guests at the party celebrating 20th apple ii game programmers reunion, Steve Wozniak was one of the other guests. Being more focused on the Atari 8 bits than the Apple II, it was still an honor to attend and be one of the forty invited guests. I guess at that point I was still known . http://www.dadgum.com/giantlist/archive/reunion.html

I can verify (anything that is correct) if that is what people need. But if I edit the page that itself may make them think the page on me, ar, tail of beta lyrae are pages of only self interest. I think people will have to chime in at wikipedia comment site on whether philip price the programmer should be deleted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Philip_Price_(programmer) I do think that the people of the later gaming areas as others said here are ignorant of much that happened early on. One person comment at the delete yay or nay site said I was just a programmer working on a game that might be notable. I think they may think it was like many games later with big budgets. They may not realize I was the game designer and not just one programmer who worked on a mega million game budget game like they are today. Hey at one point I was living in a shack.lol. The industry was nascent and very different back then. They may just be ignorant. But deletion of the page just causes loss of history. Another said "Let's let the secondary sources decide how independently notable Price is from the game itself. ". The fallacy in that logic is like saying lets take what the person is notable for and see how independently notable they are without it. That would of course eliminate everyone that is notable. But the game design, the crypto, the anti tamper techniques, the novel musical language allowing composer to define probable musical paths, the 3d texture mapping techniques, moral choice and non-forced story was all me. Divorcing AR (Especially the City) from me destroy the human history of the innovations. Pointing any link to me to just the page on ar the city does not let people know the works related to the one game designer, nor the human element involved. Beta Lyrae had a game whose game elements changed after you owned and played it for a while, something back then was a first in a game too. I think that diminishes Wikipedia. It definitely would diminish the history of gaming, and particularly the Atari 8 bit history.But that is my own biased opinion. The remark one person mentioned a link to what sources are acceptable as a source of information, "credible video game sources", that listhas very few pre-1985 'credible' sources. No antic or A.N.A.L.O.G., nothing atari related, guess it doesn't exist, but they do have a sinclar magazine. But as the earlier part of the page it says that common sense should be used. There have been a few interviews of me. Haug's book on the interview of 30 programmers who helped start the video industry with a forward by John Romaro is one of them. I think every one of those thirty should at least have a wiki page about them so that video game history (History is both the games and the principal people behind them) does not disappear. Magazine sources can also be wrong, There was an article in one magazine where they described that I learned programming while at sea in the navy. The journalist who interviewed me had it wrong, the navy kept me away from the sea, and had said they would never let me work on computers, that is why I became a nuclear reactor operator. I had told the journalist when he interviewed me back then, after the article came out, I called him up thinking he made an unintentional mistake,. But his reply was,"But doesn't it sound good that way?". I then realized that what you read about people in a magazine is not always true. But Wikipedia is whatever the people who decide to take time to delete or protect make of it. No matter what changes there, really the greatest value thing would not be impacted by whether that page is there or deleted. The greatest value thing, as I have said before, of the work I did back at the beginning of the gaming industry is the joy it had brought to the people who experienced it [especially back then]. Phil

Well I was at Camp Liberty(North Victory) in May and June 2005. The army and the ex special forces people I dealt with were great.I had voluntarily gone out to Iraq with the thought that if I went out there and it saved one soldier's life it was worth the risk (and I did not have a wife or kids). Well one time I had been working away alone in a small spot on a hill and was real tired. I remembered what my niece had said to me earlier that year... Uncle Phil if you are ever really tired, Red Bull works great (she had just finished undergrad...I get a feeling she might have drank a few before some finals). I thought Red Bull sure would be nice right now, thinking of my nieces suggestion. Then a sizzling sound went over my head and I heard a whoooomp (not a thump, thumps from my experience were ones that landed a bit farther away or were outbound). Then a shock wave hit me. A mortar round had landed a short distance away [but I was out of shrapnel or eardrum bleeding range ] . I was wide awake, calm and not tired for hours. I thought, well that is better than Red Bull. I went out of my spot to see if anyone needed help, the injured were already being serviced. Another round went over my head, someone later said to me that one landed near block 11, near were my hooch was. I have a dark sense of humor under situations like that, I turned to them and said:"See nothing to worry about, they missed me here, and they missed me there, they can't shoot straight" (Full well knowing I was not the target and they had probably had used GPS to hit at least one of the spots they were attending). Phil

Haha, My day job is Vulnerability Research and Cyber Security (and this is the first post I have publically stated it, but hey OPM gave out everyone's personal data to the Chinese by having very poor Information Assurance [if they or companies like Sony had or listen to people like me they might have defended themselves], and my master's in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance, so it is not too hard for some to figure out]. I know he just edited out the entry on me and added html for disambiguation. It would seem to have been friendlier to have then at least recreated the page on me[versus just overwriting it with the disambiguation two weeks ago and by doing so removing me] and added a link to it in the disambiguation. Yes I do think the editor (and anyone can edit a page) did not consider a developer/designer of old things from the atari days something that should be primary, he may be a fan of later generation machines, a fan of one of the other people named philip price, or likes a disambiguation page as the primary page. I just think we lose a bit of history and as you say that leads people to think that the world started later. I am glad Alternate Reality is still there [see whoever added disambiguation page there years ago did not stomp on the Alternate Reality series]. Phil

Lol, Hopefully I have not offended anyone. I would love to do another side scroller again. I have a passion for games. But I have a hard time doing things part-time, and my day job if I stay with it comes with a pension [which is unheard of today] Phil

I think someone is not a fan of atari programmers. Wikipedia entry on me was replaced by someone with the disambiguation page but changed it to includes people named philip price but deleted the atari programmer from it too.

Cool, glad to see you here.. Most (actually everyone I ran into so far) on this forum seem to be very nice people. Phil

Hmm, Not sure if that interpretation is 100% correct (but it is about 30 years since I looked at object or source of my game). I know one of the things I was strongly trying to do in AR was to have freedom of choice, free will. At the time I saw I could have ways for people to go evil (i.e. 'sin'), that was done by acts such as attacking something good without provocation (self defense was not evil). Trick and charming was evil only because it was done in order to be able to put a knife in the gut of the person deceived or charmed, by getting them to trust you and then betraying that trust. So it was evil. But my biggest problems was how can someone be 'good'. Of course there are 'good'/ unselfish deeds (not enough of them possible in the city, I should have had more). But if a deed is done only because it will benefit oneself by making one look good. That is really evil. But it is hard to measure quantitatively the intent of the gamer. Same with forgiveness. I really wanted a way for characters to be forgiven (in dungeon there was a way, but I actually did not ask for that in, but it is probably better than no way but time as I had in the City). But forgiveness of past evil really is based on the heart and not the number of good works, or one's words, or even actions(when done without the right motive). So I had not by the time I wrote the city a way to see into the heart, and therefore did not put in a good balance to all the things that would cause one to be evil. Phil (Yes, If I wrote a game today that needed to understand player('character') motive, I would a lot of complexity unseen by the player to look into the heart, plus there is always the 'fool me once' method of reaction) I always wanted free will and not force people to be good (or evil), but perceive evil was always harder than perceive good (since good acts can just be a evil deception to gain trust for the moment)

I had fun too, though I only played a couple hours (because I was running it on an emulator with no substantial stick) myself. Even in my best days I never beat level 4. I rarely beat level 3. In a single run I am not sure even back then I ever made it from one all the way into three. So rdrunner, you are better than I was when I was at my best. I think in my 'best' days I might have provided competition for therealbountybob, but he is awesome now, and I am back at the beginning which I am ok with[because it was fun in any case for me]. As long as people had any of the following: a) Fun b) Stress, then stress release[usually when stopping playing the game] c) a slight unexplained addiction to it. Then it was a success for me. Of course fun is paramount. The game is something I can play again and again over the years (and usually it has been years between plays for me since I don't have my old 800s setup atm) and have fun since it is not a game where you just remember a map, but must remember how to act and react quickly. My apologies for not playing much but my schedule is usually very swamped, Phil

Nope not licensed. Of course a company in Britain was contracted by Datasoft to convert the original games to Sinclair in the 80s. Datasoft had: No rights to publish a version of anything past City and Dungeon. Conversion work had to be offered to us(effectively me) first for any City or Dungeon variant. They owed royalties in any case. (Though the math was setup so we wouldn't see any of it) They had zero rights after ten years.(which means 1995 & 1997 respectfully). All rights return to the creators (Myself and Gary). They went bankrupt in any case. Datasoft when it existed, could not give right to a converter beyond the rights they had. Therefore Elite has no rights to do what they are doing. So Elite Systems(Steve Wilcox) has no rights to AR, but is publishing anyways.(As I said before). I informed them they had no rights, but they continued. It is sad, but true. If I had time and money I could better enforce my rights and stop them. Don't have either at this time. So the answer is no nothing has changed in the past month. But it looks better for them to say they have rights they don't have. Phil (So don't buy the IOS version [which is probably a Sinclair emulation run in anycase and no where as god as an Atari version)[They probably made some money, and we can hope in general they don't do it to many other developer's games)

Once you make it to 6 you have pretty much made it through the level. The energy caverns are the heart of the alien installations, not well defended, decent points(But don't risk dying in 6.. 7 has a lot of points), easy to survive...then 7 is the aliens evacuating (Since you did find the energy caverns and your command can bombard those to dust once located, they are leaving asap). The alien ships are worth a lot of points, because that is the aliens themselves. Less aliens survive less aliens to take over another locale. Definitely shoot as many of those ships. 8 is just transitioning to another (harder) alien presence. Nothing in 8 is worth much [blowing up dirt is usually not worth anything to command, but once in a while there are some minerals with a little, but generally avoid unless it is a hazard. 5.8 is so close to 6.(and 6 is a gentle walk to 7). In a sense, 6 and 7 are almost boring, the aliens have lost and have little defenses, but for the strategic goals of command these areas are worth the most. Phil

It should be patchable. I don't know if I did more than check a single byte on a single sector. Hopefully I did not do anything more sophisticated such as simple encryption I used in AR on writes. Never experienced washouts. I wonder if it is PAL vs. NTSC issue (Though it seems like that should not be an issue). I know I only thought of NTSC and was ignorant of the PAL versions of the hardware (As I said before I had to reverse engineer what I had, and just never thought about overseas market[foolish of me, but I was young]). I know sometimes while developing I played with how many scan lines could really show up. I know why bars appear when people video a TV (has to do with the interplay of the sample rate of the recorder and the refresh rate of the TV, that can created shaded bars on the screen)) Concerning Variants: Initial Variant(i.e. Variant #1): NO Volcanos at any level, No backbiter missiles (I think on any level, but for sure on lower levels), No Gravity Balls. Variant #2: Volcanoes added, mostly harmless, but makes people think that they must of just never noticed the harmless volcanoes Variant #3: Backbiter missiles added. Not harmless Variant #4: Gravity Balls added: Not harmless. Also there may be a different from the made up at Gary's house version from Paradise Programming, and the Datamost version. Not sure about the cassette version, other than I wrote the whole game until the last bit only using a cassette drive. Gary wrote the intro (I am glad he did and it is full his creation other than I did talk with him about my rational of Beta Lyrae). So a double The The was probable a typo on his part[and obviously I didn't catch it either]. (Though there is an interesting brain teaser that uses the brain's self editing to hide the fact of two thes in the brain teaser...but that is unrelated). Phil

I can say that Datamost is the same one as the gaming one.

(Note from Phil, I added numbers into Jim quotes to make my responses easier to follow, I hope Jim that is okay) Jim, 1. Most of my current work is non-programming (Though I really, really love programming) Modern languages (Other than assembly) require a lot less labels, and I rarely need them. naming classes, functions, and variables I tend to try to be descriptive of the purpose and scope. So in modern programs I don't use the HBO technique. 2. I decompose the problem down. I try to look at minimizing entanglement, and minimize scope. I try to think more in a more meta way than brute force. I have used almost every technique out over the ages which best fit the customers requirements, constraints, and problems. I naturally can find really nice solutions to most problems. If it is real hard, often I can literally sleep on it and the solution pops in my head in the morning...which is strange[but I don't depend on it, but I will sleep on a hard problem]. When I was working in a the finance field, the company had a problem with infrequent loss of messages (not good for a trading platform), I looked at the code, saw the logic flaw (They did not properly handle all cases of a logical message straddling 2 to n messages), I rewrote the code (they originally had separate cases for each variation of the problem[but missed some variation) to a universal recursive solution that was only a page of code, worked for all conceivable cases and very very fast. Simple, deep in thought, fast. The head of development and the principal developer at the company called my in the next afternoon and told me they spent all morning looking at my solution for any bugs, found none and thought it was awesome. (I did think they spent more time analyzing it than it took me to conceive the solution and implement). To this day I have never found a unsolvable programming problem (But I know they exist, I know there are unsolved mathematical problems, etc.). I just never found something someone needed a computer to do, that with enough time or resources could not be done. Now for games, there are still things left undone (Particularly in areas that social media only touched the surface on[and in that I may be saying too much). Less than in the 80s or 90s, but still a few areas not yet fully explored. 3. When I was in the ANSI C++ standards committee as a principal voting member the Swiss I think were keen on getting garbage collection into the language. It was voted down, not because the Swiss idea of garbage collection was a bad idea. But rather by not specifying a specific technique it allowed the freedom of ideas for best memory allocation / garbage collection to exist in the language as choices. It kept the language lightweight and more in the programmer control, but required more programming skill to avoid memory leaks (or they just had to adopt a third party memory manager). That was the rational the majority had from my memory of twenty or so years ago. 4. Actually I used a technique to incorporate complex types at compile time when I architected the B-2 MCR software(Which had to remain backward compatible to the older software in certain areas that did make this a little uglier than I liked). One area I did specialize in C++ committee is Intertranslarion Unit Static Initialization. Only had three weekend to work on the problem, found what seemed as a solution, proposed it and our subcommittee looked at it and planned to propose it at the next X3J16 meeting. But between the meeting I proposed it, and the next, I spend another weekend and found an obscure corner case that my solution would not resolve. It took most of the next meeting for me to convince my fellow members that my earlier idea is flawed and we should not propose it. (So there is something I did not fix). Oh Bjarne Stroustrup is a real nice guy who would listen and interact with all committee members, I respected that a lot. Also remember his favorite well known saying he would get put up on a slide in the meetings. ("The enemy of the good is the perfect"). 5. No job is perfect, there are many good things and bad things as with all work. My ideal work? Having a nice home in the city my fiancée likes here in Florida fully paid, have the resources to work fulltime on a game for a few years, but with a small team with a low burn rate and the right resources to write some mind blowing games. Not have to worry while doing it about putting food on the table or affording simple pleasures. I would love doing things that bring a lot of happiness and thought into people's lives. But that is not life at this time.

14 or 15 (1970s) when I wrote my first multiplayer game on an IBM 370 16 or 17 (!970s) when I wrote a multiplayer nuclear wargame on a Multics mainframe while attending Virginia Tech 17-20 Operated Nuclear Reactors in the USN 21-22 Wrote Tail of Beta Lyrae on an Atari 400 with cassata drive in a shack in Hawaii(with moldy bed on floor) with no running water and a jeep to power the 400 22-23 Wrote Alternate Reality (I think I was post shack by the start of it, since I met Gary at the end of my writing Beta Lyrae) 24-34 Designed(and later maintained'/updated) a distributed Architecture/update using a new language called C++ used to test the B-2 Stealth Bomber. 35 Did a little work for Creative Labs 36 Looked at reentering Game Industry with Monolith CEO contacted me (i.e. what was to be ARO) 37+ Various(As in financial industry[still find High Speed Trading and Quantitative Industry interesting, but I was more in core quote side of things), telephony, and defense)