Interview - Old friends: A Story of Glory Mednonogova on its activities as a programmer

<b>Interview</b> - Old friends: A Story of Glory Mednonogova on its activities as a programmer

Story

       GLORY MEDNONOGOVA,

             Author

     "UFO. The enemy is unknown."

      on their activities

        as a programmer.
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   His first "Spectrum-48" I
collected in 90-year, while
fashion they had just begun.
However, he was unlucky, and he was burned in a week and has 
been a long time forgotten. And if my uncle

restored to him after six months, I
I do not think you would know who
such glory Mednonogov.

   I first met
computer back in ninth grade.
It was the "Spark-1256" with 4
kilobytes of RAM, no graphics,
with built-in interpreter
Fortran. Then I tried
write her first little toys. As it is not funny, was a pioneer 
of "Battleship" with a size Field 4 * 4. Then there were other

PC: M-6000, SM-4,
CM-1420, DCK, Agate, etc. In addition to
what I learned to program and mastering the most different 
peripherals (printers, digitizer, graphic terminals), I 
continued to write books: "Point", "Labyrinth", "Star Wars", 
"Business" - The last thing - something like "Monopoly", with 
the possibility of playing with many terminals. Their names

do not tell anyone but
close friends, and the level of implementation to date, no
stand up to scrutiny, and
even ten-year children will be able to
repeat.

   In the second year at college,
After the army, I became acquainted with the IBM PC, or rather, 
with EC-1840. Not to say that I was

delighted by this machine. Despite the large amount of memory 
and opportunity to work with graphics,

"The EESC had" no hard drives
often flew out and broke, and
importantly - they were few. Not dumayu that you gave pleasure 
to have 3 - 4 hours of computer time per week. Perhaps the main 
reason that I switched to "Spectrum", then was just that.


   So, having the works "Spectrum", I, like many
of you for a long time and played a lot.
"Pacman", "River Raid", "Savage"
- I went through it all. Summer
91-second friends brought "Laser Basic", which struck my fancy 
- on other machines I do not seen anything like it.


   "Laser Basic" is not suitable for
a serious and maze of arcades, but it is an ideal
means for creating logical
games. I managed to sort out
him for a week. After another half
months there was a program "fool".

   Do not think that I sverhprogrammist, just I had a pretty 
great experience, and most importantly, I have twice tried to 
implement this game (on the CM-4-1840)

why drafts of the text, though not in Basic, I have had. 
Interestingly enough the game was held Debugging: I typed a few 
lines, deducing maps computer and watched as he

acts in a particular case.
If I do that - not like something,
I immediately changed the procedure for computer strategy 
games. Writing "Fool," I showed it to friends

and then long forgotten about it -
I myself did not like the game,
because it seemed too slow and could think of only one
- Two moves ahead, besides,
I had the "Gens-4." On the market
"Fool" was released in March 1992 along with the game Tankodrom.

   During those six months that have passed
between their writing, I'm pretty
tolerably learned assembler (I
dealt with assemblers and KR580
KR1801), so in terms of
programmer, "Tankodrom, by -
I think it done well, but not
too easy to manage.
The rights to this game got a firm "Peter" (now the publisher)
of 1.000 rubles, with the proviso that "Tankodrome will
Included in their advertising, and electronic clock at the end 
of the game will be removed. Ad I put in and the clock and not 
removed. 

   Around the same time, we
classmates, Viktor Postnikov, decided to try his hand at
As software vendors
software for the Spectrum. As
Just at this time a boom in
cassettes. Cause we were quite successful, and we even 
organized a sort of studio recording, entitled "Compact - 
Studio ". In programming I looked more like an interesting

hobby, but the years spent
on the market, helped to understand what
to most buyers.
Therefore, introduced in February
1993 "Pinocchio" has caused more interest than the previous 
game. (By the way, officially "Pinocchio" is a term paper on 
the subject "Computer graphics", I got him "Excellent"). A 
month earlier to the appearance of "Pinocchio" studio

"KCS has released the first two cassettes russified games.
Around this time, my younger
brother, Alexei, too, took up Russification. Within a very 
short period of time He has translated more than forty 
programs. And it began ... Everyone wanted only play games on 
the Russian language. Besides, "Pinocchio"

added fuel to the fire. Boom in the Russified game lasted
almost two years, and now even
its echoes are heard.

   More time was taken
Institute and the "Compact - Studio".
Writing the same games are not represented
then the commercial value of -
the difficulty of protection (disc machine only then - only
started to appear), and time
This occupation requires a lot - "Pinocchio" and "Tankodrom" 
written three months each. True,

This does not mean that I gave up
programming on the Spectrum
(Although I already had IBM).

   The theme of my thesis
called the "Graphical Editor
for "ZX-Spectrum", which at the time of protection of the 
diploma was ready half. But - "out of sight,

from the heart - out of here! "- I finished
Institute and the editor is no longer
recalled (a pity - it would be
the best vector graphics editor of what you've seen). Then I
took up a different toy (even
for "Color Lines"), but I did not want to waste time on cheap
artefacts, especially at this time
there was a very good program Sergei Gorshkov "Dizzy-X".

   Finally, the summer of 1994 I
got a game for IBM "UFO. Enemy unknown". It was then that
need (not only me but you).
By this time I thought
way to protect (as it later turned out pretty good).
True, the plot I decided to just simplify, to make the game more
dynamism, because most users will then be
would still not ready to take a serious tactical game, and I
wanted to make a game for everyone.


   "UFO. The enemy is unknown," was written intermittently 
between September and February - more than six months.

The greatest difficulty is
assembly process is too
large object code. First I had to write low-level routines, 
until enough memory GENSa, then assemble the piece, and in next 
block give links to routines from it. Make

change was difficult,
as the chain would need to change and all pereassemblirovat
subsequent blocks. For the same
because I could not really
mask protection (those who
tried to break the "UFO", drew
note that the security procedures
as if grouped in two places at the program). Text, tables,
part of the graphics I am ready to help IBM.Tam I realized the 
layout of the program. What happened from all this, you've 
already seen. 

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