Yup, you heard me....it was my idea and my idea alone. HOWEVER, I wasn''t the first! My last post reminded me of when I was about 17-18 years old. (1990) I was up late one night programming on a game and I had the great idea of placing bitmap "icons" all over the screen. I was having a hard time getting 2,3,5 or even 20 screens in my killer Amiga game. Then I said, "What a minute...why can''t I just stack them?" First, I tried tiles (20x15 pixels). I thought, "WOW! I can build a whole screen using only about 30k for my art and only 6 bytes per tile!!!" I used 6 bytes per tile because I tried using 2 bytes for the X position, 2 bytes for the Y position, and 2 bytes for the number of the tile. Then, I got a little smarter. I said, "hmm, I have to use 2 bytes for the X because X can be greater than pixel 255. But, I can use 1 byte for the Y because the screen is only 200 pixels tall. And, I can use 1 byte for the tile number because I have fewer than 256 tiles." It was great, I reduced the map size to only 4 bytes per tile instead of 6. Then, I had a break-through. Why not just blast tiles in a row every 16 pixels (figured out 16 was better than 20) and just use an array???? I had done it!! ONLY 1 byte per tile! I could build HUNDREDS of screens in just a few byte. Now, before I get flammed, keep in mind that I had NO internet, NO BBS''s, NO books, no programming friends, etc. I totaly came up with the idea in my head. I didn''t realize that millions of other people already did it. But, I have to admit it was one of my greatest programming achievements. May not sound like much, but think about it...when was the last time you were programming and had one of those, "HOLY SHIT!" moments? I mean the kind that changed your life and renewed your love of programming? Well, felt kinda nice to tell my story of how I invented the tile-based system of making games. Ok, now bring on the flames. hehehehe -Coleco Rock the cradle of love! You stupid WANKER!

I''m sure you already knew that game console systems such as the Nintento Entertainment system was based completely on Tiles, and preceded you by almost 7-9 years.

Jim

Please, please, please, please, please, don''t patent the idea will you? ;-)

well, i think its pretty cool. i''ve thought up things like that (not programming related), only to find out it was thought up 50 years ago. its nice to be able to have your achievementts, even if done before, recognized.

If all these errors are so fatal, why am I still alive?

Well congratulations, when creating my Tile based game I thought up z-buffering, but of course, that was already invented too. Everybody has great Ideas. The other thing I invented on my own was linked lists for maps in RPG''s. That also has been thought of before me.

Knowing that you can come up with the same ideas as many super-game-programmers makes you a little happier thought... I know it made me a lot happier .


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
and our eGroup:
http://www.egroups.com/group/dwarfsoft

Hey, I came up with the tilebased idea completely on my own too! I wanted to make some sort of pacman game (in Textmode, for Turbo Pascal...ah, those were the days!), and I thought about how a normal textscreen was arranged (80x25 "Tiles" for characters in a memory buffer), and somehow it was totally natural to use a 2-dimensional array for my map and then "translate" each "cell" in my array to the correspnding position on the textscreen. Ah, that reminds me to make a primitive textmode game again when I find the time...

Who says that text based games are primitive? Some of them are far more advanced than games today. I know that they may not be up to date with graphics (what graphics? ) but they had some of the greatest implementations that could make new games better.

This is becoming yet another ranT on NPC AI (I am glad that I can now tell when I start to rant ) so I'll just point you to the appropriate thread .


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
and our eGroup:
http://www.egroups.com/group/dwarfsoft

Edited by - dwarfsoft on June 30, 2000 5:33:47 AM

Yup, to go with the origial post idea, I thought up the whole idea of FPS long before they existed and a home computer just wan''t around - yup in the early 70''s I was playing soldiers one day and thought - this is a great game

-----------------------------------------------
All messages are of my own personal opinion and
not meant to offend. But if they do - tough :)

Neuro.

Unfortunately, I was not around in the ''70''s to be able to have such an option, but I do remember playing Space Invaders on my Old XT in the Late ''80''s

I came up with the idea of Text Adventure too.. But then I discovered it''s creation as a game on my old XT. I then invented storing map links as linked lists (n,e,s,w,up,down I mean), but that was too hard to implement in Q-BASIC so I moved to Turbo Pascal and had some fun writing some basic LORD IGM''s for BBS''s and started writing my own BBS MUD''s. I loved LORD and LORD II, has anyone else ever played them?

Anywho... Enough reminising(sp?)... The Internet came along and destroyed all the BBS''s in my area and my modem became a waste (ISP''s cost too much ... In respect to BBS''s that is).


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
and our eGroup:
http://www.egroups.com/group/dwarfsoft

I came up with the idea of the Laplace Determinism myself... What a luck, someone thought of it about 100 years ago. So at least I got not bashed because the stuff was wrong ;-))

Tim

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