Automata UK 1985

Language:

English

Authors:

John Hughes

Systems:

BASIC

Platforms:

Spectrum

Genres:

Science fiction

Entered by:

Strident

Added:

20-10-2010

Edited:

02-07-2022

Synopsis

Notes

Writing about the game on Spectrum Computing, the author John Hughes notes:

I started writing Xtroth when I was around 14 years old as a way to learn programming. I would have been maybe 15 years old when I sold the game to Automata. At the time, I didn't know anyone in to programming, computing wasn't taught at school and it was very difficult to find any learning resources at all so I was basically self-taught with the aid of whatever ZX Spectrum magazines where available at the time. I obviously knew very little about game design going into this.

The game was written in BASIC. The code is full of weird optimization hacks to squeeze as much gameplay into that 48K RAM as possible.

Star Wars would have been an influence for the game. The biggest influence was likely to be the movie Alien and there was another cheesy horror movie about extraterrestrials at the time called Xtro that clearly influenced the game's title. Another influence was likely the Douglas-Adams-esque Sci-Fi novel "Who Goes here" by Bob Shaw.

I never wrote another game but I did build on the experience to study computing at university before going on to get a PhD in Artificial Intelligence. I then switched to a career in Visual Effects working on movies such as Spider-Man 3, I am Legend, Frozen and Kung Fu Panda 2.

Resources (Upload file)

Solution

by boldir

Map

by Exemptus

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