GRAC authors - the interview

When did your interest in software creation start?

Edmund:

I started programming the first time I had access to a computer. Computers came with BASIC built-in then. So it seemed a natural thing to do. I started with simple programs, and tried to write some text adventures, because graphics in BASIC was very slow.

Ant:

I first encountered computers at my neighbour's house. He had a 48K Spectrum, and we spent hours playing Atic Atak on it. Well, hours loading Atic Atak. He had a Kempston joystick interface, and if it moved even slightly the computer would crash and we'd have to load the game all over again. I remember desperately wanting to get a computer of my own, and being surprised to learn that my dad already owned a Dragon 32. I was even more surprised to discover that it was possible to write my own games for the computer just by tapping in some cryptic commands at the BASIC prompt. At that point, I was hooked. Making things move around the screen was just a question of using a few FOR...NEXT loops and some PRINT statements, and that was the motivating factor - I could control the TV! The one-way output box suddenly became interactive.

From the Dragon, I moved to a Spectrum 48K+, and from there to the Amiga. It was the Amiga that really let me develop as a programmer. For the time, it was outstandingly powerful, and nothing was beyond its capabilities. I learnt to write music with OctaMED, program with AMOS and Blitz BASIC, and draw with DPaint.

John:

The first computer in our family was an Amiga 500, back in 1990, surely one of the finest home computers ever built. Before the days of the computer, my brother Edmund and I - he is 7 years my senior - used to entertain ourselves with more primitive tools. We made comics, role-playing games, board games, even a cardboard version of Transformers - anything at all that was creative and fun. Edmund once built a fully-functioning cockpit we called "Interceptor" in my bedroom out of nothing but carboard, with switches, HUD display, 3D viewscreen and a sophisticated AI system (someone stood outside pulling levers and suchlike).

So it was a natural progression to using computers. I was never much of a programmer; I didn't have the mathematical inclination. I created some very simple RPG games in Amos, and used to make animations in Dpaint, but never touched the musical stuff. In short, I was more interested in the imaginative side than actually doing the really hard work!

What was your background at the time of writing the games?

Edmund:

I continued programming in BASIC on the Amiga, and found AMOS, which could handle graphics quite well. After a while I wanted to try a large project, which turned out to be Starbase 13. I enjoyed combining stories with graphics, and followed that with another game, The Lost Prince. GRAC was, to begin with, an attempt to streamline the next game I wrote, by improving the game editor to the point where the game code could be completely generic. But the games were never economically viable, just written for fun, and there was a niche in the market for an adventure game creator. I therefore polished it for release, and found F1 Licenceware, who were very good at publicising the software. A few good reviews helped to boost the sales.

I don't think more than a handful of GRAC games were ever completed, though I answered hundreds of letters from game-makers. I think the amount of work involved, and the complexity of the process, resulted in most attempts being abandoned. Perhaps it got some people started though, who moved on to other systems.

Ant:

When we began writing The Experiment, we were all 15, at school, in the first year of our GCSEs. We were all videogame players, and fans of graphic adventures. John was a talented artist and could translate those abilities to the Amiga; I had some programming knowledge and was trying to improve my lacklustre musical skills; and Mark, the third member of DAS Software, had a gift for developing storylines. As we had immediate access to the author of GRAC, the only graphic adventure creation system available at the time, writing a graphic adventure seemed to be an obvious project for us.

It was the first major game any of us had attempted. John and I had written smaller games before, but nothing on the scale of a graphic adventure. Though we were using GRAC as the game's engine, it was still a massive undertaking. We'd never tried collaborating on a project before, either.

In all, from its inception to its release via F1 Licenceware, The Experiment took about 18 months to write. We finished it just as we were taking our GCSE exams. In fact, in one of the documents that shipped with the game, John says he should really be revising, not working on The Experiment, as he had a maths exam in the morning.

Entity was more troubled. We began writing it when we started our A-Levels, and it should have been easier to do than the first game. We all knew what we were doing and it was a smaller project. However, our school work got in the way, and we didn't finish it until we'd all gone our separate ways to University. During this time the Amiga finally kicked the bucket. In the end, as the only member of DAS Software with an interest in Amiga games, I put the finishing touches to Entity and uploaded it to the internet.

John:

That's pretty much the story. The Experiment originally started out as just that: an experiment in using Amos to construct an animated narrative, using Dpaint animations with music, sound effects, fading and so on. It was basically an animated version of The Experiment's intro as we know it (Mark refers to it in one of the documents). Not knowing what else to call the file, I saved it as "Xperiment". The idea progressed towards using it as an introduction to a GRAC game, and then of course we had to built the story around the title... hence the eponymous Stingon genetic experiment.

Entity would never have seen the light of day were it not for Ant. I took an Amiga 1200 to university, but abandoned it in the first year - and that was the death knell for my creative computer pursuits. The game itself was virtually complete, but for tidying up, debugging and adding music and an intro and outro. All that came courtesy of Ant.

What did you enjoy most about writing the games?

Edmund:

What I enjoyed most was using my imagination. But there were other rewards in solving programming problems, drawing the backgrounds, and making the music.

Ant: