DIV ARENA FORUMS

How DIV affected us

Ferret - 29-2-2016 at 12:00 PM

Well this is all kinds of weird and bizarre. :) Feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone.

Nice to see a bunch of old names here!

I dunno about you guys but DIV had a huge influence on a huge amount of my work.

I've especially been chasing co-routine based entities as a dream ever since.

I wrote a couple of Python libraries for doing them eventually culminating in this one: https://github.com/Fiona/Myrmidon

And here's a recording of a short talk I did at PyCon UK last year where I give DIV a lot of love (my bit is the second half of it, my current boss is the first) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqB3L836wHo

MikeDX - 29-2-2016 at 12:09 PM

Interesting choice using python - I never really got my head around it - its second only to perl to giving me a headache whilst trying to decipher it. Guess I've been spoiled with the div language although I'm sure once you've invested the (many) hours into python it can be readable. Bit like learning to speak french I suppose :)


Very cool to see so many people doing well at programming from their humble beginnings on here. Very cool indeed.

Htbaa - 29-2-2016 at 01:02 PM

DIV is what got me into programming so I suppose I owe it a lot! Never really understood much about what I was doing but it was such a fun way to learn. I ended up being a web developer and always did some sort of game related side projects. First Fenix, then C++ with SDL and later added OpenGL to the mix. After that I went on to use BlitzMax which I've enjoyed a lot and the last thing I used was Monkey X. Always did 2D, never 3D (can't get my head around that stuff). Did a bit of XNA as well.

I haven't done any gamedev for over 2 years now. Seeing DIV back in action makes it itch to do so again though. Who knows, if I feel properly motivated, have plenty of energy and can find some time on the side I guess I will! Actually, I'd really like to do some sort of small game, but don't know yet what. Back in the days I enjoyed Galactic Assault a lot and have always tried to create something like it. Last attempt was a research project I did in Monkey X which was completely AI driven using Fuzzy Logic, which is very interesting I must say!

Aside from the aspiring game dev endeavors in my professional life (lol) I work mostly with Perl, some PHP for legacy stuff, Javascript or if possible CoffeeScript together with Backbone.js. I also toy around with Golang from time to time which I think is an awesome and powerful language and tried many other languages such as C#, Java, Haskell and Python (for a Raspberry Pi project). Web dev has gotten me bored though and I try to stay away from frontend development (HTML/CSS) as much as possible.

iWizard - 29-2-2016 at 01:05 PM

Nice going and to me as well DIV was is unique and awesome and beautiful, as was is this community. I've been wondering a few times how many of us have ended up in the games industry. Too few that I know of.

Me? It may have been ages but I have no idea what's happened inbetween. Still trying to finish a game. :crazy:

MikeDX - 29-2-2016 at 01:12 PM

Quote: Originally posted by iWizard  

Me? It may have been ages but I have no idea what's happened inbetween. Still trying to finish a game. :crazy:


I think these are finished, whats wrong with these: :D

Lone Wolf

Bomber Bros

iWizard - 29-2-2016 at 01:45 PM

Quote: Originally posted by MikeDX  
Quote: Originally posted by iWizard  

Me? It may have been ages but I have no idea what's happened inbetween. Still trying to finish a game. :crazy:


I think these are finished, whats wrong with these: :D

Lone Wolf

Bomber Bros

Such beautiful masterworks. :yes:

Adherbal - 29-2-2016 at 11:40 PM

Creating games was something I got into from a very young age - initially by making cardboard games and "computers" - and DIV finally allowed me to do the real thing. After Windows XP took over I briefly moved to Fenix and then to modding Total War games. The latter got me in touch with wargames publishers Slitherine/Matrix and now, several years later, I work full time as an independent game developer.

Considering I never did any computer programming courses/education, I doubt this would've happened if it wasn't for the experience learned from DIV :)

Woody - 2-3-2016 at 06:52 AM

Adherbal living the dream! Doesn't surprise me a bit :)

DIV got me started with programming, and led me to my web development career, which has kept me well-fed and happy. I sorely miss making games, though, and I am trying to get back into it. I made ScrapFighter for Ludum Dare 34 in December, and I'm really digging what JavaScript can do for games. Phaser is an outstanding framework.

Great to see some of the old faces again!

RaverDave - 2-3-2016 at 08:23 AM

sex,drugs, violence.. the usual for me, aint changed a bit :P
oh yeh I coded some too .. managed to get a game on the play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.extragear....



Unfortunately stuff took its toll and I am now in ill health, I did that game in desperation to finally get a game out there before I snuff it. So I don't give a fig about how the game does, the naming convention of the game was stupid googles fault for half uploading a project with the same name but not visible!
A$$H0leZZZ...

I had started working with this new DIV, was cool to relearn with a much more mature approach, did A complete level editor in no time :P Using the old maps and pixel colour reading

Tomorrow I have heart surgery, time to get WASTED!

But I did achieve that for ONCE in my life!

Most of my stuff went on youtube, just search 'boning santa' in youtube search.. :P

Sandman - 2-3-2016 at 10:15 AM

Good ol' boning Santa. Good luck tomorrow Dave, get that ticker fixed!

iWizard - 2-3-2016 at 10:21 AM

I was about to say absolutely fantastic to read all this but then Dave got to post that party pooper!

Just kidding. What Sandman said - good luck tomorrow Dave :)

RaverDave - 2-3-2016 at 10:36 AM

hm yeh, tnx boyz, and girls maybe, and the inbetweeners.. I will leave this with a quote from my favourite sci-fi author..

"Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though."

chclau - 2-3-2016 at 07:42 PM

Hi there you all.

I was never looking for programming as an income or as a job, I was at that time and still am a HW designer.

However I loved DIV a lot and was quite a heartbreak to see the community going down into oblivion while we waited and waited... more than ten years ago, for f*** sake

Well the wait is over.
Is it?

BTW, nice to see many of you. Even Dave.

Mezzmer - 3-3-2016 at 05:32 PM

SUP GUYS

It's Square/Mith of course!

I remember coding a few demos and eventually a small game called Hero: The Realm, which actually was coded quite badly - but still fun and educational.

DIV was pretty amazing I guess. It got me deeper into coding (from a purely BBC/Archimedes BASIC background) and working a project from start to finish. I even can say I took some useful lessons from it in terms of level design, optimising a game, definite dos and don'ts in game creation. Which is a lot.

I used Bennu for a complete recode of Hero: The Realm, which I was pretty happy with. Unity is what I use nowadays and with it's up-to-dateness and portability, is amazing.

Seems in our modern age plenty of people think they can code games or call themselves game developers/designers without putting time in. This is not GameMakers or Unity's fault, it's just no one wants to learn in the prelude - or research, endeavour over a project. Result = Shovelware.

Having a good community such as DIV Arena really does help a lot though. I'm almost interested to write a tutorial or contribute to DIV3/DX somehow - we'll see what will be available on the site in terms of pages/worklogs?

Mike?

Sandman - 3-3-2016 at 10:04 PM

Because of DIV/Fenix/Bennu, I can almost read Spanish.

MikeDX - 3-3-2016 at 10:31 PM

DIV ruined my life. I now spend 24 hours a day on it.

MikeDX - 4-3-2016 at 04:09 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Mezzmer  
SUP GUYS

Having a good community such as DIV Arena really does help a lot though. I'm almost interested to write a tutorial or contribute to DIV3/DX somehow - we'll see what will be available on the site in terms of pages/worklogs?

Mike?


I quite agree. If you're feeling up to it you can do a code-along with Mith :)

I suggest something easy though at least to start with. I'm almost regretting agreeing to this mario remake... however the result will be pretty cool.

Dennis - 4-3-2016 at 08:30 AM

Dennis aka "waffle eater" here. DIV made me what I am today professionally, and it will probably be the last nail in my coffin. THANKS A LOT! (No sarcasm)

PS: should we tell Deadmaster the forum is back?

iWizard - 4-3-2016 at 09:23 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Dennis  
Dennis aka "waffle eater" here. DIV made me what I am today professionally, and it will probably be the last nail in my coffin. THANKS A LOT! (No sarcasm)

PS: should we tell Deadmaster the forum is back?

What are you professionally?

I fear BreadCaster is already here :thumbup:

Looks like there's space for a life story afterall

iWizard - 4-3-2016 at 09:39 AM

Moving on from DIV all those years ago was a pain, as nothing else really was quite like it, not quite as effortless to use as DIV. So, I dropped the idea of using something build for games and decided to go all or nothing and study C/C++ properly, but surprisingly enough non-programming related stuff started to seem more interesting; perhaps because I couldn't find another community like this, perhaps for other reasons.

While in uni I started studying Ogre on my own because calculators and helloworlds just didn't cut it, but then, for job experience, I joined a games company which used Unity and switched Ogre to it. The games company went bust in less than 6 months time and I joined another company where I did web stuff, which was alright at first but when it became just maintenance I got bored real fast. So anyhow, I finished my degree a year or so ago and ever since (and before but nvm) I've been chasing that perfect wave -uh- game with Unity.

Though I'm thinking again that maybe, just maybe, perhaps I should try to get more excited about normal work again. But games :starhit:

Dennis - 4-3-2016 at 12:02 PM

Quote: Originally posted by iWizard  
Quote: Originally posted by Dennis  
Dennis aka "waffle eater" here. DIV made me what I am today professionally, and it will probably be the last nail in my coffin. THANKS A LOT! (No sarcasm)

PS: should we tell Deadmaster the forum is back?

What are you professionally?

I fear BreadCaster is already here :thumbup:


Oracle IT Consultant. Query tuning, PL/SQL code, Forms, APEX... Also some big data [Censored].

PL/SQL syntax always reminds me a bit of DIV! And I chose PL/SQL because I liked the syntax! There is no coincidence. DIV Games Studio is the reason I am doing this.

iWizard - 4-3-2016 at 01:00 PM

Quote: Originally posted by Dennis  
Also some big data [Censored].

Naughty :borg:

Adherbal - 4-3-2016 at 02:00 PM

Quote: Originally posted by Woody  
Great to see some of the old faces again!


Indeed. I'm pleasantly surprised to see so many still showing up after all these years. I thought I was the only geek who looked back with nostalgia on DIV games/arena :dork:

PS: That scrapfighter is a neat idea. The movement speeds can get a bit out of hand though :) And I'm gonna have to sue you for it vaguely reminding me of Galactic Assault.

Htbaa - 4-3-2016 at 02:12 PM

I enjoyed playing Galactic Assault so much back in the day :-). Probably because of the big scale battles which I hadn't been able to experience up till then!

BreadCaster - 4-3-2016 at 07:37 PM

Quote: Originally posted by iWizard  
Quote: Originally posted by Dennis  
Dennis aka "waffle eater" here. DIV made me what I am today professionally, and it will probably be the last nail in my coffin. THANKS A LOT! (No sarcasm)

PS: should we tell Deadmaster the forum is back?

What are you professionally?

I fear BreadCaster is already here :thumbup:


who is this deadmaster of which you speak i do not know waht you are on about

MikeDX - 4-3-2016 at 08:11 PM

Quote: Originally posted by BreadCaster  

who is this deadmaster of which you speak i do not know waht you are on about


Admit it DM, the div meet was the best day ever.

ExcitedPixels (scribbley) - 4-3-2016 at 10:07 PM

I've heard about this Div thing.. what is it?

Seriously Div was my spring board into PC game making type things. It got me into PC zone, Edge and PC plus magazine and a shiny graphics card (the second one as some naughty person stole the first one).

It also started me on my Journey through FastTrak and Avanquest until recently where they cruelly chucked me out for good behaviour. But hey I survived longer than any other FastTrakker so that has to be something to be proud of.

So to anyone that remembers me Hello. Oh and hello to all those that joined us in Milton Keynes that once when we met Daniel. Still have the photo of us all :)

Adherbal - 5-3-2016 at 01:13 AM

Quote:
So to anyone that remembers me Hello.


You were one of the "developers" I envied because your games didn't just look awesome but where highly innovative as well.

RKSoft - 5-3-2016 at 01:49 PM

I wanted making games on PC because i made little BASIC games on Commodore 64. Also, i bought Game Maker 2000 (with a fine german handbook) and tried it. Some days i found DIV Arena and i fell in love :).

After DIV Arena closed i made games with Blitz Basic. So, i can/could make games for Windows in True Color and Stereo sound. ^^

After many years, i found the DIV Arena 2.0 and Mike at YouTube. So, i become a beta tester and i'm here. The DIV Arena community was the finest and best communities ever found in web and i hope the 2.0 will be fine again.


PS:
i found my Game Maker 2000 Box with original CD and, of course, the german handbook. :)

MikeDX - 5-3-2016 at 02:59 PM

Quote: Originally posted by RKSoft  

i found my Game Maker 2000 Box with original CD and, of course, the german handbook. :)


And threw it in the bin? :)

RKSoft - 6-3-2016 at 02:44 PM

of course nooooo, why should i threw it in the bin? My last programming action with DIV is very long time ago (i think 2004), so i can read all about functions/processes etc. Blitz Basic is very different to DIV. ;)

MikeDX - 6-3-2016 at 03:06 PM

Oh I see is gamemaker what DIV was called in germany?

stuckie - 15-3-2016 at 08:26 PM

Wow, DIV lives again! Complete with the green forums.

Along with my utterly awful retro remakes entry as well I see... thankfully I've got better since then. Least I think I have...
In fact, since then I went on to University to do one of them game programming courses, did Dare to be Digital, then went up and down the UK for half a year knocking on doors to get a job.
Ended up in Liverpool for a few years at a little indie dev, before moving back up to Dundee.
Started Arcade Badgers! didn't get too far with it due to illness and things, but it's ticking along still as a side project.
Now at YoYo Games, so technically the enemy as I work on GameMaker:Studio ;)

MikeDX - 15-3-2016 at 08:28 PM

Quote: Originally posted by stuckie  

Now at YoYo Games, so technically the enemy as I work on GameMaker:Studio ;)


TRAITOR!!!!

Also, welcome back


Also, TRAITOR!!! :)

RKSoft - 16-3-2016 at 03:29 PM

Quote: Originally posted by MikeDX  
Oh I see is gamemaker what DIV was called in germany?


Yes, in germany it was called Game Maker 2000. I don't know why xD. But i'm proud to have the original manual with all commands etc. in german letters ^^

MikeDX - 16-3-2016 at 03:46 PM

Is it translated into german for the IDE / HELP? if so could you send me the files please? system/lenguaje.int, system/lenguaje.div and help/help.div

RKSoft - 16-3-2016 at 05:41 PM

hehe, no. It is in english ... only the manual (book) is in german but i started to translate DIV to german. It isn't easy because some message are curios xD. Currently the IDE is (90%) finish and some messages (30%).

NoBrain2k - 17-3-2016 at 09:45 AM

It's times like this I wish I was a bit more active on the forums back in the day, I very much doubt anyone will remember me. All of my game ideas were way too ambitious so I never finished anything, but I had a great time learning an experimenting. I remember hanging around on the IRC channel quite a bit. They were good times.

A couple of my best friends, whom I only communicate with online, were guys I met because of DIV. And although I started learning to program years before DIV was around, it was another opportunity to keep programming and honing my skills leading to me becoming the developer I am today.

BreadCaster - 17-3-2016 at 09:21 PM

Quote: Originally posted by NoBrain2k  
All of my game ideas were way too ambitious so I never finished anything


Yep that was me all over!! :lol: I wish that a game design video series like Extra Credits existed back then, I've watched through a lot of that and they talk a lot of sense in terms of minimum viable product, failing faster etc. One of my issues is that simpler games don't peak my interest, so I often didn't finish more basic things.

I guess I should do some kind of little update on myself then! As most of you folks probably guessed, I didn't go back into game development or continue with it as a career. I love coming up with ideas for games and I have bundles of creativity but I'm just not logically minded enough for it, I can't follow long strings of nested statements or keep all these various concepts in mind simultaneously when programming so most things i made were either inefficient or utterly broken. I could (and still can) memorise routines - like how to code a particle engine from scratch, or how to check for hardness maps etc, or basic jumping physics, but anything more complicated than that leaves me in the dark with no idea where to go, so I switched to a different industry. I now do fashion and print design! Who woulda thunk it. I went to university in London and now I live here, I'm currently setting up my own clothing brand and doing the odd commission :)

I'm still working on a few little side things here and there though in terms of programming, though the project I'm doing currently is a salvage of an old unfinished game I started making while DIV-ARENA was down. It's a Bennu project and I'm still hashing it out, hopefully you'll all see it soon and it'll make up for the mostly terrible things I created back in the day. :lol:

I'm tempted to have a fiddle around with Unity at some point to make some simplistic 3D games - but to be honest it can't take priority any more like it used to. I'm particularly interested in the one button porting claim, as the few ideas I have would run really well on Android! Anyway - I hope y'all are well and stuff :D

<3

iWizard - 18-3-2016 at 10:31 AM

Ha, what I've read having ambitious ideas and never really finishing is a, or even the, common pitfall among game developers. Good and bad. Or wannabe game developers if you're a bit cruel.

BreadCaster: I think you can advertise, I mean mention specifically, what you're doing. I'd like to check it out. Please tell me. I bag you! Also, about Unity, I haven't tried to make anything for Android but I've had to make something for iOS and, albeit porting is really that simple, you still should develop specifically for mobile because of the limiting hardware. Set aside controls, even simple 2d can have horrible performance if you make certain things mobile devices aren't really good at it. This is well document and not difficult at all but it needs to be addressed. Disclaimber: been a few years but I doubt devices have advanced that much.

NoBrain2k: did you use that nick on the IRC-channel?

NoBrain2k - 18-3-2016 at 10:36 AM

Quote: Originally posted by iWizard  
NoBrain2k: did you use that nick on the IRC-channel?


Yes. Although I'm now wondering if I'm actually thinking of the GP32 IRC channel as that was the thing I moved on to next after DIV and BlitzBasic It's all so long ago (18 years since original release I think?) that it all has blurred into one a little bit!

MadCow - 21-3-2016 at 01:45 AM

Quote: Originally posted by NoBrain2k  
It's times like this I wish I was a bit more active on the forums back in the day, I very much doubt anyone will remember me.


I still remember you!

Have I fallen into a coma and it's now 1999 again...yet I am just older and fatter... well it's been a long time, DIV was my first foray into game making, which lead me on to studying game making at uni and then never looking at it every again haha. I now 'try' and program for a living but my employer may disagree with me in that terms. I still have fond memories of the chat though and the randomness that it contained. I, like most people, never actually got anything decent finished though.

MikeDX - 21-3-2016 at 03:57 AM

Welcome back MadCow. nothing has changed except we are finally getting the DIV we always dreamed of :)

BreadCaster - 21-3-2016 at 05:35 AM

Quote: Originally posted by iWizard  

BreadCaster: I think you can advertise, I mean mention specifically, what you're doing. I'd like to check it out. Please tell me. I bag you! Also, about Unity, I haven't tried to make anything for Android but I've had to make something for iOS and, albeit porting is really that simple, you still should develop specifically for mobile because of the limiting hardware. Set aside controls, even simple 2d can have horrible performance if you make certain things mobile devices aren't really good at it. This is well document and not difficult at all but it needs to be addressed. Disclaimber: been a few years but I doubt devices have advanced that much.


Oh yeah, no the few ideas I have planned are intuitive as far as the controls are concerned - a flat shaded/sparsely textured low poly rail shooter with cursor aiming (so tap where you want to shoot), similar to Killer 7. Swipe up to move forward a square, left to turn 90 degrees left, swipe right to turn 90 degrees right, tap on an enemy to shoot at them - sort of like Reboot level graphics (man, remember that old show?) - I've played games (or even higher spec, actually) like that played on my own android phone so I know they can do it =)

MadCow - 21-3-2016 at 08:51 AM

Quote: Originally posted by MikeDX  
Welcome back MadCow. nothing has changed except we are finally getting the DIV we always dreamed of :)


Thanks Mike, it feels weird to be sat on a bus looking at the DIV forums on my phone if I'm honest haha. I look forward to having a play when I get the chance, I think my DIV manual is still lying about somewhere. I might finish Madcows or even start Syndicow.

iWizard - 24-3-2016 at 05:14 PM

Quote: Originally posted by MadCow  
I might finish Madcows or even start Syndicow.

This is the best news since Madcows was announced!

Adherbal - 24-3-2016 at 11:58 PM

Quote: Originally posted by MadCow  
or even start Syndicow.


I remember doing a sprite with a minigun-armed cow for this, but can't find it in my backup drive any more. I did found some questionable menu artwork though :blush:

SYNMENU.png - 6kB

Dennis - 25-3-2016 at 11:43 AM

Quote: Originally posted by NoBrain2k  
All of my game ideas were way too ambitious so I never finished anything


One of the problems I had and have with DIV is the fact that organizing your code gets difficult as your game grows bigger. You're stuck with one file so after a while you lose track of your processes, local variables, globals, etc...

However, I think there are ways to program more efficiently, while waiting for the ability to include code snippets into your code you could find other ways to succesfully develop good-structured code (some basic things like prefixing your variables with "l_" for local and "g_" for global is one way to do it)

I am planning to think this through, but as for know I do not feel like spending too much of my free time on it.

BreadCaster - 25-3-2016 at 05:35 PM

Well if a process isn't self explanatory in it's name, then I usually add a comment. Sometimes I add comments to IF statements as I program them, just to remind me what they do later on if it's not immediately obvious.

Additionally, while I never got to the stage of adding L_ for local and G_ for global, I did start to prefix all the global asset variables with things like gfx_, sfx_, fnt_ etc. That's what I'm still doing for CyberCrisis, actually. :)

Dennis - 25-3-2016 at 08:29 PM

Yeah I know but you should be able to logically group processes in a seperate file and access its local variables by declaring them as public in the process itself instead of all the local variables on top of the PRG... Hmmm oh well...

const

global

begin

end

process a_process()
public
private
begin
end





etc... I think you can do something like this with Bennu. Not sure though.

MikeDX - 25-3-2016 at 08:38 PM

You can only declare private vars in a process but you should really be able to declare local vars too, but this is a fairly big change to make and could cause issues.

But with the addition of include() files this should at least get a little easier

Htbaa - 25-3-2016 at 11:20 PM

I think Mike said on IRC he would add some form of "include file" later on.

Edit: lol. I'm a slowpoke. What he ^ said.:no:

RKSoft - 27-3-2016 at 09:43 AM

okay, i found the Game Maker 2000 installation disk and Genesis 3D cd :)


Dennis - 27-3-2016 at 12:00 PM

It is really weird they renamed it for some reason. Maybe it was a package that contained DIV and other programs? The program itself was called DIV Games Studio or did it have another interface?

RKSoft - 27-3-2016 at 11:00 PM

The CD and manual calls Game Maker 2000. The software is DIV Games Studio 1. The Genesis 3D engine, i don't know for what is it. I think a 3D engine for game making.

Dazzy - 31-3-2016 at 03:25 PM

Div was my first taste of programming and I never really got round to doing anything in it all those years ago. School and live got in the way. Bar a few websites, WordPress, phpfox, jamroom over the years and a number of access front end databases I haven't really coded all that much.

Not sure I have the creative juices far developing from scratch.

Jamroom is current pay thing and it got me back into hacking smarty templates together in phpstorm, a great ide.

In case anyone wonder I am the same Dazzy!

I pretty much remember nothing about DIV, one really useful feature in modern ide's is code suggestions and completion, any chance you could bring that to the ide Mike? Would really help people pick up the language faster I think.

OScoder - 3-4-2016 at 09:24 PM

DIV saved me from the hell that was trying to make games in visual basic (no really!). I'd got no internet to start off with and no money - so before DIV it was just a pirated copy of VB I'd blagged from a student and a couple library books.

The language was nice - far better than basic as a beginners thing since it paved the way to C, js, and other languages full of curly braces and functions. But the big deal for me was actually having everything in one place. Decent examples, a graphics editor, all of that. Back when 56k internet was fast this was a massive massive deal! Half-decent documentation along with the box helped too - compare it to dark basic that sh*t was terrible! Then when I got onto the forums finally (I was 12 I might have had to lie about my age :P ), dang - all those examples, a tutorial or two written by normal people, free graphics and sound. It was a massive step up from being a lone coder working in a sh*tty language. I'll definitely always remember it as an example of what an online community can be like. One of the main things I remember is it didn't feel corporate at all (say, compared to the dark basic community). People were prepared to give away a lot of hard work for free and that was nice.

Anyway, after div arena died I lost interest in games programming and did various other coding projects. Then life happened and I stopped doing computers altogether and went off and did all kinds of crazy sh*t :) (like trying to break into an army base - that was interesting! The guy before me got his dreads stuck in the barbed wire, true story...). Only just got back into it properly the last few years. I'm a web developer/dev-ops engineer now, so it all kind of worked out!

Oh, and back in the day my name here was "anjetika" (I don't know why)

MadCow - 11-4-2016 at 11:26 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Adherbal  
Quote: Originally posted by MadCow  
or even start Syndicow.


I remember doing a sprite with a minigun-armed cow for this, but can't find it in my backup drive any more. I did found some questionable menu artwork though :blush:



That was an amazing sprite! I think I lost the file too :( I lost pretty much all my DIV source code :(

P.B. - 13-10-2016 at 01:10 PM

Before DIV was released (I probably was around 10 years old), I already wanted to be able to make games. I liked games the most if they had a level editor. So I was really happy when I saw adds for DIV as a 12 year old. This was what I wanted, and now there was a platform that would enable me :-). Despite the adds, my parents told me that they couldn't find it and that it wasn't released yet.

I think I was round 13 years of age when I finally got DIV Games Studio 1 and I was excited :-). I did read the manual that came with it, wrote the space invaders tutorial and started tweaking that to my liking. Thanks to DIV, I learned to understand code, write code and think in code from 13 years of age onwards.

Even though throughout my DIV adventure, we had a dial-in internet connection, the internet did start to integrate into society. I wanted to share the games that I made, so I found a Dutch DIV community (DIVonline). A friend at school also started making games at that time using Game Maker and he had a website (using DreamWeaver), this inspired me to make my own website too.

I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment by writing code, so I didn't like Game Maker and I didn't like DreamWeaver. In stead, I started writing HTML, CSS, JavaScript and later even PHP using notepad. On top of that, I started to communicate online in "English". All these things where related to DIV and helped me to develop these skills at a young age.

Eventually I found DIV-Arena (I think DIV was released a bit later in the UK than it was in NL) and that was the community that I've been part of the longest. I was probably around 15 or 16 years old when I became a moderator here, but it felt like I had status and that gave me some pride (and I could use that).

When I was 17 years of age, I had to choose what I wanted to study and I chose Computer Science. That definitely was related to the fact that I already enjoyed writing code. By that time I had already learned a little bit of C (for the DLL's) and read a good part of a book about it and I had experience in writing websites and games in multiple technologies (I also wrote games for my calculator).

Now I am a software engineer who still enjoys writing code and made his career out of his hobby. I didn't end up writing games (mostly web applications), but I never wanted to make that my career (at the time I felt that wasn't the way that I wanted to contribute to society).

So in multiple ways, DIV was a foundation to develop a range of skills that are more useful to me now than most of the things I learned at school...

Casper - 18-10-2017 at 09:26 PM

DIV was life back in 2001/2002. I was obsessed with making games - so I did. I started with QBasic, but one day my dad bought me DIV! DIV was amazing; the program, the games, the community - it was a perfect storm of chaotic creativity on the internet. I coded in all my free time; school, friends, family, exercise was all secondary...

Eventually DIV became obsolete, and the community slowly dwindled. One day in a fit of teenage depression, I deleted all my games. Everything, all my code from back then is gone. Let's say it was a learning experience... I make backups of everything now.

I still write games, I've been doing it for a living for 5+ years, although I'm currently switching careers. DIV played a massive role in my interest in computer programming; to this day I still get nostalgic flashbacks to all the time spent in that blue screen...

Making games gives me joy... no simpler way to put it than that.