Thanks everyone, well like a good engineer I am here in my lab working on an adaptive lighting controller But, I will take a break to go see Prometheus tonight
Here's something I've wanted to say to Andre' for a long time.
When I was 16, a junior in high school, I was at a book store in the mall (can't even remember the name). I think I was there with my mom and sisters...so, I finished looking around at "Dungeons and Dragons" stuff then meandered around till I was looking in the computer programming section. I had had some exposure to programming in school (Apple II BASIC, LogoWriter, Hypercard) and had heard of C/C++, but I knew I wanted to make games somehow. Then I saw...
"Teach Yourself Game Programming in 21 Days" published by SAMS Publishing, written by the prolific Andre' LaMothe. There were other game programming books there, but that one just seemed "right". I asked ma for an early Christmas present and began reading on the drive home. For my 17th birthday, I got a compiler (Borland Turbo C/C++ 3.0) and I away I went, trudging through the "Hello World" stuff and teaching myself C++ from the book as I went. (Also, the compiler came with pretty good paper documentation which was indispensable.)
A few months passed, and I had a problem I just couldn't figure out. I was trying to load PCX files and show them on screen, but it failed with "big" images. Finally, I decided to write the author a letter. I really didn't know what to expect, but not being able to load graphics when you want to be a game programmer is a problem. Not too many months after, I got a letter from Andre' LaMothe himself in which he apologized for not getting to me sooner (because he had been putting in, like 170-hour weeks, IIRC) and he suggested four things I could try. One of them was to set the compilation memory model from "small" to "medium". (Ugh. Remember THOSE days?) As soon as I used the medium memory model, I saw the proper picture being displayed on my chunky mode 13h screen, and the rest as they say...
So, a great-big, gigantic THANK YOU SO MUCH, to Andre' for writing back to me and, pretty honestly, enabling my computer programming career, which started in video games and then transitioned to graphics/video and optimization. I taught myself C++ from your book "Teach yourself..." and later bought "Tricks of the DOOM programming Gurus" and "Black Art of 3D Game Programming". You and Michael Abrash have taught me much.
Publison
Posts: 12,366
Comments
Andre' is a neat person, a great engineer, and all-around creative guy. He deserves a fantastic birthday!
Ken Gracey
Happy Birthday Andre' -- Thanks for all you do for the Propeller! You made the chip fun.
OBC
Thanks,
Andre'
When I was 16, a junior in high school, I was at a book store in the mall (can't even remember the name). I think I was there with my mom and sisters...so, I finished looking around at "Dungeons and Dragons" stuff then meandered around till I was looking in the computer programming section. I had had some exposure to programming in school (Apple II BASIC, LogoWriter, Hypercard) and had heard of C/C++, but I knew I wanted to make games somehow. Then I saw...
"Teach Yourself Game Programming in 21 Days" published by SAMS Publishing, written by the prolific Andre' LaMothe. There were other game programming books there, but that one just seemed "right". I asked ma for an early Christmas present and began reading on the drive home. For my 17th birthday, I got a compiler (Borland Turbo C/C++ 3.0) and I away I went, trudging through the "Hello World" stuff and teaching myself C++ from the book as I went. (Also, the compiler came with pretty good paper documentation which was indispensable.)
A few months passed, and I had a problem I just couldn't figure out. I was trying to load PCX files and show them on screen, but it failed with "big" images. Finally, I decided to write the author a letter. I really didn't know what to expect, but not being able to load graphics when you want to be a game programmer is a problem. Not too many months after, I got a letter from Andre' LaMothe himself in which he apologized for not getting to me sooner (because he had been putting in, like 170-hour weeks, IIRC) and he suggested four things I could try. One of them was to set the compilation memory model from "small" to "medium". (Ugh. Remember THOSE days?) As soon as I used the medium memory model, I saw the proper picture being displayed on my chunky mode 13h screen, and the rest as they say...
So, a great-big, gigantic THANK YOU SO MUCH, to Andre' for writing back to me and, pretty honestly, enabling my computer programming career, which started in video games and then transitioned to graphics/video and optimization. I taught myself C++ from your book "Teach yourself..." and later bought "Tricks of the DOOM programming Gurus" and "Black Art of 3D Game Programming". You and Michael Abrash have taught me much.
Happy Belated Birthday, sir.
P.S. How do you pronounce your last name?