I'm looking for a student for an M.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of Calgary. *This is a fully funded position.*
The project: building tools to help understand how "retro" video games were made under amazingly constrained circumstances. While it's a CS position, this is interdisciplinary work done in collaboration with archaeologists and others.
Needs: strong coding skills, good writing abilities. Ideally: low-level, reverse engineering, or compiler experience.
@herrprofdr Since you use the word "retro", this is about how people made games that fit original form factors even though larger computers are around, and not how people made games back in the eighties?
Not that you need archeology for either, you can just use anthropology and history, since many people who made games since the seventies are still available.
But I'll give one hint: coat-hangers were really important to keep everything together.
@halla @herrprofdr right, but with the right tricks (changing the background colour at the right times, you can still makes some interesting effects on the screen)
Here's a video of it if you're interested.
@halla @herrprofdr I started with the C64, and did some assembler on it, but I didn't really get into it until after I moved to the Atari ST.
More recently I went back and did some simple stuff on the C64 and it's quite different.
John Aycock
Halla Rempt
Elias MÃ¥rtenson