Bill Budge | |
|---|---|
 Budge in 2012 | |
| Born | August 11, 1954 [1] [2] |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | video game programmer, designer |
| Known for | Apple II games Raster Blaster (1981) and Pinball Construction Set (1983). |
Bill Budge (born August 11, 1954 [1] ) is a retired American video game programmer and designer. He is best known for the Apple II games Raster Blaster (1981) and Pinball Construction Set (1983).
Budge says he became interested in computers while obtaining a PhD at UC Berkeley. He purchased an Apple II and began writing games. He enjoyed it so much that he dropped out of school and became a game programmer. [1] Budge's first game was a Pong clone, called Penny Arcade, which he wrote using his own custom graphics routines. He traded the completed game to Apple Computer for a Centronics printer. [3] California Pacific published a collection of four of Budge's Apple II games in 1980 as Bill Budge's Space Album .
By 1981, his reputation was such that BYTE wrote in its review of Budge's Tranquility Base, a Lunar Lander clone, that "Consistently excellent graphics are a trademark of Bill Budge's games". [4] Budge marketed his games commercially with a floppy disk drive salesman who traveled from store to store; he and the salesman agreed to split profits of selling his games 50/50. Budge was shocked when he got his first check for USD$7,000.
Budge does not enjoy playing video games, and described having to play pinball for months while developing Pinball Construction Set as "sheer torture." [5] He more enjoyed writing fast graphics libraries for game programmers. Budge said "I wasn't that interested in playing or designing games. My real love was in writing fast graphics code. It occurred to me that creating tools for others to make games was a way for me to indulge my interest in programming without having to make games." [3] and "The way I got started was by not trying to do anything original at all. I wanted to learn how to write videogames. I ... just went to arcades and copied the games that I saw." [5]
He created the 3-D Game Tool, a program allowing rudimentary creation of wireframe images on the Apple II for use in games or other applications. It was published in 1981 by California Pacific.
Budge first became interested in writing a pinball game while working for Apple in 1981. There was a pinball craze among the engineers there and it occurred to him that a pinball game would be a fun programming challenge. At that point he wrote Raster Blaster for the Apple II. Things like physics and collision detection were difficult on the Apple II's 1 MHz 6502 processor.
Budge formed his own company, BudgeCo to distribute Raster Blaster. He realized he could do what the big distributors were doing: putting the games in packaging— Ziploc bags—and delivering them to software stores. Budge and his sister, who also handled the accounting, would assemble the game packages in one of the rooms of his house and deliver them to local software stores. [3]
He followed Raster Blaster with Pinball Construction Set, a more general tool which allows users to create arbitrary pinball tables, including how the components are wired together. The project required him to write a mini-paint program, a mini sound editor and save/load systems. Some of the components he already had, which he developed for Raster Blaster.
By 1983, however, the computer game publishing arena had become too complex for Budge, who did not really want to be an entrepreneur. When he was approached by Electronic Arts (EA) founder Trip Hawkins (whom he had met when they both worked at Apple) to publish his games, he discussed the idea with Steve Wozniak [ citation needed ] and signed on. With EA's distribution, Pinball Construction Set eventually sold 300,000 copies over all platforms. EA marketed Budge and other early EA developers with publicity photographs by Norman Seeff, an appearance by Budge on Computer Chronicles with Hawkins, and author tours to computer and department stores. [6]
Shortly after this, Budge disbanded BudgeCo, which he says was something of a relief for him, since he was really just a programmer and was not interested in being an entrepreneur. [3]
After Pinball Construction Set, Budge attempted to create a "construction set construction set," [5] but abandoned the idea after determining that it was too complex a concept. Royalties meant that he did not have to work, and EA eventually gave up asking Budge for another project. [6]
Budge wrote MousePaint, which was a program for the Apple II similar to the Macintosh program MacPaint. MousePaint was bundled with an Apple Mouse II and interface card for the Apple II. [7] Apple Computer released the mouse and software in May 1984. [8]
BYTE 's reviewer stated in December 1984 that he made far fewer errors when using an Apple Mouse with MousePaint than with a KoalaPad and its software. He found that MousePaint was easier to use and more efficient, and predicted that the mouse would receive more software support than the pad. [9]
Budge ported Pinball Construction Set to the Sega Genesis, which was published by Electronic Arts in 1993 as Virtual Pinball . Ten tables can be saved, but they cannot be shared with other players.
Shortly afterward, Budge worked for 3DO, creating a 3D engine for Blade Force . He remained with the company for nine years until its demise in 2003. Budge returned to EA but stayed for less than two years. He joined Sony Computer Entertainment in 2004 as Lead Tools Programmer. Budge left Sony after six years for Google in 2010. [10] Budge retired from Google in January 2022. [11] [12]
Budge and his wife live in the San Francisco Bay Area and have two children, Natalie and Andrew.
In 2008, Pinball Construction Set was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for "User Generated Content/Game Modification". Budge accepted the award. [13]
On February 10, 2011, Budge was the second recipient of the Pioneer Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. [14]
Pinball Construction Set is an inductee in GameSpy's Hall of Fame. [15]
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-molded plastic case, Rod Holt developed the switching power supply, while Steve Jobs's role in the design of the computer was limited to overseeing Jerry Manock's work on the plastic case. It was introduced by Jobs and Wozniak at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire, and marks Apple's first launch of a personal computer aimed at a consumer market—branded toward American households rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists.
MacPaint is a raster graphics editor developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 24, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processing counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notable because it could generate graphics that could be used by other applications. It taught consumers what a graphics-based system could do by using the mouse, the clipboard, and QuickDraw picture language. Pictures could be cut from MacPaint and pasted into MacWrite documents.
Deluxe Paint, often referred to as DPaint, is a bitmap graphics editor created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts and published for the then-new Amiga 1000 in November 1985. A series of updated versions followed, some of which were ported to other platforms. An MS-DOS release with support for the 256 color VGA standard became popular for creating pixel graphics in video games in the 1990s.
Pinball Construction Set is a video game by Bill Budge written for the Apple II. It was originally published in 1982 through Budge's own company, BudgeCo, then was released by Electronic Arts in 1983 along with ports to the Atari 8-bit family and Commodore 64.
The KoalaPad is a graphics tablet, released in 1983 by U.S. company Koala Technologies Corporation, for the Apple II, TRS-80 Color Computer, Atari 8-bit family, and Commodore 64, as well as for the IBM PC.
Lunar Lander is a genre of video games loosely based on the 1969 landing of the Apollo Lunar Module on the Moon. In Lunar Lander games, players generally control a spacecraft as it falls toward the surface of the Moon or other astronomical body, using thrusters to slow the ship's descent and control its horizontal motion to reach a safe landing area. Crashing into obstacles, hitting the surface at too high a velocity, or running out of fuel all result in failure. In some games in the genre, the ship's orientation must be adjusted as well as its horizontal and vertical velocities.
Fueled by the previous year's release of the colorful and appealing Pac-Man, the audience for arcade video games in 1981 became much wider. Pac-Man influenced maze games began appearing in arcades and on home systems. Pac-Man was the highest-grossing video game for the second year in a row. Nintendo's Donkey Kong defined the unnamed platform game genre, while Konami's Scramble established forced-scrolling shooters. The lesser known Jump Bug combined the two concepts into both the first scrolling platform game and the first platform shooter. Other arcade hits released in 1981 include Defender, Frogger, and the Galaxian sequel Galaga.
David's Midnight Magic is a pinball simulation video game written by David Snider for the Apple II and published by Broderbund in 1982. The game was published in Europe by Ariolasoft. A port to the Atari 8-bit family was released the same year, then the Commodore 64 in 1983. In 1987 Atari Corporation published a cartridge in the styling of the then-new Atari XEGS.
Will Harvey's Music Construction Set (MCS) is a music composition notation program designed by Will Harvey for the Apple II and published by Electronic Arts in 1983. Harvey wrote the original Apple II version in assembly language when he was 15 and in high school. MCS was conceived as a tool to add music to his previously published game, an abstract shooter called Lancaster for the Apple II.
Softalk was an American magazine of the early 1980s that focused on the Apple II computer. Published from September 1980 through August 1984, it featured articles about hardware and software associated with the Apple II platform and the people and companies who made them. The name was originally used on a newsletter of Apple Software pioneer company, Softape, who in 1980 changed its name to Artsci Inc.
Bill Budge's Raster Blaster is a pioneering home computer pinball simulation written by Bill Budge for the Apple II and published in 1981 by Budge's company, BudgeCo. It was ported to the Atari 8-bit family. Raster Blaster resembles the Williams Firepower table from 1980.
The Prisoner is a 1980 Apple II computer game produced by Edu-Ware. The game was loosely based on the 1960s television series The Prisoner and incorporates that show's themes about the loss of individuality in a technological, controlling society. The player's role is that of an intelligence agent who has resigned from his job for reasons known only to himself, and who has been abducted to an isolated island community that seems designed to be his own personal prison. The island's authorities will use any means—including coercion, disorientation, deception, and frustration—to learn why their prisoner has resigned, and every character, location, and apparent escape route seem to be part of a grand scheme to trick the player into revealing a code number representing the prisoner's reason for resigning. The game occasionally breaks the fourth wall by acknowledging that a game is being played.
Many games, utilities, and educational programs were available for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. Atari, Inc. was the primarly publisher following the launch of the Atari 400/800 in 1979, then increasingly by third parties. Atari also distributed "user written" software through the Atari Program Exchange from 1981 to 1984. After APX folded, many titles were picked up by Antic Software.
Garry Kitchen's GameMaker is an integrated development environment for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and IBM PC compatibless, created by Garry Kitchen and released by Activision in 1985. It is one of the earliest all-in-one game design products aimed at the general consumer, preceded by Broderbund’s The Arcade Machine in 1982. Several sample files are included: a demo sequence featuring animated sprites and music, a recreation of Pitfall!, and a birthday greeting.
California Pacific Computer Company is a defunct software company that published games and related software for the Apple II family of computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. California Pacific is best known as the publisher of the first installment of Richard Garriott's popular Ultima game series, and for Super Invader, a Space Invaders clone voted the most popular software of 1978–80.
Dazzle Draw is a raster graphics editor for the Apple IIc and Apple IIe. The program allows users to create bitmap images which can then be printed or used in other programs. Developed by David Snider and released in 1984 by Broderbund, the program is similar to MacPaint, released in early 1984. Snider previously wrote the Apple II pinball game David's Midnight Magic.
Bill Budge's Space Album is a collection of four Apple II action games written by Bill Budge and published by California Pacific in 1980. The games are Death Star, Asteroids, Tail Gunner, and Solar Shootout. Death Star was based around a scenario similar to the Death Star "trench battle" that formed the climax of the 1977 film, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Asteroids was a variant of the popular arcade video game of the same title.
Night Mission Pinball is a pinball simulation video game published by Sublogic in 1982. It was developed by Bruce Artwick for the Apple II, then ported to the Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, and IBM PC.
Preppie! II is a video game written by Russ Wetmore for the Atari 8-bit family and published by Adventure International in 1983. Subtitled "The continuing saga of Wadsworth Overcash," it is a sequel to 1982's Frogger-inspired Preppie!. It loosely follows the preppy theme, primarily through a story in the manual, but replaces the country club setting with an abstract, overhead view maze. Some obstacles from the first game appear in the second.
Yesterday was my last day at Google. Instead of working from home, now retired at home.
Media related to Bill Budge at Wikimedia Commons
