Alright, let me tell you about this “rockets 1998” thing I tinkered with. It wasn’t some grand plan, just me messing around, trying to build something, you know? Like a personal challenge, a bit of a throwback.
Getting Started with the Idea
So, I got this idea in my head. I wanted to make a really simple game. Think space, think rockets, but with that clunky, charming feel of stuff from around 1998. Not super polished, not super modern. I remembered hearing about those super old games, like that Spacewar! thing they played on those massive old PDP computers back in the 70s. Wild stuff. I wasn’t aiming for that ancient, but you get the vibe – simple, direct fun.
My goal was straightforward: get some pixels moving, shoot some stuff, maybe a high score. The “rockets 1998” name just stuck because that was the year, the feeling I was chasing.
The Messy Process: Tools and Tribulations
First off, I decided to go all in, or so I thought. I dug out an old computer I had stashed away. A real relic. I figured, “Hey, this will give it that authentic 1998 development experience!” Boy, was I wrong, or at least, naive.
Getting that machine to even cooperate was the first hurdle.
- It took forever to boot up. Seriously, I could make a coffee, drink it, and it’d still be chugging away.
- Finding drivers for anything was a nightmare. The internet back then wasn’t what it is now, and finding compatible bits for that old hardware… a real treasure hunt.
- I tried using some old programming tools I had on a CD-ROM. Some kind of basic compiler and a very, very simple graphics library.
I started coding. Little rocket ship, check. Making it move? Okay, managed that after a bit of fiddling. Then came the “shooting” part. Trying to get those pixel bullets to appear and fly straight, then detect if they hit anything… it was way more fiddly than I remembered. Things kept crashing. The whole environment felt brittle. One wrong move and poof, back to the drawing board, or worse, a system reboot.
The graphics were basic, to say the least. I wasn’t aiming for Picasso, but even getting a few colors on screen without it looking like a glitchy mess was an achievement. Remember those old screens? The refresh rates, the resolutions? Yeah, working with that was an eye-opener, or rather, an eye-strainer.
What Came Out of It?
So, did I create the next big indie hit from 1998? Absolutely not. What I ended up with was a very, very basic prototype. A rocket that could move, shoot tiny squares, and some other squares that were supposed to be asteroids, or enemies, or whatever. It barely held together.
But the thing is, I wasn’t really aiming for a finished product to sell. This whole “rockets 1998” exercise was more about the journey, the struggle. It was about remembering what it was like, or imagining what it was like, to build something with those limitations. It makes you appreciate how far things have come.
Why did I even bother, you ask? Well, it started because I was clearing out my attic a while back. Found this box of old tech magazines and game disks. It just sparked something. I was between projects at the time, feeling a bit burned out by all the super complex modern stuff I deal with daily. You know how it is, sometimes you just need to do something completely different, something that doesn’t have a million dependencies or require a PhD to understand the build process.
This whole adventure started pretty much after I left my old gig. That place was all about cutting-edge, ultra-optimized everything. Microservices for microservices. And honestly, it was exhausting. We had teams for everything, so specialized you barely knew what the guy next to you was actually building. When I left, I suddenly had all this time, and a strange urge to do something incredibly simple, something I could control from start to finish, even if it was clunky and old-fashioned. So, “rockets 1998” became my weird little therapy project. It was frustrating as heck sometimes, but also kinda fun in a stupid way. Made me appreciate the tools we have now, that’s for sure. And hey, I got a rocket to shoot some squares. That’s something, right?
