- Bill Budge
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Bill Budge (born c. 1954[1]) is a computer game programmer and designer. His two main claims to fame are 1981's Raster Blaster and 1983's Pinball Construction Set. Both these games were released originally for the Apple II.
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]
Contents
Early games
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.[2] While a graduate student in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, he went on to make other games, which he tried to market commercially. Teaming up 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 then proceeded to write fast graphics libraries for game programmers. He stated that was where his real love was:
- "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".[2]
Raster Blaster and Pinball Construction Set
Budge first became interested in writing a pinball game while working for Apple in 1981. There was a pinball craze going on 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, which presented some significant challenges under the Apple II. Things like physics and collision detection were brutal with the limited facilities of the Apple II's 1 MHz 6502 processor.
From this initial pinball game, it was a small step to writing an entire construction set. Budge notes that it also 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.
After writing Raster Blaster, Budge founded his own company, BudgeCo, taking over the responsibility of what his publishers were doing. He printed copies of his games and put them in a Ziploc bag with a photocopy of the game's instructions.
By 1983, however, the computer game publishing arena had become too complex for Budge's taste, 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 and willingly signed on. With EA's distribution, Pinball Construction Set eventually sold 300,000 copies over all platforms. Budge's name became well-known among gamers, because of EA's "rockstar" promotion of game designers (other designers who received similar treatment were Dan Bunten, Anne Westfall, and Jon Freeman).
Part of EA's rockstar promotion was sending their programmers out on autograph tours. Budge was included in this and went around signing the "album cover" packages of his game published by EA.[1]
They also assembled several developers and hired a Hollywood photographer for taking a photograph in rockstar pose which led to EA's famous We See Farther advertising poster.
After PCS, Budge toyed with the idea of creating Construction Set Construction Set but abandoned the idea after determining it was too complex a concept. He did, however, create the 3-D Graphics Tool, a program that allowed rudimentary creation of wire-frame graphical images for use in games or other applications.
Pinball Construction Set is an inductee in GameSpy's Hall of Fame.[3]
MousePaint
Budge wrote MousePaint, which was a program for the Apple II similar to the Macintosh program MacPaint. MousePaint was bundled with an AppleMouse II and interface card for the Apple II.[4] Apple Computer released the mouse and software in May 1984.[5]
After EA
Budge left the game industry to semi-retirement in the mid-1980s in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Budge returned in the 1990s after deciding that he only liked working when he enjoyed the work. By this point he had decided that he liked game programming as long as he was developing something cutting-edge. To this end, Budge ported Pinball Construction Set (under the title Virtual Pinball) to the Sega Genesis, one of the hottest platforms at the time.
Shortly afterward, Budge went to go work for 3DO, creating a 3D engine for Bladeforce. 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. Bill left Sony after 6 years for Google in 2010.
Budge and his wife live in the San Francisco Bay Area and have two children.[1]
Awards
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.[6]
On February 10, 2011, Budge was the second recipient of the Pioneer Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.[7]
References
- ^ a b c d Interview with Budge from The Tower of Pin
- ^ a b An interview with Budge from Halcyon Days
- ^ GameSpy Hall of Fame from GameSpy
- ^ Apple II Mouse Card at Folklore.org
- ^ Peripherals, cont. at Apple2History.org
- ^ 2008 Tech Emmy Winners from Kotaku.com
- ^ "ACADEMY OF INTERACTIVE ARTS & SCIENCES NAMES BILL BUDGE AS ITS SECOND PIONEER AWARD RECIPIENT". January 21, 2011. Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. http://www.interactive.org/images/press_release/AIAS-Pioneer-Bill-Budge-FINAL.pdf. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
External links
Categories:- Video game designers
- Video game programmers
- Pinball game designers
- Living people
- University of California, Berkeley alumni
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
