In the same folder as the code-generation files, dated March 19, 1994, there’s a letter I wrote to a customer.
He had registered Combat Tanks and enclosed a note with his check. He wanted a naval battle game. I was twenty-two, and I wrote back at length.
The first part is the form letter, the same one everyone got — user ID, registration code, you’re in the database now. Then it stops being a form letter.
Combat Tanks, although fairly simplistic in comparison to current DOS games, has been a long time coming for the Windows game arena. We simply could not understand why no one was developing decent Windows games, so we took it upon ourselves to write something we wanted to play, and in turn something others could enjoy.
And then, having decided this stranger was worth it, I handed him the entire methodology:
To give you an idea of how to assess the different types of enemies, we usually vary the speed, energy, weapons, firepower, movement, intelligence, and obviously graphics for each object in the game.
Along with both things that were actually stopping us:
First, it is very difficult to make the computer enemy anywhere near as smart as a human player, which is why we opted for a larger, more varied, but fairly stupid computer army (except choppers). Second, the more moving objects, especially fast-moving objects, there are on the screen, the slower the game gets.
Then I asked him to do some of the work:
I really encourage you to give us an outline of what you would like to see in a naval game: what kinds of ships, what kinds of weapons they would have, and what kinds of obstacles like islands, occasional typhoons, etc.
It’s signed:
Sincerely,
Michael Morrison
President
(74037,3444)
President. Of two people. The other was Randy Weems, who built Combat Tanks with me. The ad I made for it captioned me the same way.
That number under the signature is a CompuServe ID, the return address on the whole operation. It’s also the first entry in the elec column of our own users table — Randy and I are user IDs 1 and 2, filed ahead of every customer who ever paid us.
There was never a naval game.