about kryton9

[kryton9]

This has been lots of fun reading your guys stories the last 2 days and I finally got some time tonight to write about myself.

This is already my fourth rewrite as my post just got too long. I decided I need to do most of it in an outline form to keep it short :)

My name is Kent Sarikaya and I am 51 years old.
I studied and graduated in Architecture, but during studies I took a Fortran class and was hooked on programming. We used punched cards, took them to the data center and gave them to the operators to run when it was our turn. We were told to come back the next day to pick up our printed output. It was so cool.

Computers:
Commodore Vic 20 learned to program on this great computer.
Timex Sinclair 1000
Commodore 64 - developed Graphic Grid 64 a graphics worksheet for graphics coding.
Texas Instruments 99/4A with speech synthesis
Then worked on Ohio Scientific Mutil-User Computer in MS-BASIC , first business programming, then developed a medical package for it with a common interface, help and status area all in a text based environment.
Then got into Desktop publishing with an Apple Macintosh. Did many political campaign and business mailings artwork.
Programmed games for my Nephew and his friends in Hypercard.
My friend gave me his old notebook computer, an IBM clone and then that is when I started to learn C. At this time I also picked up a book on Pascal for the Macintosh.
Then the company that I worked at that had the Ohio Scientific computer then switched to PC's. I was asked to come in and develop applications to port the 3 businesses they were doing at the time to PC's. I picked Borland's Paradox and it was really fun developing all those apps. At that time my Boss got involved with Kent State University and an exchange program they had with Russia. So he sponsored a Russian Professor and it was such a joy to work with such a super smart person. He was the youngest Tenured Professor in Russia at the time. We made a great team and went many sleepless days and nights working together.

I then got an opportunity to move to South Carolina and the ocean, by this time I was 35 and I always wanted to live by the ocean so I moved.
The beach community I lived in had many small shops, very few of them were computerized, I thought, wow great I can build and sell computers and support them. But as I found out, these small shops were not computerized for a reason... so work was slim, but there were enough computerized businesses that I freelanced. Also during this time I started getting interested in investments and the stock market. So I wrote a program in C to help decide when to buy and sell stocks. I shared my idea with 2 close friends who too where interested in becoming investors and they were both very sharp people. So together we started to invest and had some good luck and some not good luck, but the program worked and made it easy to decide when to sell. I became hooked on being a day trader. It is nerve racking but also very very exciting.

I then moved back to Ohio as my Nephew was growing up and I was missing him too much and also my Mother needed me around. So it was fun moving back to Ohio. I got into building computers and programming in Visual Basic, also Paradox stuff for my old Boss when he needed things. I also rekindled my love for model rocketry and also hooked up with friends that I made music together in earlier years, never in a band as too shy :) Had great fun gaming and having Lan Parties with my Nephew and his friends. Rocketing was getting more and more interesting as we came up with more wild designs.

Then we formed a company named Hardwired. We made a proposition to a Lan Party hosting company to go into their stores and sell Hardware and run the stores for them. It was a bold proposal as it would allow us into prime location in a couple of states with hardly any start up money. One of the partners really liked our proposal, but the other partner was against it and without both oK'ing the deal it was dead.
Right about this time I lost my Mother, my Nephew went off to College and my Dad needed me in Florida as he lost his vision enough not to be able to drive. So I am currently in Florida.

I have been lucky to live in some beautiful states. The South has really great wild life and really friendly people, I just love that. I sold everything and drove to Florida and then my health went really bad. It was lucky I was in an area with a great hospital and staff. They saved me from death. I now have what is called Congestive Heart Failure. It is something you live with and just need to watch what I do, eat otherwise I feel great. Before coming to Florida I developed my first 3d game using DarkBasic Pro, It as a drag racing game. I made everything for the game it was just incredible fun to work on.

My first year in Florida I got into making Levels for Unreal Tournament 2004. I also got back into making music and 3d modeling. I decided that I loved working on making games and the tools for games. The big problem was which language. In the search I came across thinBasic via The Coding Monkey's Forum.

And since coming here, I realize I still have so much to learn to make the kind of game I would like. So many tools to develop, but what better community could anyone ask for?

[Michael Hartlef]

Hi Kryton,

thanks for the info. I'm sad that your mom is allready gone. I hope she's in a better place now. I wish you the best time with your dad.

Your drag racing game sounds interesting. Is it for download somewhere?

Best wishes
Michael

[Petr Schreiber]

Thanks Kent,

lot of things I did not know :)
I would also appreciate download of your dragracing game !

Such a movements across country, that had to be adventurous.
Was your TI machine this one (http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html) ? Looks pretty cool.


Thanks,
Petr

[kryton9]

Mike, thanks for the well wishes for my Mom. She was a creative, funny and very loving person. It is wonderful how even though you lose someone you love so much, that they are never gone. They truly are with you forever. It is very comforting that it is this way.

My drag racing game is not available for download yet. I never finished it all the way, that is with a nice splash screen and help. I will put it up this weekend for download since you guys are interested. It is still pretty fun to play I think, as it is easy to learn but hard to get perfect score. In fact, no one has done a perfect. Well more later on it when I put it up.

Petr, yes that was my TI-99/4A and to have a computer that could speak was really wild stuff.

[kryton9]

Well, I found a copy of the game that still works. I developed this when I had a 21 inch analog monitor and I hard coded the screen size in. So it might not run on all computers.

The screen shot shows my best ever score on it and I will use this picture to go over what you see and how the game works.

The vertical circles on the right side of the dashboard show your powerup history for that race.

The 4x5 grid of circles on the left side of the dashboard show
the history for each race. So the very bottom row is the first race series. You need to win 3 out of 5 races to progress to the next level of racing. Each level the cars go a lot faster and hence harder.
The center display is your speed, time and average speed over the run.

The story is as following: Kom Puda was the best racing car driver the world had ever known. He won every race he entered and was champion in all the major race events in the world. He could see that if he went on racing, he might kill the sport he loved. Fans might lose interest as no one could beat him, so he retired from racing and retreated to a secret hide away where he and his team still pursue their dream of racing and perfecting the cars.

Each year Kom Puda invites that years current champion for head to head racing, the results are kept secret from the world and is just for the men and their teams. This is us, the current world champion, our name is Yuso Swift.

Since Kom is the best ever, his very clever crew analyzes the current champions performance in all races that he raced in the circuits and sets up a handicap system to put both drivers on equal playing field, this is like how handicapping works in Golf. That is we Yuso Swift get powerups where as Kom Puda does not. The powerups equalize both racers and their cars. So taking away Kom's incredible natural skills and his incredible cars put out by his team we are on even ground.

When you want to race, you press D for drive, the race starts. Your job is to get as many green powerups as you can without crashing into Kom's car.

You use the right and left arrow to steer your car. Whatever you do, do not go off of the race track. It is better to go over a red powerup which slows you down than to go off of the track. Going off the track is the biggest no no.

The second is avoiding crashing into Kom. This will set you back and pretty much making that race hard to win. Not impossible, but very hard.

The other thing is always hit a powerup even if red. If you miss hitting a powerup, you get no more for that race and pretty much can't win.

So green is best to go for. Yellow is Ok, Red try to avoid, but better to hit than miss getting powerups.

You can see how you are doing against Kom by seeing live footage of the race on the big screens along the raceway.

When the race ends, you can move your car left or right (arrow keys) to see how much you or Kom won or lost.

At the end of the race, press S to stop your engine and this was going to be to service the car, but I never put that in. Then press R to go to the next Race. Press D to Drive the race. Left and Right arrow to steer.

It is really easy, but the challenge is to get a perfect score, which is winning 12 races in a row, has yet to be done by me or my friends that played it.

Originally each level or racing was going to have another car model and interior, but never got to it. So just imagine that in the service the engines are upgraded etc.

Hope it runs for you. Once you unrar the file, it should be a single executeable with all media self contained.

I spent at least 2 to 3 days working on the sounds. I think it adds to the excitment.

You can press S during the race to stop it and just press D again to continue in case of a phone call or something.

Hope it runs for you guys and you enjoy it. I did this back in 2004 while in Ohio.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hey,

this is fantastic game!
I was never interested in dragraces, but this game is really good, very emotional ( must-get-that-green-ball ).
Very nice game system and presentation !


Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

Hi Kent, I will check later.

Fixed resolution? Which one as my Notebook doesn't get higher than 1024x768.

[Petr Schreiber]

Mike,

I have 1280x1024 which is really not 21" parameters, but it ran ok.
I think this game is redoable in thinBASIC, so when in troubles ... ;)


Petr

[kryton9]

Thanks Petr, I couldn't remember the resolution, so glad you figure it out.
I used to have programming keys in it to look around while driving, Kom used to be animated, I can't remember if he still is. I tried the keys I thought I might have used, but none worked, so I must have removed them in this version.

But glad you liked it. I've learned a lot since making that game, but still not what all I want for the next game project.