Calvin Allett

Calvin Allett

AKA

BitaByte Software
BaBS

Biography

Started off programming the odd little demo or game, once I had a few disks full of stuff I was pleased to get some stuff on Fred disk mag.

Most notable programs that were on Fred were NotePad (Fred 36), a very fully featured word processor written entirely in SAM Basic, and then a few months later the re-written and much faster NotePrint which added the ability to add lines, pictures and different fonts to a document, admittedly with the loss of the four documents in memory feature.

Also wrote a few articles for FRED, and had Directory Manager on one of the last issues of Outlet magazine.

When games and applications were becoming too big to be included in FRED I started up Search: “BitaByte Disk Magazine”, issue one was compiled and written almost entirely by me, and issue 2 was done before I started trying to sell it. Sales were low, at about the 15-20 mark, as most famous mags wouldn't advertise it for me, but when Outlet featured a text ad for issue 4 featuring the massive 200K game Lemming Attack sales picked up and with Arcadia Disk Mag kindly featuring a demo of Lemming Attack in their issue 6 things improved again :)

Issue 5 was probably the best, as the code and programs were getting more complicated, with full screen scrollers in basic, a little Sphera multiple layer shooter and a demo of a game called Tomato Antix. the main menu being very nice, even if it did run at just 3 fps, lol

Issue 6 was never finished as I received an Amiga to start converting NotePad over.

Some SAM video's at: http://www.youtube.com/yaKC

Where are they now?

Still coding on SAM, 15 years after I first started.

Working on two games :-

Tomato Antics, a totally revamped version of the original 1992 demo. running at 35-45 fps and looking much better.

Jimf n Oobs Go Whack - an arcade adventure platformer in a similar mould to the Dizzy games, with nearly 150 frames of animation on the main character Jimf, comedy coming from his faithful sidekick Oobs and the job of kidnapping sheep to get on with. set in the 1600s yet Jimf `n Oobs are aliens.