Jeremy SAN and The Argonauts
10 min read
The argonauts team
Starglider has made Argonaut famous. Simon Rockman visited the company to find that it’s not resting on its laurels
JEREMY San – Jez to all who know him – « Argonaut software. J. San and the Argonauts. The company now consists of seven programmers and a number of freelancers, but it wasn’t always like that.
Jez started with a Tandy TRS-80 when he was 13, in those days 8k was a lot of ram. He can’t remember what his first Basic program was but everyone in his class at JFS school knew about his machine code joystick reading routine – whether they wanted to or not.
He switched allegiance to the BBC Micro, picking up pocket money working for a local Beeb dealer and working as a freelancer for Acornsoft. Several Acorn games were protected with Argonaut disc protection routines.
Many parents may wish that their children would do something educational with their spare time, like programming, but Jez programmed in school time and left before A levels to join Silversoft, one of the first successful software houses.
There he worked on two projects. Labdis – a labelling disassembler for the BBC Micro. This was launched a couple of times but was never actually produced. The other project was a game based on the Tac-Scan arcade game. “I hadn’t even seen the game”, says Jez, “My boss at Silversoft – Dougie Hern – had seen it once in an arcade and I had to work from his description”. Tac Scan was never finished.
It was while working at Silversoft that the Sinclair QL was launched.
Jez was among the very first people to order this 68008 based wonder machine. He co-wrote a book.
Quantum Theory, on the machine with Fouad Katan and someone called Simon Rockman. Despite being a very, very good book (tongue firmly in cheek) the sales were no great shakes.
It was guided through the mysterious seas of publishing by Jacqui Lyons, who now represents Argonaut. She is an agent who finds programmers or programming teams for software publishers and work for programmers. By applying the rules learnt in the book world Jacqui makes sure that contracts contain provision for things like film rights and makes sure that copyright is correctly assigned. She ensures that programmers are not exploited and they keep their noses to the monitor.
Quantum Theory was published by Century Communications (now Century Hutchinson) a very large book publisher which wanted to move into software publishing. It was for them that Jez and Fouad wrote a scrolling shoot-’em-up called Skyline Attack with graphics by Danny Emmett, who is now an Argonaut programmer.
While Jez disliked the 64 he could see that the Beeb had a limited future. He and Fouad produced the Comm Zromm for the BBC Micro and Demon modem. With his understanding of the two machines Jez acted as a coordinator for Commodore 64 Elite, helping with the conversion. He’d heard of the Amiga. I’d read about it in the American magazine Compute! and can remember reading the specifications out, the conversation interrupted by the dark patches between streetlights as we drove along in his Datsun Cherry. We calculated that a screen resolution of 320 by 200 in 4,096 colours was impossible, the machine would be too ram-hungry. We’d reckoned without HAM.
By the summer of 1985 Jez could see that the future lay with the 68000. He was commissioned by Firebird to produce a game in which you flew a spaceship from planet to planet without any power. The game was to be called Starglider. Jez rented an Apple Macintosh and started work on line drawing routines.
Two new machines loomed on the horizon, the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga. Commodore held a conference for software houses. Jez flew over to see the wonder machine.
“It was wonderful – everyone was so excited. The case was a little dull, but the custom chips could do incredible things. The operating system was a programmers dream – they thought of everything”, said Jez, ecstatic. “Things which had previously only been done in software could now be handled by hardware: Hardware fill, and line drawing, sound described by the waveform, multi-tasking”.
Amiga seems advanced today; it was an amazing look into the future then. The next machine was codenamed Ranger and offered a 68020, hard disc and the chips would be able to magnify sprites in hardware. Ranger became an unfulfilled wish, It was a move up market and Commodore, with a much more commercial eye than that of the designers, elected to cut the price by introducing the A500 (codenamed B52) and to launch a more expandable machine, the A2000.
Jez was the first person in the UK to have an Amiga, and that includes Commodore UK. It is the same A1000 which he uses now. With a converter which produces an American voltage and a number of chip upgrades, it runs all day every day. Additions include a couple of megabytes of ram and a large hard disc.
Unfortunately even the first Amiga landed after the first Ataris. Starglider was first shown at the PCW show in 1985. Il was just a city of towers and a landscape running on an ST, but that was the start of the game we know and love.
Firebird split into two sections with Tony Rainbird taking the 16 bit projects over to Rainbird. The company quote 18 months for taking Starglider from the arrival of the machines to the finished project, but the crowd at Argonaut know that it was over two years before the baby was born.
Starglider was a huge success. Being late, it had caught the market at the perfect time. There was nothing to rival it. Thousands of Amiga owners took on the role of Jaysan, the heroic Noviean as he battled against the evil Hermann Kruud and the Egrons.
The game had changed a bit. All the action took place on Novenia. But that action is fast and furious, Jez wrote and rewrote the graphics routines many times. Obsessed with frame rate, he studied the 3D maths, tweaked and recoded. It is this work which has made Starglider so playable.
Jez and James Follet discussed the plot and tried to make sure that the novella James was writing to go in with the game would capture the atmosphere. James, who wrote the film Who Dares Wins and Earthsearch, contributed a number of ideas to the game, Some – like the powerlines made it to the game, others like a fog descending were rejected.
It was with the profits of Starglider in excess of 100,000 sold worldwide that Jez enlisted the help of the crew at Argonaut. The extra manpower has allowed Argonaut to diversify. It took on contract work and wrote hard disc driving routines for Cumana’s Atari ST drive.
If an army marches on its stomach, a software house marches on ils hardware. Argonaut has a couple of boring IBM PCs. some equally boring STs, a superfast 80386-based PC with a laser printer, and loads of Amigas.
There are A1000s, A2000s, an A500 and even an A500 connected to an A2000. Other machines include an Acorn Risc machine in prototype casing and an Atari Abaq transputer machine. Perhaps most interesting is the 68000 in-circuit emulator. This box replaces the central processor of the Amiga with another computer. It can analyse what the machine is doing, which areas of memory are being written to, and display the contents of registers while the program is running in real time. It can even show what the program was doing during and after a crash. “The emulator is an invaluable debugging tool. It cost £8,000, so we rented it at first, but we found it made bug hunting so easy we decided to buy it”, says Jez.
The men and machines are now working on two major projects.
Starglider II for Rainbird and a secret, unnamed combat flight simulator for Electronic Arts.
On a planet in a solar system not far from Novenia, the Egrons, still licking their wounds after doing battle with Jaysan’s AGAV, have retreated there. They have enslaved the population and regrouped for another attack on Novenia. The Egron’s not-so-secret weapon is a cannon which can blast Novenia from its base.
Jaysan has been sent in a new ship to destroy the cannon. The craft was designed for police patrol work, so while it is capable of using a number of weapons and is very nippy it is not too good for interplanetary travel. To this end it has been stripped of armaments and filled with fuel so that it can cope with the voyage.
Trying to take on a heavily defended Egron cannon without even a simple laser is a mite foolish. Some of the other planets in the solar system are less heavily defended. You need to enlist the help of rebel forces to arm your craft.
You’ll be low on fuel. There are three ways of topping up docking with a refuelling station, drawing radiated power from fuel lines as in Starglider I and by scooping energy from a star, which is hazardous but lucrative.
To arm the craft you have to reach rebel centres. Those which haven’t been overrun by Egrons are often the other side of pirate infested spacelanes. You have to battle your way between planets to reach the resources you need.
When you land on a planet you have to get to different bases. This can take a while, anti the Egron cannon must be stopped. Hallucinogenic fields make normal spacecraft seem strange in an Alice through the looking glass kind of way.
To dodge these perils you can fly under the surface of some planets through narrow tunnels, taking a short cut in the process. The tunnels turn and twist, divide into twos and threes. You will need to keep your wits about you to avoid the sides.
There are further hazards: Iris shaped doors will shut on you unless you time your movements. Barriers need to be blasted and tunnel aliens avoided.
Starglider II is Jaysan’s toughest assignment, with very much more to do than just fly and blast. The sound is excellent: Not only the title music by Dave Lowe, but the clever spot effects. Each alien makes its own noise which is doppler shifted as you approach the first time this has been done in a computer game, adding a dimension to playing Starglider II which makes the game feel more real.
The programming team has followed Jez’s lead in being obsessed with frame rate. The solid graphics have not been allowed to impinge on the gameplay. The new aliens are more complicated and better animated than those in Starglider I. Towers, nicknamed Telcom towers, have multifaceted tops which rotate.
When I visited Argonaut they were experimenting with a patchwork landscape, weighing up the advantages of a better sensation of movement against the reduction in speed. With one programmer arguing for smaller patches which would be slower but look better, one for no patches and Jez wanting big patches. It will be interesting to see what happens.
ADLS — Argonaut Disc Loading System
The lack of a standard disc size for the IBM PC has led to many manufacturers putting both 3.5 inch and 5.25 inch discs in the same box. In a meeting with Jacqui Lyons and Jez, Rainbird boss, Paul Hibbard, suggested that they put both ST and Amiga discs into the same box. Jez came up with the idea that both games could be put on the same disc.
Clever routines were needed to fool the machines into reading different parts of the disc. “Harder on the ST because the disc controller is dumb”. Both versions will use common data files but there will be marked differences when the games are run.
On an ST some routines will be slightly faster due to the higher clock speed. But this will be balanced by the speed improvements which result from using the blitter and sprites. Amiga sound will be very much better, and the colours “that little bit nicer because of the wider palette.” according to Chris. The combined format means that more shops will be willing to stock the software and that the price will be the same for both machines. It will confuse the chart no end.
The programming team
JEZ SAN :
Managing Director at 21. in addition to writing and designing ultra-fast graphics and maths routines, Jez handles all the negotiations with outside companies and keeps things running smoothly. Jez keeps an eye on the market and tests all rival flight simulators.
RICHARD CLUCAS :
As the senior programmer Richard coordinates projects. He makes sure that subroutines written by different programmers will work together within the finished program. This task involves sharing out the ram, restricting the amount each programmer is allowed tn use.
DANNY EMMETT :
is part time. A physics student at Imperial College he designed the alien graphics and the animation formulae.
PAUL GOMM :
Writes the fundamental graphics routines. These are the building blocks for the whole game. His code has to run as fast as possible to make the game playable.
CHRIS HUMPHRIES :
An Atari 800 expert Chris understands the Amiga’s custom chips. His forte is writing sound routines. He is responsible for the EA game artwork, and the off-planet sequences in Starglider II.
PETER WARNES :
Is the EA game strategy and gameplay man. In addition to writing flight simulation and 3D maths routines, he is up to date with weapons technology and responsible for making sure the game is both accurate and playable.
TIM WATSON :
Is the flight dynamic expert. A spaceship may not have to mimic a real plane but you can’t go around rewriting Newtonian laws even on Novenia. He is an IBM PC programmer.
ALISTER PERROT :
Looks after the strategy element within Star glider II. A brilliantly programmed game will flop if it is boring. Al has ensured that this isn ‘t the case.
Source : AMIGA COMPUTING
Source of information – AMIGA Computing of June 1988 – Download of the magazine below:
