| Hit Squad |
Chris Bourne talks to high-octane programmer Steve Kelly
ASK MOST PEOPLE about Aintree and they will probably tell you how they almost bet on Lucky Dancer in the Grand National. Ask Steve Kelly of Psion Software and he will tell you the story of his back.
Kelly is from Warrington, where Roy Jenkins lost a famous by-election and Vladivar makes vodka. With his long hair and drainpipe jeans he looks like the boy next door, the one your parents said would never amount to anything. He left school at 16 and eventually obtained a job lifting heavy boxes. He might still be lifting them had he not injured his back at work.
When he left hospital, manual work was not an option and it was during a Manpower Services Commission rehabilitation course at Aintree that Kelly first had contact with computers - in the form of the ZX-81. He is full of gratitude to the people at Aintree. "It was the best therapy I could have. They were really great people."
After he finished the course, he joined a Government TOPS course in computer programming, learning the training language PL1. It was during the course that he bought his ZX-81 and began programming it.
"I liked playing arcade games like Pac-man but there were no games for the ZX-81. I was learning Z-80 machine code programming from articles in Sinclair User. Instead of making the screen go black all over and things like that, I thought why not write a game?"
Kelly managed to sell some of those early games, such as his version of Pacman, to Microgen, but at that stage he was still thinking in terms of using his programming skills in a business career.
"I expected to go into business after the TOPS course but nobody wanted me. I lacked the qualifications. You need A levels and a degree and an IQ of nine million," he says.
David Potter of Psion, on the other hand, was not interested in A levels and the like. Kelly says: "I wasn't trained but I thought I would have a go. I was interviewed on the Tuesday and the next Sunday Potter offered me the job. After two-and-a-half years out of work it was incredible."
Kelly joined Psion in October, 1982 when the company was putting the finishing touches to Flight Simulation. The company had been around for some time, linked closely to Sinclair Research, with which it had a deal. Any programs written by Psion for a Sinclair machine are first offered to Sinclair to be marketed under the Sinclair name. So far, Sinclair has not refused any of its products.
Kelly wrote the explosions for Flight Simulation but his big personal success at Psion came with Chequered Flag, the Formula One racing simulation.
"Potter had the idea on an aircraft and thought it would make a great game for the Spectrum," he says. He thrashed out the idea with Charles Davies and they went to Kelly. They told him they wanted a car race game with 3D graphics like those in Flight Simulation, with the car controls at the bottom of the screen. Kelly says he would have liked to have had other cars to race against in the game but that would have made it more of an arcade game and less of a realistic simulation. It was obviously impossible for the team to drive Formula One cars round Brands Hatch but they hit on the idea of power curves to simulate engine performance. Programmer Steve Townsend designed the engine and, as speed of operation was the priority, the program used tables of data linking gears, speed and engine revolutions rather than set formulae which the computer would have had to work out every time the controls were altered.
Kelly attributes much of the success of the game to the constant revisions made during programming. They did the road sections three times and were still not satisfied.
Kelly is scathing about companies which produce games without taking such care to have each stage exactly right. "Companies produce games which are not as good as they could be. Some clearly do not change halfway through. I see many games getting a lot of mouth and I am sure we could do better."
Apart from his new-found love of motor racing, Kelly is a keen photographer and regards himself as a connoisseur of bitter and tea. He also likes listening to music. "I like Killing Joke, the Sex Pistols, Tangerine Dream and the Police." He also misses his roots - "It's good up North. I miss Warrington, I always look forward to going back home." He also likes playing arcade games but apart from a few early games which Sinclair wanted for the launch of the Spectrum, Psion has so far preferred to concentrate on simulations and what Kelly calls more refined games.
"We have never really gone into arcade games, mainly because they have to be very good to get anywhere. Jet Set Willy and the Ultimate stuff has set an amazing precedent. If you produce an arcade game you have to produce quickly. We do not have the time to do it at the moment.
"Potter always wanted something extra. When Flight Simulation appeared there was nothing like it - the same with VU-3D and Scrabble. With an arcade game you can always say 'there is something like that, it is not original'".
The game on which Kelly and Psion are working at present is a simulation of a tennis match. The graphics I saw were impressive, with very realistic tennis strokes. According to Kelly, the main difficulty is how to move a player round the screen and also specify particular types of shot with a single joystick.
The background picture of the tennis court is most attractive and instantly recognisable to Wimbledon enthusiasts. Kelly says the company would like to call the game Wimbledon rather than Tennis, but the All England Club which stages the tournament is not enthusiastic about having its august name linked to a computer game, although it assisted by providing action photographs.
He was coy as to whether Psion plans to write games for the QL but said there were ideas floating around.
He does think the machine would be ideal for an adventure game. "I would love to write one and the QL is the machine for an adventure. With two Microdrives and 128K of RAM, you don't need other attributes for an adventure but so far as Psion writing an adventure goes, I do not know."
His enthusiasm for the QL seems to have left his admiration of the Spectrum undimmed.
"It is perfect as a games machine. People talk about buying programs for the Atari costing £29 and say 'but they are better than the Spectrum games'. I do not think that is true nowadays. You can get just as good a program for the Spectrum. Atari has a tennis game but ours will be as good as that."
He enjoys programming for the Spectrum Z-80 processor but he has a few criticisms of the Sinclair implementation.
"It has a fantastic instruction set but why did Sinclair do the screen the way he did? I will never forgive him. It has a crazy screen organisation which makes my job difficult so far as speed is concerned. The sound is sickening as well but I stay away from the hardware," he says.
Kelly feels lucky to have entered the software industry when he did. He thinks the days of the individual games designer are over. At Psion he uses a Digital VAX for all the games programming and says games of today's complexity and quality could not be programmed sitting at home on a Spectrum.
He believes the idea of a generation of children making millions with their computer skills is a myth. "I don't know much about how it affects children in schools but I know a kid who had a computer for Christmas and he spent the whole time in front of the television with it. It might be like any toy. You get something for Christmas, you huddle in a corner with it and play with it for ages, then leave it."
According to Kelly, parents are becoming much more involved than the children for whom the machines were bought.
"I know another kid who had a Spectrum for his birthday but he has not even attempted to learn programming. He has just bought a few games but his father is getting really into it. It seems to be the adults who are interested in learning. I suppose the kids get a bellyful at school."
Kelly hopes young people get a break like he did.
"Everything is getting multi-multi nowadays and the little person may be left out of it more but I think those people may be able to prove themselves anyway. They should still be able to go to a big company with a program and say 'Look what I've done' and the managing director will be impressed," he says.
Kelly obviously enjoys working for Psion and is full of praise for his employers. Was there a glimmer of regret at having turned professional and perhaps lost some of the fun of playing games?
"I have a Spectrum at home but I cannot handle playing it at night now. I used to play it a great deal - games like Manic Miner - but unless it is absolutely necessary I avoid touching it at home," he says.
Kelly has gone a long way from Warrington in the last three years. As far as losing his hobby is concerned, he says it is a fair swap.