This month on Open Apple, we sit down with legendary Apple II programmer, Bill Budge. In addition to being an icon of Apple II gaming and graphics, he is the number-one-requested guest by listeners of the show. Mike and Quinn are very excited he was able to make some time to talk to them, and hope you agree it was worth the effort. Bill is, of course, the author of such seminal classics as Raster Blaster, Pinball Construction Set, and MousePaint. He was an influential force in the golden years of Electronic Arts, and did many good works with early Apple as well.

After chatting with Bill, Mike and Quinn chew the fat about Soviet Apple II clones, slowing down the IIc Plus, and documenting rare II models. Meanwhile, Quinn constructs an impromptu sound studio in a conference room, and Mike waxes nostalgic about harpsichords. Also, this episode marks the most Apple III references snuck in to date. Mike even manages to goad the guest into bringing it up. Don’t miss Quinn struggling to remember the word “Dacta”, and Mike taking a cheap shot at Elevator Action.

A quick update to Quinn’s Floppy Emu Model B review- since this was recorded, Steve has updated the firmware so it now remembers the last disk image you used.

Bill Budge will be making an appearance at GDC 2013 to give a “Classic Postmortem” on his hit software title Pinball Construction Set.  From the GDC 2013 news item:

… Bill Budge, father of the seminal Pinball Construction Set will lay out one of the earliest examples of an in-game editor – a title that game developer legend Will Wright has credited as a key influence on the simulation games that launched him to stardom

…

Published in 1983 by Electronic Arts, Pinball Construction Set created a new genre in video games that encouraged user generated content where players could trade personalized content via floppy disk. The game’s editor allowed players to construct their own virtual pinball tables, and players could save these tables to disk and trade them with friends.

The editor’s clean and simple interface even served as inspiration to designs behind SimCity six years later – The Sims creator Will Wright cited Pinball Construction Set as his key inspiration while speaking on the GDC 2012 panel “Forgotten Tales Remembered.” Bill Budge, the father of the seminal Construction Set entry, will lay out the blueprints for how he created his own game and one of the earliest examples of an in-game editor.

This should go nicely with Budge’s release of the PBC source code earlier this week.

GDC 2013 is scheduled to take place March 25 – 29, 2013 in San Francisco.  Registration and travel information can be found here.

Bill Budge has posted to github the source code to his seminal hit Pinball Construction Set, according to this Y-Combinator item.  Some sharp eyes in the comments thread noticed that although the code is for the Atari 800 version of the program, it was developed on an Apple II, a common practice in those days and made easy by the fact that both platforms use a 6502 processor.  According to one of Bill’s recent tweets: “The Atari 800 had a raster mode that was very similar to the Apple II Hi-res graphics. The code had minimal differences.”

Bill has also tweeted that he intends to go through and comment the code, which you can find here.

(HT: Sean Fahey, image source: The Digital Antiquarian)