Realtime Games Software

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Realtime Games Software[1] was a video game development company founded in Leeds, United Kingdom on May 8th 1984 by Ian Oliver[2][3], Andrew Onions and Graeme Baird. It was the very first third-party software developer hired by Sega of America, for developing games, expecially for porting the PC version of M-1 Abrams Battle Tank to his 16-bit console (Realtime Games Software founders had been making games since college[4][5] having developed a wireframe tank simullation called 3D Tank Duel[5] for ZX Spectrum based on the Atari arcade game Battlezone). It was during the development of M-1 Abrams Battle Tank, that Ian Oliver, facing dificulties in porting the PC version of the game to the Mega Drive (according to Ian Oliver's testimony in the book Playing at the Next Level: A History of American Sega Games, his main problem was the fact that the PC version of the game had been coded in C and there wasn't a way to port it over with the cartridge size and RAM available), created the command-line assembler SNASM68K (the original SNasm developed by SN Systems, was at the time licensed[6] to and already being sold by Ian Oliver's Cross Products for the Atari ST and Amiga computers, however, it needed some modification for use with the Mega Drive, which overall wasn't much different from an Atari ST computer, save for a lack of RAM for screen buffering) which made porting games more easier and gave developers high speed download to target machines and remote debugging (replacing developers reliance on the limited[7] PDS Programmers Development System[8], which was originally created for computers like the Amstrad CPC, C64, MSX, ZX Spectrum and Atari ST[9] and was pratically obsolete, however, this was not a problem when Realtimes's founders adapted it for being used on a Apple Macintosh, despite not having been made for this computer when they developed the Macintosh version of the video game Carrier Command[10], in 1988), thus expanding his relationship with Sega, which turned out to be the largest costumer of Cross Products, a company founded by Ian Oliver in 1989[5] that Sega ended up buying in 1994[5], as part of his ongoing development tools strategy at the time.

Realtime Games Software was hired by Sega for two projects, though only M-1 Abrams Battle Tank would see completion. The other, a racing game based on 70's police show Streets of San Francisco[11] was cancelled because developers couldn't get the frame rate to a level high enough to make it enjoyable. The game was 75% complete when it was discarded for not meeting Realtimes's standards for quality.

Softography

Mega Drive

References

  1. ↑ http://www.crashonline.org.uk/29/realtime.htm
  2. ↑ http://www.carriercommand.com/newweb/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ian_oliver_80s_logo.jpg
  3. ↑ http://www.carriercommand.com/newweb/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ian_oliver_now_spectrum_logo.jpg
  4. ↑ Interview: Ian Oliver (2012-05-10) by Bohemia Interactive
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Interview: Ian Oliver (1998-01) by World of Stuart
  6. ↑ http://www.snsys.com:80/snsys.htm (Wayback Machine: 1997-07-09 12:39)
  7. ↑ http://birdsanctuary.co.uk/carrier-command/2/
  8. ↑ http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/PDS_development_system
  9. ↑ http://trastero.speccy.org/cosas/JL/PDS/Introduccion.html
  10. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Command
  11. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Streets_of_San_Francisco
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