Steve Wetherill

"Why don't you come over to the Odin office and see what we're up to with this Nodes of Yesod game?" said Stoo Fotheringham. And so I did. Nodes of Yesod "Welcome to Nodes of Yesod, from the Odin Computer Graphics team!" As I read that, I hear the Nodes of Yesod music (by Fred Gray) start to play in my head! When I started at Odin, the game Nodes of Yesod was already underway, plenty of the cool graphics (Astro Charlie, etc) had been created, and there was a playable demo (on Spectrum, possibly on C64) already. I have an indelible memory of that somersault animation on that bright blue moon's surface. I think Marc (Dawson now Wilding) was working on the title Stairways on C64 (released under the Thor label), which was actually the name of a heavy metal club we frequented in Birkenhead. I'm pretty sure Marc cranked the game out very quickly, and if nothing e...

Software Projects : 1984

January 23, 2022

SOFTWARE PROJECTS The first games I developed were for a British computer system produced by the ubiquitous (if you're British, anyway) Amstrad plc : the Amstrad CPC-464. The games were " Manic Miner " and " Jet Set Willy ", both "ports" from the original Sinclair Spectrum versions. I had spent the second part of 1983 without gainful employment after discontinuing my Electronics & Electrical Engineering studies at Manchester University after the second year. I was putting the Z80 programming I'd learned at college to use in an attempt to create machine language games on the Spectrum. I had obtained the Spectrum initially to pursue my interests in electronic music (it was easy to cobble various hardware bits onto the Spectrum expansion port). Still, the availability of games for the system was too tempting, and inevitably, I ended up spending more time playing games, disassembling games, etc. I burned many, many midnight hours poking away at th...

Chasing the raster on the ZX Spectrum in Sidewize

February 20, 2022

How did Sidewize accomplish the "raster-chasing" required to update the display 50 times per second? Read on! [note: jump down to The Results to see the videos, otherwise let's dive in!] Twitter user Ville Krumlinde mentioned in a Twitter comment that he had captured the screen draw update sequence for a number of Spectrum games and recorded the updates to video. He mentioned that he had hacked an existing Spectrum emulator to do this, without going into specifics. This got me thinking about how I might do that for the "raster-chasing" games I've developed, specifically Sidewize and Crosswize. I do have my own Spectrum emulator, it runs on Windows and Pocket PC (and PalmOS, but that is another story). It has not seen the light of day for over 15 years (and my Windows-foo is rusty), so the prospect of compiling it again was a bit off-putting. Then it occurred to me that the Spectrum emulator I have been using for the ZX Spectrum Next version of Nodes of Ye...

Nodes of Yesod : ZX Spectrum Next : Update #4

May 25, 2022

A Big Change Of Plans! Astro Charlie has a close encounter If you have read my previous updates, you'll know that Nodes of Yesod for the Speccy Next is based on a C codebase. I've discussed details of my progress in that direction in previous posts, tool selection, and various other considerations. I have to share with you that I've had a rethink and there's a big change of plans! As I intend to make this version of Nodes freely available, and since it follows that there's no direct benefit to me financially, building the game has to be a fun and enjoyable endeavor. While I've enjoyed certain aspects of getting a C codebase to compile and run on the Next, I've had a few nagging doubts. C was always going to be a 'heavy' way to do things on an 8-bit Z80 (even with a faster clock), and paging code in and out of 8K or 16K banks does not make things less complicated; however, more than that, I need to personally get something out of this, it needs to be ...

Odin Computer Graphics Part Two : 1986 - 1987

February 09, 2022

Continued from part one . That Telecomsoft Deal On the strength of the commercial success of Nodes of Yesod and Robin of the Wood, Odin Managing Director Paul McKenna had convinced British Telecom (in the shape of Telecomsoft , aka Firebird - I've used the names interchangeably in this post) to pay us a (middle, UK pounds) six-figure fee in return for 10 games (or equivalents, with ports counting as half a game), which were to be delivered over the space of 1 year. It was a lucrative deal for us, but very aggressive obviously. That's about all there is to say about this deal right now, but it was to flavor just about everything Odin did from this point out. Heartland Spectrum Notch number one for Firebird. Heartland was created by Colin Grunes (who had done the animation for Astro Charlie in Nodes) and myself, with others pitching in here and there. The gameplay was very simple, and I su...

Electronic Arts UK : 1992 - 1993

April 07, 2024

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! John Betjeman, 1937 After the closure of Eldritch The Cat and after surviving the development of Under Pressure, I interviewed at Electronic Arts UK in Langley (near Slough), where I ultimately started in January 1992 as "Senior Programmer,” reporting to Director of Development Joss Ellis. I was to be responsible for all internal software development; the appropriate title would follow, but for now, EA had a vacancy for a senior programmer, so a senior programmer I was. The internal development team was small, just myself, Stefan Walker (we meet again!), who was working on LHX Amiga, and Gary Roberts, who was working on the Amiga Port of John Madden Football. Since I was a senior programmer, I had to do some senior-programmering, and it was determined that the bestest senior-programmering I could do would be a Sega Genesis port of the Amiga game, "Risky Woods." I was offered the opportunity to work on the FLOPS game, but I could...

Eldritch The Cat Mk III : 1990 - 1991

March 03, 2024

Part 3 of the Eldritch The Cat story. Parts 1 & 2 are here and here . Jim Savage, Mark McCubbin, Dave Colclough, Steve Wetherill, Martin Calvert, Dave Collins New Digs Mark McCubbin had found himself an office in the Brunswick Docks, part of Liverpool's docklands. The docklands saw new life following the significant renovations undertaken in the Albert Dock, close to Liverpool's city center. The renovated Brunswick Dock, further away from the city center, was divided into affordable office space. Mark's office was tiny and inexpensive, and it got us thinking: there are other, larger offices in the Brunswick complex; perhaps we could join forces and share a larger office space? And so it came to be that Eldritch The Cat moved out of my house to a new office, a windowless room in an otherwise decent building that was once an ancillary part of Brunswick Dock: Century Building Section 5, Brunswick Business Park, Tower Street, Brunswick Dock, Liverpool 3. And Then ...

Eldritch The Cat Mk I : 1988 - 1989

March 18, 2022

Steve Wetherill and Marc Wilding, the Eldritch Cats Eldritch The Cat Mark I After Odin , Marc Wilding contracted with Ocean to create the Amiga & Atari ST versions of the Army Moves game. Next, he successfully pitched Hewson Consultants with an original game of his design called Astaroth for the 16-bit platforms. It was while Marc was completing Astaroth and after I had left Denton Designs that he and I decided to set out together and form the Eldritch The Cat dev studio. Initially, we worked out of my house on Crompton Drive in Croxteth Park, Liverpool 12 , with graphics work contracted out. Marc brought Astaroth in under the Eldritch umbrella, and the next task was to find a project for me. Projectyle Projectyle During that initial period at Eldritch, I used the experience gained while creating the scrolling tech on Sidewize and Crosswize, coupled with the experience gained at Denton's building the Gargantuan prototypes, to create a demo showing smooth, multidirectional scr...

Westwood Studios Part 1 : 1993 : A Barnsley lad in Las Vegas

August 05, 2024

In December 1993, just before Christmas, we arrived in Las Vegas after a flight from Heathrow with a connection in Seattle. Taking time off from my job at Electronic Arts UK , Elsbeth and I were visiting my former business partner from Eldritch The Cat Ltd , Mark McCubbin. Mark had moved to Las Vegas earlier that year to work at Westwood Studios on games like Hand of Fate and Lands of Lore . He would kindly host us in his apartment for the duration of our visit. While the main purpose of our trip was to visit Mark, see Las Vegas, and attend Winter CES, I also had a tentative interview for an engineering leadership role at Westwood Studios. Although this wasn’t the primary reason for our visit, I was both excited and nervous about the opportunity. By the time we had collected our bags in McCarran (now Harry Reid) airport it was already dark, past 10:00PM. Mark collected us at the airport in his Chrysler LeBaron and suggested, “Let’s go to Walmart and get some bedding,” and so we did ...

The Making of Heartland for the Sinclair Spectrum

January 09, 2022

Note: this article expands upon material I provided for the RetroGamer #129 article on Heartland. In 1986, Odin Computer Graphics Ltd published the game “ Heartland ” for 8-bit platforms such as the Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC. Colin Grunes was responsible for art, level design & background lore. I did the coding on the Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions and contributed to gameplay design. Keith Robinson coded the Commodore 64 version. Initial Development Heartland development was commenced around the time of the Odin deal with TelecomSoft to create 10 new games, and Heartland was the first title released under that deal. As it happened, Odin moved office in the middle of the development of Heartland, though it was not a very big move (it was across the courtyard in Canning Place to another unit – the old Bug Byte office, as it happens). The new office was much bigger – we needed the space for ...