Legacy Work
1986-1994
My first company, Locatha Industries, Inc., was so named after a character from the Dungeons & Dragons™ campaign I played as a child. At that time I was captivated by the movie War Games and deep into the BBS (Bulletin Board System) world. I ran a BBS named “Hall of Bones BBS” based on the popular Wayne Bell WWIV BBS software. I coded in Borland Pascal and C, at that time, and loved writing Doors. Doors were to the BBS industry what we would call today plug-ins, add-ins, or even a phone app. I wrote games for Mustang Software, PCBoard, Teleguard, WWIV, and a dozen other popular BBS software packages. Here is a list of the games I made for BBS’s and some screen shots. Please bare in mind that VGA (256 colors) had just come out, so the normal was 16 color screens.
In 1992, while building my second company DGI (Digital Graphics, Inc.), we made such an impact on the BBS industry that the Florida Times Union sent a reporter down to find out what was going on. Yes, that is me on the right with long hair. 😀
Battle Grid
Battle Grid was a 2 to 5 player vs player game where you tried to control a grid with your mechs and blow up the other player. It was fast paced turn by turn with some basic economics and mech enhancements.
Fields of Battle
Fields of Battle was a 2 to 5 player vs player turn by turn game. The rules were principally based on the Axis and Allies ™ board game with some variations on technology, units, and more importantly maps. The game offered the ability for players to build their own maps and add them to the game to keep strategies new and exciting. You organized troops, tanks, subs, battle ships, troop carriers, and air units to conquer territory. Territories provided income and factories allowed you to build more units. Technology was a huge part of the strategy of the game, but was a risk to both unit production and resources. This was my favorite one of my games.
Dark Harvest
Dark Harvest was my flagship product. It was a full 3D ray-cast real time fantasy adventure game on BBS’s using 320x200x256 graphics. At the time, BBS’s were largely ANSI (text and color) based. Unfortunately, it has been so long, I no longer have screen shots. There is a rogue group still playing the Locatha games on Telnet. If anyone out there can grab some screen shots and send them to me, that would be greatly appreciated.
Other Games
My other games were more of the common variety, but all graphical: Black Jack, Concentration, GridLock (A Tron Cycles™ clone), GunShip (arcade shooter), Hangman, Metal Worlds (Side Scroller), Milos Hi/Los (card game), Poker, Private Eyes (Graphical Clue “Who Done It”), Slotris (Tetris Clone), Slayers (Graphical version of L.O.R.D.), Syndicate (Hacker Simulation), eChess, Joust, and TOAG (Ishido clone).
DDO-F/X
DDO-F/X was a scripting language I developed to allow BBS’s to have full graphical interface. You could consider it a precursor to HTML, Javascript, and CSS today. My terminal program “LI-TERM” supported it. It stood for Digital Design Online Effects Language. It allowed the controlling of sprits, music tracks, sound effects, event driven architecture, 3D ray-casting, and more. Unfortunately, it was released in 1994, about a year before the internet hit the scene and wiped out the BBS.
