Development
The game was designed and programmed by Peter Irvin (author of Starship Command, a space shoot-em-up with an innovative control system) and Jeremy Smith (author of Thrust, a game based on cave exploration with a simpler physics model). Jeremy Smith died in an accident several years after Exile was published and it is his last known game. William Reeve executed preliminary conversions of the earlier 8-bit versions to the Amiga and Atari ST. These were then upgraded and completed by Peter Irvin and Jeremy Smith. Tony Cox did a preliminary conversion of the game from the Amiga to Amiga CD32. Paul Docherty was involved in the graphics for the Commodore 64 version and Herman Serrano created some of the artwork used in the game and manual. Henry Jackson composed the title music for the Amiga and Atari ST versions and Paddy Colohan remixed this for the CD32 release.
Due to the limited memory of 8-bit computers, the large subterranean world is procedurally generated. This is achieved using a compact but highly tuned pseudorandom process with a fixed seed number to generate the majority of the caverns and tunnels - augmented with a few custom-defined areas. The later Amiga and Atari ST release use a more conventional tiled map to allow greater customisation and variation in the landscape.
Read more about this topic: Exile (1988 video game)
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)
“I’ve always been impressed by the different paths babies take in their physical development on the way to walking. It’s rare to see a behavior that starts out with such wide natural variation, yet becomes so uniform after only a few months.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will later serve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)