This page is basically my game design diary. It goes from my starts till my last releases. It's mostly for personal usage so I can have an overview of my work but people who are interested in what I do might enjoy reading it. It will be updated with my every new release or important event.

PROLOGUE(My starts, before first KENTAURI releases):
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QBasic was the only programming language I knew to use, back in the late nineteens, before I got online. QBasic 1.1 came with MS-DOS 6.22 I had on my harddisk and using some books from my informatic classes I was able to learn the basics. I liked the language's semantic right away. I was in contact with some other languages, like C++ and Turbo Pascal, but I never had the proper books for them or enough will to go any deeper into them. I was unaware of QBasic abilities at that time so I didn't know you could use graphic made outside QBasic, mouse routines, libraries and all that. Despite that fact, strong will to create something pushed me to mess with QBasic 1.1 and the result were some silly games, with graphic made inside QB, very primitive which I finished more or less in the year 2000. Two dice games, a hangman game and some boring space arcade game that ran too fast on all the newer PCs. I even released them under title "QB4PACK" when I got online, somewhere in the year 2002.

My first contacts with the Internet were in the 2001 through Internet stands and I did bumped on qb45.com back them. When I got my computer account at college somewhere on the beginning of 2002. and was able to download files from the Internet I started to go deeper into QB sites on the net. It was a revelation, in the full meaning of that word. I downloaded QBasic 4.5 and began to gather information. Wasted a lot of time with outdated routines. I was a bit overwhelmed then, and didn't know where my head was. Still I was able to compile a demo of my first project, Legacy Of Noname General. A silly story intro and 4 scenes. It was just some image BLOADing and mouse routines. Nevertheless this demo, on some way, was a reason why I founded KENTAURI.

Somewhere in that period(3rd and 4th month of 2002.) by some lucky coincidence R.E.Lope(I didn't know him them) contacted me about hosting some file for him. That file was RelLib and from that day, everything changed. RelLib turned out to be everything I've looked for. Easy to use library with a scrolling engine. R.E.Lope was a great help then, before RelLib got popular. He thought me most of stuff I know today. Without him, I don't know what kind of game designer I would be, if I would be one in the first place.

Later Nathan, author of Jill contacted me about LONG, on which he wanted to work together with me. After and because of that I decided to found KENTAURI, somewhere in the 4th month of 2002.

Before the 6th month I started more and more to work in RelLib disregarding LONG, which was slowly progressing and was left unfinished for years. In released some kind of scrolling tutor/demo under title "SCROLL20". Also during that period I released a demo of Ritual Combat, now a canceled project. It's a nice demo of side view battle game, but very technically imperfect. If I would ever wanted to continue working on it I would have to recode and redraw it and that's basically starting a new game.

Before my summer break I started working on Dark Quest, a project from which I expected a lot. It supposed to be my first fully finished game and was completely coded in RelLib's scrolling engine. The summer break was here and Dark Quest was on my list of priorities.

KENTAURI releases(thoughts and reflections):
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About Dark Quest and Run 'Em Over:
During the summer of 2002. I worked on and finished two games. Dark Quest, during the 7th month, and Run 'Em Over, a mini game, right after that. I was very happy with the Dark Quest. Despite being my first game it came out very nice, with little technical imperfections, the main would be a questionable hit routines but they were the core of the gameplay and had to stay. I was able to upload both games on the net not before the 9th month. I was a bit disappointed with the feedback. I naively expected support emails which never came. Still both games got nice reviews in QB community. REO was strangely popular and almost all who played it liked it. I think even more people liked it than Dark Quest. Still Dark Quest gathered more downloads all around the net.

Despite being busy with the college classes I franticly worked on a new project, gravity game in space, Ignition, which is now canceled. Ignition code was a base for all my later games(except Another World Memory) since while coding Ignition I created very powerful routines and layers for explosions and projectiles which showed to be very useful in creation of almost any kind of game.

About Pong Worz:
Very soon, using a lot of routines from Ignition I began working on Pong Worz, a pong game which supposed to introduce a lot of new features in classic pong concept. Creating it went very smooth, since the code wasn't demanding and graphic was easy to draw. I released it on 20.10.2002. Feedback was strange. It was the only game I got reviewed at GameHippo while the reviews in QB community were mostly negative cause of game imperfections which were fixed later. I'm not very happy with the game today. It still has a lot of imperfections. A doubtful asteroid blast mode, unpolished graphic and such. Nevertheless it is an interesting, original and even unique pong game, by my opinion. To bad I wasn't able to release it in more shinier package.

After Pong Worz I kinda wandered a bit. Planed to finish a mini RPG game during the Christmas holidays called "Favorite Son" for some DarkDread's competition but that fell into water soon since I was unable to find someone to work on the graphic. It all remained on some map randomizer and a guy running around the forest shooting fire balls.

About Another World Memory:
Christmas holidays were here and first week of it I used to recode LONG. Draw few new scenes and did a lot of coding. Implemented RelLib's XMS routines into the code which helped a lot. Game was around 60% done and all that work burned me out. I had to work on something else now. I came up with great idea to create a memory game with Another World graphic. RelLib's XMS routines turned out to be very useful here and ripping AW graphic went great. It resulted in a really nice game. Completely coded by me. All of it. I released it early in the first month of 2003. Still very small amount of people liked it. Most of them ignored it though I got very nice feedback from Brendan Urquhart, webmaster of qbasicnews.com and one small in Home Of The Underdogs forum. It's one of my favorite games. Today, I only dislike grammar and spelling in that game.

Few weeks later(26.01.2003.) I released a new version of Pong Worz, featuring an extra match in tournament and lot of new options. It got it re-reviewed at GameHippo and final score went up by one point(6/10). Period after that is a bit blurry. Don't know when exactly is started working on Rocket Fuel Mayhem and when I was preoccupied with college exams.

About Rocket Fuel Mayhem:
Creating Rocket Fuel Mayhem went really smooth. It was done mostly during my second college semester of the third year from the second month to the sixth. Idea for it originated from a freeware game I never actually played. I only saw a screenshot of it on which two simple designed ships fought each other on one screen arenas with gravity. It seemed like a great concept to me and during the entire creation of RFM I never doubted it except on the very end. I simply expanded that idea and created the game you know today. Graphic was never a problem with this game which was great since it also came out really nice. I mostly worked on it during the weekends when I had free time, I didn't hurried and the result was a detailed game with a lot of content, like the large database, for example. I released it on the 09.06.2003. and later a smaller update on the 25.06.2003. The concept itself did not showed to be so great on the very end, since the one screen arenas are a bit crampy for the game ship sprite sizes but nevertheless it was my best game so far and I was proud on it.

I think few weeks after the second version of RFM I started working on a new project Ball Blazing Fantasy since some exams went good so I was in a good mood plus there was the extra free time. Idea for it, like for almost all my games came out of nowhere, like an inspiration. College obligations were behind me and almost a month and a half of completely free time.

About Ball Blazing Fantasy:
Ball Blazing Fantasy was probably my mostly organized project. I had the experience and the routines from the previous projects, I knew my time limit and what was my goal. There was few problems which you can read about in the BBF readme.txt file but still, I finished the game in planed amount of time and it didn't gave me too much headaches. A very coherent and playable game with few technical imperfections which I am sadly still unable to avoid. I guess a KENTAURI's 100% technically perfect game is still something unreachable to me. I worked on it during the entire 7th month of the 2003. I mostly happy with it, graphic is on the level, gameplay works and it's not too short like most of my previous releases. I wasn't able to release it before the 9th month and before that I had to beta test it. I released it 11.09.2003 together with the new version of RFM which was again, mostly bug-fixes. The initial feedback on BBF was very nice, but sadly at that time I've lost my website account which allowed remote linking so I wasn't able to introduce the game in forums on the best way nor upload it on various file archive sites which required from you to host the file.
Found a new host and re-opened the site at the new URL on the 09.10.2003. I got nice feedback on the Ball Blazing Fantasy in QBasic community and few other places. All is good.