Introducing Allan Findlay of Atomicom…
After university (studying Microelectronics and Computer Engineering) Allan worked at a computer graphics hardware company for a few years, then pursued a couple of years of contracting (non-games) before he started doing games at Tiertex in Manchester. Later he moved to Software Creations, then on to Zedtwo before leaving games and doing a few years with a motion detection company. When that company went under he got a job at Playbox (which became Atomicom) and has since been at Atomicom since doing an online interview about his first game
(follow this link to see some of his previouswork)
http://lscmainframe.kontek.net/features/afindlay.html
Allan developed an intereset in games before he even owned a computer by reading up on the following books http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/ andhttp://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/
Out of the library he taught himself Basic programming, his first computer was a ZX81 a year or so after seeing those books, even with its very limited display and power, there were some great games on there. He recalls ‘Moving to a ZX Spectrum a year or two later I was amazed at the games available and wrote some small ones for myself.’
Allan’s likes and hobbies include playing Dungeons & Dragons, reading, kites and programming his own stuff, particularly stuff for his Pebble watch on which he has released a few games.
Allan enjoys the fact that he gets the chance to work with some of the latest technological developments (like Virtual Reality), and see consoles etc before they are released. Allans passion is coding and hopes to continue progressing with this in the future and would like to get back to doing smaller games at some point.
Advice for upcoming developers…
Find a more stable industry and program games as a hobby!