Talk:RJD Online Software Development

Dispute: The controversial and somewhat disprovable History section

Posted by Tinytimrob@thegineverblock.com 05:49, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Earlier today I updated the article to include a large section about the history of the division. But a lot of this is estimation and is likely to be wildly inaccurate. After writing the article I decided to go and check to make sure I had got it all right. And I'm glad I actually did check, because I was almost entirely wrong for a good portion of it.

I began by consulting the old History page for RJD Enterprise Solutions (archived here), which I seem to remember writing a few years ago, but it seems to have a lot of information that I have since proved is totally wrong.

For example, I am not entirely certain what year RJDSoft was created. The old History page claims it was 1999 (and the wiki article did too, before I updated it to indicate the uncertainty). But I'm almost entirely certain that it wasn't set up until AFTER St. Paul's Primary School Pendeford had their new computing suite fitted, which I seem to recall happening in 2000 to coincide with the millennium. Also in 1999 I would only have been just starting Year 3, which really doesn't seem feasible. But what I DO know for certain is that RJDSoft was definitely shut down by the time Tashon left, which would have been July 2002.

Chopper release date discrepancy

Another discrepancy relates to the date that Chopper was released. The aforementioned linked history page claims it was 2001. I have now confirmed that this is definitely 100% wrong, since I know for a fact that Chopper was built with Game Maker 4.2, which wasn't even released until April 2002. Hit the Ballz was also definitely made (or at least started) before Chopper, and a sensible amount of time needs to be left between the acquisition of GM 4.2 and the start of Chopper's creation, in order to account for us learning GM to the point where we were able to make Chopper (which had to use GML scripting and a few other things!). I am also pretty sure that Chopper could not have been released until Shaz was built (which was April 2003), as I see no way Paul would have been able to get it to Farsight other than on a burnable CD, and Vicky Vale (the 1996 Pentium I-based machine we had prior to building Shaz) only had a 6X CD-ROM drive and was not capable of burning (or even READING) a CD-R.

To get a better idea of dates, I now proceed to head over to "E:\Archive 2\Game Development\- old GM versions\Game Maker 7\Examples", which contains all of the GMD, GM6 and GMK files I have a copy of that were made prior to the release of Game Maker 8. I managed to find the very first 'game' I ever made (it was just a single room which drew a background, but even now I remember creating it), which was was called "splat.gmd" and has a timestamp of 18 June 2002 20:29. That sticks our original acquisition of Game Maker right in between the releases of GM 4.2 and GM 4.3, which would make sense.

The following additional evidence points to a 2003 release of Chopper: I found what is almost definitely a fully completed version of Chopper v1.0, entitled "chopper.gmd", with a timestamp of 9 December 2003 18:40, in my Game Development archive folder. Another version in the same folder called "chopper crapped up.gmd" has a timestamp of 6 December 2003 14:18, and is clearly missing the credits system and a few other things that were pretty much added right at the last minute. This would imply that the game itself never made gold until 9 December 2003 18:40 GMT. The v1.1 re-release of Chopper from 2008 appears to support this, as it seems to be built from the 9 December 2003 version, and the help page also references the original game being released in 2003 (although that was probably based on the 9 Dec timestamp). The article on GineverWiki cannot be used as a reference, since that in itself merely takes the date from the help of v1.1.

I therefore conclude that Chopper v1.0 must have been completed and subsequently released in December 2003.

Virtual World Interactive date discrepancy

One is therefore led to look at the section of the article which talks about Virtual World Interactive. There is a clear inconsistency between the gmd files and the article. Firstly, there is a file called "explore.gmd" that contains VWI branding and has a timestamp of 23 November 2003 14:16; but that would be BEFORE the release of Chopper, NOT after it (which is NOT what I remember happening at all!) One must also consider the file "Hit the Ballz 2.gmd" with a timestamp of 4 February 2004 20:29, which is clearly the sequel to which I refer in the article, and a file called "Ecard1.gmd" that contains Dennington Games branding and has a timestamp of 11 August 2004 19:17. Furthermore, a copy of the Strike Gunner style shooting game that myself and Paul started working on can also be found in this folder; this was definitely a Dennington Games creation, and it has a timestamp of 27 October 2004 17:10.

The first file with VWI branding is "vwos1.gmd", timestamped 5 November 2003 16:46. But I cannot find any reference to VWI branding after the file "explore.gmd" timestamped 23 November 2003 14:16.

I now proceed to take a look at the file "UFO.gmd", which I know was a Dennington Games creation and is timestamped 1 June 2003 16:35. But after this file, there is a very long gap between any new gmd files being created, and the next one of any importance happens to be "vwos1.gmd".

Considering everything so far, this seems to be the only clearly definable set of events:

• 1 June 2003: Dennington Games last build of "UFO" is created (after this, the project is abandoned)
• Long period of silence
• VWI branded files are created during November 2003
• By the time it hits 6 December 2003, we are clearly working on finishing Chopper, in which the name Dennington Games is used and I am clearly listed in the credits as being involved with development.

That would seem to imply that Virtual World Interactive was around perhaps between July 2003 and November 2003 at the most, before eventually being disbanded BEFORE Chopper was released. Although I cannot be certain of this at all.

Dennington Productions date discrepancy

You thought that the historical content of the article was bad so far? It gets slightly worse.

To throw even more chaos into the mix, the only references I can find to the name "Dennington Productions" are in the file "PHD Team.gm6", timestamped 13 March 2006 18:04, and the file "Shooter1b.gm6", which is the GM6 file for Supernova, timestamped 11 July 2006 11:35.

This seems to indicate that Dennington Productions was in fact the name Paul used while I was overseeing the administration of B-Cool. But I do not recall starting to oversee the administration of B-Cool until MAY 2006?!

Summary

OK, so my memory of what actually happened blob years ago isn't too good. I can see that. Maybe I can clear the article up tomorrow.

Dude: The Robot

Oh, to add to this; I just noticed that the file "Dude.gmd", which seems to be of Dude: The Robot v1.0, is dated 24 October 2004. The help file also CLEARLY has DENNINGTON GAMES branding. The date would match up with the general output of Dennington Games in the 2003-2004 period that we seem to have uncovered, but it doesn't match up with the help file for v1.7. Tinytimrob@thegineverblock.com 05:53, 25 January 2011 (UTC)