In 1998, I already had a PC Pentium 166 MHz with a CD-ROM drive at home. This year I was preparing for the Bachelor of Computer Science admission exam at the Federal University. Also, I had started researching game programming in C language for Windows using DirectX. My plan was to start my game development company as soon as I entered Federal University.
Programming with DirectX was very complex, as it was not meant to be friendly for novice programmers. DirectX's goal was to provide high performance and flexibility to attract the gaming industry to Windows.
I kept avoiding playing games as I wanted to maintain focus on my studies. One day a friend showed me the demo of the racing game Destruction Derby 2 at his home. I thought the game was really fun. I liked the game's physics and damage effects on cars.
In June 1998, I saw Big Max magazine issue 20 on a newsstand, which had the complete version of Destruction Derby 2. I was surprised because usually these magazines only had CDs with demos of the games. The magazine was cheap so I bought it:
The game had the traditional mode on racing tracks and had the mode called Destruction Derby which took place in an arena and the objective was to break the other cars:
Magazines with complete PC games became very popular in Brazil. It was a great alternative for the Brazilian market as it allowed consumers to purchase original games at an affordable price.
Destruction Derby 2 was the only game I bought in 1998. At the year's end, I passed the Federal University admission exam.
In 1999 I started the activities of my company RH Games. I continued to avoid playing games so I could dedicate myself as much as possible to programming the games of RH Games. In addition, the University required a lot of time.
Until I found an issue of CD Expert magazine at the newsstand that had two complete games:
I looked behind the magazine and found the game Oddworld: Abe's Odysee interesting. The game received awards for best animation and best platform game. So I decided to buy it.
The game tells the story of Abe, a creature of the Mudokon race who worked in a factory as slaves. Abe manages to escape the factory and tries to rescue the other Mudokons:
In July 1999 my brother came home on vacation and brought the Command & Conquer game:
I really liked this game. It was released in 1995 and along with Warcraft 2 were responsible for popularizing the RTS (Real Time Strategy) genre:
I stayed with this computer until the end of 2003 when I completed my graduation at the Federal University.
- Outcast
This game was released in 1999 for PC and was a super production by the standards of the time. Outcast is an action-adventure game set in an open world. The story is engaging, the graphics and environments were fascinating, the dialogues are fully voiced and the music is orchestrated.
- Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament was released in 1999. This was my first contact with Unreal Engine. I was very impressed with the game's graphics, music, artificial intelligence, weapons, and gameplay.
- In 1999 and 2000, I programmed the 6 games of RH Games.
- In 2001, I developed the MRDX, which is a framework for 2D game programming using C/C++ languages.
- In 2002, I presented the MRDX at the first Brazilian Games Workshop.
- In 2003, I founded a local group called Beljogos, with the goal of encouraging the development of games in northern Brazil.
I wrote a lot of C language code for RH Games and MRDX in paper notebooks. Since my computer was at home, I could only use it at night and on weekends.
I continued to work in my father's law office in the morning and in the afternoon I went to the University. So I always had a paper notebook with me. When I had free time at the office or at the University, I would write the C language codes for the games in my paper notebook to transfer to the computer later. This is an example sheet of code for the Cyborg Arena game:
In addition to RH Games and MRDX code, I wrote game ideas and plans for RH Games. There are some texts scattered in my paper notebooks containing stories for the RPG world "High Sphere" by RH Games. I numbered the sheets and made an index at the end of the paper notebooks pointing to some important content.
While I was at University, from 1999 to 2003, I wrote 7 paper notebooks:
