library of technical documents ( JWDA, Henry Will IV )

[timdu]

From our interview with Todd Marshall, we learned another former co-worker of his at JWDA, Henry Will IV, kept extensive notes of projects he was involved with. Todd ended up with 3 of Henry's notebooks, which span from late 1981 to mid-1986! They have been archived and are now available as "TECHNICAL DOCUMENTS "in our Library section.

 

 

http://www.2600connection.com/library/tech_docs/tech_docs.html

 

 

 

It's a fascinating look inside game development and packed full of info. Enjoy, and happy holidays!

 

 

 

Tim

[DEBRO]

Hi there,

 

Major BUMP here...

On 12/27/2015 at 8:14 AM, timdu said:

From our interview with Todd Marshall, we learned another former co-worker of his at JWDA, Henry Will IV, kept extensive notes of projects he was involved with. Todd ended up with 3 of Henry's notebooks, which span from late 1981 to mid-1986! They have been archived and are now available as "TECHNICAL DOCUMENTS "in our Library section.

I missed this post from 5 years ago. Are these scans archived? I'd love to see them.

[alex_79]

The Wayback Machine has the linked page archived and the downloads seem to work:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161208144456/http://www.2600connection.com:80/library/tech_docs/tech_docs.html

[DEBRO]

Thank you!

18 hours ago, alex_79 said:

The Wayback Machine has the linked page archived and the downloads seem to work:

I went there first but apparently missed the links.

 

I started looking at reverse engineering Word Zapper and Squeeze Box just for time killers. When I saw that Henry's notebooks were scanned I was excited. Seeing these adds a little more into what he was thinking and what was going on during development. They're not the most exciting games but it is still nice to see the historical artifacts. Looking at the disassembly of Squeeze Box it appeared Henry used an Atari 8-bit to code the game. The first couple of bytes has what appears to be COPYRIGHT 1982 US GAMES CORP. in inverse ATASCII characters. He does mention getting an Atari 400 in his notes. There is also reference to the Apple ][ and an ICE board. I'm not sure if this is the board Garry Kitchen created. We also get to see royalty payment discussions and how he was concerned with capital gains tax.

 

Notebooks 1 and 3 were accessible. Notebook 2 seems to not have archived nicely.

[alex_79]

1 hour ago, DEBRO said:

Notebooks 1 and 3 were accessible. Notebook 2 seems to not have archived nicely.

You're right, I didn't notice as I only checked the first one.

 

Anyway, I managed to recover the corrupted archive (hopefully, there isn't any missing page).

henry_will_notebook2_repaired.zip