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INTERVIEW WITH Al and Ed Mackey
Amigapd would like to thank Al and Ed Mackey for taking time to answer some questions about their wonderful Megaball series of games. We hope you enjoy their answers.
How did you become involved with creating computer games on the Amiga? Was it the first computer you programmed for?
Al: Our first computer was the Commodore 64. When we got it, I was 7 and Ed was 10, I think? This was our only computer until we got an Amiga 500, nearly a decade later. We both learned Basic and some 6502 assembly on the C64. On the Amiga, Ed picked up 68K assembly and, later, C. MegaBall was written in assembly.
I had particularly taken a shine to the 64's ability to make music. I had composed a lot of music with Compute's SID Player, but I was also fascinated with algorithmic music in Basic, which I imagine must sound atonal and wrong to people who didn't grow up with it.
Incidentally, our mother also had a Commodore 64 around the same time, which, along with a very loud daisy-wheel printer, she used to do word processing for the articles and books that she wrote long before that sort of thing was at all mainstream.
Ed: I started on the Commodore 64, in grade school. Al and I created a lot of little prototype games and almost-games, the most complete of which was probably our Tetris clone. We didn't have Internet in those days of course, so most people never saw those early designs. The Tetris clone featured Al's music and my programming, like MegaBall, but the graphics were just solid-color blocks.
I had particularly taken a shine to the 64's ability to make music. I had composed a lot of music with Compute's SID Player, but I was also fascinated with algorithmic music in Basic, which I imagine must sound atonal and wrong to people who didn't grow up with it.
Incidentally, our mother also had a Commodore 64 around the same time, which, along with a very loud daisy-wheel printer, she used to do word processing for the articles and books that she wrote long before that sort of thing was at all mainstream.
Ed: I started on the Commodore 64, in grade school. Al and I created a lot of little prototype games and almost-games, the most complete of which was probably our Tetris clone. We didn't have Internet in those days of course, so most people never saw those early designs. The Tetris clone featured Al's music and my programming, like MegaBall, but the graphics were just solid-color blocks.
Which software tools did you use to create Megaball (Amos / Deluxe Paint e.t.c)?
Ed: The coding was all done in Abacus Assembler, and maybe Al can comment on music & graphics, but I remember he was using OctaMED and we had real MIDI equipment hooked up for v3.0 that we bought with MegaBall profits.
Al: For my side, I was using DeluxePaint for the graphics in the original version, and later Brilliance for the AGA version. The music was all done in various versions of MED and OctaMED.
Al: For my side, I was using DeluxePaint for the graphics in the original version, and later Brilliance for the AGA version. The music was all done in various versions of MED and OctaMED.
Megaball Version 1
Youtube video by meowthx1985.
What inspired you to make a breakout clone game?
Ed: Hmm... that may be lost to the sands of time. I don't remember. We liked Arkanoid in those days.
Al: We really liked Arkanoid in the arcade, but we didn't think that the official Amiga port or any of the other Breakout-style games on the Amiga at the time really got it right. They all had their quirks, but most were very jerky in their motion. The original game ("Ball") grew out of Ed seeing if he could get a ball moving in that very smooth way you'd see in the arcade.
Al: We really liked Arkanoid in the arcade, but we didn't think that the official Amiga port or any of the other Breakout-style games on the Amiga at the time really got it right. They all had their quirks, but most were very jerky in their motion. The original game ("Ball") grew out of Ed seeing if he could get a ball moving in that very smooth way you'd see in the arcade.
What was the hardest part of Megaball to program?
Ed: I think it was dealing with the chain-reaction bricks, like the exploding bricks and slime bricks. There wasn't much memory devoted to the task, one byte per brick if I remember, so getting the complex behaviors put in was a challenge.
How long did the various versions of Megaball take to complete - Did the later versions take longer or less time to complete?
Ed: The later versions did take a bit longer because we were trying to get a more polished product with a lot of fancy features.
Al: The later versions were a bit harder to work on, since Ed and I went off to different colleges, and at different times. Fortunately, email came along at about that time.
Al: The later versions were a bit harder to work on, since Ed and I went off to different colleges, and at different times. Fortunately, email came along at about that time.
Which aspect of the Megaball gameplay are you most proud of?
Ed: The seemingly simplest part: The math governing how the ball reflects off the paddle. Quite deliberately, it has nothing to do with the laws of physics, and everything to do with giving the player a sense of momentary control over the ball as it leaves the paddle each time. I think it's the secret sauce that makes the game fun.
Al: I think its replayability is the key to its success. It's easy to learn but difficult to master, and has an element of randomness to it. Designing and downloading new board sets also helps keep it fresh.
Al: I think its replayability is the key to its success. It's easy to learn but difficult to master, and has an element of randomness to it. Designing and downloading new board sets also helps keep it fresh.
How did Megaball 3 and 4 differ from the earlier releases?
Ed: MegaBall 3 added a lot of new brick types, if I remember right the exploding bricks went into this version, as did AGA support for better graphics. Al and I had bought new hardware (an Amiga 3000 for me, A1200 and music hardware for Al) with real MegaBall money, and wanted to put the fruits of this back into the game. MegaBall 4 built on the brick types even further.
Al: The later MegaBall releases had support for AGA graphics. It had more colors of bricks, plus more bricks with strange behaviors: exploding, expanding, unlocking, and replicating. I had also made a number of songs that only used 3 of the Amiga's 4 audio channels, so you could have music and sound effects at the same time.
Al: The later MegaBall releases had support for AGA graphics. It had more colors of bricks, plus more bricks with strange behaviors: exploding, expanding, unlocking, and replicating. I had also made a number of songs that only used 3 of the Amiga's 4 audio channels, so you could have music and sound effects at the same time.
Were there any additional features you wished you could have included in the games?
Ed: I think we were suffering a bit of feature-creep by version 4. It was almost to the point where I was thinking of trimming some of them back
Al: Towards the end we started experimenting boards made of hexagonal blocks rather than rectangular ones. This changed how the ball bounced quite dramatically, but it never got in to a release version.
Al: Towards the end we started experimenting boards made of hexagonal blocks rather than rectangular ones. This changed how the ball bounced quite dramatically, but it never got in to a release version.
Which awards did the Megaball series win?
Ed: I don't remember... sorry...
Al: We did win some awards (that I can't think of off the top of my head), but what really tickled me is that MegaBall became the standard by which other breakout clones were judged, even years and years later. You'd see reviewers comparing other games to MegaBall point-by-point, and you'd see newer Breakout-style games touting the features they had over ours..
Al: We did win some awards (that I can't think of off the top of my head), but what really tickled me is that MegaBall became the standard by which other breakout clones were judged, even years and years later. You'd see reviewers comparing other games to MegaBall point-by-point, and you'd see newer Breakout-style games touting the features they had over ours..
Megaball 1 - Later levels
Youtube video by meowthx1985
Did the numerous Amiga computer set ups (different kickstarts / chips and memory) course any problems with compatiblity of the game code?
Ed: No. We had different sets of graphics (one for non-AGA older machines, and one for newer AGA machines), and maybe Al will say it was a pain to keep the two in sync, but in my code it was a simple test to see if AGA was available, and use the appropriate set of graphics. It's the same as modern-day Android "fragmentation", as an app developer I have very little sympathy for those who complain about fragmentation, since I handle it in my own code with a couple of "if" statements. See if your friends or coworkers have a few different brands or OS versions, test on there, and make a couple of different Android emulator images of different OS versions, and test there too.
Al: I don't think we had any major problems with any real Amiga hardware, but it didn't do too well in some of the early emulators. The reason for this, I think, is because MegaBall actually goes through the Amiga OS's audio library to play its sounds rather than banging on the audio hardware directly. The library works in such a way that if it can't get a proper response from the audio hardware (which some of these emulators don't bother to do), it just sits and waits for it. MegaBall works fine on most modern emulators now, but will still hang at startup if the emulator has the sound emulation turned off completely.
Al: I don't think we had any major problems with any real Amiga hardware, but it didn't do too well in some of the early emulators. The reason for this, I think, is because MegaBall actually goes through the Amiga OS's audio library to play its sounds rather than banging on the audio hardware directly. The library works in such a way that if it can't get a proper response from the audio hardware (which some of these emulators don't bother to do), it just sits and waits for it. MegaBall works fine on most modern emulators now, but will still hang at startup if the emulator has the sound emulation turned off completely.
Were there any unfinished Amiga games you were involved with?
Ed: We had plans to develop a sequel called "Quantumball", with hexagonal bricks. I had the math worked out, and I think we even built a board editor for it. But real life got in the way.
Did you try to distribute the Megaball games through commercial publishers or was it always going to be a shareware game?
Ed: It was shareware through version 3, and then v4 had a commercial release through IAM with Dale Larson.
Al: The last version of MegaBall was distributed by Intangible Assets Manufacturing, which was a company that Dale Larson, one of the former Commodore engineers, started after Commodore's demise. By that time, of course, the Amiga scene had already died down quite a bit.
Al: The last version of MegaBall was distributed by Intangible Assets Manufacturing, which was a company that Dale Larson, one of the former Commodore engineers, started after Commodore's demise. By that time, of course, the Amiga scene had already died down quite a bit.
What did you enjoy most about creating games on the Amiga?
Ed: The community was far-flung but had to stay tight-knit, since we were kind of a niche computer compared to the competition. I feel like Al and I became really well-known in this community at an early age, and we got lots of great feedback. It was a lot of fun
Al: People will go on about how computers of that era were just "simpler" to work with, but it didn't seem simple at the time; the Amiga was the most advanced computer of its age. Being on that cutting edge was what was so exhilarating about using an Amiga in its time.
Al: People will go on about how computers of that era were just "simpler" to work with, but it didn't seem simple at the time; the Amiga was the most advanced computer of its age. Being on that cutting edge was what was so exhilarating about using an Amiga in its time.
Did you have any programming heroes?
Ed: There were lots of great people. We became friends with Mike Welch (Scorched Tanks), and Al had some correspondence with the author of OctaMED. Dale Larson gave us a tour of Commodore, where we met a lot of engineers working on the Amiga
Al: Rob Hubbard has always been a hero to me, for what he was able to do with the C64's little audio chip.
Al: Rob Hubbard has always been a hero to me, for what he was able to do with the C64's little audio chip.
Megaball - Music - Main theme
Youtube video by Kuokka77
Were there any Amiga games which particularly influenced you?
Ed: We played lots of games. Marble Madness, Hybris, Arkanoid, Crystal Hammer, Shadow of the Beast, Lemmings, R-Type, too many to name.
Al: The original "The Settlers" was always one of our favorite Amiga games. We'd have days where we'd get a bunch of people together and go head-to-head, using its splitscreen mode and hooking two mice up to one computer.
Al: The original "The Settlers" was always one of our favorite Amiga games. We'd have days where we'd get a bunch of people together and go head-to-head, using its splitscreen mode and hooking two mice up to one computer.
Did you find the Amiga Magazine press supportive of shareware authors in terms of reviews and offers for including the game as a cover disk game?
Ed: Absolutely. The Internet was much harder to reach in those days, and the folks running magazines were really helpful getting software out to the users.
Al: Yes, very supportive, yet I don't think we ever actually had to campaign them to get MegaBall into a magazine. It ended up getting pretty good coverage on its own merit.
Al: Yes, very supportive, yet I don't think we ever actually had to campaign them to get MegaBall into a magazine. It ended up getting pretty good coverage on its own merit.
Were there any particular public domain libraries which were key in helping you market and distribute your game?
Al: AmiNet was crucial. I believe at the time it was all done through FTP.
Did you concentrate solely on the coding and leave the graphics and music to Al Mackey or was there more of an overlap in duties?
Ed: There wasn't any overlap in terms of me writing any music or Al coding for the 68k CPU. But we worked very closely to get things like animation sequences to work right, and a special way of doing the music. There were four voices on the Amiga, and with some arm-twisting I convinced Al to write some music using only three of those voices, leaving one of them free for sound effects during the music. We also had a way to specify a short "ending" on a song that could play briefly on all four voices at the successful conclusion of a level. Additionally I asked Al to make new "high score" and "game over" songs that both started with an explosion, the sound of your last life ending, so the music could start the very instant your game was over.
Al: Our duties didn't overlap much at all in those areas. Both of us, plus our family and our friends, all had a hand in designing the default board set and the expansion sets that came with the full version.
Al: Our duties didn't overlap much at all in those areas. Both of us, plus our family and our friends, all had a hand in designing the default board set and the expansion sets that came with the full version.
Are you and Al Mackey still involved in the computer industry today and if so are there any projects you want to share with our readers?
Ed: Yep, we're both doing computer stuff. Al moved to California and is doing a lot more programming these days, lots of web stuff. I work at a satellite software and visualization company called Analytical Graphics, and you can find my free app "Satellite AR" in Android Market.
Al: After college, I moved to Chicago and worked as an artist at a few game houses there, but I found the working environment very nasty. They could pay you peanuts and treat you horribly, because if you didn't like the deal, there was a line of people at the door clamoring for your job.
After that, I moved out to the Silicon Valley shortly before the dot-com crash and started getting in to web development. I started out coding HTML by hand (a marketable skill before the crash), but eventually got into programming with Perl, and later JavaScript, PHP, Flash, and more.
These days I work as a developer for Data911, a company that makes hardware and software for police and public safety.
Al: After college, I moved to Chicago and worked as an artist at a few game houses there, but I found the working environment very nasty. They could pay you peanuts and treat you horribly, because if you didn't like the deal, there was a line of people at the door clamoring for your job.
After that, I moved out to the Silicon Valley shortly before the dot-com crash and started getting in to web development. I started out coding HTML by hand (a marketable skill before the crash), but eventually got into programming with Perl, and later JavaScript, PHP, Flash, and more.
These days I work as a developer for Data911, a company that makes hardware and software for police and public safety.
Downloading Megaball
If you want to download the disk images for Megaball then please visit Ed and Als Megaball website.
Thank you.
AmigaPd would like to thank the Mackey brothers for taking the time to answer the questions.
We would also like to thank Betty Mackey, the mum of the talented Mackey brothers for kindly forwarding our interview email onto them. Betty runs an independant publishing company for garden books, click here to visit her website.
We would also like to thank Betty Mackey, the mum of the talented Mackey brothers for kindly forwarding our interview email onto them. Betty runs an independant publishing company for garden books, click here to visit her website.
AmigaPd Charityware
We hope you enjoyed reading the interview - remember AmigaPd is charityware - please visit our just giving page to support our chosen charity Mencap.
