Bill Budge! The creator of both Raster Blaster and Pinball Construction Set (PCS), the first pinball simulation and the first pinball editor (you will have to take my word for it that they are the first)! Here follows an interview with him, hope you like it! The interview asks questions about how the pinballs he developed came to be and also investigates the history of computers a little...
If you see me use either "Pinball Construction Kit" or PCK in the interview, it is ofcourse "Pinball Construction Set" or PCS I mean to refere to.

The Interview...

[Sam Gabrielsson]: Godday Mr. Budge. A simple question, who are you? (if it is not to personal, how old are you? :)

[Bill Budge]: I'm a guy who likes to build things. I discovered computer programming as a teenager in the late 60's. While in the PhD program at UC Berkeley, I got an Apple II and began writing video games for fun. I liked it so much I stopped being a student and became a game programmer. I'm 44, married to a beautiful woman from Chile, and have two little kids, aged 3 and 5.

[SG]: What are you doing today? Still programming all you can, or have you taken the step up (down?) to be the organizer of lots of other programmers or are you just relaxing with a lot of money at some calm Hawaii hotel... or what do you do? :)

[BB]: I'm still programming. I love to build things, and software is the ultimate construction toy. I do work with other programmers though.

[SG]: By memory, how many titles (games, programs, whatever) have you created? Might be quite a lot, feel free to mention just the titles of the ones you are most happy with or maybe the ones that were most successful. Just curious on what you have created!

[BB]: About a dozen - let's see... First was inspired by Pong, called Penny Arcade and traded to Apple Computer for a printer. Then some more Apple II games. I did a 3-d vector graphics game construction set, then Raster Blaster, the first personal computer pinball simulation. (Someone did a really nice arcade sim before me) I extended RB to get Pinball Construction Set, which is probably my major claim to fame. More recently, I completed a version of PCS for the Sega Genesis, called Virtual Pinball, published by Electronic Arts. At 3DO, I did a 3DO Multiplayer game called Blade Force, and worked on an Olympic Decathlon game. Since then, I've been doing engines and tools for PC games.

[SG]: Where did you grow up and where do you by the way live today? Did/do you like the places?

[BB]: My family moved around a lot; I've lived in Raleigh, NC, Buffalo NY, Chicago, Los Angeles, Wichita KA and finally, the San Francisco - Bay Area. I love it here.

[SG]: Let me jump directly to a quick pinball question, did you play any pinballs as young? If so, any special ones you remember? If you had no contact with pinballs at all as young, when did you come in contact with one the first time?

[BB]: Never. Only when I was an engineer at Apple Computer in the early 80's. Woz and a lot of the other engineers became obsessed with pinball, and I picked it up from them.

[SG]: Today, do you play lots of lots of pinball all the day in the arcade or on the computer? :)

[BB]: Neither. With work and kids, I don't have time for much else.

[SG]: Do you remember which your first contact with computers was, which the first computer you owned was (I suppose there might be a big time gap between those two occasions and then again maybe not, I don't know)?

[BB]: First computer programmed - An IBM 1401, a real antique. First computer owned - an Apple II, serial number about 10,000.

[SG]: As might not be a surprising question in an interview with a programmer, when did you start programming and well... on what, why and what (interpret that in some way you think is correct)?

[BB]: A math teacher in my high school, Harriet Hungate, started a computer programming class. I took it out of curiosity and after a week of total confusion realized what I wanted to do as a career. A local business loaned us some time on an IBM 1401. We wrote programs in assembler on coding sheets, they got punched into decks of cards, and we got printer output. I wrote multiply subroutines at first, obsessed with improving them. Then more math stuff, like division, factorials and square roots. This was a very primitive computer. Later someone gave us time on a machine that had a FORTRAN compiler. Finally, we got a terminal which could link up to a minicomputer with BASIC, and I wrote tic-tac-toe, checkers and GO games. My unfinished project was a Geometry Theorem Prover.

[SG]: What was the situation like when you started programming, even if your aim wasn't to get work as a programmer, would it have been hard?

[BB]: It didn't occur to me that I could make money at programming then. Probably not if I'd been more of a hustler.

[SG]: So, what was your first finished v.1.0 of a game or program? You still got it lying around somewhere or has it been lost somewhere unknown?

[BB]: Probably Tic-tac-toe. I think I have the source listing stored away. I definitely have some of my first programs saved.

[SG]: Would you like to tell us a little more about your early days as an more or less experienced programmer? I mean more like, what did you do to work your way up to wherever you have ended up, or are you maybe still aiming for something! Maybe you could start with your time at Electronic Arts, that was the first company you worked for, right? What did you do?

[BB]: The learning process never ends. I've improved my skills significantly this year, and I'm 44! I was always a good programmer, almost from the start, but I had a lot to learn. It's a common fantasy, when you're starting, to believe you're the best programmer in the world, because other programmers' work isn't that visible. I've come a long long way since then, but in some sense, I still have about the same intelligence and creativity.

[SG]: When did you write Pinball Construction Kit and why, what is the background for the game? For which platform did you originally write the pinball (I think it has been ported to quite a lot of systems?).

[BB]: I wrote it in 1982. It's descended from Raster Blaster, which I wrote in 1981. I rewrote the pinball simulation to make it more robust, and added the GUI editor. It was originally written for the Apple II, but I ported it to Atari 800 and Macintosh, and EA hired programmers to port it to IBM PC and Commodore 64. I totally rewrote the whole thing in 1993 for Sega Genesis Virtual Pinball. It's the same idea, with a better simulation, better graphics and sound, and a simpler interface.

[SG]: Were you happy with PCK? I have read that the wysiwig interface featured in the pinball was pretty unique when it came out, sort of the first game to feature a graphical level editor?

[BB] Yes, I was very satisfied. I was inspired by the Xerox Parc work on GUI's. I had to solve a lot of problems to build all of that on an Apple II.

[SG]: Tell me about Raster Blaster!!! When did it come out, for what computer, why did you make it, give us the full story! :)

[BB]: Raster Blaster was also an Apple II game. I did it in my spare time while working as a graphics engineer at Apple Computer. I had seen an arcade pinball, and had learned enough about hi-resolution graphics to realize that a very nice simulation could be done on the Apple. For the first couple of weeks, I built the basic simulation and built a board database by hand. Nobody quite understood what I was doing. Then one night I got the ball bouncing around on the board and it became apparent how cool it would look (by 1981 standards at least) I got the rest going pretty quickly. I made myself some bitmap editing tools (which were included in PCS) and made it look pretty. Flippers took a while to implement. They're definitely the most complicated thing for me. I also had some trouble with collision detection, with balls getting stuck to walls, or slipping through. Eventually I got it pretty solid. I had my own company to market the game and we sold quite a few without much effort.

[SG]: What other pinballs have you written?

[BB]: That's it!

[SG]: What do you think of the pinball simulations and the pinball editors released today (not sure if you have tried any?)?

[BB]: I haven't played too much; the ones I've seen look very good, and I'm sure the latest ones are great. Much better than my early stuff, which wasn't very realistic.

[SG]: I read some notice that EA in it's early days packed their games like lp records and send people like you out on... "autograph signing tours"? You got to tell me something more about this, sounds like a kind of unusual idea! Did it work out well like a promoting thing? (could you email me your autograph? :)

[BB]: Yeah, they sent me out on a kind of celebrity rock star tour. But it became obvious pretty quickly that programmers aren't quite rock stars. But it was a fun experience. I don't have a scanned autograph yet!

[SG]: What did you do after EA? I know a pinball by the name "Virtual Pinball" for Sega Genesis was released by BudeCo Inc. in 1993, is that some company of your own? Is it still in business?

[BB]: That's an EA game too.

[SG]: So, when did you start working at Studio 3DO? What do you do there? (I'm pretty sure that you are working at 3DO today, if you don't, how come you have this email? :)

[BB]: I started in 1993. My official title is "Distinguished Engineer", which is kind of like a fellow. So I get to work on cool new stuff, like game engines.

[SG]: Anything really special you remember from your computer programming life so far that you would like to share with us? Any important step in your career I haven't asked about?

[BB]: My programming teacher in high school was great. She let us discover things by ourselves. So I actually discovered the "loop" by myself. That was a transcendent moment for me. Getting my first pong ball bouncing around on the screen, that was another one.

[SG]: If you today look back on the two occasions when you had your first contact with a computer and when you got your first computer, how have computers developed in your eyes until today? (maybe not only in terms of speed and hardware, but in usability, affect on people etc.)

[BB]: Computers were big expensive machines that you never touched. You didn't really interact with them. Some, like university minis had graphics and cool peripherals, but I couldn't get my hands on. It was great to have my own Apple II with graphics and sound. Even though it wasn't that powerful, you got the whole machine. Now, with the Internet, and the kind of hardware and tools that are available, the promise of computing is being realized, so I would say that the impact of the computer has increased dramatically.

[SG]: Most interesting of all, do you find the way things have evolved good, fascinating or bad (and why in any case)? Is anything (concerning the computer world then) today like you expected it to be when you began your career?

[BB]: Good. So many things are better because of computers, from cars to toys. I never thought the average person would ever be buying software!

[SG]: Let's say I think it would be cool if computers evolved so that one on the computer could simulate a real pinball so that it looks as well as feels as a real pinball (maybe a vr or holographic pinball), do you think that will ever be possible? I imagine you as the one and only person who can answer this question correctly! What is your view on the future of computers?

[BB]: Some areas of technology like computing cost and speed are advancing rapidly. But other technologies, like true 3D displays and tactile feedback are in their infancies and may face insurmountable obstacles. For example, feedback to simulate a solid object requires force powerful enough to rip your arm off. I could be wrong, but I think computer pinball should strive to exploit its special advantages, rather than just be a copy of real pinball machines.

[SG]: My last pinball question to you, are you planning on in some way in the future being active in the release of another pinball?

[BB]: Probably not, but you never know. There are interesting problems to solve.

[SG]: A last question, when EA published their first games they produced an ad that said: "Software artists? It is a name these people are uncomfortable with. 'I'm not so sure there are any software artists yet', says BB. 'Maybe we've got to earn that title.'" Well, have you? (don't be modest!)

[BB]: I think I was talking about game design. There is art in just about anything, but I'm strictly an engineer at this point in my career, so I'd have to say "No". But I'd like to design a game again some day.

[SG]: Anything else you want to say...?

[BB]: No, but thanks for the questions. Please forward any club newsletters, I'd be interested.

Thanks for Answering!