Talk:Beast (video game)/Dan Baker Letters
Emails between WP user Cyborg and Dan Baker
[edit]User cyborg made a JS port of the original game (though the link was recently removed as the remake is not yet complete by a strict editor).
Permissions
[edit]Hello again,
shortly after adding the history details into the article, it was removed because there's no way to prove the facts are true. I assume showing them the email thread between us would be helpful. Though I'm not showing them the email unless you allow me to as I regard emails/mail in general to be personal. Especially when there's personal info in it (obviously). I hope you will let me copy the thread so I can back up the facts.
Thanks, Anders
Please feel free to use these emails, after removing all personal information (like email addresses, school and company names).
DanB
Original thread
[edit]Hi, my name is Dan Baker, and I wrote Beast a long time ago. Someone pointed me to the Wikipedia article about Beast, and that led me to your Javascript version of the game. I played your Javascript version -- good job.
I just wanted to say Hello, and I think it is pretty neat that you rewrote Beast into Javascript.
DanB
Hi,
glad you like the game! Alhough I'm very excited to recieve email from the legend, how do I know you're really Dan Baker, the mysterious lead programmer of the classic computer game Beast? As you know, anyone can fake an identity these days by putting up a site like danbaker.com or bakercrew.com and claim to be him. There's just nothing there to prove you're actually him... the sections were missing (blog) or locked (pics). Unfortunately even with a pic, there's no way for me to verify your id because searching the net for "Dan Baker" only gives me pages related to Beast, not about the person. If you could tell me a bit about yourself that would probably help a lot though.
I know there are others out there that would like to know who DB is and think it's a pitty there's no info at all about him. He deserves a wikipedia article! So, if you're really him, do let me know :-)
I was wondering if you would be skeptical, when I was writing the email. It is very difficult to prove anything via email.
A brief history: I write computer games during Junior High and High School on the schools mainframe computer (teletype). My brother is an electrical engineer, and he bought a TRS-80 when they first came out. We wrote games on that thing all the time. I went to college (*** University) in 1980, and got a job at a little software company called ***, which turned into ***. Eventually the IBM-PC came out, and I started working on it. The first thing I did was write a game (Beast). The PC only came with a BASIC interpreter, so the first version was written in BASIC, and didn't work very well. After we got the assembler, I started re-writing Beast in ASM. Alan Brown wrote a routine that would make sound, Derrick wrote a disk I/O routine for saving the high scores, and Mark wrote a random number generator for me. I distributed Beast as shareware for a few years, and made some money (not much, maybe $100). After WordPerfect came out with the Shell (which allowed multiple programs to be loaded at the same time, but the user could only interact with one at time), I fixed Beast to be "Shell Compatible". WordPerfect bought Beast from me for about $1000 (which my wife and I quickly spent on a video camera), and Beast started shipping with Shell (or Library, what ever they called it). That was kind-a the end of Beast for me.
After WordPerfect, I worked at a little software company called ***. Then I worked for ***,a local video game company. Now I'm working for a place called ***.
I didn't write, or even know of, the Wikipedia Beast article until just recently. I was talking to Derrick, and he mentioned the Wikipedia article, so I looked it up. Funny how things work.
I don't know how you will ever really know if I'm the "real" Dan Baker. I still talk to Mark, Alan, and Derrick from time to time. A friend of mine, ***, worked at *** with me. He has his own video game company called ***. You could send him an email ***, he would vouch for my "realness".
DanB
Note: all (direct) personal information was censored as requested. Cyborg 06:02, 18 April 2007 (UTC)