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Post by Peer on Jan 16, 2024 14:32:49 GMT -5
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Post by VectorX on Jan 16, 2024 15:06:32 GMT -5
^It is! And it's an unusual one.
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Post by 50tbrd on Jan 16, 2024 15:06:50 GMT -5
That just might give us a idea of who programmed it. "The Kid" is the nickname of a famous western gunlinger, William H Bonney, Billy The Kid. We already know a Bill/William who was a programmer, Bill/William Hawkins and he implemented that similar clever easter egg in Bedlam.
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Post by D-Type on Jan 16, 2024 15:43:26 GMT -5
Hehe, very sneaky programmer :-)
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Post by hcmffm on Jan 16, 2024 17:47:22 GMT -5
Phew, I felt a bit dizzy when reading the way the programmer obfuscated the string. Pretty clever and also pretty clever that you, Peer, did find out about it via reverse-engineering.
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Post by Peer on Jan 17, 2024 13:31:13 GMT -5
That just might give us a idea of who programmed it. "The Kid" is the nickname of a famous western gunlinger, William H Bonney, Billy The Kid. We already know a Bill/William who was a programmer, Bill/William Hawkins and he implemented that similar clever easter egg in Bedlam. I got word from one of the other WT programmers, who wrote one of the other original GCE games, and who is in contact with William Hawkins. According to this, it was not William Hawkins who programmed Pole Position. And they both do not know the name of the person who did. |
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Post by 50tbrd on Jan 17, 2024 15:08:23 GMT -5
Oh well.
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Post by TrekMD on Jan 17, 2024 22:35:22 GMT -5
The fact that stuff like this keeps on getting discovered is so cool.
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Post by Peer on Jan 18, 2024 4:47:20 GMT -5
The fact that stuff like this keeps on getting discovered is so cool. When I started the analysis, triggered by the discussion I had with 50tbrd, I was convinced that there was nothing to be found inside Pole Position. And at several points I wanted to stop it, as I have some other Vectrex stuff going on, and I was sure that I was following some red herring. Especially when I saw that the routine, which I suspected to be the decryption routine, was not reading data, but code. But, once fueled, it is hard to stop an obsession  |
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Post by Peer on Jan 20, 2024 12:01:39 GMT -5
I have reliable information that confirms that it was not Bill Hawkins who programmed Pole Position.
I have also learned that a 3D Pole Position was initially assigned to one of the other known WT programmers, who was not involved in (the non-3D) Pole Position. But since he was blind in one eye, he was unable to do the 3D.
It is likely that the project was put on hold when he declined the assignment, and that there never even was a single line of code or a prototype, as Vectrex production and sales soon came to an end afterwards.
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