Greetings from Fish-Guy!

I should break the ice here! Hi! My name is Andy, I am the owner of F1-Software and have been an avid games programmer or over 14 years now. I started back in the days of the good old C64 and Sinclair Spectrum computers, spent a good number of years on the Amiga writing programs using AMOS and AMOSPro, and have been moving up the computer ladder ever since!! My first ever game on the Sinclair was called 'Operation Genie' and was a tacky fly-your-helicopter-around-a-maze game lol.

I mainly spend my time writing puzzle games, and only publish a very small handful of them as they normally don't get completed. I'll get started on a new idea, and lose interest before working on something new. I do a lot of work on commercial applications, which is why I often lose patience to work on my own programs when I get home ;)

I have worked on PC's, Macintosh, Linux, Windows Mobile, and lot's of other platforms writing portable code. My langyage of choise is C++, though I have dabbled in some others including java.

When i'm not working hard, I like to relax by drinking a beer, beating the crap out of people in World of Warcraft, or creaming aliens in the Half-Life trilogy games (i'm a big Gordon Freeman fan!). I also like spending time with my wife and four kids, who keep me sane and give me something to work for =)

As far as what I am currently working on, well, that's always a big list =) I'm working on the new PilesOTiles game, which will be made available for all the platforms including a brand new PocketPC version. I just got a nice new PDA with screen rotation, which has me all excited about being able to do some landscape PDA levels!! I am also working on a new update to CrazyCrystals, which seems to have been going on for way too long! I have also got two other games under way, one is a wordsearch game which is about 80% finished (keep your eye out for beta test requests soon!) and an ice-themed puzzler which will probbably be called 'Avalanche! or something equally as tacky-sounding ;)

I am working on two commercial programs at the moment for one of my employers. The first is simply called 'Bend File Printer' and is a tool which prints out bend files for the CNC bending machines we use here from day to day. We use them to bend semi-rigid cables into complex shapes for the cabling industry, including customers such as Agilent Technologies, Syracuse Research, even Intel and AMD are on the customer list!! The program produces a sheet which is attached to work orders on the production floor, telling them what the cable needs to measure, what type of connectors to use (SMP, SMA's etc.) and any fancy notation such as testing requirements. The bend files are experted from a CAD package called CoCreate (formerly OneSpace Designer) using a cable advisor module which renders the shape of the cable, with it's connectors, in 3D.

The other project is much larger in size, and is the program that will actually power the physical bender machines using the same bend files as the previous program. We currently use a very old program from Seven Associates which only runs on Windows 9x. It also has lots of bugs and was written using Delphi, making it very unfriendly to update. The new program will be written using C++ and contain thousands of new features, allowing the cables to be bent with more accuracy, and offer more tools to the engineers at the same time. One of the most recent additions to the program is an error reporting system that can predict problems during the manufacture process, so they can be fixed before any material is wasted and before the information even reaches the production floor. The program is expected to officially hit beta testing at the end of the year, and I will be sure to post some info and screenshots as I proceed!