Bill Budge, the developer of 1983’s Pinball...

Bill Budge, the developer of 1983’s Pinball Construction Set, has open-sourced the game’s code today. This is in preparation for a post-mortem he’ll be giving at GDC this year (along with the creators of Myst, Crystal Castles, etc). As I’ve said before, the value of post-mortems cannot be underestimated and LA Game Space will place a strong emphasis on them by offering talks and exhibitions alike.

The quote above is taken from the June 1984 issue of ᴋ-ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀ (which coincidentally I’d been reading this week for WWWTXT). Bill spent a day with a then 17-year-old programmer who looked up to him, and when he asked what Budge’s personal goals in programming were, his reply was:

I don’t consider myself a graphics expert. What I’d really like to do is write programs that are useful, instead of just entertaining. My main interest is artificial intelligence.

My next project may be a “Construction Set Construction Set” which would let players create all sorts of games, and then play them.

The game was first self-released and eventually published by a very youthful Electronic Arts. It was developed after Budge released the popular Raster Blaster pinball game for the Apple II.

(Thank you Kevin Fowler for the heads up!)