01/10/2003 Interview with Tony Kingsmill- author of Top of the League.
How long has Top of the League taken to develop? (from the initial idea to release)
Development started in January this year - the first few weeks making notes on paper and making rough plans and drawings. The actual computer work started in February - designing the forms and then the coding. The game was finally released late September - and minor changes were being made right up to the release date. The last month was devoted entirely to testing and making improvements to things such as screen layouts and realism - all quite important to the game play.
Are you a football fan and if so, who do you support and who, in your opinion, is the best player the world has seen?
A Watford supporter for almost 20 years. There certainly hasn't been too many too many candidates at Watford for the best player in the world! John Barnes was probably the closest Watford had to a world class player, he scored a classic goal for England against Brazil in 1984. Bobby Moore was on of the greats, as was George Best. Then, of course, there's Pele and Maradona - everyone knows all the greats. In the modern game, Manchester United's Roy Keane would probably be an assett to any team in the world.
Why did you first decide to make this game and have you made any other Palm apps/games?
This is my first release on the Palm, although I've written a lot of programs - mainly games for the PC, and going back some years - the Amiga and Amstrad CPC. Top of the League goes back 15 years to when I wrote the game on the Amstrad CPC, and then the Amiga. The thing that inspired me to write a Palm football game was the lack of a management game for the format. I really wanted to write the game so I could play football on the move myself. The idea to making it shareware and available to all was secondary really. Seeing as I've written football games before, and I liked the name, I decided to call the Palm game Top of the League.
Do you have plans to enhance the game in the future i.e. hi-res, colour etc.?
I've got lots of plans to improve the game. Graphics - although perhaps not the most important part of a management game - is certainly an area for improvement. I also want to make changes to the interface, making it easier to make team selections, view formations and things like that. I also want to find ways to speed up the game processing, and am considering player and team name editors in future releases. Other leagues such as the Spanish league is also a possibility. I always open to new suggestions, gamers can leave suggestions on the website forum.
What PDA do you use and why?
I'm still using my aging Palm M100. It's surprising what you can run on such a basic machine, but you have to uninstall one thing to use another, because it's only got 2MB of RAM. I am hoping to upgrade to a Palm Tungsten T2 - very capable machines with a decent processor and 32MB RAM.
What's your favorite Palm game (besides TOTL:))
I loved Space Trader, I played it for a long time and it inspired me to program the Palm. I haven't got many games on my palm at the moment, because most of the memory is taken up by AvantGo and SmallBasic. I've got Pacman installed though, and Extra Time is an old favorite of mine.
What one feature would you like to see in a future PDA?
I'm not really the best person to comment on hardware as I'm still running a 16Mhz monochrome device! Faster processors are definitely a bonus as it allows for developers to be more ambitious. Right now a colour screen would be nice for me!
How many people do you know who use PDAs?
I know a couple of friends with Psion 5 organisers, but when I got my PDA I don't think I knew anyone else using one. Where I work full time mobile users mostly use laptops, but there a couple of Palm users and someone with a Pocket PC.
Tell us a bit about yourself (well, anything you want to:)
Writing Top of the League has taken up a lot of my time in recent months. Luckily my partner has plenty of patience as I've been rather stretched recently, with lots of late nights programming and time spent on the internet! I also have a full time job working in an IT department, carrying out all sorts of tasks such as project planning, hardware purchasing and support. Unfortunately there's not a great deal of opportunity for programming, so Top of the League has been a bit of a creative outlet for me. Now that I've finally released the game hopefully I will have a little more spare time on my hands!
If you want more information on Top of the League please visit Tony's web site which has all of the details you need. If you like football you NEED this game on your Palm- I was sacked yesterday as Bournemouth manager after only 12 games:)