Julian Cochran's programming page


This page discusses mathematics and other creative pursuits unrelated to my composition primary work, which some people are also interested in.

I started programming in 1986, at the age of 12, after - thank goodness for the good luck - my father brought an XT 8088 home from work to help with his medical research at Flinders Medical Centre, Adelaide, Australia. I was mesmerized by it, along with its loud hum as it started up, but it came with almost no software - just some file utilities and a programming language. I didn't even have a programming book, but managed to remember just as few commands that someone had shown me in primary school which was enough to start.

Entranced, I was not only in my own world, but set upon creating my own worlds, which in my imagination was more interesting and beautiful than the real one. I developed many games and utilities in my teenage years, and the sense of wonder and excitement was rather similar with what I applied to music composition starting a few years later. With both composition and programming, one could create anything from one's imagination and there was sense of being unrestricted for the first time. The pen and paper must give many authors a similar sense of freedom, but I had a computer (and musical instruments) and thought that having nothing else in the world could be better. Quite incredibly, this optimistic sentiment carried through right to today, 30 years later.

I completed eight games during my teenage years but D-Zone was the most successful in reaching the public, published in 1992 at the age of 18 - these are the days before the internet, but the game was distributed all around the world via bulletin boards and I received over 500 hand-written letters that pleased me infinitely.

Another one of the games I developed was simply called - "talk". It allowed the player to talk with the computer, in any language, and the computer would learn to talk back in no matter what language you typed, and very interesting conversations ensued. The algorithm was not complex, but during the only year of my life in which I had a "job", I showed the programme to a colleague and he became absolutely obsessed with the game. He would "talk" with the programme all through the night, arrive exhuasted at work, and explain to me the profound poeticism of this so-called artificial intelligence. I was somewhat perplexed, but also excited, by his interpretation.

It was these early experiences that made me convinced about the creative power and aesthetic dimension of computer programming. Through the the decades, I have completed many software projects, but much of my work is contained in the most important work below, Xalaria.

Game production

Xalaria (2021)
This was something I wanted to create for many years, and it kept being put on hold, but finally completed the text-based game in 2021 and I will continue to upgrade it. Xalaria is an extremely deep game in which the entire universe is modeled in great detail.
Xalaria is a simulation of our universe, allowing you to travel from star to star - starting with your trusty Hobby Explorer - and interact with life forms beyond anything ever before described. Being based on text, without the limiting framing of graphics, I was able to keep the game far more open and creatively intricate.

D-Zone (1992)
D-Zone version 1.0 was released in 1992, leading to a v1.4 version update in 1993. I regularly receive emails from dedicated players from so far back (and have hundreds of hand-written letters - that was the way, back then before the internet), so I have continued to make the original DOS version of the game available.
D-Zone is a futuristic top-view multi-player battle game in which the player can shop for dozens of different vessel and weapon upgrades. Others have used this name for their game in later dates, and even a game publication firm started using it, but it all started here with D-Zone v1.0 released in 1992.

D-Zone II (2004)
Owing to the popularity of D-Zone, in 2004 I developed a modern update to the game.
D-Zone II repeats the game-play of D-Zone, however the graphics are upgraded using a unique 3D rendering engine that I developed from scratch. This graphics engine was originally planned as precursor for Xalaria, however the interface for Xalaria was greatly revised in 2017 with a focus on game-play depth rather than graphics.

Tools

3D-matrix
A 3D model development system with real-time rendering, suitable for real-time applications.
I programmed this in 2004 for the cross-platform graphics used for D-Zone II.

Extreme Brightness
I programmed a graphics engine (perspective rendering of polygons) that catered for light levels beyond the limited rgb values of present hardware. The engine was used within D-Zone II.

What is Shininess?
This is a technique that I invented to represent highly reflective polygon surfaces surfaces with extremely rapid perspective rendering.

Shrewd'm Message Boards
In late 2022 I programmed a self-education discussion forum which brought thousands of people happily together. Shrewd'm is a community forum supporting civilized, and highly helpful, investors that come together for shrewdness and merry spirits.


For feedback on this page, email me at Julian Cochran.