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A Short History of Game Programming '9x
Some of you may have already been to older versions of the site and not have realized it. The Game Programming '9x page has been in existence since 1996! The page was started strictly as a resource center for myself (Michael Tanczos). I would save documents from some of the programming pages of the time onto my hard-drive. Eventually, I wanted to organize the documents I had into a more organized source. I saw the graphical interface that the internet offered as a perfect opportunity...
Running Time : Sept '96 to March '98
The first version was created on Geocities has been by far the longest running version of the page. It utilized a rather large interface and suffered from infrequent updates (it was still my own personal page). I quickly ran out of room with geocities since at the time, since they only offered around 1-2 megs. But the page would progress, through a movement to Logic-Gate.com.
Running Time : April '98 to June '98 At Logic-Gate, the page was short-lived. I had decided to that with a new interface I would get the page it's own domain. Surprisingly enough, gameprog.com was still available... I quickly snatched it up.
Running Time : June '98 to November '98 The move to gameprog.com was accompanied by an explosion of interest and a redesigned interface! I was finally equipped with the resources to create fully-automated site updates, interview industry professionals, and get authors for the page. In fact, the site was being accessed so many times that I ran into a tiny problem.
Running Time : November '98 to December 31, '98 That little problem was data transfer. I began to experience data transfer amounts in excess of a gig and a half per week. Also, I needed to modify the site so that I could place more banner ads throughout the site. I know many of you hate them, but they were needed for me to pay for the costs of hosting the domain.
Running Time : January '99 to June 15, '99 The site redesign was less than exciting. A few people liked the new look, but most complained that it was just plain ugly. Looking back, I would have to agree with them. But, it was a new year.. no longer '98.
Game Programming '98 would not die, but would face a version upgrade to '99. The new version, Game Programming '99, would feature a number of behind-the-scenes automated features. The most noticeable difference would be the completely redesigned interface and incredibly fast search engine.
On June 15, 1999, the site would merge with Gamedev.net, thus forming the largest game development resources available on the net.
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Unite 2010
