About Fred
and This Page
Here is a picture of me taken several years ago when I was chief military advisor to a small, underdeveloped nation which will remain nameless. Having spent a happy career as a research chemist, I was looking for something to liven up my retirement. Using my vast military experienced gained through playing Panzer General and Steel Panthers, I was able to impress the country's leaders and land the job of Generalissimo of All Forces. Things went along OK until an equally small and underdeveloped neighboring nation invaded. It was then that my employers found that most of my military successes had been achieved via the Save Game feature. After a fast exit, I decided to stick to computer gaming and started Fred's Program Page.
If you are still here, you may find the rest of this a little more plausible. I have been a computer hobbyist for more than 20 years. My first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80. Back in those days there really wasn't much software available and considering what it did, it was pretty expensive. The obvious answer was to write your own programs. My first program, written in BASIC, was a simulation of the siege of the British by the Turks at Kut. As befits the actual situation, the game was amazingly boring. I wrote a lot of other programs in BASIC and even assembly language both for fun and for work.
The coming of the IBM PC really changed things. First of all, by then there was a lot more software available and some of it was even affordable. Besides, my employer was willing to actually buy spreadsheet and word processor software. My programing became directed to removing copy protection from games either with a little hex editing or for stubborn cases, a TSR to serve as loader. Sometimes I would use the TSR to display my x,y position in dungeons or conveniently teleport through walls.
When Windows became the dominant interface, my programing pretty much hit the skids. Doing Windows programing in straight C was tedious to say the least. I only wrote one major program that way. When Borland came out with Delphi, I gave it a try. Wow! Windows programing was a snap. But Delphi is Pascal and since I still programmed non-windows stuff in C, I was usually confused. When Borland brought out C++Builder I jumped at it. I like the orderly nature of programing and CBuilder is so easy to use that programing is fun for me. In addition to programing, I love to get inside programs and files and see how they work.
The programs on this page are designed to help the owners of games get the most out of them. This whole thing got started when I bought Pacific General. Although it had a scenario editor, as promised, it had no map editor. I was really disappointed and decided to look into writing my own. I quickly hit the stumbling block of the shp graphics format. A week or so of looking at hex dumps and a couple of Eureka moments and shp lost most of its mystery. At the time I was involved with the Panzer General DOS Research Center directed by Panos Stoucas. Some of the members there convinced me that being able to "decode" the shp format was something that a lot of people were interested in. I wrote ShpEd and it still seems to be a popular download.
All of the programs here are free (although I will accept donations). I am always looking for new projects. I have set up a message board so anyone who wants me to tackle an editor or whatever for their favorite program can let me know there and maybe get a few supporting responses. I like role playing and strategy games, especially war games and could probably be talked into doing something for games outside the scope of what is already here. I like to get feedback on what I write. If something doesn't work, is really ugly, confusing or useless, I like to know. If you find a program useful or want new features, I also would like to hear from you.
You can currently reach me at: chlanda@peoplepc.com
I also keep a more or less permanent address at: chlanda@hotmail.com
I hope the layout of this site is a little easier to use than the old one. Only the latest news will be kept in the news section. Old news (more more than a week or so) will be placed in the News Archive each time the page is updated. All of the programs are listed in the table on the main page. In that table programs are listed by the game they support. Those that are useful for several games or none in particular are given as General. The description of all of the programs is given on the Programs page and it is from there that you can download. There is a message board here now on an experimental basis. This is primarily intended for visitors to have input into what programs might appear here in the future. As time passes I will make some cosmetic changes and try to update the program descriptions.