Designer Castles was a software title for the

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

and later

Acorn Archimedes Acorn Archimedes is a family of personal computers designed by Acorn Computers of Cambridge, Cambridge, England. The systems are based on Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and the proprietary operating systems Arthur and RISC OS. The fi ...

(

RISC OS RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archim ...

based) range of computers. The software produced by Data Design in

Barnsley Barnsley () is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. As the main settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley and the fourth largest settlement in South Yorkshire. In Barnsley, the population was 96,888 while the wider Borough has ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, UK allowed its users to design a

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

style-

castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

by means of a

WIMP Wimp, WIMP, or Wimps may refer to: Science and technology * Weakly interacting massive particle, a hypothetical particle of dark matter * WIMP (computing), the "window, icon, menu, pointer" paradigm * WIMP (software bundle), the web stack of Wind ...

based design environment. In the design environment a number of pre-defined components, (For example,

tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

wall A wall is a structure and a surface that defines an area; carries a load; provides security, shelter, or soundproofing; or, is decorative. There are many kinds of walls, including: * Walls in buildings that form a fundamental part of the supe ...

s and

keep A keep (from the Middle English ''kype'') is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word ''keep'', but usually consider it to refer to large towers in c ...

s) could be linked and manipulated to form a castle design. The components of the castle could then be printed (along with wall elevations and plans) so that a card model of the designed castle could be assembled. The paper, glue and model making tools required for assembly were not supplied with any version of the package, although assembly instructions for components were provided in the extensive manual.

BBC Micro version

Designer Castles was first released in 1988 for BBC B/Master 128. The

environment supported keyboard input and also allowed use of the mouse (such as

AMX Mouse AMX Mouse was a 1985 computer mouse sold by the British company Advanced Memory Systems. The mouse has 3 buttons. It was sold with a dedicated interface, and usually with some accompanying software such as ''AMX Art'' (MacPaint clone), ''AMX Pagem ...

). The package consisted of a software disc together with a ring bound manual and

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * R ...

cartridge containing WIMP and

dot-matrix printer A dot matrix printer is an impact printer that prints using a fixed number of pins or wires. Typically the pins or wires are arranged in one or several vertical columns. The pins strike an ink-coated ribbon and force contact between the ribbon ...

support routines. Data Design targeted with the application educational market. Review in BBC Acorn User magazine praised features of Designer Castles, but criticized its high price. The support ROM was named the ''PRINTWARE Support ROM''. The term ''PRINTWARE'' was created by Peter Downs as a trade mark to cover the concept of software that was developed to enable designs to be sent to printers as 'nets' that could be cut out and folded to construct models.

Acorn Archimedes (RISC OS) version

A version of Designer Castles was released in 1991 for the Acorn Archimedes systems using RISC OS. Unlike the BBC Micro version, the program utilizes the existing RISC OS Wimp environment and printer routines without need for a separate support module. Archimedes release also introduced several enhancements of the user interface (colourful environment instead of black and white), on the other hand it was no longer possible to print small simplified view of the castle like in the BBC Micro version.

Additional spin-off titles

As well as Castles, the design environment was later adapted in a separate software title "Medieval Villages" to allow construction of medieval villages. Castle designs could be added to designs produced by this program. A second additional title "Designer Environment" utilized the design environment for modern buildings, although it was not possible to add Castle designs to "villages" created with this software. Data Design also released "Designer Logic" for drawing of

logic gate A logic gate is an idealized or physical device implementing a Boolean function, a logical operation performed on one or more binary inputs that produces a single binary output. Depending on the context, the term may refer to an ideal logic gate, ...

The people behind Designer Castles

The Designer Castles idea was the brainchild of Peter Downs and the late Keith Swift . The original idea was to develop a "design, print, cut-out and assemble gymkhana". since both Peter and Keith had daughters it seemed a great idea, when they presented the idea to a commercial software company they were told that girls didn't use computers nearly as much as boys and, if they were to develop a similar product for boys, then the firm would be interested in discussing it further. So they set to work, and designed the first (never released) version of Designer Castles, when they presented this, the commercial company was highly critical. Peter and Keith set up Data Design, brought on board R Fry http://www.flaxcottage.com/educational/ShowPackage.asp?p=363 as programmer and Vic Wright (primarily to write the content of the exceptional manual) which Peter then produced. The business recruited Carol Duffy who was massively responsible for working with the key publications and writers (such as Chris Drage and Nick Evans), to create a tremendous amount of publicity leading to the software becoming one of the best selling educational software products in its time.

Current situation

As of 2006 there have been no attempts to revive the program for modern PC systems, despite the porting of other programs originally

Acorn The acorn, or oaknut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'' and '' Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains one seed (occasionally two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne ...

based, such as

BBC Basic BBC BASIC is a version of the BASIC programming language released in 1981 as the native programming language for the BBC Micro home/personal computer, providing a standardized language for a UK computer literacy project of the BBC. It was wri ...

and Tabs.

References

{{reflist Acorn Computers RISC OS software