So today we bade a fond farewell to our friend and colleague Jonathan “Joffa” Smith. Spectrum programmer, artist, and game designer extraordinaire who was taken away from us at a far too early age of just 43.

I thought I’d use this blog to put down some thoughts and memories on one of the best kept secrets in the games industry.

When I joined Ocean at the back end of 1987, Joff was the first person that I spoke to - I’m not ashamed to admit I was completely in awe of him - in the many years to follow he still referred to me as his biggest fan! Just before he left Ocean to form Special FX with Paul Finnegan I had the privilege of sharing a room with him working on a C64 version of a game idea that he had called “Newt” - a Cobra killer!

The game only had a few weeks development before he went off to the Albert Dock (it did become a game eventually under the Special FX banner - Hyper Active) - but in that short time I got to learn how he worked; it was a fascinating, darkly funny exercise in how to develop a game at breakneck speed - that was one hell of an education.

The word “Genius” is banded out a lot these days - but my lord, Joff personified it. I’ve never met anyone since who was just so far ahead of the curve - from his interleaved data/mask sprite plots to his self generating code for pre shifted block scrolling on Cobra, this young lad constantly thought outside of the box, and constantly left us all slack jawed.

Joff kept himself to himself and didn’t really play the fame game - it’s only recently, with the dawn of the internet, that people tracked him down and let him know just how inspirational he was at the start of our fledgling industry. In a bizarre twist he became more famous later in life due to a “retro” resurgence for games he had worked on decades previously.

At least he left us knowing that people truly appreciated his work and looked up to him as a developer to aspire to. Thanks to the many, many great games he developed, he has left a legacy behind that will ensure that although he’s gone, he will never be forgotten.

Mini Softography:

Pud Pud, Kong Strikes Back, Daley Thomson’s Super Test, Green Beret, Hyper Sports, Terra Cresta, Cobra, Mikie, Hyper Active, Firefly, Hysteria, Batman the Caped Crusader, Midnight Resistance, Hudson Hawk, Mr Do!

In memoriam, Jonathan “Joffa” Smith, 1st February 1967 - 26 June 2010. Rest in Peace.

Your biggest fan.


Paulie.

It has been a while since I’ve updated the old blog - but this weeks sad news requires an update.

I’m sad to report that last Saturday the games industry lost one of its original trailblazers - Jonathan “Joffa” Smith aged just 43.

Joff was without a doubt one of the finest Spectrum programmers I have ever met. The thing is, Joff wasn’t just a programmer, he was a designer and an artist (he even wrote the music players!) He could pretty much do the entirety of a game on his own. His games were good; damn good:

Pud Pud, Daley Thompson’s Super Test, Kong Strikes Back, Hyper Sports, Green Beret, Cobra, Terra Cresta, Mikie, Ping Pong, Hysteria, Firefly, Batman the Caped Crusader to name but a few.

Every game carried Joff’s trademark sense of humour, perfect sense of playability, and technical mastery.

He was the first person I spoke to at Ocean, and I must admit I was a little awe struck by just how smart, yet unassuming he was. Thankfully we have stayed in touch ever since - his passing completely caught me off guard and knocked me for six.

I’m off to his funeral tomorrow and I shall raise a glass to a true gaming legend who will be sorely missed.

Jonathan “Joffa” Smith, 1st February 1967 - 26 June 2010. R.I.P.

Well, I said there was big news on the horizon. Turned out to be a bit bigger than I first imagined. Elsewhere on the site I was talking about the UK developers that where top dog - top of that list was Traveller's Tales (creators of Lego Star Wars, Narnia, Finding Nemo amongst many others), well, I'm now pleased to say that we have been acquired by Traveller's Tales and are working as part of their group on some seriously wicked IP.

Oh yeah, and we're also hiring! Any programmers and animators out there why not hit out web sites www.embryonicstudios.com and www.t-tales.com for details. Great company, great people, great projects and job security - c'mon what are you waiting for!

Have a great Christmas everyone!

Finally, I've had a couple of hours to add some more of the intended content to the site. I've started adding screenshots and more details on some of the games I've worked on. As a starter for ten I've added a page on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. You can also get to the detail pages from the My Games thumbnails.

There's tonnes more to come over the next couple of weeks - and more stuff (finally) on actually writing your own games!

I've also put up the Z80 source code to Mr Do! on the Gameboy, as Jofffa, the original author, has decided to put it up on his website. I merely finished the product off and debugged it prior to shipping - I found it lurking on a floppy disk the other month and so sent it to Joffa. As Joff is happy to put it up, I figured I'd do the same.

Just been fiddling around with some new Java plugins and so to test the dynamic goodies out I've put up some stuff about various CHEATS in some of the games I've worked on. Its all a bit, well, perfunctory at the moment, but I'm going to start adding more in depth looks into the development of some of the better games (!). As its the 10th Anniversary of Privateer 2, and the chaps on the Wing Commander Combat Information Centre are planning on doing something to mark the occasion, I thought I'd dig a few bits and bobs out and start with that. Stay Tuned.

I awoke this morning to find that the people at Your Head software have come up with even more fabulous plug-ins for the insanely great Rapid Weaver (the finest web creation tool on the planet). So, my tips for creating lovely web sites.

1) Buy a nice shiny iMac (with Intel Core Duo of course)
2) Buy Rapid Weaver
3) Buy every RapidWeaver Plugin that Your Head software makes.

The Your Head plug-ins take Rapid Weaver from Insanely Great, to "REALLY Insanely Great"

Just added MP3 versions of some of the Ocean Loading Music to my DOWNLOADS page for those of you who'd rather just see what the fuss was about / re-live some memories without getting a C64 emulator going.

Blimey it's been a while. Since setting up Warthog some ten years ago I'd kinda forgotten how fast time flies when you're having fun! And I've been having a lot of fun over at Castle Embryonic with the gang! We're just putting the finishing touches to our all new singing and dancing cross platform technology - more on that soon! You know, it's amazing how starting something from scratch really opens your eyes to all the shortfalls of your previous technology. As one great philosopher once said, "Experience is a wonderful thing... It allows you to recognise a mistake when you make it again". Going into something with your eyes wide open this time around is very handy!

There's nothing quite like the ability to engineer a project on six very different platforms using essentially the identical code, art and audio assets - and it just works. I say "essentially" - the one caveat is that whilst everything does work straight out of the box, what you don't want is your product to look identical on every platform (basically aiming for the lowest common denominator). To counter this we have a "fork" in our shader implementation/preview pipeline (essentially its a parallel shader cascade) that allows the artists to set up different levels of shaders depending on the target platform - its up to our graphics guys and technical artists to ensure that "under the hood" the target platform implements the most optimal and graphically rich interpretation of the artist's desired shader.

Tune in again real soon....

Well, it was time for a change of scenery - so I've setup a new indie games studio with my old developer mates from EA Manchester and the Warthog days called "Embryonic Studios". Keep an eye out, as we should have some big announcements coming out soon. This is going to be a real blast!

Just added a page about SID music on the Commodore 64. It contains info on how the drivers of the time made the funky sounds and has links to the DOWNLOADS page were you can get sample code for the emulators along with the source code for the music driver.

Just thrown together a page about "Freeload" or "The Ocean Loader" that everyone called it. Lots of people have asked about how it worked, what it did, so after answering the same questions for various magazine articles I thought I'd write the definitive guide to Freeload on the C64.

Warning - It's extremely nerdy

Well I've had enough - after BT's FTP site was down for the gazillionth time , and my refusal to use the BT/Geocities ad laden "freebie" web space, I finally bit the bullet and got myself some proper dedicated web hosting. This is more like it. Guaranteed 99.9% uptime. Bliss. Added links to Jonathan "Joffa" Smith's website that is finally back up and running. Joff was one of THE best Spectrum programmers in the land, and IMHO the best programmer at Ocean.

Started a stab at the first page of the GAME DEVELOPMENT section. Added some more WARTHOG PICTURES (and got around to annotating them too), along with some more pictures from the OCEAN days,

Just added a new bunch of Quick Links from the HOMEPAGE, along with a starting swipe at the master LINKS page itself. I've added links to key game development sites (including games industry job searches), useful links for programmers and links to some of the top flight developers in the UK. There's more categories and links to come. Enjoy!

Just started adding a host of ye-olde photographs from the Ocean Days. Lots of bad haircuts and bad jumpers (actually, that's just me!). More to come from the EA and Warthog days.