Populous The Beginning

A much more visually and technically advanced take on the Populous theme. Actually it brought Populous properly into the RTS genre. It was a fantastic team lead and inspired by Alan Wright. All in all a very enjoyable project. I left E.A. to join the Lionhead Studios start-up before the game's completion but I can fairly consider myself to have been the art lead on the team.

I understand that people are still playing POP3 (as we referred to it) today, which is very satisfying if a bit crazy.

Dungeon Keeper

This was a good one. I remember one day Peter M' coming up to me and asking if I could put together a visualisation of a maze/dungeon thing to help him communicate an idea he'd had. A month later we were developing dungeon Keeper.

Quite an inventive title which again spawned many imitators. Mark Healey did a great job as the Lead artist on the project but I had a 'hands on' part to play as well as my Head Of Art role. I remember it being enormous fun to work on, a really buzzing team.

I was particularily proud of the map and Torture Chamber screens and am struggling to find copies of them to post. If anyone has them stored, please give me a shout.

Hi Octane

This shameless reuse of the Magic Carpet engine resulted in us getting a new title out in an amazing 6 weeks. It was visually more interesting than Carpet even if the game was less innovative. I really enjoyed retrofitting in some more hardcore graphics into an engine written for a much softer experience. I was also quite proud my console box cover, it was probably the first time I was able to create a CG visual without fighting the tools and I'm still very happy with it.

Theme Park

Believe it or not this pretty much set a new paradigm for gaming. There are sooo many derivative titles it's amazing. I guess the graphics were functional and reasonably memorable but, once again, it's hard to be excited now.

It was hoped that the Theme series would form a major franchise for Bullfrog but apart from 'Theme Park 2', the extraordinarily successful 'Theme Hospital' was the only other addition. Also considered were Theme Airport and Theme Prison !

Magic Carpet

It's 1994 and finally were into 3D game engines. That'll either be a really significant landmark to you or you will juat have assumed they were always there. This was a great team to work with and the game justly deserves it's place in the favourite lists. Graphically it was pretty liberating (for the time) but in many respects I felt as if I was reworking Populous again. Lots of interesting technical challenges however and it really felt like we were pioneering developers.

We went on to do Magic carpet 2 in 1995. This had all new graphics and some evolved gameplay but was pretty much more of the same. Great if you were a fan as, presumably, that's exactly what you wanted. 

Syndicate

Lot's of people have fond memories of this 1994 game, it still actually has quite a cult following and, for whatever reason, is the old-skool game that still earns me some kudos.
For me at the time it was great to dabble in cyberpunk and work in hi-res (640 x 480, you know, like on that mobile phone you just junked) even if it meant only using 16 colours as a result. I think the wrapper screens and cut-scenes still have some creative merit even if technically they make me cringe.

Many thanks to Tomasz lis for putting this excellent resource together: http://syndicate.lubie.org/synd/html/synd_main.php simply amazing.

Populous 2

This was a much anticipated title in it's day. Pop 1 had created a new genre, had enticed me into Bullfrog Studios in the UK (I was in Ireland previously) so working on this sequel was important to me. I think it was a reasonably turned out effort. Nothing much to speak of graphically other than it was tidy and had I believe the first rendered CG intro to a game (it's shockingly poor!!). I couldn't find anything in the annals to support that assertion so we can wrestle over it if you like.

Treasure Trap

Treasure Trap on the Amiga again. 320 x 200 and in glorious 16 colours. It was actually quite a nice game to play and lots of fun to work on. This was cutting edge Deluxe Paint use for 1989.

Disclaimer

I'm immensely proud of some of this work and have great memories of working with some brilliant people but CRIPES some of this stuff is so old I had to chip it out of the rock! We were so pleased with this stuff at the time but the early work looks so basic and tired now. I guess it's comparable to some extent with some contemporary mobile content but remember it was cutting edge back in the day. Anyway, I'll lump all the 'classic' bits together at the bottom so you don't feel you have to look at them too closely :-)

The Deep

Well, if only for the sake of completeness, I guess I should mention The Deep from 1998 too. Enough said :-)