The following people contributed their hacks, writing, and inspiration to this book:
Adam Cadre (http://adamcadre.ac) is the author of the novel Ready, Okay! and the web comic ACX. He has also written several computer programs, most of which prominently feature the line
20GOTO10. Among those that don’t are the interactive fiction works Photopia, Varicella, and Narcolepsy.chromatic cut his teeth programming games for the Commodore 64 before growing up to become Technical Editor of the O’Reilly Network. In practice, that means he edits http://ONLamp.com (open source administration and development), http://Perl.com, and, occasionally, books like this one. Outside of work, he enjoys cooking and producing weird software hacks such as SDL Parrot. Wade through the disarray of his web site at http://wgz.org/chromatic/.
Frank Dellario cofounded the award-winning Machinima animation company, the ILL Clan in 1998 and is its current president. He has served as the producer, production manager, assistant director, and cinematographer on numerous ILL Clan productions, bringing over 15 years of experience in film production to great use. He recently produced a series of vignettes for Spike TV’s Video Game Awards. Frank also cofounded, published, and edited FilmCrew magazine, a trade journal for the film industry business, for over eight years, and has been a multimedia producer as well. Prior to all this, he spent six years in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear technician on a fast attack submarine.
[Hack #66]
Hugh Hancock founded Strange Company (http://www.strangecompany.org/), the world’s first professional Machinima production company, making films in computer game engines, in 1997. Since then, he has produced or directed more than 10 Machinima films, been praised by Roger Ebert, been described as the “guru of the Machinima movement,” and worn PVC trousers on some seriously inappropriate occasions. He currently divides his time between running Machinima.com (http://www.machinima.com/) and working on Strange Company’s first Machinima feature film,
Bloodspell.Jeremiah Johnson is a graduate of the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science, where he spent most of his time skipping classes on Java programming and database management and instead hacking old video game consoles. In 1999, together with friend Mike Hanlon from Detroit, he cofounded the 8bitpeoples, a artist collective interested in the audio/video aesthetics of early video game consoles and home computers, and has released several recordings through 8bitpeoples under the name Nullsleep. His most recent work has focused on the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy, in areas such as music programming and graphics data hacking. He has written several online guides to music programming for Nintendo hardware.
[Hack #62]
Chris Kohler has written about Japanese video games since 1996. His work has appeared in magazines such as Wired, Animerica, and Nintendo Official Magazine UK, and on web sites including Wired News, Gamespy, and Games Domain. He has contributed research, pictures, and text to books such as High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, Second Edition, and Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Videogames, Third Edition. He spent the 2002-03 academic year living in Kyoto, Japan, on a Fulbright scholarship, researching his book Super Mario Nation: The Cinematic Japanese Video Game, which Brady Games will publish in late 2004. He graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University in 2002 with a B.A. in Japanese and highest thesis honors. Visit him online at http://kobunheat.pitas.com/.
Johan Kotlinski is currently working on his Media Engineering masters project at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. During his education, he had time to program the Little Sound Dj music editor for the Game Boy, maintain the Bleep Street/Rebel Pet Set record label, organize Microdisko club evenings, and helped kick off a new genre of music recognized by the likes of Sven Väth and Malcolm McLaren. Besides being an all-round music superstar, Johan also keeps busy programming the Commodore 64 as a proud member of the Hack’n'Trade demo group; check out the Kid Grid 2 release for an example of a truly hardcore hack.
[Hack #22]
Joshua “Storm Shadow” LaTendresse writes the audiovisual column “The Hook Up” (http://www.penny-arcade.com/hookupmain.php3) for popular web comic Penny Arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com). He is active as an instructor and student practicing Tae Kwon Do at UC Berkeley, and resides in the Presidio of San Francisco in California. His narcissism knows no bounds. Through this deeply passionate and profound self-love affair, he has purchased for himself nearly every electronic toy imaginable. Stormy (as his friends call him) will guide you through the constant bickering and irreconcilable differences between consoles and A/V equipment to the hot and steamy three-way action that can coexist between you, your gaming gear, and a great Home Theater.
Christopher Linder cofounded the independent game house Demiurge Studios (http://www.demiurgestudios.com/) along with two fellow Carnegie Mellon alumni. He is a significant contributor to the Unreal Developers Network, where many of his technical documents can be found. Besides programming and writing at work, Chris can be found creating particle systems, monkeying around in UnrealEd, and fiddling with sound effects. One day Chris hopes to outfit his station wagon with roof-mounted auto-targeting rave lasers. While he thinks this will be cool, other people are dubious.
David J. Long is a father of three little boys six and under and resides in Reading, Pennsylvania. Yup, just like the railroad. He regularly appears in the pages of Computer Games Magazine and offers a weekly column, reviews, and his unique insight into playing games and the business of games at GamerDad (http://www.gamerdad.com/), the web site of choice for parents looking for information about video games.
[Hack #8]
Chris Sturgill has been a video game artist for the better part of a decade, plying his trade at Atari Games, Midway, and Demiurge Studios on all manner of games from the arcade to home consoles. His content-related documentation can be found on the Unreal Developers Network. His doodles can be found on scraps of paper just about anywhere he’s been.
Al Reed is cofounder and Director of Development of Demiurge Studios, Inc., an independent game-development studio located in Boston. Prior to his time at Demiurge, he served in various roles at CogniToy and Iron Lore Entertainment. He is also an adjunct lecturer for a game-programming class at Carnegie Mellon University.
Spenser “Redef” Norrish is an university student who has run and written for GameSpy’s PlanetUnreal and PlanetHalfLife fan sites for the past three years, even while playing Counter-Strike competitively and playing in a season of the Cyberathlete Professional League.
Roger Post hails from southern New Jersey. He has played video games since the Atari 2600 era and tends to gravitate towards shmups, while still enjoying the occasional racer or RPG. Roger, who also goes by the name Postman, enjoys the creative side of gaming, producing the occasional article on just about anything shoot-em-up related, or tracking down fan art on some obscure Japanese web site. While some may accuse him of living in the past, he is still hopeful for the day that 2D shoot-em-ups will make a huge comeback. His web site is http://www.shootthecore.com/.
[Hack [Hack #95] ]
Nolan “Radix” Pflug has always got the most out of the games he plays. He started to go for fast completion times with Super Metroid, and in 1997, started a web site to keep track of fast times for the id Software classic Quake. After over 6,000 demos and 6 years, he expanded the site to include console games with his run of Metroid Prime 100% in 1:37. The skill of speed running gets more popular as the site continues to grow. Visit his personal site at http://planetquake.com/sda/other/.
Richard Skidmore, a.k.a. Morfans, has been a game addict for over 20 years, ever since he purchased his first computer (a ZX81) at the tender age of 11. In recent years, time restrictions and his innate lack of any actual gaming talent have meant that he spends more time watching other people play than playing himself, a situation that suits him just fine as an admin at the Speed Demos Archive (http://planetquake.com/sda). He lives in the Highlands of Scotland with his family, an assortment of animals, and a very slow Internet connection.
Andrew Plotkin has moved away from Pittsburgh three times and now lives in Pittsburgh. He is interested in making tools that let people make art; he studies what draws people into complicity with virtual worlds. (He suspects the answer is how the interactions are shaped.) He has several Macs and lots of very cool books. He can also cook and enjoys long walks. He would like to get together with a nice geek girl. Email for info (see http://eblong.com/zarf/home.html for address).
Michael Zenke (http://www.randomdialogue.net) writes and consumes oxygen in what is undoubtedly the best city in the world, Madison, Wisconsin. Michael lives with his fiancée Katie. This is his first contribution to a published book. Michael is a sectional editor for Slashdot Games (http://games.slashdot.org/) and posts content on a regular basis to his own web site, Random Dialogue. When he’s not writing about games, he’s usually playing them or running pen and paper games for his friends. There is no truth to the rumor that he once ran over a woman with her own car.
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