About

If you hadn't figured already, I hail from the UK, England. And yes, I do fulfil the stereotype of consuming lots of tea. These days I'm living with my partner and our cat in a small village in the South East, surrounded by elderly folk and sheep.

I'm heavily into data preservation (particularly around games) and run a site called TalonBrave.info, which is named after a character that was to feature in a game you may have heard of called Prey. The site is a bit of a branching spider, with other associated projects and sites, such as The Data Dungeon. I've dumped quite a few different pieces of software over the years, many of which can be found on the Internet Archive.

Reverse engineering various file formats and games is also a big hobby of mine (you can find some of my work published on both TalonBrave.info, and here).

Besides computers, I also love to write, whenever I get the chance and motivation to do so. For a long time now, I've been gradually fleshing out my own fantasy universe, though who knows if it'll actually go anywhere.

Finally, I sometimes produce music though it's completely for my own pleasure and something that I'm not doing as often as I used to, sadly - creative blocks suck. If you're interested, you can find my SoundCloud here.

Portfolio

ApeTech (2020 - )
3D game engine written in C23. After using the Quake, Source and some other engines for a number of years, in 2020 I decided to work on my own from scratch. Alongside the engine I also developed my own editor environment called Forge, which allows you to work completely from within the 3D view. A video overview of the engine is available here.

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TinyJC (2021)
Modification created for Deus Ex that shrinks the player to provide a unique playing experience. It also changed the pitch of the main characters voice to match, which proved to be incredibly entertaining. A video is available here.

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OpenHoW (2017 - 2020)
FOSS reimplementation of the classic Hogs of War game. Models, sounds, music and environments were loading in almost perfectly, and minimap, alongside some basic game logic, were also done. A set of tools, using Imgui, were also implemented, such as a model viewer and some basic level editing functionality. Shelved as an official remaster is currently in the works.

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Decay: Tempus (OpenKatana) (2011 - 2016)
An ambitious first-person shooter that sought to answer the question of what Daikatana might've ended up like had the original team stuck with the Quake engine. Working alongside four others, I was project director, lead programmer, texture artist and level designer.

Other

Below is a list of various other projects I've worked on over the years. 

It's a little awkward putting a range on some of these, as it doesn't necessarily mean I worked on the project continually for that long or that I'd completely stopped at that point, but hopefully gives a rough idea of how long it was a focus for.

• bloggy; static blog generator written in C (2024)
  
• Rayman Raving Rabbids: Reburrowed (2024 - )
  • Fan-game based on a prototype of Rayman 4.
  • Engine programmer (see Jaded)
• Jaded; community patched version of Ubisoft's Jade engine (2023 - )
• DNF2001 Restoration Project (2022)
  
  • Contributed some bug fixes at the start of the project.
• Space Ranger Asteroid Attack (2021)
  • Submission for Quad Cities Indie Arcade Jam.
  • Using own ApeTech engine.
  • Source code is available on itch.io under LGPL3.
• D3Foxed; modified fork of fhDOOM with 64-bit support (2020 - )
• Prey: Hunted; small mod for Human Head's Prey (2020)
• Buddy's Adventure (2020)
  • Submission for DOS Games Jam.
  • Spawned ApeTech, which at the time was called Yin.
  • Source code is available on itch.io under public-domain.
• qmfw; platform abstraction and utility library (2017 - )
• Virtual Creature (2017)
  • Submission for #LOWREZJAM 2017.
  • Built from work done on Compton.
• Compton (2016 - 2022)
  • Life sim with isometric perspective, using Allegro.
  • Source code is available here under GPL3.
  • Shelved.
• Invasion (2014 - )
  • Ported Valve's 2003 Team Fortress 2 to Source 2013.
  • Source code and content are publicly available.

Websites

• RayDevWiki; developer resource in relation to Rayman games (2023 - )
  
• The Data Dungeon; data archive for games and more (2021 - )
  
• TalonBrave.info; blog focused on video-game preservation (2013 - )
  

* = There's an official remake of Hogs of War currently in the works, and I've stated that I'll take my hands off my own project until I know what's going on with that, as it's basically aiming to do what I'd wanted to do anyway. Depending on how the release goes, I might or might not revive the project.