shawn64.... dead

[sevengali]

probably one of the best game makers i have ever seen...

Shawn64 (real name Shawn Noel) took his own life onFriday, January 20, 2006. He was only 17 years old, but had produced many polished, professional games. His games showed a creativity well beyond his years. We gamers have lost a very special person.


The following paragraphs have been taken from 'A Shawn64 Retrospective' by clysm on the 'game maker games' forum:

Shawn Noel was already a Game Maker veteran when I discovered Mark Overmars's game creation program in early 2003. His Missile Wave 2 was the first Game Maker title I came across that really impressed me. When I wrote Shawn to tell him this, he became my first contact in the Game Maker community. We talked frequently over the next few years, exchanging instant messages about our work with Game Maker and about other things. I was always impressed by his enthusiasm for game creation and by his prolific output.

Although Shawn may be best known for his chaotic and violent games such as the Jetz series and Infection, he also created quite a few more benign puzzle and skill-based games, such as Marblex and Thrust. Virtually all of his games were and continue to be hits in the Game Maker community and beyond. Today, although his own site is gone, his games can be found in many other places on the Web, where they continue to entertain and inspire many people. Galaxy Arcades and Missile Waves

Galaxy Arcade was Shawn's first game, released in the Summer of 2002. He had discovered Game Maker earlier that year when he searched for the phrase "game maker" at Download.com. Instead of creating a single game for his first project, he created a collection of mini-games, each employing a different mechanic. In early 2003, he followed this up with Galaxy Arcade 2, a more polished collection with some overlap.

Missile Wave 2 was the sequel to one of the mini-games in the first Galaxy Arcade. In it, you defend a wall of blocks against missiles with various personalities. In my first e-mail message to Shawn, I asked him why the screen capture on the Game Maker site showed a colorful background while the actual game had only a solid black background. He explained that the background image increased the file size beyond five Megabytes, and that was the file size limit for all of the free Web hosts that he knew of.

Other Ventures

While many people may have creative ideas, Shawn was unique in his dedication to realizing his creative visions. As his games became more and more elaborate, he continued to release them at a surprising rate. He created all of his games within about a three-year period. I can't help but wonder what he might have done in the next three years and beyond.

Shawn's games were quite varied. Bounty Hunter SX is a space exploration game with mining, upgrades, and ship battles. Marblex is a challenging top-down action puzzle game reminiscent of Marble Madness.

Thrust may be my personal favorite of Shawn's games, despite my frustration with its difficulty. When I complained about some of the levels, he mocked me by recording a video of himself breezing through the game on its hardest setting. When I reached the end of my skill and patience, he gave me a debug code that enabled me to see the final areas of the game.
Mini Golf Pro is an elaborate miniature golf game with multi-player support and additional mini-games. I enjoyed helping him test the game--especially the Gravity Tower mini-game--along with Darthlupi, Mocha Man, and Shaltif.

Shawn's final release was Street Bike Fury, another rather violent fast-action game with an impressive amount of detail and polish.

In addition to his games, Shawn released collections of source code examples on several occasions to share his programming tricks. He also took part in various Game Maker forums, including his own.


Gonna miss his games

[aaaphil]

gona miss is game but I dont know him

[Xtreme22]

That stinks, i havent heard of his games though.

[pp2]

That's bad i don't know him and i'm gamer.

[CrosbyisCool]

wow, he was so young....

[sevengali]

yea, he made some games for that site...

permission for url's?

[ryanmcmillan]

man.... another lost video game man.... another lost dollar out of our pockets! lol! i bet he will be missed!

[sevengali]

yea... he was the best (best single game maker, he didn't work with anyone)

[rockbock]

man that was bad but i didnt heard of his name and his games and i have a question fro my game"is roadrash copy of street bike fury?it also involve some type of bad things and is violent you would be surprised that i love that game"!