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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 36</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">New!!</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments <a href="../../../index.html">on the front page</a>!</font></p>
              
<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><a href="../../2.15/feat/index.html" target="">Livin' 
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  theAntiELVIS explores the wild and wacky world that is Will Wright's <b>The Sims</b>, 
  asking the inevitable quesiton, &quot;is <b>The Sims</b> the first step toward a virtual 
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                A <i>lot</i> of people deserve thanks for this article...Jason 
                &quot;loonyboi&quot; Bergman took a moment to thank them all.</font></p>
              <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><a href="http://www.raven-games.com">Raven-Games.com</a>: 
                A great resource for classic Raven games.</font></p>
              
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<p align="CENTER"><img src="../../images/v_thumb.jpg" width="64" height="64" align="MIDDLE"></p><p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">Hey <B>Half-Life</b> fans! Looking for some good reads? Check out Valve designer Harry Teasley's <a href="../../1.16/guest/index.html">guest editorial</a>, our <a href="../../1.16/topshelf/index.html">review</a> of Half-Life, or our interview with <a href="../../1.34/feat">Marc Laidlaw!</a></font></p>

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        <p align="center"><img src="../../images/cover1.36_sml.jpg" width="230" height="230" align="middle" hspace="4"></p>
        <p align="center"><font size="+3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8">Inside 
          Raven Software:<br>
          <font size="+1">the definitive history </font><font size="+1">(part 
          one)</font></font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
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        <p align="LEFT">&nbsp;</p>
        <p><img src="../../images/letters/i.jpg" width="26" height="40" align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 
          nside Raven Software, a number of people are huddled around the cubicle 
          of Dan Kramer, one of their intrepid programmers. We’re about to be 
          shown the latest feature from <b>Soldier of Fortune</b>, one of two 
          games currently being worked on at Raven, and the company’s eleventh 
          full game since their inception in 1988. </font></p>

        <p></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">&quot;Check this out,&quot; 
          he says, and everyone leans toward the computer in anticipation, &quot;you’re 
          going to love this.&quot;</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">He spawns a new character 
          on the screen, and raises his ultra-realistic looking pistol. He fires, 
          making the character drop to his knees, and then to the ground. A pool 
          of blood forms around the body, slowly oozing out. The body jerks slightly, 
          and then comes to a cold death. I comment on the realism, to which he 
          replies, &quot;That’s nothing. Watch this.&quot;</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">As several others and I look 
          on, he raises his pistol to the now-dead body, and begins to fire. As 
          each bullet hits its mark, the corpse twitches with grim realism. It’s 
          more than a little disturbing, and the crowd eats it up. This is yet 
          another example of the sort of small detail that Raven consistently 
          puts into their games. From the blowing leaves in <b>Hexen</b> to the 
          map that shows up between levels in <b>Heretic II</b>, Raven has mastered 
          the art of the detail.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Raven Software has been making 
          games that are full of depth, immaculate detail, and more than perhaps 
          any other game company, original artwork, for over a decade. The company 
          was founded by artists, and this has had a profound impact on the way 
          their games are developed.&#9;Take <b>Heretic II </b>as a recent example. 
          Raven’s most recent title, a third-person action game, had a whopping 
          seven conceptual artists. Compare that to the two concept artists on 
          <b>Tomb Raider 3</b> or the <i>one</i> credited on LucasArts’ <b>Grim 
          Fandango</b> and you start to see the unparalleled attention to detail 
          Raven puts into its games. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Given their attention to 
          detail, it should come as no surprise that their first game was a role-playing 
          game (RPG). RPGs are typically the most complex and developed games, 
          and Raven’s background in role-playing set the tone for virtually all 
          of their games.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">&quot;In 1988 my brother 
          and I decided to start working on our first game,&quot; Brian Raffel, 
          co-founder of Raven, and current Big Cheese explained. &quot;We were 
          <b>Dungeons and Dragons</b> and role-playing fans, so we had this concept 
          to start a role-playing game.&quot; But Brian and his brother Steve 
          were both artists, not programmers, so they found themselves needing 
          a little help. &quot;We were friends with this guy who had a computer 
          shop, and he put us in contact with a couple of programmers, Ben Gokey, 
          and Rick Johnson.&quot; </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It turns out that their meeting 
          was one of those rare strokes of pure luck. Rick Johnson (who’s still 
          with the company, working on <b>Soldier of Fortune</b>) and Ben Gokey, 
          (now at Human Head Studios) both made quite a trek to get to that software 
          store. Rick explained, &quot;[Ben] and I went to the same high school, 
          and we both had Amiga computers. We were both programmers and hackers. 
          Because the Amiga was rare, not that common in the U.S., the closest 
          software store was about thirty minutes away. So we went there, and 
          we got to know the owner pretty well. And he knew these two artists 
          who were trying to put together a game but didn’t have any programmers.&quot;</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">But while Ben hopped on the 
          project as soon as he could, Rick was tied up in other commitments. 
          &quot;I was going to college [and] Ben had more time, so he got involved 
          with them. He started working on it…a month later, he realized it was 
          too much work for just one person, and he asked me to help. We worked 
          on it in our spare time for a year, and put together a demo.&quot;</font></p>
        <table width="75" border="1" align="right">
          <tr> 
            <td> 
              <div align="center"><a href="bcryptc.php"><img src="images/bcryptc_sml.jpg" width="113" height="149" border="1"></a></div>
            </td>
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            <td> 
              <div align="center"><i><font size="-1">The <b>Black Crypt</b> cover 
                art. Scary, huh?</font></i></div>
            </td>
          </tr>
        </table>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">That demo was the genesis 
          of <b>Black Crypt</b>, Raven Software’s first game, and their only release 
          for the Amiga. With only four people working on the game, naturally 
          everyone did more than one job, according to Brian Raffel. &quot;My 
          brother and I did all the artwork, and the sound effects, and all the 
          levels. So we were kind of jack-of-all-trades. Rick did the editor, 
          our C code, and monster AI and Ben did our assembly language.&quot;</font></p>
        <div align="left"> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">After a time, 
          the demo was complete, and ready to show to publishers. &quot;We felt 
          it was pretty good; it was similar to the <b>Eye of the Beholder</b> 
          or <b>Dungeon Master</b> series. We got the demo done, and we sent it 
          out to ten publishers…we figured what the heck…we talked to them ahead 
          of time, and they were all saying, ‘We get a thousand submissions a 
          month. Maybe we’ll get back to you in three months or something.’ So 
          we sent it out, and in three days, we had six contract offers.&quot; 
          Pretty impressive for four guys with no professional work to speak of. 
          The fledgling developers decided to go with Electronic Arts, who agreed 
          to produce the full game. </font></div>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">And so the small bunch of 
          guys who were now known as Raven Software continued work on <b>Black 
          Crypt </b>for the next ten months, finally finishing their first game 
          in January of 1992. The game was originally supposed to go on sale on 
          March 20, 1992, but in a major goof on EA’s part, the game was actually 
          freely available for download for about six weeks before that. Undaunted, 
          the game did ship, and sold surprisingly well for an Amiga game, breaking 
          30,000 copies. There were plans to port the game, but they never actually 
          materialized. According to Raffel, &quot;there was a PC version and 
          a Sega Genesis version planned, both got killed. One because the developer 
          couldn’t get it ported properly to the PC and the other because they 
          had another RPG title out on the Genesis that didn’t do well. You know, 
          typical business stuff.&quot;</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp; </p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><i>(<a href="index2.php">Continued 
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      <p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
        Illustration &copy; 1999 Rowan Crawford. This article is &copy; 1999 Jason 
        Bergman. All other content is &copy; 1999 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
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