Rich Whitehouse

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Rich Whitehouse

Born	September 20, 1982 (1982-09-20) (age 25) Harvard, Illinois
Occupation	Video game designer

Rich Whitehouse is a game designer and programmer. He is well-known for several famous game modifications,^[1] including the Jumbot and Scientist Hunt mods for Half-Life. Rich is also well-known in the video game industry for work on titles in the Jedi Knight series (such as Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, in cooperation with LucasArts) and Soldier of Fortune series, as well as, most recently, Prey.^[2]

1 Development History
2 Personal Life
3 References
4 External Links

[edit] Development History

[edit] Game Modding

Rich first became publicly involved in game development in December of 1997, with his Famkebot mod, the first bot for Quake 2.^[3] Rich continued periodic development of the Famkebot for several years, eventually offering a complete rewrite of the source code, and a Capture the Flag version of the bot.

After work on the Famkebot, Rich continued on to work with Half-Life to create the Jumbot and Scientist Hunt. Rich continued development of these projects for roughly 2 years, offering a variety of improvements and new features in each release of the software.

In May of 2000, Rich contacted Raven Software about writing a bot for Soldier of Fortune. Studio head Brian Raffel requested that Rich come to the studio to meet the developers of the game and look at the preliminary game source code distribution, and development was underway shortly thereafter. Development of the bot, named hidebot (after Japanese rock star Hideto Matsumoto), eventually led to its distribution at retail, with the release of Soldier of Fortune Gold. Rich began fulltime work at Raven Software shortly after the release of Soldier of Fortune Gold.

During his career in game modding, Rich also contributed to other community efforts, such as Action Half-Life, and did several community interviews.^[4]

[edit] Raven Software

Rich started working full-time in the video game industry at Raven Software, at only 18 years of age, with no formal training or experience beyond his history in game modifications. Rich first worked on Soldier of Fortune 2 under the supervision of game programmer Keith Fuller, and moved on to the Star Wars game, Jedi Knight II, shortly after. In addition to handling multiplayer game logic, networking, and integrating single player technology features into the multiplayer code-base, Rich also focussed a great deal on keeping the game code mod-friendly, and creating simplistic and easy-to-work-with interfaces, which contributed to the game's extreme longevity in support from its mod community.^[5] Rich was also responsible for the unauthorized inclusion of a secret Darth Maul-style double-ended lightsaber in the game, an act which nearly led to an early termination of his employment.^{[citation needed]}

Following the success of Jedi Knight II, Rich continued on to serve as the multiplayer programmer on Jedi Academy. Rich continued his focus on mod-friendliness, and worked closely with programmer Mike Gummelt and designer Mike Majernik in conceptualizing and implementing new gameplay elements.

Rich moved on to X-Men Legends after the successful completion of Jedi Academy. However, citing the desire to move more into technology and expand his knowledge, he resigned from his position at Raven Software before the completion of X-Men Legends. In the time following this period, Rich dabbled in development for the Gameboy Advance, as well as development of an OpenGL-based game engine.^[6]

[edit] Human Head Studios

Rich began working at Human Head Studios in 2005, where he served as network and general technology programmer on Prey. Rich once again served a design role in multiplayer development, in addition to his technological duties, organizing in-house testing and feedback sessions.^[7] After the completion of Prey, Rich left his full-time position at Human Head Studios, to once again pursue personal interests and further development of his own technology. However, he remained on the 3D Realms forums, where he was often seen assisting users with technical problems.^[8]

After his departure, Rich returned to Human Head Studios the following year to assist in the development of technology for an unannounced title. Rich writes that his contributions to this title include robust texture streaming (with real-time texel area determination), hardware vertex blending/animation, and shadowmaps with dynamic frustum grouping/LOD.^[9] Following the completion of this technology, Rich left Human Head Studios again.

[edit] Industry Interim

During his professional career in the video game industry, Rich has continued to produce freeware and games in his spare time. Especially notable among these projects are Hydroball, Ninja Mod, Dixerius, and Quake Royale.^[10]

Additionally, Rich is known for having created Nintendo DS ports of Hexen and a NES emulator.^[11]

[edit] Personal Life

Rich began game development at a very early age, and was involved in a Duke Nukem 3D Total Conversion called Unleashed in his very early teen years. Rich was homeschooled through the majority of middleschool and highschool, and has stated that he believes the resulting extreme social isolation and lack of formal teaching is a primary cause of his unusual personality.^{[citation needed]}

Rich was involved in the foundation of a superficial Skull and Bones organization, known only as "#mm", before his professional career began. This group consisted of some 30 or so social miscreants, and was abandoned by Rich during a struggle with depression and transition in his personal ideology. The group continues to operate in varying forms.^[12]

Since the GPL release of the Quake 3 source code, Rich has been on a personal crusade to see the Jedi Knight II engine source released under GPL. However, his attempts to reach through to LucasArts have not yielded success, in part due to a lack of community support.^[13]