Silas Warner

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Title Screenshot from Castle Wolfenstein

Silas Warner (18 August 1949 – 3 March 2004) was a game programmer and the first employee of Muse Software. Among other games, he created Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. These two games inspired id Software to create Wolfenstein 3D, the game that popularized the first-person shooter genre.

Warner was educated at Deep Springs College and Indiana University. He was a talented programmer, but lacked some social skills.^[1] Former coworkers state that he was a prototypical "geek" in the best sense of that word: smart, inventive, and totally uninterested in conforming. He was a very large man, 6'9" and over 300lbs. Legend has it that he would typically program while wearing only his underwear, even in the office.

Warner was a major contributor to the early PLATO system in not just the area of gaming but also as an educational content developer. RobotWar and its editor program RobotWrite originated on the PLATO system in the 1970s. This game allowed players to program their own robots in a simple language and then pit them against each other in an arena. Due to the nature of the PLATO system as an interactive educational tool, and the availability of RobotWar at many PLATO sites, this game became an item listed in the on-line computer science curriculum of many universities and colleges. Other PLATO games authored principly by Warner include Conquest, Orbit War and Airace^[2] (precursor to Airfight hence Sublogic's Flight Simulator). He was also a contributor to Empire. ^[2]

Warner also created one of the first digital sound systems for the Apple II called "the Voice" which enabled one to record voice and play it back through the Apple II's severely limited sound system. The technology was used to create the voices in Castle Wolfenstein. He also adapted RobotWar for the Apple II. This version of the game was so popular Byte magazine used to run competitions for best robot.

After Muse, Warner went to work for MicroProse at their Hunt Valley, Maryland studio. He left about 1990.

Warner died in March of 2004 after a long battle with kidney disease.

[edit] Music

Silas Warner was also a published author and talented musician and composer in the classical European style. Amongst his notable works are Fugue for DRH and Variations on Sonata in A by Mozart (the second of which can be downloaded for personal use).^[3]