Fallout Developers Profile - Tim Hume

[Brother None]

It's a busy Tuesday, but nonetheless it is still Profile Tuesday.

This week brings us Tim Hume, who did the Mac programming for Fallout 1 (pretty much all by himself):<blockquote>I did all the programming, of course. But my job also involved proof-reading the manual, getting someone to do a desktop theme in the Fallout style, and doing a few interviews.
My main role was programming. I had to get the sound, graphics, game play, etc. to work on the Mac. This was the first game that I had that much responsibility for. It was a lot of work.
I had a lot of problems getting the performance to be good enough. All the design and development decisions were based on the PC's strengths and weaknesses. The waves and fire were done using palette switching. That was fast on the PC, but slow on the Mac. It would have been faster on the Mac to animate it using frames. The Mac wasn't limited to 8-bit color like the PC was at the time.
Other bugs showed up from using a different compiler for a different operating system on a different CPU. I was using CodeWarrior on the Mac, and they were using Microsoft Visual C on the PC. Of course, a good thing with this was that these two versions would uncover bugs that might not have been caught if there had just been the PC version. This helped the PC development go a little faster. The problem for me was that I was the only one tracking down all the ones that showed up only on the Mac, and there were a dozen to find the ones showing up on the PC.
One of the fun things I added to the Mac version that wasn't in the PC version was having the Pipboy talk. I used the Mac's Text to Speech capability. When the Pipboy came up, it would say hello. It would have different greetings on various holidays. I'm not sure if many people noticed it. When the game was ported to OS X, they dropped that. I don't know why.</blockquote>Link: Fallout Developers Profile - Tim Hume

 

[alec]

Before going to work for Boeing, I took the stage name of Albert Hammond, Jr. My new solo CD, Yours To Keep, is available now. I worked on it in my spare time.

Uhm... people: something is dreadfully wrong about this Tim Hume interview.

I'm a pretty big The Strokes fan and Albert Hammond Jr. is the guitarist of that band.

This is his pic from the cd booklet of "Is This It", the first full cd by The Strokes:

This is the pic of Tim Hume that accompanies the interview:

Notice the differences?

"Yours To Keep" is Albert Hammond Jr.'s first solo-album, very reminiscent of The Strokes by the way, and Julian Casablancas (singer of The Strokes) even plays bass and sings on a song on "Yours To Keep" (the song "Scared"). Sean Lennon contributed to the album as well.

Check online reviews if you don't believe me.

Is Tim Hume ill in the brainz or is he just trying to fool us?

 

[Brother None]

He's trying to fool us. He also did not win a nobel prize for medicine in 2004.

Silly beans.

 

[alec]

Silly beans.

Hume or me? He had you fooled as well, iirc. You just edited the link to "his" album out of your first post.

 

[Brother None]

Hume or me? He had you fooled as well, iirc. You just edited the link to "his" album out of your first post.

I originally included that link to his album as a joke, but your post made me realise most people won't get the joke, so I removed it.

As long as his Fallout-stuff is genuine.

Any Mac users willing to comment?

4too, this one goes out to you, buddy.

 

[alec]

your post made me realise most people won't get the joke

Most people call that "a lie". Which is a sin. Ask God Almighty.
What's funny about saying you made a (less-known) record when it isn't true?

Just saying, that's all.

 

[Per]

Don't listen to alec. He's the crazy vandal who edited the Wikipedia entry for The Strokes to say "Albert Hammond Jr." instead of "Tim Hume".

 

[Clewin]

Hume or me? He had you fooled as well, iirc. You just edited the link to "his" album out of your first post.

I originally included that link to his album as a joke, but your post made me realise most people won't get the joke, so I removed it.

As long as his Fallout-stuff is genuine.

Any Mac users willing to comment?

4too, this one goes out to you, buddy.

I have the original mac version (not the OSX version), but I'd have to reinstall and test to know for sure - it's been a while. I've been platform agnostic for years, so I didn't need to jump and grab FO2 on mac because I had it for PC already.

I vaguely recall something strange with the pipboy on mac (like maybe as he said, a holiday type-greeting or hello), but I haven't played the mac version of Fallout 1 in at least 8-10 years. I had even forgotten FO1 was ported to OSX (along with 2). I can tell you text to speech would speak text in a variety of computer voices and needed to be enabled (which it might have been by default), unfortunately, I personally usually disabled it to preserve system resources, so I may have completely missed this or been surprised once when I had it on. The one thing I really remember about the mac FO1 was the 35-40 minute load time on a 1x CD-ROM drive (it was <4 minutes when I upgraded to a 4x drive).

Having special holiday greetings was pretty traditional on mac in that era - I think it all started with the Dark Castle game being decorated at Christmas and several other games expanding on it (Spaceward Ho! planets with stocking caps at Christmas, etc.). I could toss in FO1 and check - my mac is old and cranky and the startup icon frowns and waggles a finger at me for lack of maintenance, but as far as I know it still works (for you gullible people, that's a joke - a FO2 joke, even).

Programming-wise, he'd have to use Codewarrior or MPW at that point, as those were the only good mac dev environments (and most people preferred CodeWarrior). I don't know for sure if palette resources were slow to switch on mac, but I tended to switch them infrequently in my programming (or stick to a single palette), so I'm probably completely ignorant. I can also tell you Interplay pretty much axed MacPlay around that time, and I even remember Tim posting that he'd been let go on a mac news group. The only part I don't know about is the Boeing stuff - I do know they really liked macs there 10 years ago, so it probably was a good fit.

 

[4too]

Live! From The Local Public Wi Fi!

Live! From The Local Public Wi Fi!



Geographical contextual explanation!
Possibly off topic, ... and yet a fascinating Mac feature looms before us. Mac OS 10 use a tenuous relevance to this FO Heroic Profile.

Am using the local library to acquire the VanBuren Tech-demo. Dial up? Attempts on ATT, 16 hours for 241 megs, were corrupted. 16 minutes at the library.

The fascinating Mac feature? I will be downloading the tech-demo onto a 3 plus year old Mac laptop. Have been feeding my PC's need for huge files with this Mac's ability to WiFi or ether link to other's broadband with out the tedious BS of a Microsoft Home Network. More likely to have a corrupt file for large download when try the PC then to have a failed file transfered from the Mac. Anticipate no problem until after unpacking the 'rar' on the PC. Executing the VB tech-demo 'exe' in Windows will be another trial for the FO faithful.

/////////////////////////


alec:

Most people call that "a lie". ...

To paraphrase P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves, Tim Hume could be applying a lot more ""latitude to the truth"" then is customary.
The contrasting mix of alacrity with dogmatic fundamentalism here at NMA is a fitting context to tell "a big one" just to see who is awake, who 'gets it', and who cares enough to comment. alec +1 teh caring!
Assuming this a wistful aspiration to involvement in the music BIZ, and not a snapshot in time of an individual, sliding on that slippery slope to a grander self delusion, this appears to be a vintage of 'dry humor'.
If delivered straight, with out a nod, a wink, or even a smiley, this can be considered a distinctively dry class of humor, with just the heady hint of perverse spin that threatens all existential veracities.



/////////////////////////




Never knew or 'saw' a pre OS 10 version of FO. Initial plays on PC version, Win 95 / 98. Tried several times for the OS 9 FO demo, link to nowhere.

When got OS 10 versions, very few problems. Certainly less OS system platform problems because it's not Windows.

FO1, no Macplay patch. FO2 has the traditional sized patch, < 2meg.

Somewhere around the Mac OS 10.3 upgrade, no longer had to do a 3 key -force quit- to exit FO1.

I've not seen any of the graphic corruption (bad source file?) reported on the NMA 'help-me' forum. Is it only the warz versions that are corrupted? Valid Macplay versions may only need a reinstall. So bad title / NPC combat screens not seen.
Hume's brief reference to the differences in graphic execution between Win 95-98 era PC's and Macs may hint at the source of the glitch in the Mac port. In the many forms of wounded applied technology I encounter, I fear I only learn about the systems that are broke. So i know less Mac fixes than PC f-disking.

One UI issue, stimpacking Cassidy from player inventory doesn't happen. PC needs to equip stimpack. Not a reinstall issue for me.

Less bugs in Mac FO 1 + 2? O.K. maybe not just the nature of the 2 OS's. Appears the Mac ports got another round of QA from Macplay, Tim Hume et al.


Saving saves?
Have found where the Mac OS squirrels away the save files, in the user's application library.

There is the typical item , stat hack utility available for the Mac in case you forget to pack a rope to The Glow.

At this instant, can't think of any significant differences between the PC version (installed on an XP PC) and the Mac port (installed on an OS 10 machine).



Tim Hume:

... One of the fun things I added to the Mac version that wasn't in the PC version was having the Pipboy talk. I used the Mac's Text to Speech capability. When the Pipboy came up, it would say hello. It would have different greetings on various holidays. I'm not sure if many people noticed it. When the game was ported to OS X, they dropped that. I don't know why. ...

In the OS 10 port, Hume's talking Pipboy was most likely gaged because it didn't conform to PC canon.

I anticipate Hume's ""Rappin' Wit' PipBouy"" , with the 'fo' f'ee Talking Pipboy patch to be released at the end of Q3 this 2007.
Just in time to wish yo' a merry Xmas -FO M.F.'er!

Possible conflict with FO3?

Not unless this famous actor they got to be yo' FO3 Daddy and de-facto narrator is really the voice for Bethsoft's talking P-boy, 'cause in the Nex Gen sand box, ""redding teh hard!""
No IP conflict!

So yah, as safe as in the bank, Q3 2007 for Tim Hume's content enhancing merchandising.

.... Yo' a merry Xmas -FO M.F.'ers! ...

4too

 

[alec]

You rule, 4too. You just rule.

 

[SimpleMinded]

Seconded. You made me smile there 4Too which was definitely needed. Of course I should have known that, given such a simple question as to describe hte mac version of Fallout, we'd get a helluvan answer. Cheers.

 

[Sytxferryman]

One of the fun things I added to the Mac version that wasn't in the PC version was having the Pipboy talk. I used the Mac's Text to Speech capability. When the Pipboy came up, it would say hello. It would have different greetings on various holidays. I'm not sure if many people noticed it. When the game was ported to OS X, they dropped that. I don't know

Wow, the Pipboy speaks. Having only played the PC version myself I can say I don't ever remember this... but just might buy a old and busted Mac to hear this on (old and busted is pretty much all Mac's, but I am referring to a few years older in this case)

The holiday greetings, those were on the PC version. I don't know if it was on the original or the new or both... my original install fried a few years back along with my computer thanks to a curious college girl drawn in by the neon lights and open side of my case like a fly... and I couldn't find the cd so I went out and bought one of those dual jewel (F1&2) for $10 at Fry's. The holiday greetings are on this one though, in text format.

Perhaps the voice was a specific one they didn't want it to be so they ditched it so they could have a easily retrievable actor for future games... just a thought.

The thing to see... would be if it would be possible to revert the Pipboy things back to the PC version using what he used to make a small fan-patch so the PC Pipboy will talk.

 

[mortiz]

This "profile" reads more like a technical report, detailing bug-fixes and other modifications he had to make for the higher-ups. Are you sure he didn't just copy and paste one of his old technical reports?

 

[Grotesque]

He worked on the AI of Master of Orion III? If I were him, I wouldn't put that on my résumé!!!!!!!!!

 

[Tim Hume]

Hi, this is Tim Hume. I wasn't trying to fool anyone in saying I changed my name to Albert Hammond. I didn't think anyone would take that seriously. I also did not win a Nobel Prize. Look up the title of the paper that won the award I claimed I won. It was a joke! As one poster wrote, this is known as dry humor. Something that you might have noticed appeared occasionally in Fallout.

Everything else I wrote is true.

Hey, Grotesque, you don't want me to put on my resume that I did the AI for MOO3? Why not? The econ AI was generally well received. Besides, it was a lot of work!

Tim

 

[Tim Hume]

Classic Mac Pipboy

The technology used to make the Pipboy talk on the original Mac version was just using the Mac's Text-To-Speech library. PCs had no comparable thing, so it wasn't done for the PC. I thought it up and added it on the Mac because it was so easy to do. It used a youthful-sounding computer voice. I forget what the name of the voice was; the Mac had different names for different voices. I picked a youthful voice since it was the PipBOY and not the PipMAN.

Anyway, I thought it was a fun thing to add. It sounds like it might have been even less noticed than I originally thought!

Tim

 

[SuAside]

hey Tim,

welcome to NMA. I hope you stick around and drop in from time to time!

greetz,
SuA

PS: Kharn give this man his Developer rank

 

[Briosafreak]

Give the man THE RANK, please.

 

[Harahvaiti]

Re: Classic Mac Pipboy

The technology used to make the Pipboy talk on the original Mac version was just using the Mac's Text-To-Speech library. PCs had no comparable thing, so it wasn't done for the PC. I thought it up and added it on the Mac because it was so easy to do. It used a youthful-sounding computer voice. I forget what the name of the voice was; the Mac had different names for different voices. I picked a youthful voice since it was the PipBOY and not the PipMAN.

Anyway, I thought it was a fun thing to add. It sounds like it might have been even less noticed than I originally thought!

Tim

hmm, could a patch be made for windows?
i think it would be funny, but we should use some attractive voice and not Microsoft Sam... 8)

ps. hey tim...

 

[alec]

Hey Tim: don't you double post ever again, or we'll get angelic on your ass!

These are Silencer's words, not mine.