Whatever happened to Julian LeFay (former Bethesda designer)

[Orgull]

Julian LeFay (Lead Deigner on Daggerfall) left Bethesda Softworks sometime after Daggerfall and before Morrowind was finished, and he seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. I can't find any current info for him anywhere. Does anyone know where he is today? Where he works? Is he still alive? Does he still work in the games industry?

Hetz? Or anyone?

Is Julian still making games?

[moss_icon]

i think he got lost in one of the daggerfall dungeons and was never seen again.

[Charlatan]

I met Julian once. Many many years ago, when I was working on Mac software, I convinced Bethesda to let me write a port of their Wayne Gretzky Hockey to the Macintosh. This was way back when the Color Mac was new, so really, prehistoric times almost!

The code had been partially converted by them, but it hadn't been updated in a while (I think it was the Amiga version, actually), so my buddy and I were supposed to make it work and put a good Mac UI on it. We got it working, and it was in decent shape, except that when you got the game going and it was updating all the players on screen, and scrolling the window, it was really slow. Or the players didn't draw correctly. Or something like that. Whatever it was, I was stuck.

So Chris Weaver (head of Bethesda) had me bring the code into their offices, and he got Julian to look at it. Now consider Julian: he's one of these scruffy looking 20-ish guys in a small office. He's got an Orioles game playing on the radio and he's sitting there working on something. Chris says "Julian, can you take a look at the code which moves the players on the screen, it's pretty slow?" Julian says he can, so we sit down with my computer. Understand that his code is written in 680x0 assembly code for efficiency sake, so it's not at all like C or any other high level language - it's low level machine code mnemonics - and in addition, it's code that he hadn't looked at for a long time (pretty sure they were working on Daggerfall or whatever its precursor was at that time). Well he sits down and looks at it, and maybe 10 seconds later he starts changing the code talking about what he's doing while he's typing in the changes:

"Oh, you need to XOR this here" (typing in the code)
"This should shift left 16" (more typing)
"Bitwise OR this one" (types)
"Swap these two bytes"
"Move this over here"
"Rotate these back"
"Poke them in the screen buffer"

etc.. all while I'm trying desparately to figure out what he's doing, the O's game is playing in the background, and people are walking around outside his office talking.

This goes on for about 10 minutes - when he's done we recompile the code and it works a lot better. First time.

I then concluded that there are just some people in this world who are really super smart - and that I had just seen one of them.

I don't know where he is now, but I'm sure he's doing something brilliant.

[Giles Habibula]

Thanks Charlatan.
I always enjoy stories like that.

[tgb]

Does he owe you money?

[Hrdina]

I met Julian once. Many many years ago, when I was working on Mac software, I convinced Bethesda to let me write a port of their Wayne Gretzky Hockey to the Macintosh. This was way back when the Color Mac was new, so really, prehistoric times almost!

You worked on that? I owned it (way way long ago, 1991 or so I think). I probably still have a copy of it in my "Mac" box up in the attic. I remember really enjoying the game, except for the time when the opposition coach pulled his goalie late in the game while his team lead me by a goal!

[Orgull]

Very cool Charlatan!

Thanks for that.

[morten]

I also met Julian many years ago. In fact, he was still named Benni, and it was before he moved to the U.S. and began working for Beth. It was back in Copenhagen, Denmark that both of us were putting in a bit of effort into a short amateur film. Julian was acting, and I was doing sound. I don't, frankly, have much of a memory of those days, but I do think we had a brief conversation once about Zelazny's Amber books and Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time. Nice guy.

[El Guapo]

Ah yes, the legendary Copenhagen amateur film scene.

[GreenGoo]

Ah yes, the legendary Copenhagen amateur film scene.

That was the most coherent, on topic thread resurrection by a bot I've ever seen.

I am in awe.

[Daehawk]

Maybe Julian programmed it.

[xwraith]

[morten]

Ah yes, the legendary Copenhagen amateur film scene.

That was the most coherent, on topic thread resurrection by a bot I've ever seen.

I am in awe.

Brrrzzz.... klonk... beeep...I think you ought to know, I'm feeling very depressed.... boink... doink... kazakzzkloom.

[Smoove_B]

Any bot that can quote The Hitchhikers Guide is welcome around here.

[razgon]

I also met Julian many years ago. In fact, he was still named Benni, and it was before he moved to the U.S. and began working for Beth. It was back in Copenhagen, Denmark that both of us were putting in a bit of effort into a short amateur film. Julian was acting, and I was doing sound. I don't, frankly, have much of a memory of those days, but I do think we had a brief conversation once about Zelazny's Amber books and Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time. Nice guy.

It wouldn't happen to be "Adam Hart i Sahara" you were working on back then? If so, did you happen to meet Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff?

[morten]

It wouldn't happen to be "Adam Hart i Sahara" you were working on back then? If so, did you happen to meet Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff?

Yup, that was the one. How very clever of you! I didn't exactly meet Erwin in connection with the short film; it would be more correct to say that I got involved with the film because I had been acquainted with him already.

[Teggy]

Wait, so this isn't a bot?

[El Guapo]

This is a Turing test.

[razgon]

It wouldn't happen to be "Adam Hart i Sahara" you were working on back then? If so, did you happen to meet Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff?

Yup, that was the one. How very clever of you! I didn't exactly meet Erwin in connection with the short film; it would be more correct to say that I got involved with the film because I had been acquainted with him already.

Nice! I've always enjoyed his novels as one of the few Danes whose literary works I've been interested in, the other being Niels E. Nielsen.

[morten]

This is a Turing test.

Rumbled.