Heliophobe

[Christuserloeser]

Nicolas Warren, aka Heliophobe, the author of SMEG, the fantastic SEGA Master System & Game Gear emulator for Dreamcast, is dead.

http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10896

We regret to inform you, that Nick Warren, aka Heliophobe, long time member and supporter of our community, passed away on thursday, january 29 at the age of 29.

Despite being active here, Nick was sick since a few months, and went to the hospital in january. You'll probably remember him for the quality, intelligence and sense of humor in his contributions. Additionnally, it isn't a well known fact but Nick generously handled hosting fees of the site for many years, which permitted our community to stay alive all this time.

More important parts of Nick's life are unknown to us, and I'm certain that his friends and family have more and better reasons to miss him. Our sincere thoughts goes to them.

His close friend Genevieve has setup a simple remembrance page here.

Shall I add some of the things that he created:
Nine Pixels (2006),
SMS Power 7 (2004),
Copyright Violation (2002),
SMEG (SMS Emulator for Dreamcast) (2001) + Interview,
Damiana (missing file) (Y2Kode 2001 competition),
Tetracycline (2000),
Good Advice (2000).

RIP.

I have had quite a few conversations with Nicolas via email and PM and he was a very, a very very nice guy. I really enjoyed talking with him. He knew a lot about the SMS and the Dreamcast and helped improving Pascal's SMSplusDC by adding previously missing features and improving the overall compatibility of this emulator.


When I first came in touch with the Dreamcast scene, I was most impressed by SMEG. It wasn't Segagen or NesterDC both of which I tried first - it was Heliophobe's SMEG that was exactly like I imagined what a good emulator should be like. The games I played as a kid looked and sounded better than ever. The GUI looked very professional and was extremely easy to use. I was VERY impressed.

I just can't remember if I ever told him that.


There were many things I wanted to do for him to say thanks and I didn't forget but just never finished what I started...


- We'll be playing some Power Strike in heaven, Nicolas.

[emptythought]

I was afraid this was going to be a passing away post. He's going to be sorely missed.

[Christuserloeser]

I am so damn mad at myself for not finishing my work with the S8DEP update. I planned to send it to him along with a letter and a brandnew SMS controller I have kept for him.

[mankrip]

Wow .

[Christuserloeser]

Here's a very nice radio show featuring some of Heliophobe's favorite compositions and some comments by members of the SMSPower community. Listening to it was a pretty intense experience. It's a great show.

The SMSPower Radio team has organised a special tribute show for Nick, you can download the show here

There are some voice comments at the end from a couple of members, thanks all.

Please understand this was hard for me to do and I felt I had to do this.

Thanks to SteveSMS for the support with the show, to DMEnduro, Niloctronic, Bock and of course to Heliophobe for his great contribution to this community.

RIP Heliohpobe, this ones for you!

[BB Hood]

I didnt know of Heliophobe or his contributions to the community but I still hope he rests in peace. At such a young age too...

The rememberance page link doesn't work :^ (

[Polymira]

Wow.

I used to beta test for this guy, then he dies on my birthday of all days.

Rest in peace...wow.

[mankrip]

By the way,
memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=9875

[Christuserloeser]

This really hit me by surprise. I forgot to link to his profile in my opening post.

Do you think there might be a way to implement FM2413 sound into SMSplusDC using EMU2413?

It could be easily enabled but it will send the framerate plummeting.

If the fm renderer section were to be rewritten for speed, it might be fast enough to run without requiring frameskip, at least for the majority of games. Or so I believe, actual performance may vary.

Here's a beta of SMSplusDC with working FM2413 sound he sent me. It's using an entirely rewritten custom FM renderer. I never could test it as neither me nor Heliophobe could create a working binary out of it. It perfectly works with a coder's cable or BBA though.

http://www.dcevolution.net/dsdevelopmen ... ection.rar

- I checked my Inbox but most of Heliophobe's PMs are gone. They seem to get automatically deleted after a certain time.



EDIT: Here's Damiana, Heliophobe's horizontal shmup for SMS:



Click on the screenshot to download. It's only the game itself, no release notes, no source code.

I'll also release sources to Copyright Violation and Damiana if I can find them. Damiana's might be the most interesting as it contains a decent collision detection system (two actually, one for sprite to sprite and one for sprite to background) - which was damned tricky to get working on a horizontally scrolling SMS game. There's almost no 'offscreen' area so I had a lot of trouble with collision zones wrapping around the edges. Unfortunately I can't see to locate the last version of the source code. Must be on this PC somewhere...

The game is technically very impressive ...and very very difficult: I recommend to enable rapid fire in SMSplusDC if you want to survive the first few screens.

[Sir Savant]

I was going to try and post something nice but I don't know what to say. Rest In Piece.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

RIP Heliophobe.

Sad news. We used to PM each other a bit around 2001 to 2003, I think I even tried to get him to become a newsposter once. He seemed like a nice guy.

[MetaFox]

What a tragedy. It's so sad that he passed away at such a young age. All my thoughts and prayers are with Nicolas Warren's family.

Your work will always be fondly remembered, Heliophobe. May you rest in peace.

[bizzle]

Damn.


Anyone know what happened?

[Jeeba Jabba]

He never liked me, but I was an ass to him. Never got to know him too well, but it's terribly sad to hear this news. First time someone I knew on the internet has passed away...


RIP

[Captain Skyhawk]

I'm really sad to hear this. People from the old times knew what a great contributor he was. Also his work for http://www.smspower.org/ was endless. For Dreamcast specific he was the creator of one of the first perfect Dreamcast Emulators: SMEG. Later on Pascal made an even nicer GUI with SMS Plus, but the emulation was still not as good as SMEG. It was great when Heliophobe popped up and helped Pascal with the loose ends to create the ultimate SMS Plus 2 emulator. He will be missed but his work will be loved for ever.

[Jeeba Jabba]

Holy shit! Skyhawk.

[discostu55555]

Wow, I know I'm late to this news, but this is just unexpected. I always appreciated everything he did to advance the cause. Next drink is for you, buddy.

[|darc|]

Wow, I know I'm late to this news, but this is just unexpected. I always appreciated everything he did to advance the cause. Next drink is for you, buddy.

Welcome back after six years. I saw you get caught in Cheatah's net with his Seanbajuice blog at dcemulation.com earlier this year when we had the split, and I was upset I couldn't post there telling you the new site address.

[discostu55555]

Welcome back after six years.

Has it been that long? I'm gettin' old.

In case you're wondering, my DC is still permanently hooked up and played regularly (just now on an HDTV through VGA). Even better, my girlfriend was excited to show me her Dreamcast complete with NesterDC the first time I went to her house (about a year ago; I never mentioned my Dcemulation past to her)... Best part: She used DSSBS to create it.

[BongDC]

I never got to know him cause i came into the dreamcast scene late. R.I.P Heliophobe.