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Sir Tech was pretty formative in my professional development. Back then game development wasn't quite as professionalized/industrialized as it is now. My firs

Sir Tech was pretty formative in my professional development. Back then game development wasn't quite as professionalized/industrialized as it is now. My first job in the industry, back in high school in the mid 1990s, was as a part-time developer at Sir Tech Canada, working on Wizardry. They had a 20-ish person studio in Ottawa working on Jagged Alliance and Wizardry about 15 minute drive from where I was. How I got in: In high school I saw an ad posted in the local newspaper. Even though I was 17 I applied and got the job as a 3D graphics developer. I had used my work in the demo scene as my resume. I then dropped half of my courses so I could work half days at Sir Tech on Wizardry while finishing high school. We were using Windows NT 4 machines with Voodoo 3DFX graphics cards as our development machines. The beta of 3DS Max for Windows as the content creation package, although there was an SGI machine with Softimage on it as well. I personally was using Visual Studio with Direct3D 3 doing various experiments on how to render the 3D realistically while being fast. It wasn't the most successful internship personally, I was pretty green, a bit disconnected from the main development drive and didn't really know how to work in that environment, but it was still fun. The demos I created worked, but my larger system architecture was lacking. Besides meeting the original Sir Tech guys at a Christmas party in the US, I did see Brenda Romero (then Brathwaite) on a regular basis in the office as she was working on the script. It is a shame we didn't take more pictures back in the 1990s. I don't have any pictures of my time there or with anyone.

DowagerDave 2y ago
>> It is a shame we didn't take more pictures back in the 1990s. I don't have any pictures of my time there or with anyone. I really appreciate your description and the picture it paints; it's a lot more work than taking a photograph. We take so many pics and videos these days that it can make the event or subject feel less valuable.
djur 2y ago
That's a cool story. I kind of get the impression that Sir Tech in particular was always a little ramshackle, especially by that time. Wiz 8 was in production forever. Turned out cool, but a bit out of step with the time it was released.
- santoshalper 2y ago
  Yeah, in spite of releasing some very important and reasonably popular games, I think Sir-Tech always kept the soul (and structure) of a small business.
MisterTea 2y ago
> We were using Windows NT 4 machines with Voodoo 3DFX graphics cards as our development machines. I didn't realize the Voodoo was running on NT 4 but for CAD/3DS/etc I can see that being a thing. I remember trying to run Quake 2 on NT 4 (Dual P233 Tyan Tomcat IV w/128MB) but there was something that stopped me from doing so, think it was direct sound so no audio? Wasn't until Win 2k could I run games on an SMP machine.
- bhouston 2y ago
  > I didn't realize the Voodoo was running on NT 4 but for CAD/3DS/etc I can see that being a thing. I may be incorrect about the Voodoo cards being in the NT 4 machines, if that was a driver impossibility. I think 3DS Max required Windows NT at the time? I know there was a bunch of Voodoo cards in the office as well, but maybe those machines ran Windows 95.
  - MisterTea 2y ago
    Could be. I do remember there being OpenGL drivers for some cards running under NT for CAD stuff. I think the ATI 3D pro turbo I had had such drivers but I cant remember if I tried running Quake or whatever.
    - bhouston 2y ago
      On Wikipedia it says that 3DS Max version 1 was only supported on Windows NT 3.5 and 4, later coming to Windows 95 with version 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_3ds_Max#Version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_3ds_Max#Version_histo... So that makes sense with my recollection.

DowagerDave 2y ago

>> It is a shame we didn't take more pictures back in the 1990s. I don't have any pictures of my time there or with anyone. I really appreciate your description and the picture it paints; it's a lot more work than taking a photograph. We take so many pics and videos these days that it can make the event or subject feel less valuable.

djur 2y ago

That's a cool story. I kind of get the impression that Sir Tech in particular was always a little ramshackle, especially by that time. Wiz 8 was in production forever. Turned out cool, but a bit out of step with the time it was released.

santoshalper 2y ago
Yeah, in spite of releasing some very important and reasonably popular games, I think Sir-Tech always kept the soul (and structure) of a small business.

MisterTea 2y ago

> We were using Windows NT 4 machines with Voodoo 3DFX graphics cards as our development machines. I didn't realize the Voodoo was running on NT 4 but for CAD/3DS/etc I can see that being a thing. I remember trying to run Quake 2 on NT 4 (Dual P233 Tyan Tomcat IV w/128MB) but there was something that stopped me from doing so, think it was direct sound so no audio? Wasn't until Win 2k could I run games on an SMP machine.

bhouston 2y ago
> I didn't realize the Voodoo was running on NT 4 but for CAD/3DS/etc I can see that being a thing. I may be incorrect about the Voodoo cards being in the NT 4 machines, if that was a driver impossibility. I think 3DS Max required Windows NT at the time? I know there was a bunch of Voodoo cards in the office as well, but maybe those machines ran Windows 95.
- MisterTea 2y ago
  Could be. I do remember there being OpenGL drivers for some cards running under NT for CAD stuff. I think the ATI 3D pro turbo I had had such drivers but I cant remember if I tried running Quake or whatever.
  - bhouston 2y ago
    On Wikipedia it says that 3DS Max version 1 was only supported on Windows NT 3.5 and 4, later coming to Windows 95 with version 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_3ds_Max#Version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_3ds_Max#Version_histo... So that makes sense with my recollection.