The Swarm

[mok]

Bob Rakosky died on Sunday May 6th, 2007 after fighting lung cancer. He was 55.

Some Empire/Perfect General fans may know Mr Rakosky, or “BobR” as I know he was referred to. Bob was Mark Baldwin’s development partner for many years. He and Mark made up “White Wolf Productions”, and created Empire Deluxe and The Perfect General under that developer name.

Mark Baldwin calls him the “technical half” of the group. From reviewing the source code, a great deal of the 1990’s code for ED and TPG was written by Bob. I often would find comments in certain high level functions written by Mark with the comment “Bob, please complete”.

Technically I can only say that his capabilities and effort for both games played a large role in enabling me to re-release the games as EDIE and PGIE. Bob was quite helpful regarding some questions I had, and it was obvious that he was a very skilled programmer.

Steven Woodcock knew Bob and told me that he possessed a great deal of humility, and definitely did not seem spoiled by the success earned with TPG and ED.

I was fortunate enough to have met Bob in 2005, when I was passing through Denver. I met him and Mark for dinner and even though I had never met him, felt I knew him because I had been over so much of the code he had worked on. I was very happy to have met him. He was a very likeable person.

So Bob Rakosky has had a huge impact on the history of Empire. And I can tell by the comments of those that knew him that he will be missed, and his impact on others outside of that circle, the family of Empire Deluxe and Perfect General fans, was great. He will be missed.

[WW2WEASEL]

It's unfortunate to have lost Bob Rakosky...

He made alot of good games...

I remember his name emblazened on the light blue and white interface of Empire way back when...

Would've liked to have met him and talked over a beer....

Too bad....