All about Andrew Gower

I was talking on AIM with an old player, Gregechidna6 (3rd to 99 hp if I recal correctly), who mentioned that he still had pictures of Andrew Gower. When I failed to see what was unusual about that, he commented that most players nowadays have no idea what he looks like. Well, if anyone still has Skittles's old "ballerina pic" I would really like a copy. :)

Until then, we will just have to content ourselves with the excellent "Unofficial Andrew Gower Archive" at http://gowerarchive.googlepages.com/ which includes pictures and personal information about Andrew Gower.

I also have stored in my computer some old posts in newgroups such as comp.graphics.animation. Here are two posts, one even has the adress and telephone numbers of Jagex (old).

Hi all!
I'm currently halfway through writing my own mud :-) In a desperate attempt
to make it stand out from the crowd, I've opted to make it a real-time mud
complete with graphics, and a point and click interface.

I've never written anything quite like this before, so I'm not sure what
problems I might face. I know its not exactly the same as running a text
based mud, but presumably some of the problems I might face will be the
same. Any advice, ideas or general feedback would be very much appreciated!

I've already spent a *lot* of time on this project! I've had to write my own
engine entirely from scratch. When it goes online all you'll have to do to
play is go to my webpage, the java program which handles all the graphics
will load, and automatically connect to the server. I'm amazed how well
things are going, because to start with I never thought this idea would
work, but its now working very well. The network code is very optimised and
only requires a bandwidth of about 0.3k /sec to play smoothly!

It should go online in about a month (hopefully!), and I might start taking
on beta testers slightly before that. For more details and screenshots visit
this webpage: http://sleepy.fitz.cam.ac.uk/mud/

Thanks
Andrew Gower

This was taken from googlegroups.com which has an archive.

Hi,
We are interesting in purchasing some 2d sprites for our new runescape RPG
game. (see http://www.jagex.com/runescape.html)

The sort of thing we need is animations of various monsters to use in our
game. For instance a dragon, a giant-rat, a giant-spider, a skeleton, a
ghost, etc... To give you a sense of scale we imagine the skeleton would be
aprox 48x88 pixels (doesn't have to be exactly that size). The rat perhaps
97x53 pixels (side view size). The dragon would perhaps 140x100 (side view
size).

Each monster needs to be drawn facing 5 different directions with 3 frames
of walking animation per direction (we are actually using 8 directions, but
for 3 of them we are just flipping other views to save memory, the monsters
need to be designed so they flip without any obvious innacuracies, (e.g
objects switching hand) but we're not worrying about the shading being the
wrong way around on a few frames as this really doesn't show up).

We also require a 3 frame combat animation per monster, this only needs to
be drawn from one viewing angle (sideways on - facing right).

If anyone thinks they can supply these graphics or knows a good place where
I can look please contact me via email. We would need to own any graphics we
commission, such that they are exclusive to our game. We are also interested
in top-quality graphics only, as we aiming for a professional quality game.

Graphics should be supplied in 256 colour gif format. No jpegs please, and
no anti-aliasing or dithering! (It takes too much memory, this is going to
be an online game so has to download quickly). We do of course still want
them to look good, so good shading and fine detail is important.

If you can supply these graphics please tell me:
a) how much will it cost per monster (Each monster requires a total of 18
frames of animation)
b) do you have any relevant samples of work I can see? For example any
animating sprite of a monster or person. The more examples the better, as we
have no shortage of internet bandwidth here. We won't use any samples you
send us in our game without paying you.
c) Any other relevant information you can give me

Thanks

Andrew Gower
Jagex Software (http://www.jagex.com)
Unit 213, 48 Regent Street, Cambridge, CB2 1FD, England
Tel: +44 (0)870 3215241

Disclaimer: This blog is not in any way connected to Jagex, Andrew Gower or Runescape. The information here was taken from usenet archives and are freely available online for anyone who wishes to search for it.