Seumas McNally (pronounced Shem-Ess) (February 10, 1979 – March 21, 2000) was a Canadian video game programmer and designer. He is best known for indie games, notably ''DX-Ball'' and ''

Tread Marks ''Tread Marks'' is a 3D computer graphics, 3D, third-person perspective, Multiplayer video game, multiplayer-focused tank combat and Racing video game, racing computer game developed by Independent video game developer Longbow Digital Arts. The ga ...

'', which won the

Grand Prize A prize is an award to be given to a person or a group of people (such as sporting teams and organizations) to recognize and reward their actions and achievements.

at the Independent Games Festival (IGF). The award was posthumously renamed in his honour when he died at age 21 of Hodgkin's lymphoma, shortly after having received the award himself.

Career

Seumas McNally's first published video game was a side-scrolling helicopter shooter titled ''Tiger's Bane'', programmed on the Commodore Amiga. Previously known as a demo by the name ''Flying Tigers'', the game went live on November 11, 1997, published through

Aminet Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga-related software and files. Aminet was originally hosted by several universities' FTP sites, and is now available on CD-ROM and on the web. According to Aminet, as of 3 September 2022, it has 83930 pac ...

. The same year, Seumas had also formed the software development company

Longbow Digital Arts Longbow Games is a Canadian video game developer based in Toronto. It was founded in 1998 by Seumas McNally. History Longbow Games was established in 1998 as Longbow Digital Arts by Seumas McNally. In 2000, the company's tank combat game ''T ...

, as the president and lead programmer, working together with his father, Jim McNally (game designer), his mother, Wendy McNally (lead artist) and his brother, Philippe McNally (3D artist). The company followed up with the release of

DX-Ball 2 ''DX-Ball 2'' is a 1998 brick buster game for Microsoft Windows, developed and published by Longbow Games. As a follow-up to the 1996 cult-classic ''DX-Ball'' by Michael P. Welch, the sequel introduced a number of improvements to the origina ...

in 1998, a sequel to the 1996 cult-classic PC game ''DX-Ball'' by Michael P. Welch, while simultaneously working on the 3D terrain tank racing game

, which was released in 2000. The game is notable for featuring in-game deformable terrain and won three Independent Games Festival Awards for "Best Game", "Best Design" and "Best Programming". Other products McNally programmed include ''Particle Fire'', a screensaver with great graphical effects; ''Texturizer'', for creating wrapping textures; and ''WebProcessor'', for creating fast HTML macros.

DX-Ball

McNally, along with Michael P. Welch (creator of ''

Pocket Tanks ''Pocket Tanks,'' often abbreviated as PTanks or simply as PT'','' is a 1-2 player computer game and mobile game developed by Michael P. Welch from Blitwise Productions. It was originally released for Windows and Mac OS X in 2001 and was later ...

''), developed ''DX-Ball'', a freeware

computer game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

for the PC first released in 1996. The game, originally based on an earlier series of

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

games known as ''MegaBall'', is patterned after classic ball-and-paddle arcade games such as '' Breakout'' and '' Arkanoid''. ''DX-Ball'' has been succeeded by three direct follow-ups: ''

'' (1998), ''

Rival Ball ''Rival Ball'' is the sequel to the PC Breakout clone ''DX-Ball 2'' from Longbow Games, Longbow Digital Arts. Released on March 19, 2001, the game features square bricks and online split-screen multiplayer. It introduces a cursor-based l ...

'' (2001) and '' Super DX-Ball'' (2004).

DX-Ball 2

'', by Longbow Games (follow up to ''DX-Ball''), also introduces the feature of board-set selection, allowing the player to select between different sets of boards to play. The free demo thereby comes packed with a total of 24 boards divided into 6 board-sets of 4 boards search. Additional board packs can then be installed for more boards, whereas Board Pack 1 will expand the demo board-sets to 25 boards each, for a total of 150 boards. While a total of five board packs were released for the game, ''DX-Ball'' 2 was eventually succeeded by ''Rival Ball'' in 2001."Topic: More DX-Ball 2 Boards!"
June 13, 1999. Longbow Digital Arts. Retrieved June 27, 2012.

Illness and death

McNally suffered from Hodgkin's lymphoma, an aggressive form of lung cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 1997 at the age of 18. McNally died on March 21, 2000, shortly after winning the grand prize for

Legacy

Seumas's father Jim continued to create a historical wargame, the basic design drafts of which Seumas had helped to formulate. This was released in 2010 as '' Hegemony: Philip of Macedon'' and became the first entry in a series of historical wargames.

, the

independent game development An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. ...

company founded by Seumas McNally, continues operations until today. In 2018, it released a 20th Anniversary Edition of Seumas's cult classic computer game ''DX-Ball 2''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McNally, Seumas 1979 births Canadian video game designers 2000 deaths Deaths from Hodgkin lymphoma Deaths from cancer in Ontario