Jim Flynn

[Lee Killough]

Sad news:

 

Jim Flynn, who worked on the Boom project, Eternal Doom, and The Master Levels for Doom II, among others, has passed away.

 

 

 

[dew]

What dire news. My condolences to his close ones, and to the Doom community for losing one of its great pioneers.

[HavoX]

WHAT?! This can't be! :(

[MFG38]

Shit, not another one. ;_;

 

May he rest in peace.

[NuMetalManiak]

Oh fucking hell, we lost a really good one.

[StoneMason]

Aw damn! I always thought of him as among the most creative mappers of the 90's. Sad to see him go.

[Catpho]

Wha... What

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

What were the circumstances? What happened?

This going to be hard to accept for me....

Im.... speechless

[esselfortium]

Rest in peace, and thank you for all you've given to our little corner of the universe.

[Uni]

My condolences. May he rest in peace.

[mun]

I never expected this to happen.

I don't know what to say, I'm almost speechless.

May he rest in peace.

[Big Ol Billy]

Very sad to hear! Hope his loved ones can take some comfort in the knowledge that his work still brings a lot of people joy to this day, and will continue to do so for a great many years.

[Jaws In Space]

Very sad news. He was an inspiration to many & his contributions to early Doom mapping & the Boom engine paved the way for many of us here today. My condolences to his family & may he rest in peace.

[Chris Hansen]

RIP. You were a source of inspiration and admiration for so many of us.

[Merry Widow]

Rest for all time in peace Jim Flynn.

[Matthias]

What coincidence, I just played his Master's levels two days ago

 

RIP

[Csonicgo]

Jim was one of the most creative mappers I remember from that era. Who else would try to make minesweeper in Doom?

Truly a legend. No telling what maps we could have seen from him after Boom.

[Nine Inch Heels]

I hope your passing was free of pain and fear. My condolences to all your loved ones. Thank you so much for all the time you spent on your dooming endeavours, without it, this game wouldn't be the same for me and many others. Be safe on your journey. Rest in peace.

[Rez]

Damn. This is a day of great sadness. Another of our best, gone, but never to be forgotten.

 

And in Jim's honor, a good day to die in his fantastic maps.

[fraggle]

Very sad indeed. I never knew Jim myself but his name (along with Lee here) is all over the Boom source code in comments. Looking back, hacking on the MBF source code to write SMMU when I was 17-18 had a big effect on my formative development as a programmer, and Jim is one of the people whose footprints I was following in.

 

Here's his changelog listing all the stuff he did on Boom. Among other things it looks like he was responsible for implementing most of the generalized linedef/sector types. So next time you're mapping for "Boom compatible" (as I know many people still are), spare a thought for Jim.

 

I'm less familiar with his levels but maybe some of the people who do streams could play through some of them as a tribute. That would be nice.

 

EDIT: Added a dedication to Jim to my HTML Boomref page; it seemed an appropriate place to honor him.

[SaladBadger]

Fuck man, that's horrible. JFF did so much wonderful stuff in the early days of the community its a shame that he's now gone. May he rest in peace.

[Vorpal]

When I'm out of ideas (i.e. always) I load up a Flynn map, copy something he did and then do some iterative distortions until it looks like I didn't steal it. Don't judge me, I know you guys are doing it too

 

Bye Jim, certainly not forgotten at all.

[Memfis]

Legend.

[gaspe]

RIP. A truly unique and inspiring mapper.

[Moustachio]

His Master Levels were among the best -- not to mention working on Boom as well as nunerous other projects. We have truly lost one of our great creative masterminds. May he rest in peace, and may we keep his memory alive.

[Liberation]

RIP

[Linguica]

That is terrible news. Rest in peace. Between the loss of Jim Flynn and Ty Halderman, we are quickly losing our chance to chronicle the history of TeamTNT and the early days of source port projects.

[Paul977]

Damn, really bad news. My condolences.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Paul977

[valkiriforce]

I'm very sad to hear about Jim's passing - I wanted for so long to know where he's been and what he'd been up to for all these years. His Enigma episode is one of my favorites, and his Titan series and Oracle wad are brilliant, and his contributions to Eternal Doom were ingenious. Add to that all of his work on the Boom engine and other utilities. He continues to inspire me in my own mapping even to this day after everything else I've played up to this point. I really wish we could have gotten to know him better, but I'm sure he had his reasons for being away. Much respect - rest easy Jim, you'll be missed.

[Quasar]

Sad to hear about this. Do we know what age he made it to? Jim was a nice guy and an old-school programmer who was coding things before I was born. I nominated him for an Espi award a couple years back because of the breadth and relative importance of his work but it got overlooked at the time.

[valkiriforce]

All I know is that he was likely in his mid-40's by the mid-90's or so, according to his old TNT page: http://teamtntmemorial.doomgate.de/team/jim.htm