Mark Sibly has Died #2
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Ahh, we were worried about him. I've been using his software for about 20 years or so, bought and used everything he ever made. I just got to know him a little better this past year and worked on and tested his last project LibSGD up until about a month ago. He was one of the main reasons I became fascinated with 3D, as I'm sure so many others have. He was also one of the main reasons I decided to pursue game programming full time this last year because the way he did things made learning fun, it never seemed like work. Sad to wake up and see this today, but thanks for letting us know. |
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I suspected something had happened. From my sporadic correspondence with him over the years he struck me as a very principled guy, so it was completely out of character for him to suddenly and completely cut off correspondence. Several years after he stopped developing Monkey 2 he emailed me offering to pay back the several thousand dollars I had contributed to the project. (I refused, of course, because I had a lot of fun with Monkey 2 at the time.) That’s a rare trait, and one that matched his coding abilities. There are some good coders out there but Mark Sibly was truly exceptional. Anyway, RIP Mark, you will be missed. |
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I was a typical Russian schoolboy, who came home and sat in front of computer games Unreal, Quake, NFS... and then I, a 16-year-old boy, came across a pirated disk titled "Create your own 3D game"... there were about ten different programs... but when I launched Blitz3D - everything immediately became clear to me. It was thanks to Blitz3D that I learned the basics of programming, and not in school in computer science lessons, where they tried to feed us Turbo Pascal. BlitzMAX taught me the basics of OOP and gave me a springboard for comfortable mastering C# \ C++. Although I did not know Mark's personally, he gave me a lot. Thanks to him for what he did. Let the earth be soft fluff for him. |
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What sad news. I am sorry to hear this. 😢 Thoughts go out to his loved ones, and may he rest in peace. RIP Mark Sibly 🚀 Bon voyage ! |
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i know the time when the program blitzbasic 2.0 for amiga comes to germany. I drove a long way to another town to buy it and was happy to have such a great program. Then i bought years later blitzbasic and the Blitzbasic 3D for PC too. I was happy to found libsgd from him. I was 2 weeks to late to talk to him directly, it is soooo sad. |
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I do notice there is a development branch with the latest work in it (well, as latest as it can be, I'm not sure who is handling his estate, or if there is more modern code on his development workstations.) So, what I'm saying is, if anyone out there wants to pick up his torch and get this library developed fully, there's only all of us. If anything, completing what he set out to do would be a decent tribute, and it would be an opportunity for his approach to things to live on. |
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What a tragic news. To Mark - Thank you. For Everything. We will keep your legacy running. |
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Hello to all, do you know anyone who has the latest source code for libsgd? The version 0.16 can be downloaded from this page, but It would be great if the code would work and many would participate in the further development. I would like to participate too... Greetings |
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@MPzCodes Looking at this repository, there's the main branch, but there is also a development branch: https://github.com/blitz-research/libsgd/branches With matters the way they are, it'll be a case of diving in and finding out what is happening there. My thought would be to compare changes to see which one compiles and then perform some bisection. Out of interest, what platform target were you compiling for? There's about 3 targets in the readme. |
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@MPzCodes Got it! So, clone the git repository, then change branches by issuing: So, from the top: Now, keep in mind, during the configuration phase, that's when you'll discover what dependencies are missing, so that varies per environment, and people need to install those themselves. |
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If you look at this CMakeLists.txt this is what the build script uses to fetch all external dependencies. Mark always made his own forks (basically copies) of the external libraries he used, so they're fetched from blitz-research and not as submodules. In other words its unlikely that any problems you find are going to be related to versions being out of date. At one time I was able to get a linux build working but this was months ago and it took a lot of debugging and working with missing dependencies on the Arch linux machine I was using. This file should provide some insight - https://github.com/blitz-research/libsgd/blob/main/external/CMakeLists.txt |
This was not an uncommon occurrence. The project has so many things going on for one person to keep track of, Mark would often forget little things here and there like that but it was never anything major. During the last month or so he was doing a lot of work in the development branch, we were working on a way to serialize and deserialize scenes. Basically so we could save and load scenes to and from .json files. https://github.com/blitz-research/libsgd/blob/main/scene/serialize/serialize.cpp But it was causing a lot of headaches and trying to decide what should be saved, should cameras and lights be included or separated, etc We were talking about adding a tag system to entities within the scene, and this was about the time I was getting really burnt out and I think maybe Mark wasn't feeling well, and I decided to take a week or two off and I never heard back from him after that. Its a shame that the messageboard is probably gone, he said it was being hosted on a little mini pc sitting in his kitchen, and that probably just got unplugged and stored away. But that's where all the dialogue we were having about this stuff was taking place, both on the board itself and in the direct message chat. |
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Thanks for the great help, now we all have a working version. I have tested the developer version too and the windows version works well now. The information show how to fix the dawn problem and perhaps it is the version 0.18. On this weekend i will look on the code, how to work this version, i will test the serialize and deserialize scenes and how i can implement it better with Purebasic. the question is, how we can development this in the future... ***** v0.18.0 ***** Added sgd material system. |
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I just sent emails out to three fairly large YouTube channels that cover game development, mostly in the realm of C++ and game engines. Nathan Baggs, who suggested I contact gamefromscratch, and then I also sent an email to Yan, (TheCherno) |
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I'm talking with Mark's emergency contacts, direct contact with second,
Seong at the GNC, looking at sorting out contact with primary contact.
He died of a heart attack at home, contacts were informed by police, no
further details yet.
I am going to try and sort out getting access to data, and esp that mini PC
to try and resurrect that message board mentioned. Not 100% on how well
this will go. If anyone knows of what else I should be looking for, let me
know, I can let contacts know. No guarantees on anything.
…On Sat, 14 Dec 2024, 04:52 Chad Dore, ***@***.***> wrote:
I just sent emails out to three fairly large YouTube channels that cover
game development, mostly in the realm of C++ and game engines. Nathan
Baggs, who suggested I contact gamefromscratch, and then I also sent an
email to Yan, (TheCherno)
With luck they might be able to generate some interest or know some people
would be interested. I'm very busy working on a game right now but later on
when it slows I'll be able to help more. If anyone wants to continue
discussing this on discord I had already setup a channel here -
https://discord.gg/f9g34x4u
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I'm not sure how well that would go unless we had admin passwords and stuff. I don't think he made anyone else an admin on that board or the machine, and then he somehow had libsgd.org pointing to it, probably using some kind of dynamic dns, unless maybe had a static IP at his house. Maybe by getting physical access to the machine there could be a way, I remember him saying the messageboard was based on nodejs |
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The admin side of things might not be so hard, db admin should be in clear
text for access for the site config files. With access to the db, it
should be possible to take a password hash from any account, including a
newly created one, to replace the board admin one in the db.
In terms of directing the IP, depends on what I find, if I get that far.
Might have to use a different domain at worst.
…On Sat, 14 Dec 2024, 15:49 Chad Dore, ***@***.***> wrote:
I am going to try and sort out getting access to data, and esp that mini
PC to try and resurrect that message board mentioned.
I'm not sure how well that would go unless we had admin passwords and
stuff. I don't think he made anyone else an admin on that board or the
machine, and then he somehow had libsgd.org pointing to it, probably
using some kind of dynamic dns, unless maybe had a static IP at his house.
Maybe by getting physical access to the machine there could be away, I
remember him saying it was based on nodejs
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Hi there, I am managing his estate so please feel free to contact me if you have any requests. SImon Armstrong |
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These are devastating news. He was like a hero to me, and the development tools he has made have been such an important part of my life. Does anyone know how old he was? |
Hi Simon, At everyone, I suppose we're all going to have to work out a primary fork for continuing the project, which means someone will be the lead maintainer, or we can have multiple lead maintainers... don't leap on it yet, but think about it. |
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From memory this was the plan -
That's all I can think of right now. I can't commit time to maintaining a fork of the project, that in itself would be almost a full time job. You'd have to really familiarize yourself with the project and then be able to look at pull requests and decide whether or not they belong in the project or in a test branch or whatever. (which is why Mark would not even accept pull requests as a policy). I don't think anyone as far as I know, knows the project that well, I could be wrong. I'm an ok C++ programmer but there's a lot of stuff Mark does in there that is way out of my league in terms of managing that much complexity. You have to be pretty savvy with maintaining a multi platform, multi target, CMake project, that was a big hurdle for me. CMake does things its own way and lot of it is not what I'd call "intuitive". Dawn and WebGPU is still emerging technology, it has its own shader language that Mark described as "Rust like". Not to be discouraging or anything but what he was doing with this project really blew my mind. His ability to handle so many different things at once and pull them all together and then still make the amount of progress he was making in a short amount of time, it was very impressive, to say the least, especially for one person. |
A little over 60 maybe. |
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I saw there's an obituary here: https://notices.nzherald.co.nz/nz/obituaries/nzherald-nz/name/mark-sibly-obituary?id=57014447&_gl=1*12zxvx2*_gcl_au*MTUyMzU0OTg5Ni4xNzM0MjEwOTgx He was turning 57 this month. The fact that it is not known exactly when he died makes me think probably he had no close relatives. I just hope he didn't feel lonely at the end, it just makes me feel so sad as he looked like a genuinely nice guy. I am coming back to this thread every few hours to read the title again as it seems so hard to believe that a couple of months ago we were all discussing the future of LibSGD and Blitz3D 2 and now he's gone. |
I was going off I think it was the resume / CV he put on his page that said he started college in 81, which means he was 14. I guess they start early in NZ, or he was just very gifted which would also make sense. I've been feeling a little sad over this last week, my energy to code all day is not what it normally is. I've lost so many friends over last 5 years or so, a lot of them were musicians and people I used to party with, and watched a lot of their lives just slowly deteriorate from drugs and alcohol. I got lucky and got away from it before it killed me, and I'm grateful every day to be alive. The thing is with Mark is that it stings quite a bit more even though I never met him in person. I spent countless hours using his software, I learned so many things in the area of something I'm truly passionate about and so much of it would likely have never happened if he hadn't been catalyst for it, and I'm sure there's tons of people out there that had a similar experience. |
I know why it throws you, it's the naming conventions they use in NZ: Technically, as I went through the NZ education system, it means I have gone to College and University, earning qualifications in both. It makes for very special problems in NZ Education, when negotiating with US-based entities, as the expectations are a lot... higher... for what are K12 level schools. Still waiting on a response from Simon. Not sure when the funeral will be. I'm really going to miss him. |
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I have a feeling he left this world at the end of October. Incidentally, I managed to compile Blitz3D V1.119 about a month ago. It is difficult to say what fate awaits all these projects. Time will manage. |
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This made me so sad. I never used Mark's Amiga products, but his later creations have been there with me all along as I started my path to learn programming, making it easier for me to try harder and harder things I didn't originally think I'd be able to. Mark, as the bits of information of your mind scatter across the universe, rest in peace knowing how much you inspired and helped us on our own personal journeys. Leo. |
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Mark's impact is profound. He has touched the hearts of so many programmers with his hobbyist (pro?) programming languages in Blitz3d, BlitzMax, BlitzBasic, Monkey, and other little iterations. He got me into object-oriented programming, and that gave me the career I have today. You will be missed, Mark! May the kindness you gave into the world spread to others. |
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Just realised I only commented on the FB post, but Mark taught and generally enlightened me so much over 25+ years! Nobody else has ever really provided a set of tools I so naturally got along with, and he made programming 3D software accessible to me, in exactly the way I'd always thought possible (entity system with simple commands), introduced OO concepts and with LibSGD was at work on something I'd dreamed of since Blitz3D -- a simple C-interface 3D library along the same lines but with modern features! Mark introduced me to this band via this video if anyone fancies a listen -- he liked this song but didn't get into them beyond that (I bought 3 albums)... but I'd never had heard of them otherwise, so he'll always be there when I hear them! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4sLTuEnIeo What a legacy to leave behind, helping literally thousands of people get into something otherwise not very accessible and in many cases develop full careers. (Simon too of course.) Doncaster 2000? Mark, George Bray of Blitz3D publisher, and me. What an honour that was!
RIP Mark, terrible loss for us all. |
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Happy Birthday Mark! You moved on to the next level, solving new tasks, facing new challenges as a higher being. Your work in this realm touched many, and your creations will be used for a long, long time. You won't be forgotten! Kris |
If you are here, I sadly have to announce that Mark Sibly has died after an illness:
I knew Mark from his days programming in an office he was renting at the back of the Graphic Novel Cafe, in Auckland.
During that time I had a chance to see him developing Monkey X, and tried out the language for a few test projects.
Ah, yes, it was also at that time I was able to use a VR unit (a dev version of Oculus), which he was experimenting with.
I am sure everyone will miss him, I most certainly will.
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