In Memorandum: Dundee

[Madman]

Today I got word that Jeff Freeman, who some here who have been a part of POL for long enough will remember as Dundee, passed away this weekend. According to posts made by his brother, he took his own life.

He was a huge part of my early POL experience. He is one of the people responsible for what I think was the first non-distro full world scriptbase (maybe the Zulu predated, but if so not by much). He egged me on to work on and contribute my first package to the distro (which was a rewrite of the doors functionality). He managed to make player policing work, proving Raph Koster simultaneously right (that it could work) and wrong (that the methods in EA's UO could work). From his time as a poster on r.g.c.u.o. and up through his successful POL shards, he made friends with Mr Koster, who called him away from the UO community and hired him at SWG, where he was responsible for some of the best things about that game and somewhat unfairly blamed for some of the worst.

I am sad to say that I lost touch with Dundee after a few chats we had once he'd started working on SWG. I discovered only fairly recently that he had a blog, and then kept saying "ya know, I should really look up that URL again and read it." Now I've missed my chance.

It would be unfair to all the people who have contributed to POL to say that it wouldn't be quite what it is without Dundee, but I will say that he was one of the people who proved early on just how great what we could build could be. Thank you, Jeff, and peace to your friends and family.


Here is a posting on Raph's blog in Dundee's memory: http://www.raphkoster.com/2008/09/30/je ... e-freeman/
And here from Lum the Mad: http://brokentoys.org/2008/09/30/jeff-d ... man-r-i-p/

[Kadmos]

Goodbye and thanks Dundee.

[Damien]

Rest in peace Jeff.

[Yukiko]

I am sorry to hear this Madman. It is sad when a "family member" passes from the Earth. I was not familiar with him as a scripter but I assume that "The Hand of Dundee" was his creation and that I have ussd. What shards was he responsible for creating?

And like you I bid him a farewell and peaceful voyage home.

[goqsane]

I am deeply shocked by this news, even though I had no idea of Dundee's success in the gaming industry I've always felt more than connected with his Hand of Dundee (I assume he was the author of this utility?), it will always remind me of my magnificent time in UO which started a long time ago and since then has been part of my life, for good. Rest in Peace Dundee

[Madman]

Belated replies, but: IIRC he was not the author of Hand of Dundee, but rather it was named after him. He was behind the World of Dreams shard and codebase initially.