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I
completed my degree at Morehead State University in 1988 with a 4.0 GPA while working full time. I then obtained a great position at
Westinghouse's Combustion Control Division as an engineer where I designed and tested analyzers
for emmissions monitoring systems.. I started in digital art
by producing clip art which I sent off to a shareware company for inclusion in their catalog.
I didn't know it, but it turned out that the shareware company had a contest for the best software submissions in 1991.
Graphics fell in the same category as computer games. My artwork took second place in it's category only to be beaten
by a game "Duke Nukem", by Apogee Software. As a result, Apogee's Scott Miller contacted me. He had seen that their game "Duke Nukem" had won the shareware contest,
and noticed that I had gotten second place for my clip art. They needed an artist for one of their next games. Well, as you
might imagine, I jumped at the chance to work with the guys who had put out Duke Nukem. I continued to work full time at Westinghouse
while working late into the night on this newest Apogee title. I even ended up being the one to name the
game "Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure" which was released in 1992 with good success. Well
now that game development was in my blood, and I was able to work on two other titles from home under contract. In 1993, Apogee
decided to start an in-house development team to create a sequel to the smash hit "Wolfenstein 3D" by id software. I was lucky enough to be the first developer hired to work on that title, and I loaded up my car and
headed for Garland, Texas. But soon id software became disenchanted with the sequel to "Wolfenstein 3D", and
we were forced to change the game to "Rise of the Triad" which was shipped in 1994. Around this time the bosses came into my office saying they were creating
a new division of Apogee called "3D Realms". They needed a logo created, and they needed it fast. Within 24 hours I had designed and created the
3D Realms logo that's still in use today. In
development for a year or two, a small development team with Todd Replogle and Allen Blum were working on a new Duke Nukem title "Duke Nukem 3D". The team needed some help; so developers from 3D Realms, including myself, were put to work on the
title. When it was done, we knew the game was good, but I had no idea that it would turn out to be a smash hit!
After leaving Apogee/3D Realms in 2000, I got the chance
to work with the guys at Rogue Entertainment on American McGee's Alice, a truly fun project. After Alice was shipped, Rogue went out of business
when EA canceled a PS2 version of Alice; and I found myself out of work for a year. Eventually I was able to get a job with
Ritual Entertainment and was able to work on lots of really great titles. Since then, Ritual was acquired by Mumbo Jumbo,
and I decided to work on my own as a graphic art contractor. My first game as a contractor was for Soldak's "Depths of Peril" a highly rated RPG just recently released. A second title recently released by Soldak on which I worked
was "Kivi's Underworld". Recently I had been working on Microsoft Game Studio's "Microsoft Train Simulator 2" on the PRR historic steam locomotives and rolling stock for two years, but as you probably know, the
Train Sim and Flight Sim projects were recently axed by Microsoft as part of a belt tightening due to the recent economic
crisis. Since then I continued to work on Soldak's next Game "Din's Curse" which has recieved some really excellent reviews. Recently, with a lot of hard work, I've
been lucky enough to become one of the owners of Soldak Entertainment and continue working on Soldak games at present.
For a full listing of shipped titles for Stephen Hornback please visit the website at
the following link:
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