| Timothy Cain Developers | |
|---|---|
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| Details | |
| Other names | Tim Cain |
| Date of birth | August 25, 1965 |
| Occupation | programmer |
| Website | Wikipedia entry |
Tim Cain is a programmer best known as the producer, lead programmer and one of the main designers of the 1997's computer game Fallout. He is currently employed as executive producer and lead programmer at Obsidian Entertainment working on the Pillars of Eternity.
Biography[ | ]
Went to college at the University of Virginia and to graduate school in California. During this time he helped out a friend programming a card game named Grand Slam Bridge for CYBRON Corporation which was released in 1986. In 1989 he received a Master’s Degree in Computer Science at University of California, Irvine.
Career[ | ]
Interplay Entertainment (August 1991 – January 1998)[ | ]
Began as a freelance programmer for Interplay where he worked on the fantasy role-play editor The Bard's Tale Construction Set. After finishing the game in 1991, he was full-time employed at Interplay. For the first time he worked with Leonard Boyarsky, who was a freelance artist at the time, as designer and programmer on the business simulator Rags to Riches: The Financial Market Simulation which was released in 1993.
In 1994 he started for a couple of months as the only employee working on a game which would later become the post-apocalyptic CRPG game Fallout. He lay out the basic concept based on the GURPS system and began programming the isometric game engine. He also took over the producer role from Thomas R. Decker. With a development cycle of three and a half years Fallout was released in 1997. During this time he was also a programming consultant on Stonekeep (1995) and helped out coding Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (1997).
Before leaving Interplay to form his own company in January 1998, he wrote the main story arc as well helping designing the Den area of Fallout 2.
Troika Games (April 1998 – February 2005)[ | ]
After forming Troika Games with fellow Interplay workers Leonard Boyarsky and Jason D. Anderson in 1998, he worked as a project leader and lead programmer on Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura a steampunk/fantasy an RPG game for Sierra On-Line, Inc. which was released in 2001.
His next game reunited him with Thomas R. Decker, the original Fallout producer. As project leader and lead designer he produces within 20 months the Dungeons & Dragons game The Temple of Elemental Evil for publisher Atari in 2003. While he loved making the game he was disappointed that it did not turn out what he wanted it to be.
He helped out programming the last Troika game, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, a horror RPG for Activision in 2004. He also worked on a post-apocalyptic roleplay game for which he couldn't convince any publisher to fund. As consequence he had to lay off most employees in late 2004 and shut down Troika Games in February 2005.
Carbine Studios (August 2005 – July 2011)[ | ]
He joined as the programming director at Carbine Studios working on a fantasy MMO game for NCSoft. He was promoted to design director in October 2007.
Obsidian Entertainment (October 2011 - present)[ | ]
Tim Cain joined Obsidian Entertainment as senior programmer. He is working on Pillars of Eternity which has been funded through Kickstarter.