Tribute to Jim Rogers 'Rad'

Today we are very sad to announce that this past week, one of the most beloved and talented developers on the team has passed away.

On April 8th, 2010, Jim Rogers (better known to the community as Rad) passed away after a long illness. Although he originally joined the Forgotten Hope team as a mapper, it soon became apparent he had tremendous skill both as a modeler and a skinner. Throughout the years, he contributed much to our mod, but his passion for modding went beyond the vehicles of World War 2. Rad created many of the things that make Forgotten Hope fun and unique, like the tractors and the teddy bear, which have become so iconic of our mod. He will be dearly missed. Below we have some pictures and testaments from a few of our devs.

Lightning:

I thought I'd share this picture. It's my first time playing the FH2 alpha version. I do feel I miss him now. I guess someone like Rad will always stay a part of the team, even though he wasn't able to do any modding lately.

Malsa:

Very sad news and a terrible loss. He was a great source of inspiration for all of the team back in the late days of FH1 and early days of FH2. Even though he never seemed to be able to get back to modding after his first long period of illness it is a sad thought to know that we will no longer see him anymore.

Bizness:

Very very sad news

I remember always looking forward to what he had cooking up next and even when he retired he would randomly pop in here and there with something he worked on. My heart goes out to his family he will be missed!

Lobo:

It's fun because Rad joined us as mapper. He made FH1 Adak because, I think, he lived in the Aleutians when he was a kid. The map was impressive and had some nice statics, but we didn't know he was so good a skinner. Then he skinned some vehicle and our jaws dropped. Then everybody begged him for more skins and the old man was ranting all day. "I joined as mapper, dudes", haha.

We all know how talented he was, we started to increase our bar quality when he joined, and his advice helped to all of us to improve our skills.

But for me more importantly, was his sense of humor. He made so much fun stuff for this mod, and made them all unique; the tractor, the teddy bears, the cars, the crazy easter eggs he hid in the mod with the help of ArminAce. I bet some are still unknown. FH is not only the mod with hundreds "serious" war machines. It's the mod with those strange vehicles just for fun and special experiences. He made a set of monster cars with huge wheels and loved to do stunts with them. The files are still in FH1 with low res textures.

The painful start of FH2 with almost no documentation by DICE was made possible because Rad and ctz started the editor one million times to find out how the hell to export a tank in this engine.

He had also a short fuse, haha. He left the mod two dozens times but it was like a drug for him; I always knew he would come back. It was like a passion for him.

Then the disease, the economic troubles ruined all this, now I know he won't come back.

Again, he will be dearly missed by all members of the dev team. You can view the original announcement about his passing on our public forums. Thank you.