Glenn Corpes is an

independent video game developer An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large Video game publisher, game publisher, in contrast to most AAA ...

. He is best known for his work at

Bullfrog Productions Bullfrog Productions Limited was a British video game developer based in Guildford, England. Founded in 1987 by Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar, the company gained recognition in 1989 for their third release, '' Populous'', and is also well know ...

on titles including '' Populous'' (of which he was a co-creator), ''

Magic Carpet A magic carpet, also called a flying carpet, is a legendary carpet and common trope in fantasy fiction. It is typically used as a form of transportation and can quickly or instantaneously carry its users to their destination. In literature One o ...

'', and ''

Dungeon Keeper ''Dungeon Keeper'' is a strategy video game developed by Bullfrog Productions and released by Electronic Arts in June 1997 for MS-DOS and Windows 95. In ''Dungeon Keeper'', the player builds and manages a dungeon, protecting it from invading ' ...

''. He left Bullfrog in 1999 to form

Lost Toys Lost Toys Ltd. was a British video game developer founded in March 1999 by Glenn Corpes, Jeremy Longley, and Darran Thomas, all of whom had previously worked for Bullfrog Productions. Les Edgar helped by providing financial support. Lost Toys ...

, which developed two games including ''

Battle Engine Aquila ''Battle Engine Aquila'' is a 2003 video game for PlayStation 2 and Xbox developed by Lost Toys and published by Infogrames Europe. In the game the player pilots the Battle Engine for the Forseti military in their wars against the Muspell to dec ...

''. He has since focused on mobile game development and has created ''Ground Effect'' for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

and ''Topia World Builder'' for iOS and

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

. His latest projects are ''Fat Owl With A JetPack'', and ''powARdup''. His work has influenced games such as ''

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before bein ...

''.

Career

Prior to joining Bullfrog, Glenn had been a computer operator, and then a Telex machine OS programmer. He joined Bullfrog after being made redundant from the Telex job, as chief graphics artist. He was a co-designer of '' Populous'', and also designed its graphics. Corpes also created the 3D landscape, which

Peter Molyneux Peter Douglas Molyneux (; born 5 May 1959) is an English video game designer and programmer. He created the god games '' Populous'', '' Dungeon Keeper'', and ''Black & White'', as well as ''Theme Park'', the ''Fable'' series, '' Curiosity: ...

and

Les Edgar Les Edgar is an entrepreneur, known for being the co-founder and joint managing director of Bullfrog Productions, which he set up with Peter Molyneux. After Bullfrog's acquisition by Electronic Arts in 1995, Edgar became a vice president there. ...

were intrigued by. He also wrote

function Function or functionality may refer to: Computing * Function key, a type of key on computer keyboards * Function model, a structured representation of processes in a system * Function object or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-orie ...

s enabling CGA,

EGA Ega or EGA may refer to: Military * East German Army, the common western name for the National People's Army * Eagle, Globe, and Anchor, the emblem of the United States Marine Corps People * Aega (mayor of the palace), 7th-century noble of Neus ...

, and

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the Personal computer, PC industry within three years ...

support, and programmed the Atari ST version. In 1991, Corpes came up with the idea for ''

'', and created its circular map. He also refined its engine many times, and developed editors and landscape generators to facilitate its use. Corpes wrote the engine of ''

'' (which was taken from ''Magic Carpet''), which became an inspiration for ''

''. Corpes has held various positions at Bullfrog, including head of technology, and head of research and development. In 1999, Corpes left Bullfrog and founded

with Jeremy Longley and Darren Thomas. The company developed two titles: ''Moho'' (also known as ''Ball Breaker'') and ''

'' before closing in October 2003. Lost Toys had been developing a third title, ''Stunt Car Racer Pro''. Corpes stated that ''Battle Engine Aquila'' is "the best thing I ever worked on". Corpes afterwards formed Weirdwood, which focused on online-distributed games. At some point, he worked for

Kuju Entertainment Kuju Entertainment Ltd. is a British video game developer. The original company was Simis, formed in 1989 and purchased by Eidos Interactive in 1995. Kuju was formed in 1998 in Shalford, Surrey, England, after a management buyout of Simis from Ei ...

and

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted th ...

. He also worked with

22cans 22cans Ltd is a British video game developer based in Guildford. It was founded in February 2012 by Peter Molyneux, previously of Bullfrog Productions and Lionhead Studios. History Peter Molyneux, who had previously founded Bullfrog Pro ...

for a year and did "a bit of work" on '' Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube?''. In May 2001, ''

Edge Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed b ...

'' described Corpes as "one of the most gifted coders working in the game industry". Corpes developed ''Ground Effect'', a

racing game Racing games are a video game genre in which the player participates in a racing competition. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to fantastical settings. They are distributed along a spectrum between more realistic ra ...

featuring "ground effect vehicles (a cross between hovercraft and aeroplanes) released for

in 2009. He collaborated with Crescent Moon to develop ''Topia World Builder'', a

world simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of Conceptual model, models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or proc ...

game. It was released on iOS in October 2012, and its also available on

. Corpes is developing ''Fat Owl With A Jetpack'', a "''Lunar Lander''-style game" for iOS. Corpes has said "it's taken way too long!". His latest game, ''powARdup'', was developed with his son, Jack Corpes, and released in October 2017. It is an

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory Modality (human–computer interaction), modalities, including visual, Hearing, auditory, hap ...

"futuristic collect-and-avoid arcade game".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Corpes, Glenn Indie video game developers Bullfrog Productions Living people Year of birth missing (living people)