From : John Milford
Date : Mon, 24 Mar 1999 00:05:57 -0000
Hi Simon. My name is John Milford. One of the ten names in the filing cabinet at the Novagen
office in Damocles. Many a long chat with Bruce Jordan I had while waiting for the release of
said masterpiece. How long ago was that? I dread to think. I stumbled on your site by accident,
but I'm glad I did. Just nosing about really for emulator stuff. When I saw that word and the
name Paul Woakes, it all came flooding back. This is just to let you know we are out here. And
you're right thinking that some memories will never really fade. I'll be back to check the site
regularly. Keep up this labour of love. Now, if I can just get this emulator running.....
Cheers for now J.M.
Luckily, we got in touch again in 2020, and John took time to tell his personal story and how his name ended up in the Novagen Cabinet in Damocles ;)
So here's John Milford's story, by himself!
A long time ago...
I had already left school in 1983 and had a choice of job offers to accept. No genius, just a lot more jobs around then if you wanted one, which I did. As I knew I had by then a potentially expensive hobby (computer games), I started with a small engineering company that specialised in making machinery for the mattress production industry. I started at the bottom, cutting delivered steal up to a cutting list, prepring for welding and other machining operations, prep and spraying parts and frames, assembly and setup of the finished machines, test running and packing for delivery. After a few years this turned into helping the installation engineers on site, installing machines and teaching new operators how to run the things. The company I worked for around this time 1988 I think, took on an agency for an American machine maker who wanted a representative agent in Europe to install and service thier machines under licence. It little occurred to me, how important this development would become.
Started with an original 48k Spectrum as a kid and never stopped being mesmerized by the screen in front of me, from Elite to Jet Set Willy, and everything in between. Didn't really stick to or favour any particular genre: if it looked fun or different I would give it a go. I dread to think how many hours I spent sat looking at the spectrum tape loading screen and listening to that wonderful relaxing (!?!) loading screech. I can't imagine the youngsters of today waiting that long for anything (but don't get me started on that). Graduated from the Spectrum to the Atari ST. Don't really remember why I went Atari and not Commodore Amiga at the time; I think they had just released the Atari STE and you could get a good deal on the original Atari ST. I pimped up the ST with an extra 2Mb of RAM and a hard drive over a period of time. I then got an Amiga as well. The leap to PC a 486 then, I think, came in about 1991 - been on PC to this day. Had the odd console, mainly for the kids now to be honest. Latest build PC, which I always do myself, is an i7 8720 Intel chip, Asus ROG Strix mother board, 32 GB of RAM, Nvidia GTX 1080Ti graphics card, 2 M2 drives, 1 SSD and 4 HDD's, Corsair K70 RGB keyboard, Logitech G502 Mouse, Logitech G25 (original) FFB steering wheel and pedals, Thrustmaster Warthog Stick and throttle. Monitor is an AGON curved 35" 3440*1440. Would like to jump to VR, but don't really feel it fits with the complex sims I'm flying now: still need to interact with other controllers and be able to see them.
Well that's the hardware story about right as best as I can remember. Now to Mercenary. I'm sure my earlist memories of the game were seeing the vector images on the Spectrum game cover. I had the game on Spectrum but it was late in my Spectrum years. Struggling to remember a lot of the games I played around that time. The one thing that I was getting more interested in were vector or 3D games. Flying games were very basic then, but the bug definately bit. Mercenary was one of my cross over games from Spectrum to Atari ST: I wanted to see what it was going to be like on the 16 BIT monster that I saved my own money for. It did not disappoint! The graphics were such a big step up from the Spectrum and the feeling of speed when flying was amazing. It was tempting to just press the next number key to go that little bit faster, then you remembered why you never went above 5 or 6 when flying low. Well, not if you didn't want to crash anyway. Mapping stuff had already started by this time, the pictures on the website really took me back. My brothers thought I was slightly deluded, but what did they know? I lost many hours playing Mercenary and enjoying them all. When Damocles was first announced, I was a subscriber of a few of the popular magazines at the time: The One, ST Format are the ones I particularly remember. That is probably where I heard about it from. There were lots of other games and real life that was happening at the time, but for some reason, I kept a particular eye out for any updates on Damocles. Now we all know now in this day and age about how protracted game development time can be. But then in the late 80's, I don't recall it being a thing. The only stand out developer who was associated with "it will be done when it's done" was Mr Paul Woakes, also known for little being known about him and not releasing stuff untill he was happy with it. I still don't know what prompted me to ring Novagen. It must have been '87 or '88. I knew it was coming out but hadn't heard anything new for a while about what was happening. I got hold of the Novagen office phone number from somewhere, and I remember ringing from a works phone during my lunch break. There were mobile phones around but you needed a fork-lift to carry the batteries around, and were definately out of my financial reach. Not sure what I expected in response, I had decided to just say I was a fan of the original game, and was ringing to see if there was any more news on a release date. I thought it would be a secretary or receptionist answering with a stock response or a sorry no information available.
The phone was answered by a very polite gentleman. I can't remember if he said "Hello Novagen" or "Hello Bruce Jordan speaking". He then asked who I was and how he could help. I briefly felt really daft, and managed to mumble, I was really keen to learn of any information on the imminent game release. I do not recall him being at all perturbed at my asking for information and only being a fan. He asked me which of the previous games I had played and how I found them, and I didn't think about it untill afterwards. He seemed genuinly interested in my thoughts, and seemed pleased about the effort that I'd gone to after describing the maps and all the bits of accumulated paper with hastily scribbled notes. I can't be sure how long that first call was, but it must have been minimum 10 minutes. He was honest and said he couldn't give release date, only that it would be ready when Paul was happy with it. He apologized but assured me it would be worth the wait. I came away without the answer I wanted, but I wasn't dissappointed at all. I knew enough to know that that I had gotten a lot more than a standard PR response to a common question, and from a very nice gentleman. This was the first of probably 10 calls I made to Novagen, both before and after the release of Damocles, most in the time before release. After the the fourth or fifth, Bruce answered the phone when I said hello and said "Hello John". I had become a stalker! The reason for call was always the game, but the conversations wandered to life in general: work, current political events. I remember one call between Damocles release and the first Mission Disc. We started talking about possible twists to throw into the original story line. He said I should write a few of them down and send them in. He said the first disc was pretty much finalised but they were hoping to do more. So I did write them down (I hope they could read my scrawl), my handwriting is terrible. Unfortunately I don't remember any of my suggestions or if they appeared at all. The last call lasted about half an hour. He was always pleasant, dry witted and very easy to talk to.
At no point during all of this was mention made of my name being in the filing cabinet. I discovered this myself at a much later date. It really made me smile to myself and reminded me instantly of those phone calls and how kindly I was treated. The reason for me learning so late about my would be fame was hinted at earlier. My employer becoming an agent for an American company meant a position opening for an installation engineer to install and service machines all over the world. Guess who got that job. Yup! When I could have been playing Damocles every waking hour after release, I actually started working across most of Europe and some other parts of the world. My return to home was taken up by dealing with day to day stuff, and very little time for gaming. I have since played the game and the first mission disc. On discovering this wonderful website, it brought it all back. That's what made me write to Simon in the first place, letting him know who I was and why I was in the filing cabinet. I hadn't realised I had earned that nod, and all I did was talk to a really nice guy about how much I enjoyed their last game and showed interest in their next one. It was with real sadness that I learned of Bruce's passing, even though the crossing of our paths was very brief .
Now I'm a fifty something gamer with kids, mortgage and receding grey hair. But I'm healthy and happy. And if you read down this far, well done. Thanks to Simon for allowing me to write this and I hope it's good enough to get onto the website. Just got to wait for that PC version of Damocles now...
John Milford, September 2020