Mark Sibly died at the beginning of December after struggling with health issues

Mark created Blitz Basic on the Amiga, and then Blitz3d, BlitzMax and Monkey programming languages on the PC. He also published several games including Guardian and Gloom on the Amiga.

I got my start with Blitz on the Amiga, after it was featured in Amiga Format magazine. Back then it was expensive learning to code, but with Blitz, which cost about £60, you could write hardware hitting games, native GUI apps and terminal programs out of the box. There was nothing stuffy about it either, from the docs and Blitz User Magazines, you knew you were dealing with some fun loving kiwi guys who liked their games and rock music.

And unlike a lot of high-level languages back then, (which were a bit slow) you could, if you had the right design, create something in Blitz that stood alongside mainstream video game releases. Worms and Super Skidmarks were popular commercial Blitz games.

I owe Mark a lot. I did not have a background favourable to becoming a programmer, but Blitz helped make that possible.

Here is what he was known for https://github.com/blitz-research