Original Idea and Script by Decoy, fine-tuning and spell checking by
Forceflow. And double-checked be Darksaber hehe.
| XWAUP: | XWAU: Hehe, time for yet another interview & hello. |
| JM: | Hello.
|
| XWAUP: | Once again we'd like to know how you got started here. Did you just want to edit as many games as you could, or did Star Wars inspire you to work on XWA? |
| JM: | Since I got my first Internet subscription & modem to play XvT that was the first game where I became enthusiastic about the
concept of editing games since I had a way to share my work with people, so it was XvT that inspired me to work on XWA. For OPTs specifically it was a case of I'd started making models because (unlike TG) I wanted to have the cutscene ships match those seen in the game and Nob asked me for a OPT of the Bulwark-II I'd made for pictures on the SFA site.
|
| XWAUP: | Have you ever thought of editing another game with a larger fan base than XWA, like Unreal Tournament, Half-Life and the like? |
| JM: | No. |
| XWAUP: | Do you think that the custom made editing tools for OPT editing can compete with any of the editors that come out of the box for other games? |
| JM: | Not many games I have included any sort of editors and those few that did had editors which were inferior in user-friendliness
and abilities to our OPT tools (and compared with Troys mission-builders....) |
| XWAUP: | What is your opinion about today's XWA community. Since it is a small community compared to for example the UT community you should have a good overview of what is happening in it. What kind of future does the community have, with the apparent lack of support from LucasArts? |
| JM: | There are some good people and some great talent. The XWA community is small because it has been reduced to the core-fans and
when you're as dedicated as them you don't really care about support from LucasArts, as long as they don't start to hinder us then we
won't bother them. |
| XWAUP: | I was just wondering, although you seem to be acceptable to advice about your OPTs, what do you feel when someone criticizes your OPTs with a "constructive comment" or a mere personal opinion? The Egg Remonda issue was a good example. Hehe. |
| JM: | If they criticize something which is correct then I feel they are a moron and I have no trouble ignoring them. If they criticize something which is caused by a flaw in the game-engine (or admittedly by my not having made sufficient allowance for the flaw) then that is frustrating, especially where the ships design doesn't allow much leeway for minimizing the flaw. If they criticize something which is my opinion versus theirs (like the specifications for shields/hull) then if they give good reasons for disagreeing then this is actually can be an enjoyable exchange of reasoning, but if they don't then they're a moron and I ignore them. What is strange is that I have had people try to "correct" me over designs I created when by definition whatever OPT the inventor makes is correct. |
| XWAUP: | Could you please tell us how do you start a new project; does it take a lot of research? Is it hard to get all of the bumps and curves in the right place? |
| JM: | I start a new project with enthusiasm. The amount of research depends on the ship, after all if there has only ever been one good
picture of a design then there is less research to be done. How hard it is to get the bumps and curves in the right places depends on
how much reference is available and what sort of reference it is. The more reference there is the less leeway you have, the more pictures you have to combine into your sketches and mental models, and the more likely that somebody will find a new picture and show you got something wrong. Photos of models are very useful, despite the annoyance that some of the photos are of incomplete models so they don't have as much information as possible, because they generally are consistent with one another. Pictures from comics on the other hand can be contradictory but can also be clearer than a photo as they have well defined outlines. |
| XWAUP: | Right now you are doing all of modelling, texturing, and OPTing for the project. How do you feel about that? |
| JM: | If you're asking what I think you're asking then I feel fine. I've always made my OPTs by myself (or with use of TG parts) so I'm
not inclined to change now, this way I have only myself to blame for my mistakes. |
| XWAUP: | What kind of program do you use to make your models and why do you use it? |
| JM: | 3D Studio MAX because that's what I got used to using when I was making cutscenes. Rhino3D because that's what everybody uses and
some things are simpler than in MAX. |
| XWAUP: | Did you ever try any other modelling program and if so why did you ditch it? JM : |
| JM: | Before I "acquired" MAX I tried some from magazine cover CDs but they couldn't import the SWMA models as well or make
such high quality pictures. Of course that's beside the point these days.
|
| XWAUP: | Are you pleased with the XWA game engine and the OPT format and if you could put one thing in the engine and one more function into the OPT format what would those be? |
| JM: | I like the feel of XWA and ,aside from the problem with what is in front of what and how things intersect - both of which are
understandable given how fast a game has to produce each frame, it all seems to work very well. One idea I had was for a more modular system where the exe has a smaller number of shipslots but the game has the ability to swap available ships in and out of these slots (rather like if XWA and MXvTED had a baby which could use *.shp files ). This way you could have a lot more detail on each ship without having the exe bloat into something of grotesque proportions. The information for each ships characteristics, including individual AI and detailed damage models (especially for starships), would be held in each ships "OPT" file. |
| XWAUP: | We've traditionally used ACE DXF but now there is also OPTech. What do you think of the program? |
| JM: | I liked some parts of it a lot but I'm so used to ACE DXF that I doubt I'll switch until at least the next version. If I was just
starting in OPT making then I might have chosen OPTech in preference but ACE is fairly intuitive to me after using it so much.
|
| XWAUP: | How do you see the future for Star Wars space simulations and do you expect LEC to come with any thing new soon or will we still be playing XWA the next 5 years? |
| JM: | If LEC (spellcheck suggestion LEECH) don't come up with anything in five years then the way things are going we'll have so
modified XWA that it won't really be the same game anymore. I hope that they do release a new space simulation though as even if it
won't have had as much love put into it, and even if it is prequel based, they have a lot more money to spend on development than we
do (unless they want to ruin the game to get it released before a disappointing film). |
| XWAUP: | Could you tell us a bit about your future plans, can we expect anything from you beside XWAU work? |
| JM: | Get the mission set I was working on when Nob asked for the Bulwark-II OPT redone (did a 25 mission version but need to redo it
to use some custom OPTs and to be longer). Add the AI Hangar Hardpoints Darksaber pointed out to my starships. Redo / Tweak the two
custom OPTs which have been made pitiful by comparison with the XWAU. I'm going to get the XWAU commitments cleared first though. |
| XWAUP: | Last but not least we have some short questions we would like you to answer short and firm |
| 1. Why are you working on the XWAU project? Saxman asked me to make the Calamari Cruisers for it and I said "ok". 2. Do you enjoy working in a team, or would you prefer to be able to concentrate more on your own projects alone? It would be nice to get my mission-set done without having to worry about the commitment I made all those months ago (remember I'm still trying to get acceptable versions of the Calamaris I committed myself to doing done) but I try to look on the bright side either way. 3. What's the best thing going around in the XWA community right now? XWAU. That, Crusade, or SFA New Craft Add. 4. Who do you think is the biggest upcoming talent in OPT editing? |
|