Chat Transcripts

TomF, 5/8/01

*** EdMack has joined #startopia
<EdMack> Tom, are you MF?
<TomF> Ed: that's me.
<EdMack> Cool!
<EdMack> (Sorry, just had to ask) would it be hard to implement fences 
in StarTopia?
<TomF> ARGRGRGRGRGRGRRHGGHGHGHGHG.
<TomF> :-)
<EdMack> Opps
<TomF> You can make fairly good fences from things like MatterAntimatter 
or Biopots.
<EdMack> But people walk through them
<EdMack> If they can't go where they want
<TomF> Yep. We tried being strict, and some stations (especially 
AI stations) just went horribly wrong. So if a peep is having trouble 
navigating, they just walk through stuff.
<EdMack> and they can't hold skrashers either
<TomF> ...otherwise your station tends to grind to a halt.
<TomF> Skrashers are even worse - they don't actually fit through doors 
and so on. So they mostly ignore furniture.
<EdMack> I noticed
<EdMack> They like lifts though
<TomF> They do seem to, oddly.
<EdMack> That messed up my plan when I was rearing them on the bio-deck lol
<EdMack> Do you enjoy your job?
<TomF> Indeed, or I wouldn't do it :-)
<EdMack> hehe
<EdMack> What ratio of artists do you have to programmers?
<TomF> It's about even for the company. For Startopia we had 4 main 
coders and 2 main artists, but at various bits of the project we had quite a few 
other artists as well.
<EdMack> Ok
<EdMack> Was there much code to ddsconv?
<TomF> Don't know - we didn't write it.
<EdMack> Oh, right.
<EdMack> (I know your not an artist, but you may know) Did the artists use 
3dMax v2.5?
<TomF> Yes, and BonesPro.
<TomF> I think they now use v4. or something, but 2.5 seems perfectly good.
<EdMack> So that's why the plugin isn't for v3?
<TomF> Yep.
<EdMack> Pity
<TomF> They didn't want to start upgrading 3dsmax halfway through the project 
- that's just asking for trouble :-)
<EdMack>lol!
<EdMack> Would it be theoretically possible for someone like me to modify
 the torus?
<TomF> No, not a chance.
<TomF> IF you had the source code, and IF you understood it as well I do, 
THEN maybe you could have done it in about four months. But it wouldn't work 
very well.
<TomF> But of course you don't!
<TomF> ...so you can't :-)
<EdMack> Thanks for clearing this up for me :)
* TomF strokes his chin sceptically.
<TomF> No probs.
<EdMack> Do you like HHGTTG?
<TomF> Aye.
<TomF> There was a program on the telly last night about DA.
<EdMack> I watched that!
<EdMack> Did you help write any of the StarTopia mission scripts?
<TomF>  No, I didn't.
<EdMack> Was there a team for that too?
<TomF> Erm... I'm not sure. I think it was Wayne (Zippy/Bungle) and another 
chap.