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1. Intro Sequence, Map: Voy1

   What is your background in gaming and/or the mod community? Is this your first major development project?
   
   Since I have been able to access the Internet from home - that was in the year 1999 if I remember correctly - I have been active in various gaming communities. Modding, well, that is another topic... 2000, that was the year when I first began looking at some tutorials. I had a pretty hard time learning things with only having some bare experience in Visual Basic! But I finally managed to release some mods for Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 and finally Elite Force.
   
   I guess I got hooked up on the latter one - regularly visiting the Raven BBS, joining mod-projects, etc. :] Two answer your second question, yes, The Cooperative is really my first major project...




2. Why did you decide to put co-op play in Elite Force? Are you a fan of cooperative play? Or are there other reasons?
   
   I never played some real cooperative, except some single user-created missions back in the days of Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2. So I really have no clue why I actually started working on this. - I suppose it was one of my friends who influenced me mostly by telling me how great the cooperative gameplay in Serious Sam was :] That's it, nothing more...





3. Hazard Team NPCs

   Along those same lines, why Elite Force?
   
   Why Elite Force? Well, simply because it is still THE game for me. Of course I play other games too, but somehow I always end in an EF CTF game, being an infiltrator. :D




4. What do you think of the Quake III: Arena engine technology and tools and the enhancements Raven has made to them?
   
   Over the time it has become my favorite engine! It's tools, like Radiant, are quite easy to pick up - yes, I actually tried mapping, but due to the lack of time I want back to programming ;] The engine itself is very scalable and runs on lots of computers without any problems. And making mods for it is no strain, but fun and I was able to learn a lot. I started playing with it only knowing basic C, and now I can even think in this programming language - no effort anymore :] I guess Raven's enhancements make it a lot cooler - ICARUS is a great addition to this engine and the .mdr files are just great, smaller models for everyone :] I also had a look at the released Quake 3 code, it's a mess compared to the EF code...





5. Harvesters At Work

   What one change would you make to the engine or the tools to make your project development easier?
   
   That's a great question for a programmer :] I guess I'd move parts of the trace-function into the released source code. I had some problems concerning NPCs. Before I started working on the coop-mod I first remove bot support completely. I knew that they would consume just to much processor power - as a preview I released sometime ago proved. .aas files - used for bot navigation in multiplayer maps - also didn't come with the game for the single player part. Creating them for every map would have extremely increased the mod-download size, and that was what I tried to prevent. So I had to program a new AI for pathfinding. (I'm still struggling with it, so if somebody had the time to give me some hints I'd really appreciate that :]) Now to come back to the trace-function: Quickly explained it is used to determine if a projected line hits something (a wall or a player) and where. I heavily used that for my NPCs, but somehow unexpectedly the trace could get stuck. ;] This was very confusing in the beginning, but I found ways around it! :]




6. What are your ultimate goals for the Cooperative project?
   
   To make it an enjoyable experience for all gamers, and to bring EF back into everyone's mind :]





7. Back From A Mission

   What has been the biggest challenge so far in realizing these goals?
   
   I'd say it was the combination of NPCs and ICARUS scripting. In the beginning everything on it's own worked quite well, NPCs walked to their navgoals and ICARUS sent commands to the clients to play a particular sound... Around Christmas Mr. Interface ;] from Elite Force Mod Central, helped me a lot implementing ICARUS correctly by sending me a document, in which he describes how compiled scripts are stored and how one could load them. That one was me... :] Without him The Cooperative wouldn't be there were it is now, thanks a lot mate! I owe you something ;] Well, ICARUS worked, but trying to control NPCs usually resulted in crashes. It took me quite a while to get a feeling for it and now everything is fine (more or less ;]).




8. After taking on such a challenging project, do you see yourself adding co-op to other games in the future? Or do you have other aspirations, mod wise or professional?
   
   That's a question difficult to answer for me: You see, I now have the base-code ready for adding co-op gameplay to other Q3 engine-based games, which would speed things really up, if I decided to continue. On the other side there are things in my life, which are more important to me, such as friends - never forget them! I'm still fairly young and there is so much to experience and enjoy ;] So I guess after I finish The Cooperative I will release it's source code and stay in the community as an advisor. There are lots of other capable people who can pick it up and say: "Hey! I can make that too..." So I'll try to be as supportive as I can, and it would be really great if another game gets the additional gametype "cooperative" :] Concerning my future in a long term I'll definitely go for a job in the gaming industry. Didn't you say Raven was searching for another programmer ;] ?





9. Briefing

   What is your favorite game to play cooperatively or in a team environment?
   
   Elite Force, period - My favorite game :]




10. Which would you rather have as a supplement to a single player game: full multiplayer support (including DM, Team DM and Capture the Flag with bots)? Or cooperative play through the single player game? Why?
    
    I think full multiplayer support is still very important for a game. Think of all the user-created maps, skins, and things like that... Of course that could eventually be possible with co-op play too, but it wouldn't be the same. In my opinion multiplayer support keeps games alive. I bet the EF single player game several times, but I don't think I'd still be playing it from time to time if there wasn't Holomatch. Sometimes, when something doesn't work - especially when programming on The Cooperative - I fire up HM and enjoy a good team-game... :D





11. Some Chatting Before We Start

    What games are you looking forward to in 2002?
    
    Of course two other Raven Software-games are on my wish list - 'Soldier of Fortune 2' and 'Jedi Knight 2: Outcast'. :] Besides that I'm really looking forward to playing 'Black & White: Creature Island' because part one was really fun, and even my mother (! ;] - usually she's playing FreeCell on the computer) enjoyed watching an ape throwing sheep into any direction... :D




12. Is there anything else you would like to add or tell fans of Elite Force?
    
    First of all my thanks go to Raven Software for creating such an awesome game, that I had fun playing for hours and hours! :] But don't let me forget the great community, which supported me on the one hand with very cool ideas and on the other hand helped me to make this progress on the mod - there were times I felt like deleting the whole project and doing something else :] Someone else I have to thank a lot is my good friend William Mull! He has been very busy the last weeks, but always tried to have one or two ears for me. ;] He also declared the readiness to host the website of the mod.