#### First Official CWF developer interview! ####

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 23:57

Hi dee Ho peeps!

I have contacted the Wing Commander Privateer Remake project leader, Jason "MamiyaOtaru" Winzenried, and asked if he is willing to be interviewed. He seems to be nice fellow (his response was wery warm, which gave me a good feeling

), and he told me he will gladly answer to questions. ( Privateer Remake on CWF

So, now is your chance to get some sight into what leading large freeware project is like. Not to mention possibility to see what kind of a person will take such a huge, unpaid job!

So, here is the plan. Every member in heré, except the person who's being interviewed (

) can write down here the questions he thinks would be cool to be used in the interview. Final date to submit questions is the last day of July, at 14:00 GMT. After that, group of people will be choosing the questions that will be asked. Members of this group will be decided later, after seeing who have submitted the questions. (Naturally, I would prefer that people who submitted questions were not the ones choosing which questions will be asked).

If there is not enough questions by the end date, I will be making the rest of the questions myself.

Finally, please remember that even though you can suggest what ever questions you wish, we will only accept questions which have been made with good taste. I know such censorship is dull, but our aim is to help the developers, bring the freeware closer to ordinary gamers, and also attempt to have some co-operation with the developers. As this is one of the first contacts to developers (I know we have had some visiting the forums, and prticipating in conversations) I do not want to burn all the bridges by being stupid and or rude...

Finally, by the august 15th (if not sooner) these questions will be forwarded to Jason, and I will upload the interview to the CWF as soon as I get the results (and have the time to upload them). When the interview is uploaded, I will write down not only the questions and answers, but also the username of the fellow who submitted this question. It is also likely that questions used in the interview will earn some points for the submitter

(I know that the points have no real meaning except being kind of 'status symbols' in here now, but who knows, maybe they one day will do).

So please, ponder what you wish to know about freeware creator(s), and then just ask

- Maz

Post by **Chroelle** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 9:45

Questions:

- Did you ever have crisis where you almost decided to make commercial games instead of freeware?

- Being the leader of a group of volunteers can be frustrating as you can´t really demand anything from them, since they are there of their own free will. How do you motivate the people making the game?

- Was the game ever in danger of not being published? Why? And at what state?

- If you were to make a commercial game (however cheap or expensive) what kind of game would you make? And inspired by what?

- Have you considered making comercial games?

- What will be your next game/remake?

- Where do you see yourself 5 years from now regarding gamemaking?

- Any favourite freeware games we should know about?

Just my thoughts from the top of my head.

SFault · Post by **SFault** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 12:33

Haven't played the game, but here's something I liked to know:

-Where did you get all the time and energy for the whole progress?

-Did you had any huge problems during the development and thought to quit the whole thing?

-Can you estimate which parts were the hardest to do?

-Was there something that was actually much easier to do than you thought?

-Do you think that you'll make some money(like contributions) with your product some day?

-Any words for other freeware game developers?

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 13:30

-Seeing how this is a remake, what did you do to keep it close to the original? Play the original 1000000 times? Decode the source?

-Did you feel it was necessary to expand on the original content? Why, and in what ways?

-Did any sacrifices have to be made with the content?

Post by **Chroelle** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 13:46

- If you were to mention a GOD of freeware, who would that be?

- What specific tech side of making a game is the hardest (to find people for)? (Music, Graphics, storyline, translation, etc.)

- Will you keep working on the game or have we seen the last version of it.

- What are you currently working on?

Pater Alf · Post by **Pater Alf** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 0:54

- When you decided to do a remake of an old game, did you get in touch with the developers of the original game? If yes, what was there reaction? Did they offer help or were there even some legal / copyright issues?

Manimal · Post by **Manimal** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 7:19

- What do you think about companies that "take posession" of some freeware to finally sell it as if it was their own creation ?
A good example is the mod named Counter Strike (no I'm not a fan of this one)

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 16:04

Questions:
-Tecy:
I have gathered the privateer remake has been written on top of vega strike engine. Perhaps you would like to tell something about the vega strike engine?
- What language it is written in?
- What limitations does usage of such engine cause?
- What kind of 'plugins' does the vega strike support (I mean how does one add own features etc. on the engine)
- I believe I saw python scripts in remake, is remake written with scripts?
- I saw a huge amount of plain text config files for privateer (like save files), this allows users to modify thingies, right? How?
- Have you ever considered of making remake an online game?
- If you would do that, wouldn't easy modding become a problem (cheating)? How would you prevent it - or would you?

--Not so techy:
- I have gathered that most of the freeware dev groups do need more 'workers'. What are the areas where help is most needed?
- Have you ever heard of CWF's developer help project?
- CWF's dev help project aims to be a 'bridge' between freeware developers and people interested in participating creating freeware games. If you needed more helpers, would you consider opening a thread in CWF, telling which kind of help you need?
- Any ideas how to enchance the dev help project? What kind of other co-operation could be done between CWF and freeware projects?
- If I wished to join remake developing team...
...Would it be possible?
...What would it require (knowledge)
...How should I proceed?

eMTe · Post by **eMTe** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 22:57

-Tell us more about yourself - how old are you, where do you live, what do you do for a living? (one of these basic interview questions

)
-When did you start playing games? Do you have any fond memories of those times and did you decide to make a game of your own because of some of them?
-Were you a big fan of Wing Commander games or Privateer or do you like space simulation games in general?
-Are you a supporter of idea of freeware or do you consider creating commercial game if opportunity comes?
-What do you think of the freeware gaming scene? Do you think there's any scene at all? Are you in touch with other freeware games developers and are you a member/supporter of any freeware projects/communities?

Majority of all questions in this thread can be later used in other interviews, so we're doing a good job here imho. Beer for thread starter.

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 20:52

Time's Up. Thank you all

I'll try to forward the questions to Jason ASAP

I believe I'll take more or less all of the questions, since they're all good, and there's not hundreds of them. Please stay tuned for next interview...

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 0:40

Here are the questions as they were delivered. I did not edit them one bit, in order to maintain exact meaning of the question.

Post by **Chroelle** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 13:24

Looks very good indeed. I have a few developers who are interested in getting reviewed too, so please let me know if you need a new volunteer. Also I think we could gather the material into a pile of questions we can ask every developer and which is more specific.

Also I have one more question.

Where will the interview show once you receive answers?

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 0:55

The place is unspecified for noe. It depends on the wind direction, position of stars and my mood

What comes to collecting a pile of questions.. I like the idea about gathering questions from users for each interview we do, and adding some of the 'old questions' if it seems appropriate. That way users can continue having answers to THEIR questions, and variation may create some additional interest factor to the reviews. Of course that'll mean we'll also lose some comparison possibilities, but I doubt that's a big loss. (comparing answers from different developers of different games seems somewhat stupid anyways..)

Scythe · Post by **Scythe** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:14

I'm not even going to ask...

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 1:18

Hell with the surftown...
(I just deleted some posts... (quadrublicate or something

Loading data from database failed way too often... But adding data was obviously successfull at times...)

Post by **Chroelle** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 13:09

I think it would be cool if we could start finding a new host. Anybody up for looking while I am spending my time in the hospital? I will look into it too as soon as I have time. (When Tanja gets home and everything has cooled down a bit.)

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 23:07

It seems Jason has been away from Privateer Remake forums for a while, and I have not received the answers yet. I assume he might be having his vacations or something. Well, I am patient fellow, so I will wait, but I am afraid the schedule I promised for you is not going to hold..

Sorry peeps

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 23:19

Actually I got confirmation, he's on vacations. Actually he's currently visiting in neighbouring country - Norway

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:17

Still no word from Jason. It also seems he has not been on privateer forums sonce last summer... It would have been nice to receive a word from him... I hope he's okay though :/

Post by **Chroelle** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 15:53

LEt me know as soon as you have anything from him. I need a developer interview for the newsletter, but I will otherwise make a simplified interview with another developer if we cannot get one from Jason this month...
Hope to hear from him though.