Meet the Team, Vol. VIII

Greetings Dev-Log Readers,

We are visited this week by another somewhat elusive person, orth. As we've tried to convey, each of our team members does their part in their available hours but orth gives us a brief look at the sheer volume of tasks that lay before our programmers. As you read the following you may get a sense of how much is going on behind the scenes.

rowana: As is tradition (for now!) I'll accept vagary here. First how old are you?

orth: I'm 34.

rowana:* And wherabouts do you live?

orth: A Toronto suburb.

rowana: Alright, obligatory stats out of the way. Moving on to the more fun stuff! How long have you been hanging around/working at Layonara?

orth: It'll be 6 years next week actually, can't believe a year has gone by since I did the little 5 year anniversary bit.

rowana: Doesn't really seem like it should have been that long! Heh. For those who aren't familiar, who have/do you play on the server? And do you have a favorite memory you'd be willing to share?

orth: My main character is Plenarius Ashaley, a Katian cleric who has probably witnessed more historical events of import then any other character, I've dabbled with a few other characters but never really had the heart for anyone else and most of them were just short diversions from the norm. As for a memory...

orth: I've thought about this obviously since reading the previous interviews and there's no way I can place one so I'll just try to elaborate on a specific feeling I have had where I realized "Wow, I really love this, I feel like I've found a creative outlet I've otherwise been lacking in life, this notion of roleplaying is going to have a significant impact on my life and I've found a community who feels the same."

rowana: We'll take that! *smiles*

orth: Watching Blood die was pretty cool too.

rowana: I can only imagine after having dealt with all that came before for so long. Heh! Tying into that, but looking toward the future of Layonara: You are of course known to be diverting most of your available time into the MMO and future of Layonara. Can you tell us a little bit about what you have going?

orth: I am blessed with a lifestyle that currently allows for a fairly good amount of free time and most of it is spent on the MMO development. My area of work crosses a pretty wide spectrum and I'd fail at doing it any justice to summarize it in this interview but I'll give a bit of a brief:

orth: The environment (water, sky, sun, terrain etc), the spell casting and combat higher level system which we call ARC short for Action Reaction Conditional, the gathering and crafting skills, currency, vendors, inventory, economy, quests, death, loot, items, character creation, sound fx, music, equipment and movement are some of the ones I can think of right now.

orth: So that's in references to coding the systems, both high and low level for those actions. No I don't create music or write quests, though I'd try if it needed to be done.

rowana: Heh. That is quite a list! Is there some one or two of those you could elaborate on, perhaps one that you are enjoying?

orth: I think what I would prefer to say is that I am pretty proud of my ability to be the guy who can be all over the place taking care of all of these aspects that are essential and that's something I really enjoy. Yesterday I worked on the little numbers that come up telling you damage/healing on characters and tonight I'm working on the Skill Progression User Interface.

orth: They're both quite different portions of the codebase and two different programming languages but I happily bounce around, I think it helps keep me fresh, it also ranges from quick tasks to very deep and lengthy projects.

rowana: That flexibility is probably quite handy on many levels, though I expect it keeps you and what you are working on in demand as well.

orth: Heh, frankly I seem to be making more of the demands then others, I guess everyone else just assumes I'm too busy to really ever ask of something.

rowana: Well you sound like you may appear that way, outside looking in. Hehe.

rowana: I'm going to guess that with all of this, Layonara pretty much is your free time. So we'll wrap today with a fun question of a different sort... The super powers... If you could have any one power (known or not), what would it be and why?

orth: I'd have the ability whatever it takes to create a utopian society, political, economic, environmental, etc; Where hunger and poverty don't exist, global peace is achieved, cures are discovered and the fragile state of our planet is renewed.

rowana: Sounds like a lot more work then what you have on your plate now. Certainly worth it for the result but sounds like you'd be wiped out by the end.

orth: I hope to be that way any way!

rowana: Hehe! Well we'll let you get back to Skill Progression User Interface(s) work for the evening. Thank you very much for taking time out to indulge us with this interview!

orth: And thank you for the interview rowana.

We hope you enjoyed this bird's eye view of activities for the MMO. Once again we invite you back for the next week's random MMO Team interview.

~row, on behalf of the writing team