 |
"Um... I don't know.
I think this interview just went up to 11/11."
- "Andrew J. Fauldings" ajf giving insight to a pressing question |
- - - - -
WEDDING RECEPTION:
B.illy S.O.D.: YO MEOW!!
B.illy S.O.D.: Is ajf on?
Meow: No. Last online 12 hours ago.
B.illy S.O.D.: AGHAHGAHSEGOSAEHASIFHAKDLFASEF
Meow: He should be on soon.
B.illy S.O.D.: It was supposed to take an hour ago, I think. 3 PM GMT, but he mentioned something like British summer time.
Meow: I’m glad he's late since I wouldn’t have been here for it either. I just got back from my wedding.
B.illy S.O.D.: Your what?
Meow: A wedding* lol not mine z4
B.illy S.O.D.: Did u marry ajf? DID U???? Anyway we'll see if ajf shows up~
Meow: ajf is online but is set to "busy."
B.illy S.O.D.: Just send him over here. I know ur honeymoon is important, but we got business to do~ And yes, I shall beat this dead horse to death.
THE INTERVIEW:
B.illy S.O.D.: Okay, let's just start now!!!
ajf: Ok!
B.illy S.O.D.: Excite hype metterr!!! First off, introduce yourself, ajf!!
ajf: Hi, I'm ajf. I've been on the GG2 forums since 2010. I'm currently an admin, though my duties are really just maintenance related (I don't moderate). I develop GG2 sometimes, I guess.
Meow: Ok, cool. So, how many alt accounts do you have?
ajf: Hmm... Only one at present, and it's one I don't use. It's called "A. Businessperson" and was used briefly for a game in General Chatter. It has only two or three posts. I've never really been one for alts ^^
B.illy S.O.D.: Well, getting into the meat of today's business: as a mod, why did you decide to start [BOT] and [SNC]?
ajf: Because I wanted to see if I could make a clan without it being instantly deleted. More seriously, [BOT] was an idea of mine to get people to play their bots off against real players. [SNC] was never serious until someone (I think killercrusher) suggested it should be a proper clan, but since everyone joined it as a joke, that hardly worked out. :P
B.illy S.O.D.: Did you have any big visions for either clan?
ajf: Eh, not really.
B.illy S.O.D.: If you were to make a third clan, how would it be similar of different to [BOT] and [SNC]?
ajf: To be honest, I have absolutely no idea. I'm not sure I play GG2 enough, or well enough, to justify making an actual clan.
Meow: I actually said we should get some bot teams in the summer tourney since hardly anybody is playing ehehe... anyway, next up is a question about the clans section: the clans section is running at a snail's pace at the moment and I believe this to be attributed to older clans being inactive and newer clans either dying off days after creation or being too scared to challenge experienced players. Do you have any advice to clan leaders/members both existing and new on how to keep a clan alive and help revive the clans section?
ajf: Nope.
Meow: GOOD INTERVIEW 10/10
ajf: ikr
B.illy S.O.D.: Lol. Well, how is being a global administrator similar or different to leading a clan?
ajf: Uh... I don't even know how to answer that. I'm not sure what it really means to be either, to be honest.
B.illy S.O.D.: Uhhhhhhhhhh when u work the forum, do you carry any abilities from that over to working a clan?
ajf: Um... I don't know. I think this interview just went up to 11/11.
Meow: Ok, next is a question about gameplay (even though you don't play): other than competitive gameplay or gameplay in general, what do you feel are other ways people can enjoy GG2?
ajf: Well, as Wareya always tells me, one of GG2's strengths is that it's a "coffee-break" game. You can just pick it up and play it for a little bit. You don't have to spend hours, or play competitively. Also, more broadly, even if you suck at GG2, there's lots to do on the forums. You can make art, mods, plugins, all sorts of things.
Meow: Yeah, and with the Haxxies coming up you could also win some prizes for contributing to the game/site :ooo
B.illy S.O.D.: Shameless advertising!!
ajf: Yeah. Speaking of which, I *still* didn't hand out the Halloween rewards. Chalk that up to forgetting about it and not wanting to figure out how to fix the script that gives them out.
B.illy S.O.D.: Mentioning that, people might think you're lazy. Do you think that the people here underestimate the work you do as a mod?
ajf: I'm not a mod, so if anything, people overestimate.
B.illy S.O.D.: *forum admin.
ajf: Eh, I don't really do terribly much as an admin, and I'm one of the more active ones. I help deal with technical issues (for example, I helped with the SMF1 to SMF2 upgrade) and sometimes assist moderators with their duties, but my responsibilities as forum admin aren't that many. At least, they're not too taxing. However, more widely, there are some other things I have to do. For example, I have to review every server-sent plugin which is on ganggarrison.com.
Meow: Even though you claim that you don't do too much, you've contributed a fair bit to GG2, so what do you feel is your biggest contribution to GG2? What has been your favorite experience from GG2 so far? What was your favorite April Fool’s joke?
ajf: My biggest contributions were to the GG2 source code. Internally, my best contribution were changing the menu back-end and writing Faucet HTTP, which nobody who doesn't touch the source will really have noticed. Otherwise, I guess the plugins system and menu backgrounds are the biggest things I've done. I'm actually responsible for changing the menu background, which I don't do as often as I ought to. My favourite experience? Hmm, probably April Fools 2014, and also when we introduced bodyblocking. Both of those were really fun. My favourite April Fools was one that never was my sentry mod. It's still out there somewhere in Mods. Go try it. :P
B.illy S.O.D.: Stuff that never was. . . how do you sort bad ideas from good ones when updating GG2? And knowing which ones to reject?
ajf: It's not really a question of "which ideas are bad," it's more which ones get implemented. Most feature requests never get implemented. The ones which do are quite likely to make it in. That said, some things arguably shouldn't have gotten in. For example, while I love that Wareya's changes allowed GG2 to run at 60fps, that makes every single instance dealing with time or movement in the source more complicated. It's been a big source of bugs, and it's added to GG2's "technical debt." That said, I'm not going to revert it.
B.illy S.O.D.: Many people are quick to complain about the updates and a lack of them but a lot of time and effort must go into each update; could you run us through the procedures of a standard GG2 update and how much time and work goes into it?
ajf: OK, sure. We don't really have a particular planning process, nor a regular release schedule. Usually releases happen when some of us feel it is a good idea to make one now, and someone is around to go about releasing it. See, the latest version of GG2 at any one time isn't the one you can get at ganggarrison.com. It's actually the version in MedO's GitHub repository. This will slowly accumulate fixes and features and then at some point we'll be happy enough to release it. Some of us contribute single things at once (which is preferred), and some people dump massive numbers of changes into it at once (which someone, who I won't name, does an awful lot). The former is preferred as it's much harder to review a ton of changes at once. But yeah, once we're satisfied with the "master" version, or sometimes we just feel that we've been too long without a release, then comes releasing. Releasing isn't difficult, but is a little time-consuming. We have to make the exe file and change log, write up a post for Announcements, update the website, and upload things in a specific order. Usually, things go OK. Sometimes we end up putting out really buggy releases and have to make a new one in quick succession. This is mostly because we usually either forget to beta test, or we beta test and no problems are noticed. :/
Meow: While we're on the topic of updates... ANY HINTS TO GG 3.0? Also a little tacked on question by me here: when will the readme.txt be updated?
ajf: I have no idea what GG2 3.0 will hold, nor if it'll actually exist. Most likely, if we ever got that far, we'd just go to GG2 2.10, then 2.11, and so on. Maybe if one of the ports succeeds, that would become 3.0. Regarding the readme, that's unlikely to change soon. I think Wareya made a short how to play guide, and I'd prefer that to the current readme. The readme is sadly out of date, but updating it is a lot of effort and I'm not sure anyone really wants to do that.
B.illy S.O.D.: Intel gave us false hope with GG2 3.0... Tho he did say "possibly." Anyways, WHAT IS THE ANSWER TO GG2’S AILING PROBLEMS? What would you do, or how would you start to fix it?
ajf: Well, let's see. The biggest problem with the game itself is that it is shackled to Game Maker 8.0. This has numerous problems. Game Maker was alright in GG2's early days, but it's slow, buggy, and works only on Windows. There are some things we'd love to do but can't because of Game Maker, and indeed a lot of development work is just working around its limitations. Furthermore, GM 8.0 is out-of-date. The standard GM series no longer exists, having been replaced with GameMaker: Studio, and GM 8.0 wasn't even the latest version, that would be 8.1. GM 8.0 is so old now that you can't actually obtain it legitimately; the software key for my legitimately bought version won't work now. The only way to work on GG2 now is to pirate it. However, no port of GG2 to another language or engine has ever succeeded, so GG2 will keep using GM for the rest of its existence, I expect. I don't think anyone is really interested enough in GG2 to fully port it, and even if a full port happened, I'm not sure anyone would still be playing the game by that point. Regarding the wider community, I don't really know. GG2F is smaller than it once was, and I don't think it's really going to get bigger again. We can, at best, learn to live with this.
Meow: AJF WHEN WILL YOUR AWBW CLONE BE DONE OR ARE YOU SCRAPPING IT ENTIRELY??!?!?!
ajf: Haha, er, good question. Initially I was going to clone AWBW in Haskell, but Haskell is hard, and that didn't go anywhere. My current plan is to use IodineGBA, a JavaScript GBA emulator, and then allow you to play the real Advance Wars 2 (which you have obviously obtained the ROM for legitimately and definitely not gotten from Ye Olde Pirate Bay), and then have it magically send save states over the internet, or something. But I'm currently distracted by my project to add support for bigints to PHP. :P
B.illy S.O.D.: Lawl, well wat was ur favorite unfinished project?
ajf: Good question. I have a lot of them. My favourite GG2-related one is PlanetaryGG2. The mod mostly works properly (except for smoke particles), but generating planet versions of maps takes ages and rewriting it in C for speed would be painful so I'm unwilling to do that. ;)
Meow: Speaking of planetary, you've showcased an interesting mod for gg2 known as PlanetaryGG2, can you give us any info on how it's going and if it will actually make a full release? On a sidenote, will perpetually looping maps be possible with future updates? Wat was ur favorite unfinished project?
B.illy S.O.D.: O wow nice copy-paste adding in my initial question :3c (We'll just edit that out magically, you never saw it ajf.)
ajf: The broader problem with PlanetaryGG2 --
Meow: OOOOOOOOPS
ajf: Er, at present, is that it uses surfaces. These are unreliable and really problematic. I'd like it to be merged into GG2 sometime, but so long as it uses them, it never will. ;_;
ajf: (brb)
*INTERMISSION*B.illy S.O.D.: WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER AJF'S BATHROOM BREAK!! DON'T MISS THE COMMUNITY QUESTIONS THAT WILL BE COMING WHEN WE FINISH THE NORMAL QUESTIONS!!!!
Meow: STAY TUNED, WILL GOKU DEFEAT FREEZER? FIND OUT AFTER THESE COMMERCIALS!!
B.illy S.O.D.: HE NEEDS TO FIND THE VEGETAbles!!!
ajf: WELCOME BACK TO AJF VS. THE WORLD: PART TWO!!
*INTERMISSION END*B.illy S.O.D.: Returning to our regular programming, there’s a stigma against you here. How do you deal with it?
ajf: I try not to let it bother me. It usually only affects me when I'm doing something bad, anyway. Granted, I haven't been very active in GG2F in the last month.
Meow: r u really a grill??!??!!! Many of us would like to know!!
ajf: No, I'm a barbecue, and I'm offf -- offended that you would ask. In all seriousness, er, I am a girl, yes. However, anyone who's been around for long enough knows I was a guy before, and that is also true. Gender is a confusing thing. :S
Meow: #tumblr
B.illy S.O.D.: Well, that finishes off the normal questions!!!
ajf: :o
B.illy S.O.D.: But now we dial up the heat to CoMmUnIty questions!!
ajf: Bonus questions????
B.illy S.O.D.: Ready even moar hashtags!!!
ajf: :ooo #bonusQs #swag
B.illy S.O.D.: This first one is from TailPipe and is *Non clan-related*: spending your time around GG2, did you feel that this game was going to turn out to be a complete flop at anytime, due to the extreme similarities in appearance and gameplay to Team Fortress 2?
ajf: #yolo. Not really. GG2's main appeal is that it's a TF2 demake. Though its gameplay isn't quite the same, not least because it's 2D. It's actually a simpler game than TF2, but it's fun. I don't think it being similar to TF2 is bad for GG2; it gives it an existing audience that might enjoy it (i.e., TF2 players). But GG2 is different enough that many TF2 players won't like GG2 and vice-versa.
B.illy S.O.D.: Also from TailPipe, though this time *Clan related*: so apparently [BOT] and [SNC] were both joke clans. Did you ever had the thought or inclination to start up and host a legitimate clan? Or was it because reasons?
ajf: [BOT] was a novelty, [SNC] was a joke. I'd love to make a real clan, but I'm not sure I'd ever get anyone willing to play in such a clan.
Meow: Our next questions come from 21Dan: any big changes in the future, game based? What's your favourite clan of all time?
ajf: For your first question, no idea. For your second, I still have a soft spot for [SOS].
B.illy S.O.D.: This one is from Bustatunez and kind of touches upon what we mentioned earlier: why did you tell people your name was Andrea when you're obviously a guy?
ajf: Because my name actually is Andrea. It may not always have been, but it is now. There's not some massive deception going on. If it isn't bloody obvious by this point, I'm trans. Go talk to my psychiatrist or something, lol.
Meow: Here are some questions from Akari: What do you like to do best as a mod/developer?? When can you unfix the fixed youtube urls??
ajf: Mod/develop. Why unfix what isn't broken?
B.illy S.O.D.: And FINALLY, we have an extravaganza of 4 QUESTIONS from your BFF, Intel GARD AGAINST AJF:
Why did you move the entire mlp thread to mod reports?
Do you think it was a good idea to unfool yourself after you got fooled?
Why do you make joke clans that you never even use?
When was the last time you actually played a comp match of GG2?
ajf: :oo 1) Because I was fed up with that thread. That was a bad idea as I was basically covering for my own actions, and I apologise. 2) I never did unfool myself. The situation there was that Sani had set my primary membergroup to fool. However, my secondary membergroups included Administrator, which Sani, as a non-admin, could not remove. Hence, while I was nominally fooled, my powers weren't actually restricted, though I made sure I didn't use them while I was fooled. I didn't unfool myself, though. I can't remember who did, I think it was Sani, since, as you probably know, that was a temporary fool to begin with. 3) Because sometimes I hope that those clans will live and prosper. 4) I don't think I ever have, except maybe as a sub once or twice. I'm not really a competitive player. I'm one of those darned "pubs" people moan about. I'm a casual player, of sorts. Hence why I care more about stuff like team deathmatch than the fact Pyro has a runspeed of x.y when it should be x.(y-1), or whatever.
Meow: Thanks for your time; is there anything left that you would like to say?
ajf: Hmm... Why is Gamedev dead ;_;
B.illy S.O.D.: C1 ;3c and thanks alot again, ajf!!!!
ajf: Glad to help :)
Author
Topic: GCD Interview Archive - IV (Read 3498 times)
