2002-05-12: Tales of a Traveller: Interview of UO Producer SunSword
Tales of a Traveller: Interview of UO Producer SunSword
| Videric | How did you get involved in UO and what is your background in the game industry? |
| SunSword | My name is Anthony Castoro, and I'm the new Producer of Ultima Online, both for the Live Team and the Age of Shadows expansion. |
| SunSword | In 1994, I left college to start my own game company called "Integrated Visions" with my partner, a very talented programmer. We hired several game developers from inside the industry and worked out of a leased house! We built a prototype of the first game that we designed called "Hoverblades," but eventually we ran out of money and I had to close the operation down. |
| SunSword | After that, I decided to get a job inside an established company to find out what professional game development was like. I took a job at Origin Systems as a QA tester on Cybermage: Darklight Awakening. It was a bit of a shock, but also a very revealing experience. Since then, I've been a QA/CS rep, a game designer, a lead designer on a few games, and now Producer. Products that I've worked on include Cybermage, AH-64D Longbow, Wing Commander 4, Privateer 2, Ultima Online, and several games that have never seen the light of day, including Star Wars Galaxies, which is still in production. |
| SunSword | I first got involved in UO when I was working at Origin in the QA/CS department. UO was being developed upstairs under the working name "Multima." Multima fascinated me, because I had been playing MUDs and hanging out on IRC since I began college, and it was a time when the Internet was all about possibilities. UO represented a lot of those possibilities. |
| SunSword | So, it was a very exciting time, and I used to spend a couple of hours a week talking with the developers about the product. I left the company before the game launched, but I played in the Beta and for about 8 months after it shipped. In the following 2 or so years, I "sold out" and did a lot of Unix systems administration and distributed network consulting for companies like IBM and Motorola, but I could never stay away from game development and design. |
| SunSword | One day, I came home to UO and found that someone had broken into my new house and had stolen everything but the furniture, which they had piled up in the back of the house. That drove me nuts and is what made me come back to OSI to work on UO as a game designer. One of the first things I was able to do was put in the kick, ban, and lockdown functions for houses :) |
| Videric | Your favourite book and computer game (non-EA, if possible)? Why these? |
| SunSword | My favourite book, hmm… I always tend to lean towards what I've most recently read. Right now, I'm reading "John Adams" by David McCullough, which is excellent. Other favourite novels include "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card and "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson. |
| SunSword | Favorite computer game… well, one of them IS an EA game. It's the original System Shock. I loved that game. But all time favourite? TRIBES. I couldn't stop playing this game. In my opinion, it's the best multiplayer action game ever made. |
| Videric | What about 2D, any plans to include new wearable items as art in future CDs? The work to animate these things must be rather big, considering how many frames each piece needs compared to 3d models? |
| SunSword | 2D wearables are the biggest challenge of all the art tasks we have. One thing that I think fans will appreciate is that we've ensured that the new weapons and creatures are all being done in 2D as well as 3D for AoS! |
| Videric | We currently have two clients, do you foresee them merging into one with 2d and 3d options at some point, or will they continue to be entirely separate? |
| SunSword | Programmatically, these are very different. I don't imagine they'll be merged for the foreseeable future. |
| Videric | Any plans to restore NPC speech lost in localization? |
| SunSword | The answer at the moment is no, but I must admit, I miss it. It's a technology problem, and it's not high on the radar. |
| Videric | The UO server engine is quite amazing. It's probably had things done to it over the last years that no one could imagine 5 years back. How much of the original code has been rewritten and what kind of problems or limitations does that old code pose? Will the engine itself ever be completely re-written at some point? |
| SunSword | I doubt it will ever be re-written completely. Don't get me wrong, a great deal of it has been optimized or re-engineered over the years, but you'd be surprised at how much of it is still original. |
| Videric | AOS: Let's say I wanted to use the largest possible customizable house deed. Could I get as high building with stairs and same amount doors and lockdowns/secures as in Large Tower? |
| SunSword | You will be able to build four stories, including the roof, which you will be able to walk on. |
| Videric | AOS: Will carpets be part of house design tool's floor tiles? |
| SunSword | Not at launch. |
| Videric | AOS: Anything new you could tell us about the new professions/classes, Chivalry and Necromancy? What exactly makes them a class, instead of just new skills? Also, are you stuck with one class after you choose a path? |
| SunSword | They aren't classes. They're skill sets just like the other skills. The term "class" as it pertains to RPGs is a misnomer in reference to the new skills. The only thing that they have in common with classes is that they have some restrictions for their use (making them difficult to have both at the same time). |
| Videric | What is the current release schedule for the Age of Shadows? |
| SunSword | Our launch date is currently slated for February, 2003. |
| Videric | Guildstones. An ally function would really be helpful on the Trammel facet (so you could fight and do beneficial actions to those who are allied with you). It would really help role-playing and guild cooperation. This is a system that certainly would be a benefit to almost all UO players. |
| SunSword | This has been a highly-requested feature for years now. In general, I think guildstones and the guild system are something that need to be addressed sometime after Age of Shadows. I'm not promising any specific features, such as an ally system, but I think that this is an issue that will get some consideration in 2003. |
| Videric | Will boats never be redone? Could ship decay time at high seas be looked at; there are so many empty ships on the high seas that people who actually use boats there have trouble navigating. |
| SunSword | It's not near the top of our list, but I am planning on having the team move back to smaller, more frequent updates after Age of Shadows. This kind of issue is the type of thing that should be addressed in those smaller publishes. |
| Videric | Of the past things added to UO, what has been the biggest challenge in coding/design? Can you also tell us why? |
| SunSword | PVP systems. I think you can probably guess why. :) |
| Videric | Do designers purely do the design work, or are they expected to be hard coders as well? What do you expect of them? Does, in your opinion, the job "designer" vary greatly from studio to studio, or does it have a standard meaning throughout the industry? |
| SunSword | The term "game designer" does vary greatly from studio to studio. In my experience, there are three sets of roles and a variety of skills that support them. These roles are: systems design (game rules), content design (world building), and creative "vision." |
| SunSword | In online games, systems designers have some programming skills as they tend to do implementation in script languages (high level, user-friendly programming languages) on top of the base code. |
| SunSword | Content designers define the world space using map and object editors. They work with artists to define the visual "feel" of the game space. |
| SunSword | Creative vision designers are the people that make the high level requirements for the game in the first place and work with the other designers to make sure that the implementation of the game meets the original vision. |
| SunSword | It's important to understand that these are only generalities. Many studios have varying definitions and role expectations for designers. And all designers should have reasonable writing, artistic, technical, and analytical skills. |
| Videric | What about producer? |
| SunSword | In general, the business of the game industry meets the art of game development in the role of the Producer. The Producer is responsible for the overall project from a personnel, schedule, quality, and budget standpoint. As a result, the person in that role tends to be involved to some degree in every aspect of the game, from its design and development to its marketing and publishing. Different people lean towards different aspects of the job--some tend to be more hands on than others. |
| SunSword | I try to take a holistic approach to the role. My goal is to get the right people in the right position so that I can spend my time merely coordinating and sampling. This allows for the most growth and responsibility opportunities for my staff, while at the same time keeps me from being bogged down by any one task (such as scheduling). In addition, the role of Producer changes pretty significantly during the life-cycle of a game's development. |
| Videric | Will Origin continue to be Ultima Online only, or are there any plans to expand this? |
| SunSword | Who knows what the future will bring? Right now, my only focus is to make UO better and stronger. |
| Videric | The traditional question we at the Tales of a Traveller ask all: What have been your most remarkable moments in UO as a player and as a designer? |
| SunSword | As a player, perhaps the most remarkable moment for me was the first time I logged in and met other players. That was the start of something really big. It wasn't the same as being in a MUD or logging onto IRC. It was "magical." |
| SunSword | For me, my favorite memory was the experience of adding the house functions that made houses so much more secure. It was one of the first things I got to do as a professional game designer. |
| Videric | Thank you for the interview. |
| SunSword | It was my pleasure. |
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