Here’s your chance to interview Chris Taylor
First of all, thanks to Molloy for his suggestion of interviewing GPG staff in our first open thread. It’s so obvious that I kind of feel dumb for not thinking of it. Oh well, at least once I get an idea, I don’t mess around with the execution of it. “Why go for any GPG staff?” I thought to myself. “Why not just Chris Taylor?”
Why not Chris Taylor indeed?
So I just got done speaking with Chris Taylor and he’s agreed to do a Slashdot-style interview. For those of you who don’t know, that means that we’ll be soliciting questions from our readers, compiling a list of the best questions, and sending them off to Chris. Then he answers the questions, sends back the responses, and we post them.
So here are the ground rules. Post the questions you’d like Chris to answer as comments on this post. I’m not going to make a set limit on how many questions each person can submit for consideration, but please don’t flood us with too many questions. Narrow down your list to the best few and post only those. Please read all of the comments before submitting your own questions, and if a question you’d like to ask (or some variant) is already in there, just second it rather than repeating it. I’ll go through in a few short days from now, compile the best questions, and send them off to Chris. Then we wait.
Oh, and one more thing. Don’t bother asking Chris questions that he can’t answer. These would be questions like “What’s in the expansion?” or “When’s the expansion coming out?” Generally, game developers aren’t going to answer questions like these (it’s very bad to make any sort of forward-looking statement and then possibly later have to renege on it). And when they do answer these kinds of questions, it’s generally in large, blow-out exclusives, like with Gamespot, PC Gamer, whatever. But don’t worry, there are still tons of questions to ask that Chris can answer.
April 5th, 2007 at 12:19 am
What can we do as fans and or players to best benifit your future or current work?
I am not a previous player of TA, but I would like to know if you have any future plans. I am not asking for specifics, but it seems you have made an already incredible leap for the genre of real time strategy. What type of changes would you like to see next?
Where did you get the ideas for the three factions? Were they inspired from any other games or experiences you have had? Also, which do you feel is your favorite (just for fun, of course)?
Those are my three best questions for now. I also would like like to say thanks for all of your hard work. I myself am a computer science student, though not likely a rare occurence, but it brings a different angle for viewing your work. Anyway, thanks for the hard work. This may be a sour comparison, but I feel as if SupCom is the new StarCraft (SC1, SC2…). Have a nice night!
April 5th, 2007 at 12:19 am
What does CT drive?
April 5th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Why is the Cybran T1 radar called a mango?
April 5th, 2007 at 12:21 am
hmm Unconqerable, personal questions could be fun too. Oddly enough I stayed to the typical…scary. I will have to think up a few atypical questions.
April 5th, 2007 at 12:24 am
How much crossover is there between the Dungeon Seige and Supreme Commander engines?
Were there other experimental unit types considered?
Do you win the games of SupCom that have to occur at times in the office, or does the staff know to let the big boss win?
Were there any phases of development that were more difficult than you were expecting, based on your prior experience, especially compared to designing Total Annihilation?
Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Chris, and Cyde Weys for setting it up.
April 5th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Do you think there is a place for the kind of multilayer experience that would take something like supreme commander and add a specific first person perspective so that one person is truly the commander, and based on their orders, other players perform a task in their unit?
I read that you enjoyed Battlefield 1942: What kind of games do enjoy the most outside of RTS? Any other favorites?
Briefly, what was your life like in the way of finding yourself designing video games. High School/College - beyond?
I’m a filmmaker - What would it take to interest you in a film based on supreme commander universe? I know video game based films are more hit than miss, but given the right producer/director, does the idea interest you?
April 5th, 2007 at 12:45 am
_hysteria_: “Magno” as in magnetic, electromagnetic… radar!
And for the questions:
What level of long term support do you hope to see from GPG for the modding community? Do you intend to ever use player made content in official downloads such as patches? (with permission and such of course)
Do you expect/intend mods, mainly (good) total conversions, to become as big a part of Supreme Commander as the original game itself?
What are your thoughts on the progress mod makers have made so far? Faster than you expected? Slower? More innovative and just plain wacky?
April 5th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Thinking about it from a gameplay perspective:
Why are there three levels of tech? Why decide on T1, T2 and T3?
Why do you think that most RTS games have not followed the TA route? Why do Starcraft and C&C style games seem to be the default? Is it simply that it’s easier?
How many iterations did ferrying go through? It seems like a very complex feature to design, let alone implement.
Is the end result of SupComm what you initially imagined?
From a software development perspective:
How do you make the decision to build vs buy (Net-Z in particular) and determine how best to build an API for mod makers (given that any decision you make could take literally years to come to fruition)?
How does a multi-year project like Supreme Commander get organized? I presume you have internal milestones and deadlines and such, but given how many projects go astray (and how fickle programmers can be), isn’t it a challenge to keep morale up and momentum going? It seems very much like video games are the last bastion of waterfall…
How on earth do you debug something as complex as this?
April 5th, 2007 at 1:03 am
1: When you finished with high school, did you attend a special college for game design?
2: Do you ever wish that you had a different job in the gaming industry other then being a game developer?
3: If you had the chance, what would you have changed with Total Annihilation?
4: Have you ever given thought do doing a game that isnt in the RTS genre?
5: Do you ever play mods for your previous games and then see ideas that you wish you could have added to your own game?
6: What do you enjoy doing on the weekend?
April 5th, 2007 at 2:25 am
[Stalker mode]
1. Can I bear your children?
2. Where do you live?
[/Stalker mode]
April 5th, 2007 at 3:00 am
What do you think was your biggest challenge in relation to working with the gaming industry?
What has been your biggest payoff for the years of hard work you’ve poured into your games?
April 5th, 2007 at 3:04 am
- Have you ever played Battle for Middle Earth series or recent Command & Conquer series or Company of Heroes or even Spring TA yourself, or be it any “other” RTSs? I mean for real, with any gaming friend if that exists.
- Do you consider yourself an RTS player or an RTS developer only?
- Back in the early beta I remember the game coming without minimap, I recall you saying something about a part of the developing team not wanting the minimap in the game as they felt it was not needed (players would care less since they had strategic zooming) and despite you wanting the minimap in, the early beta really came without a minimap until the Beta community cried for it… well you were right… knowing that a game development process is a chaotic brainstorm with tons of ideas just about to be applied or just about to be trashed, I would like to know how much do you depend on team’s internal feedback? How much your team influences you in the game shaping?
- Any plans on future patches to make the game more low-end-PC friendly?
____
“Do you win the games of SupCom that have to occur at times in the office, or does the staff know to let the big boss win?” >>>(from Viperion)
April 5th, 2007 at 4:14 am
Are there any aspects of PC gaming that you would like to bring to home consoles (or vice versa)?
What are some of the most important facets of game design? What advice would you give to potential designers?
What types of toys and games did you play with when you were growing up?
April 5th, 2007 at 4:47 am
Actually, Jun Kazama, even the early betas came with a minimap. It just wasn’t /clickable/. Anyway, here are my questiosn:
- what’s the entry level salary for an engineer at GPG?
- is GPG profitable yet?
- how did Supreme Commander sell, so far?
- is there a deadline for when the support (patches, tools, community work, etc.) stops, or could you say how much of a budget you have left for these things?
- since you have a couple of sons - how does working as a game developer/designer influence your family life? I heard a few nice things about GPG and health + family being important, but I’d like to hear more of it if you care to share. :)
April 5th, 2007 at 4:48 am
There are some excellent ones there so far though. The more personal questions could be interesting. He’s not going to tell people about what he’s going to put in future patches, about optimisations or integration of third party units/mods. That’ll be announced officially at a later stage.
Good work on securing a CT interview. I can’t think of any good questions.. I asked him a few in an e-mail years ago. He was nice enough to reply.
http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16226
Ugh.. I can’t believe I sent an email with so many smiley faces in it.
April 5th, 2007 at 4:56 am
Regarding what happened with Total Annihilation and the TA:Spring project (people created an open-source engine for the game, in some ways more powerful than the original) :
Are you considering open sourcing SupCom in 3/4 years? Are there any blocking license issues? Of course it’s a bit early to discuss this but knowing that SupCom may one day become an open source community project would definately boost the community and the modders.
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Were you able to include in SupCom all the features you wanted or did you drop some new great ideas of yours during the development because of lack of time/technology ? (read: Have you still some ideas left for SupCom 2 ?!! ;-)
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What is you opinion on the SCU spam issues?
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If you were to play in the ladder (maybe you do!) what race would you choose?
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What do you think of SupComTalk ? ;-)
thanks chris!
April 5th, 2007 at 5:19 am
- Have you or some of the lads of GPG tried usermade mods/maps/units already and if you did, what did you think of them?
- After reading several developer posts on the official boards it seems like the SupCom-engine is going to get more moddable and optimized after certain updates and from other interviews I gather you’re not out of ideas yet for this game, does that mean there is still lots of room for new big features or do you have more the feeling already that it’s maybe better to start from scratch again with a completely new engine, for SupCom 2 or so (how hard that may even sound)?
- Do you think Atari might be planning to do something with the TA-license now, after they’ve seen the positive hype of Supreme Commander? And would you consider taking up the task if they would ever ask GPG to create an “official” Total Annihilation 2 (even when everyone knows they didn’t want to let you use the license in the past when you asked them)?
April 5th, 2007 at 6:04 am
What feature do you wish to add to the game the most and why?
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Which is/are your favourite unit(s) in the game and why?
April 5th, 2007 at 6:58 am
Are you satisfied with the state SupCom was in at release? (Meaning the units, balance, features able to be included, etc.)
[Regardless of whether that is answered with an affirmative or negative answer, the follow up question is:]
What are the top two or three features you would like to have included in SupCom for release?
[This will also give us an idea what we might see in the expansion.]
Fans are looking forward to the first of the GPG official unit releases. Can you share with us some hints as to the type of units we can expect to see GPG release? (We imagine the big patch that is due out shortly has been taking up much of the SupCom team’s time recently, but would imagine the team already has a shortlist of the units it is going to release in the future.)
April 5th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Why did you decide to not include a our base/units are under attack warning as has been in every rts since the dawn of time, Even TA!
Any chance of a revision of the miniture UI that has a minimap button? i love the look of the mini UI but i feel blind without a minimap
Any chance of an EMP missile launcher, like the ones introduced in the TA xpac
April 5th, 2007 at 8:14 am
[Regardless of whether that is answered with an affirmative or negative answer, the follow up question is:]
What are the top two or three features you would like to have included in SupCom for release?
[This will also give us an idea what we might see in the expansion.]
Fans are looking forward to the first of the GPG official unit releases. Can you share with us some hints as to the type of units we can expect to see GPG release? (We imagine the big patch that is due out shortly has been taking up much of the SupCom team’s time recently, but would imagine the team already has a shortlist of the units it is going to release in the future.)
+1 to those.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:25 am
If we all had infinitely powerful computers (or close enough), what sort of game would you make?
April 5th, 2007 at 10:10 am
“If we all had infinitely powerful computers (or close enough), what sort of game would you make?”
I thought that’s what supcom was? :)
April 5th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Scouting in the early stages is important to achieve overall victory. However; I have found it a little tedious to have to scroll to that area of the map which has just been scouted to see what is there. Would it be possible to implement some sort of reporting system where the intelligence gathered would be summarized in a box or something (# of factories, units being built etc) and updated as the area is scouted?
April 5th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Did you ever play quake ?
What is your fav game of all time?
Why do you make games?
Did you consider some kind of AI base builder you could program?
Did you consider implementing some kind of “switch” that you could make part of stacked attack instructions? So when you hit the switch you can unleash you stacked attacks?
April 5th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Are you tired of Supreme Commander getting knocked in reviews because of the hardware requirements?
Will you talk expansion?
Can we have peewee’s back in an official patch?
Will you duel me?
April 6th, 2007 at 2:23 am
Is it possible to make Cybran’s destroyers use the faster way to go from a point A to B instead of the shorter one?
Flyings construction bots later ?
Lois Lane is still alive ?
April 6th, 2007 at 5:06 am
@Jun Kazama Mishima
“- Any plans on future patches to make the game more low-end-PC friendly?”
Depends on what you mean by low end? Take a look at the laptop gaming article. Even with a pretty low end card and cpu it works pretty well.
@Chris Taylor
A suggestion about SupCom, what about letting us set the display distance when going from strategic zoom icons into to displaying the units textures and such.
Also, what about having the option to turn off all units being displayed and show only the strategic icons? I actually have the icons on at all times which helps me to distinguish general unit types even when zoomed in.
What about adding support for one of the 3DConnexion’s controllers like this one?
April 6th, 2007 at 10:31 am
“Take a look at the laptop gaming article. Even with a pretty low end card and cpu it works pretty well.”
yeah if you don’t mind playing a game that looks like poo. ;P
April 6th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Why did Uncoq lose to hysteria?
April 6th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
What was the most unexpected strategy or tactic that you found players using once the game went live?
April 6th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
@lol: Watch the replay and you’ll see what happened. This is a totally different thread though. Please keep comments on-topic: we’re looking for interview questions for Chris Taylor.
I might as well take this time to make a little announcement:
I’m going to compile the final list of questions on Sunday and send them off to Chris Taylor in time for Monday. Hopefully we’ll get the responses back in a week. I’ll post a comment when solicitations for questions are closed, so until you see that notice, please submit any more excellent questions that you may have.
April 6th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Who designed the aeon T1 mobile AA and do they still have a job?
April 7th, 2007 at 4:37 am
If you could meld your intellect with an AI would you do so?
April 9th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Okay, we’re compiling the list now. No new questions will be accepted.