Ask the devs an MXO question

Kayda

Word, Rarebit. I actually choose my clothes for my RSIs based on look,
rather than buffs. Usually I have a "Strolling Around Town" suit, a
"Combat" suit, and perhaps another style of suit designed for a
combination of style and combat effectiveness. Anywho, yeah, I'll let
you get back to your questions SMILEY

Sykin

A mission designer? Oh. Well, he did make Veil's RSI so I just thought...

Well in any case, I what to know what kind of junk happens around the
work area for the MxO. I imagine a million Matrix quotes a day with one
lone man at the coffee machine offering the "choice" of caffeinated...
Or decaffeinated.

**Rarebit**

Sykin wrote:
So you're part of the graphics design team (a highly interesting job, in my opinion), I assume. What other kinds of designers/developers can be seen Kung Fu'ing around the office on a normal day?

Don't assume, it makes an as-- Nevermind. SMILEY

I'm a general game designer (*double-checks his business card, sees it still just says "Game Designer" on there instead of "World Dictator," /shakefist*). HCFrog is in this group, too. We have the most fun, or so we tell ourselves. We do pretty much anything that Archon asks us to learn to do with the tools, which currently seems to include such things as:

- NPCs (conception, putting them together from existing components, play balance, etc)
- Screenshots for art, marketing, Paul Chadwick
- Missions
- Quests (ex: Pandora's Box, Uriah reflow)
- Gameplay (ex: snowball fights)
- unique inventory objects
- World design
- Events
- isn't that enough????!?!

But Archon is always inventing new things to make us do, too. He himself is, as you know, the lead designer, and he handles overlord stuff like dreaming up and pushing through big projects, ie the combat update, overall Richland/Westview level reflow scheme, skill tree revamps, and the Pandora's Box concept.

Then there's the mighty community team, aka Walrus.

And there's also, in no particular order:

- Matrix Storyline (the famous Mr. Paul Chadwick)
- Art
- Technical design (scripts, object and ability design and generation, and other hard stuff)
- QA
- Ops (keep dem Live servers running, keep our dev machines running)
- Dev Liaison (integrates changes, builds code and patches, does automated testing, props patches, maintains internal server clusters)
- Server engineering
- Client engineering
- Tools engineering
- Database administration
- Production

I think that about covers it for usual day-to-day development here.

Steege

Earlier:

Rarebit wrote:

TetraCleric wrote:
Why is Ghost Bald?

If I remember correctly, it's because we didn't get the rights to use
the likeness of that movie actor in the game. This wasn't discovered
until right near the end of Beta, so up until that point, he had hair,
just like in the movie!
Message Edited by Rarebit on 12-14-2005 09:38 PM

However, I'm still curious as to why exactly Ghost is bald.

So they weren't allowed to use Anthony Wong's likeness, it doesn't quite explain why you guys decided to scalp him.

My question:

Why
didn't you just Frankenstein together a vaguely similar looking
character using the generic character models (like you did with Veil)?

Siros7

Now my question:

Waffles or biscuits? Answer it for iterator's sake! :smileywink:

**Rarebit**

Steege wrote:
Earlier:
Rarebit wrote:

TetraCleric wrote:
Why is Ghost Bald?

If I remember correctly, it's because we didn't get the rights to use the likeness of that movie actor in the game. This wasn't discovered until right near the end of Beta, so up until that point, he had hair, just like in the movie!
Message Edited by Rarebit on 12-14-2005 09:38 PM
However, I'm still curious as to why exactly Ghost is bald.

So they weren't allowed to use Anthony Wong's likeness, it doesn't quite explain why you guys decided to scalp him.

My question:

Why didn't you just Frankenstein together a vaguely similar looking character using the generic character models (like you did with Veil)?

I can only guess that whoever did it back in the day had a thing for bald Asian men.

**Anamodiel**

What's been the funnest thing you've designed in the game?

Siros7

Now my question:

Waffles or biscuits? Answer it for iterator's sake!

Steege

Ahaha!

**FAOrien**

I know this isnt right after Rarebits post, but Im sure someone would ask:

There are highlighted areas on the Mega City map that arent ingame, have these areas been created?

Yes its a future question, but any answer is better than no answer.

Message Edited by FAOrien on 12-17-2005 06:30 PM
Message edited by FAOrien on 12/17/2005 16:30:54.

**cloudwolf**

Seriously bout the ghost thing, is there ever a chance of getting anthony wong? or at least a more like him model in the game?

I mean it, everytime time i see that bald..thing it makes me wanna /vomit!

Steege

cloudwol wrote:
Seriously bout the ghost thing, is there ever a chance of getting anthony wong? or at least a more like him model in the game?

I mean it, everytime time i see that bald..thing it makes me wanna /vomit!

I don't mind the fact that Anthony Wong declined. The only thing that bothers me is that Ghost is BALD!

Anything would be better than this. :smileytongue:

...

Update 39:

* Ghost now has an afro. Happy?

**cloudwolf**

Yeh i dont mind either. I mean niobe, they did a good job with her but the ghost we have atm gives me nightmares...

PLEASE frog, rarebit, walrus, somebody! push forward a change of ghost model!

Message Edited by cloudwol on 12-18-2005 12:40 AM
Message edited by cloudwolf on 12/17/2005 16:40:19.

**FAOrien**

Ghost with the Ponytail hair cut might look cool.

mercurius420

The reason ghost is bald seems to be (to me at least) that when they
found out they didn't have the rights to his likeness they decided to
avoid a possible lawsuit they purposely created a character that had no
likeness to the actor, whatsoever.

While this works from a business stand point, it leaves soething to be
desired from a story stand point, like a real explination, but perhaps
by not explaining it, we can avoid drawing too much attention to this
particular hiccup.