My dinner with Shane Alfreds, by FoX
1) Name, project, position, drink of choice?
Shane Alfreds, aka rupract, aka SpankMaster3000 (nickname conceived by Pax, enough said). I work as the lead programmer on Sigma, my main coding responsibilities are still the audio code and some of the Sigma tools. Drink of choice depends upon my mood. During heavy crunch time I favor coffee, when I’m trying to relax a nice dark ale goes down just right and when I need some sugar I seek out the Dr. (Dr. Pepper that is).
2) Ummm, okay, what the heck is the “Golden Tent” award?
Well during the development of Homeworld, we would often relieve some stress with some Quake 2 action. The Golden Tent award was given to the most devious and persistent camper during each session. Quinn, Rasolf, YMS, Aaron Kambeitz and myself were often the recipients of the award. It was only a title, but I had the idea of actually creating an award using the wrappers from some Caramilk bars.
3)Okay… we’ve seen you as Xena… we’ve seen you as a scottish warrior of some sort (please tell me you were wearing something under that kilt/skirt)… is there anything we’re missing?
Umm, not really. Last year it was Frankenstien but that wasn’t too disturbing (except to my daughter). As for the Braveheart, that was the real deal: my natural hair, my kilt worn in traditional Scottish fashion.
4) We know ya like sailing, we know you like ferrets and to dress up as Xena (not necessarily at the same time… I hope…), what else do you enjoy in your free time?
Well, foremost in my life is my wife Monica and daughter Maya. This industry can be hellishly stressful and you get worked to the bone, but I can go home to them and get away from it all. Monica and I have been studying Taekwondo for the past 7 years and we love it. I would always like to be involved in some kind of martial art, its great for stress relief and keeping your body in good shape. I play a lot of sports as well. This year we started a Relic ice hockey team. We weren’t very good, but it was a lot of fun. I also play soccer, ride my bike (just started communting to work and home again) and rollerblade. I also read a lot of SciFi, listen to music and sometimes play music (when I have the time).
5) We havent heard much about the ferrets lately, any updates?
Well, our oldest and first ferret, Dritz, died last year. Zoe, our second ferret, had to have surgery, but she’s recovered well. Spooky and Kodiak are still crazy and love to play with my daughter. She chases them around and plays hide-n-seek.
6) So who did you have to have killed / bribed for the change in position?
I refuse to answer that question as my answer may serve to incriminate me.
7 ) When Alex first came to the team about Sigma, was it well recieved or did you all kind of give him that “time to update my resume” look?
I loved the idea from the beginning. I knew it was ambitious and would be difficult, but I thought if we can nail down a game around this idea people are going to love it.
8 ) Any favorite animal combo? There has to be something that makes rup giggle everytime he makes it.
Its tough to pick a favourite, there are some really awesome looking animals in the game. From a visual perspective I really like combos that use a creature that has animations that are a little different than the standard quadrapeds (four legged animals). For example, when you take a chimp, which walks fairly upright, and combine it with a giraffe you get some really interesting looking animation.
9 ) There has to be moments that even impress the devs of the game, any time in particular that this happened for you?
Oh yes, we have a very talented team here and there are lots of times when a team member finishes something off and sees it in the game for the first time. Everyone gathers around and oohs and ahhs a lot.
10 ) I’m sure quite a few things were learned from making and releasing Homeworld. Do you care to elaborate on anything that was learned that is being applied to Sigma?
Software development, and game development specifically, is a learning curve that never completely tapers off. Your next development always has new features that nobody on your team has tried before. We have definatly tried to take feedback from the community, our publishers and ourselves as to what we could do better in our development. On the programming side we are developing better tools for creating the game, having a more open architecture so we can better support the MOD community and trying to keep our codebase clean and hopefully reusable.
11) We know you guys hit the boards quite often, do the ideas there ever find their way into the game?
Yes, definately. Sometimes the fans’ ideas match what we have already been working on and it validates all the design we’ve be doing. Since I did communicate a lot with the HW community and the MOD community I’ve really tried to ensure that we are doing what the fan community wants.
12 ) Are you surprised by any of the mods out there for HW right now? Are you excited to think of the possibilities available with Sigma (given that its suppose to be more mod-friendly)?
I’m amazed at what the HW MOD community has done, there are a lot of talented people out there. There are some amazing models, effects, maps and tools that have been created. I really enjoyed helping delphy out with some of the audio related stuff, like extracting all the speech out of the VCE file. I wish I could do more work with the communtiy, but I have way to much work of my own to do.