News Meet the Team #1: Mark Allen (Programmer)

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MikeSnos

MikeSnos
breakpointUK said:
Welcome to the Forums Mike;)

What Freelancer Mod did you work on?

I've played a few!... Is there anything that you would like to incorporate in ED (in regards to an FL mod concept)?
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Alien said:
I have two questions for Josh (and Mike too if he wants to answer them)

1) where do you stand on the Yorkshire puddings with Roast Chicken debate. The way forward or sacrilege?

2) apple or banana?
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I'm Mike.... He's Mark! :)

PS - I had a similar thing once... buying a new car the salesman insisted on calling me Mark instead of Mike.... I went elsewhere in the end... silly sod (him, not me)!
 

Mark Allen

Programmer- Elite: Dangerous
M
Sometimes it's easier to call ourselves the indeterminate M's ;).

breakpointUK: As with most of the games I mod, I never released anything. Most of the time I want want to play around with the game, experiment with things I think might be better balanced, or just make a really stupid weapon because something in the game's fiction prompted me (Supreme commander, I'm looking at you). It's curiosity as much as anything else!

Alien:
1) mmmmm Yorkies, as long as they come with gravy I don't care what else is on the plate :)
2) Apples. However: peel a banana, wrap it up in some foil along with good fudge and stick it on the barbecue until it goes all melty. You are now in possession of something awesomely tasty!
 

breakpointUK

breakpointUK
Mark Allen said:
Sometimes it's easier to call ourselves the indeterminate M's ;).

breakpointUK: As with most of the games I mod, I never released anything. Most of the time I want want to play around with the game, experiment with things I think might be better balanced, or just make a really stupid weapon because something in the game's fiction prompted me (Supreme commander, I'm looking at you). It's curiosity as much as anything else!
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Know what you mean, FL was totally unbalanced (I suppose because multi-player was an after thought)
 

Adam Lusardi

A
I'm going to really enjoy this thread with all the disciplines. Well done!

Already got memories flooding back of playing with C and then rewriting all the chucks in assembly just to see the speed increase.
 

Slawkenbergius

Slawkenbergius
Question for Josh

Questions for Josh

How much of constraint are you finding the gravity situation when it comes to designing the space-stations? Does it constantly get in the way of great ideas, or does the challenge inspire you further?

How much change happens between your concept designs, and the final in-game model? How does this make you feel?

What's been your favourite non 'Top Secret!' game to design for? If Elite, then what's been your second favourite?
 
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FS3DPete

F
Adam Lusardi said:
I'm going to really enjoy this thread with all the disciplines. Well done!

Already got memories flooding back of playing with C and then rewriting all the chucks in assembly just to see the speed increase.
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It's kind of a shame that trying to code any significant programming in assembly language for specific CPU sets is no longer widely practiced. I remember a lot of additional speed was wrought from a given platform in the 90's over C or other mid-high-level languages at the time, but given the different platform specifics, how dangerous it is to address the hardware directly, and how much easier it is to code in a language that can be cross-compiled more easily, I can see why it's not used as widely any more.

I do wonder what speed increases would be available to today's hardware though. Would it even be worth the effort outside of OS development?
 

Juniper

Juniper
Great interview. :)

Questions for Josh when you get to it:

1) Which movies or TV shows inspire you in terms of look and feel? Particularly in Scifi, a lot of effort is made to generate a consistent "look" - which is your favourite?

2) How do you feel about re-designing iconic ships or stations? Are you given strict guidelines by David Braben or are you given free reign?

3) How much does scale matter in your designs? Example - a ship is much smaller than a planet, how do you incorporate both in a design without the ship looking impossibly small or the planet impossibly large?

4) Possibly relating to 2, do you feel any weight of responsibility to the old games or are you free to create things which are entirely new?
 

Juniper

Juniper
FS3DPete said:
I do wonder what speed increases would be available to today's hardware though. Would it even be worth the effort outside of OS development?
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As someone who started as a 6502 assembler programmer, and now develops C# apps for a living, I would have to say 'no'. Particularly in the case of C & C++, the compilers are so efficient these days that to spend significant time re-writing sections of code in assembler wouldn't gain a vast increase in performance, unlike days of yore.

Microcoding however is a slightly different beast - there you are not only trying to get performance, but also build functionality into a memory space which is very small - like the computers of old.

For everything else nowadays, with 4GB or 8GB as standard, nobody bothers anymore. :(
 

Alien

Alien
[off topic]
As someone who knows nothing about programming, I have a question ...
C is pronounced See ... that one is easy
C++ is pronounced See plus plus ... that one is easy
but how do you say C# ? (the musician in me looks at that as C sharp)
[/off topic]
 

psykokow

psykokow
Alien said:
[off topic]
As someone who knows nothing about programming, I have a question ...
C is pronounced See ... that one is easy
C++ is pronounced See plus plus ... that one is easy
but how do you say C# ? (the musician in me looks at that as C sharp)
[/off topic]
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you would be correct it is C sharp
 

DigitalDuck

DigitalDuck
Alien said:
but how do you say C# ? (the musician in me looks at that as C sharp)
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Yup.

In coding, you add ++ to the end (or beginning, there's a difference, but let's save that for another time) of a variable (thing that holds a value) to add one to it. C++ is C, "plus one".

Meanwhile, C# is the next note up. They represent two different evolutions from the base language C.
 
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