Good Afternoon Sky. Thanks for allowing The Buzz to interview you. Firstly, can we ask, why do you lock yourself away in this closet? Has Aldarion and Mika been to see you yet? Every now and then I venture out of the closet, knock one of them out, and drag them back in with me.
Drag them back in with you? May I ask what your intentions are once they are behind closed doors, or is best not to ask? Don't ask, don't tell.
What is your most favourite update/feature and why? I think from a strategy point of view I really like the idea of the gymnasium. It added a new depth to the game because instead of just needing the cash to buy a gun and go training for 10 hours, you need to put in some effort to be able to handle the weapon you're buying. It's another nice touch that this ever growing game now has. I'm also very pleased with the bust party system. I've always enjoyed watching people hosting bust parties manually before I was able to release the system and I felt that the amount of effort that went in to it kind of ruined the fun of hosting, and yet still they were willing and eager to burden themselves. Integrating bust parties fully into the forums allow hosts to automatically see who stands where and therefore they can just enjoy the community without worrying about counting the bust messages and updating their topic. There's a certain elegance to it despite the shocking mess of code that powers it. Same goes for Russian Roulette thinking about it.
Will there be any extra additions to the gym? Sauna maybe for quicker 'recovery' time, or a snack back, again to reduce the recovery time maybe? Nothing planned at the moment but that's probably just because we haven't seen a good idea yet. Gymnasium levels will play a bigger role in the game going forward though, I can say that much.
OK, can you tell us about the moment you received access to the scripts It was overwhelming. I'm experienced in the languages Bootleggers uses but when I first got access I wasn't familiar with how it had been used. Everyone does things differently and Bootleggers has it's own style, one it took me a while to get used to. I spent a few hours just reading and seeing how certain pages were done, which is tremendously interesting. I've picked up some great new techniques from reading BSF2000's work and it's spilled over in to my personal work as well. My first update to the game, which was probably an ill-fated attempt to bug fix, was perhaps the most nervous few seconds of my life.
So, you could say BSF2000 has been a mentor for you, learning his style and how he does things. Are you a developer in real life? You could say that. He's helped me find new techniques that are improvements on my way of doing things. And I'm not a developer professionally, just a hobbyist.
Are you hoping on becoming Administrator soon There would be absolutely no change to anything I do if I became an administrator. I already basically have the game at my fingertips, the only difference would be I could see more Help Desk tickets and I could fire Mika.
Fire Mika? For any particular reason? Also, you mentioned you have the game at your fingertips, what improvements would you like to introduce to the game, that you can talk about? What can the community look forward to in upcoming releases? Just because I could. Any improvements that I can make on my own I've already done. The ranking rewards, the graveyard, witness searching and statement verification, the timers. These things make the game a nicer place to be, I feel.
What's your worst coding mistake So many... I don't remember things that well but off the top of my head probably the issue I caused that meant no-one got paid from their Organized Crimess for a few hours, that was a boo-boo. I've yet to accidentally kill everyone but it's only a matter of time.
I think that would cause a bit of an uproar, ever logged on one day and thought of just going 'postal' and killing off all those who have annoyed you if your having a bad day? Not at all, but I've once or twice considered banning everyone on April 1st, just for 30 seconds. You log in to discover "You have been banned!" and then automatically get logged out, after you log back in you discover it was an April fool. I figured that some people might take it seriously and then quit the game, which would make me responsible for a mass departure of players, so I decided against it.
We have been informed that whilst your sat there, coding away, you also have Grand Theft Auto V on the go. What do you like about it? In all honesty the coding has taken a bit of a back seat while I revel in Grand Theft Auto V, for which I'm sorry but the game is so good that I'm sure you kind players will understand. I've always loved the series and I practically creamed myself at the site of the trailer for the game. I played it for 14 hours straight on the first day after which I basically died from exhaustion. I'm now getting in to Grand Theft Auto Online which is like an entirely separate game. Rockstar really have outdone themselves, as always.
I may have to give it a go. I think I'm the only 28 year old I know who actually hasn't played it yet. I'm still playing Sleeping Dogs. Ever played it? I have played Sleeping Dogs but I didn't get very far. It was quite slow paced, and I couldn't get to grips with the combat system. I enjoyed the two games before it though, True Crime LA & NY. They had some great features in that Grand Theft Auto games have started to include too.
What's your favorite and least favorite parts of the job? Favourite would be helping the players to feel involved. I'm always checking out the suggestions people make and if I think I can do it and it's not so big that BSF2000 should approve it first, I do it almost straight away. Before there was a sense that the players were passive participants in the development of the game but now I like to think that every single player, as well as every single member of the Elite Guard, can consider themselves a contributor to the game's growth.
Do you miss being a normal player on Bootleggers? I was never a normal player, all things considered. I was a loyal member of The Invisibles a couple of rounds ago when The Invisibles were hogging the State Don slots and owned 5 of the 9 bullet factories, and that was good times. We aggressively pursued rankists with the plethora of bullets we had. But The Invisibles retired a long time ago and I lost interest in being a normal player. I'm far too lazy. Instead I was active on the forums and tried to be helpful, and that's basically all I do now on the game anyway. So not much has changed.
Why are you not an administrator yet? There's a misconception that administrator means developer, when for a long time there have been Moderators who had access to the games source. Me being an Administrator would bring nothing new to my abilities and I would bring nothing new to the role.
What do you have planned next? I've got many plans but very little time. I'm still eager to release the feature that Mika and I have alluded to previously, and I intend to at some point modernize the Organized Crime page and bring a new aspect to it at the same time.
Something you and Mika has been working on, you mean when you drag him in to your closet? Any chance of you giving the readers a little 'teaser' as to what that might be? We'll we already gave a bit of a reveal but it's basically a mashup of Organized Crimes and Bootlegging. It's 99% ready, it just needs some testing, although after feedback from BSF2000 we're looking at going another way with it so at the minute it's a toss-up between releasing it as is and then working on the other way, or keeping it back until the other way is done and then releasing the finished version. It's hard to tell when I'm going to have the time to dedicate an entire day to working on it though, which is the only real issue.
We have asked Mika and [/color=green]Aldarion this question, so feel it only fair to ask yourself too, can you tell us something funny or embarrassing about any of your fellow Elite Guard? Aldarion is allergic to Thursdays.
Aldarion is allergic to Thursdays? How so? I think you should make every Bootleggers day a Thursday, just to cure Aldarion of his allergy, unless he somehow swells up, then that maybe worth seeing haha. He gets all puffy around the face and starts to leak from his ears. It's quite funny. I think I might change the time above the barrel to say Thursday every day.
So, what have we learnt from the man in the closet? Well, we could advise you to not walk past his closet for the fear of being knocked out, but unless you're Aldarion or Mika you probably have nothing to worry about. Sky seems to have a lot of control over the game, much more than many players would have thought. Could that be a dangerous thing if he ever escaped his closet? The reason he isn't administrator is pretty clear, it would just be a colour change, nothing more seeing as he has the world as his finger tips. We are looking forward to seeing what new exciting releases he and the fellow Elite Guard have installed.
Next, we are going to attempt to get an interview with Riserva and with a bet laid out on the table between The Buzz and whether we would get the last two interviews, it will be done, even if I have to get Sky involved and dragging them in to his closet, so be it.
