Chat Session with the Coles

[Swift]

Chatsession with the Coles, creators of the QfGSeries
Original source:www.sflah.com
A revision of the chat log
by Paladin Valiant

Saturday 31th March would be an interesting day in my life. I would be able to chat with the creators of the Qfgseries and ask them several questions about gamedesign and the qfgseries. Actually it all took place at sunday morning because those americans didn't expect any europeans would be willing to be present at the chat as well. At 5 am dutch time they would arrive, the chat at hero6 was already very crowded with various nervous qfgfans.

SECTIONS
A Quest for Glory
-Development of the games
-The games themselves
B Sierra Entertainment
C Explorati
D Fanprojects
E Various topics


QUEST FOR GLORY

-DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAMES

DAEMIOUS: Corey, did you program much of the original SCI?
COREY COLE: I converted SCI from the PC to the Atari ST, making a few small improvements in the PC version as well. My Atari code was later used as the basis for both the Amiga and Macintosh versions.

DAEMIOUS: Did you program any of SCI, or do scripting for any of the QFG's ?
COREY COLE: I worked on the first two QG's as a scripter ("SCI programmer") as well as helping with the design and leading the team part of the time. I also wrote a lot of the behind-the-scenes code (and a few of the rooms) for QG5. My greatest design participation was on QG4 followed by QG2. I had little to do with QG3 except writing some text messages, and did almost none of the QG5 design (but did write dialogue for a couple of the characters).

SIR ELTHIL: One question, which answer may already be publical known(but I was hardly online during the development of QG5) The graphic styles changed several times. I saw some excellent pictures, partially concepts, originally, with the hero having a golden ring in his hair. Then, there was a first demo, where the hero had orangeish hair, where I actually didn't like the graphics a lot. Then in the final they changed again, to a mix between those two.
COREY COLE: We went through a major graphics change during QG5 development. The engine we had initially turned out to be too slow when the characters got large, so we had to switch from voxels to polygons and redo *all* of the art. Yuck!!

SIR ELTHIL: I am wondering, by how many different persons where the graphics done in the different games? Like, how many in QG4, and how many in 5?
LORI COLE: In QG1, we had 2 artists. QG 4, had about 10 artists. QG5, I would have to guess around 20 artists at one point or another. Have to see the credits again.

DAEMIOUS: Did you like using 3D for QG5?
COREY COLE: 3D looked fine IMHO, but the development time for 3D art is unbelievable! The artists used to get a room and corresponding animation done in two weeks in 16-color EGA, then took 4-6 weeks in 256-color VGA, and oh, somewhere around a lifetime in QG5.

PALADIN VALIANT: Can you give some examples of ideas you wanted to include in the game but couldn't add because of any limits in either software or time?
COREY COLE: Brian Hughes developed the "Saurus Repair Shop" for QG2 with Kenn Nishiuye's help. It was pretty funny, but we had to cut it at the last minute because it would have kicked us onto another floppy. QG1 was supposed to have a whole underground "Goblin Maze", but we had to cut it for lack of time and resources. I think there's still one reference to it that slipped through into the game.
LORI COLE: There were some spells, like the Kobold's "Blip" spell, that we couldn't afford to give the player, though. Too hard to program.

PALADIN VALIANT: The Saurus repair shop, could you explain the idea a little more?
COREY COLE: The Saurus Repair shop was in a dead-end alleyway. There were a bunch of different pieces of a Saurus there and it was set up like a garage. The character there offered to fix or upgrade your Saurus as though it was a car.

COCO: What ever happened to all the programming you guys did for the saurus repair shop?
COREY COLE: I fear all the Saurus Repair Shop code was lost forever. Maybe on somebody's backup somewhere, but I wouldn't know where to find it. It couldn't be added to the game at this point unless we had all of the source, art, the compiler, etc., from that period. And it would take work. So I doubt that could ever happen.

KYLE: Did you ever plan to make a 'familiar' spell?
COREY COLE: We wanted to have the Hero be able to have a familiar, like Zara in the first game. That was just too difficult to pull off in programming.

KYLE: Why did you decide not to do Multiplayer?
LORI COLE: The only reason QG5 was not Multiplayer was because the system just wasn't designed. The game was designed to have a multiplayer route through it. You could play as Elsa or Magnum, or as the Hero.
COREY COLE: The demo let characters run around multiplayer, but all of the puzzles had special code to keep them balanced (and some different puzzles) in multiplayer mode. Much of that didn't get coded, and none of it got tested. We would have had to add 2-3 months programming and at least that much additional testing time to get it working.

PALADIN VALIANT: Lori/Corey did you two had total coordination over the games, write the designplan and have the final saying?
LORI COLE: Usually, Paladin, the only time I lost control was with QG5, where the boss didn't like Salim, and made me re-write him. Salim was too hippy for the president to take. He thought it was inappropriate to have a hippy character, and that it would offend the fans. And poor Gnome Ann had some of her lines cut, but I refused to cut the character altogether, I wanted humor in the game. Aside from that I had to remove all the salacious lines from Nawar, like "Is that a Sword in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" We didn't expect the lines to be cut. Ken Williams rarely made designers change anything in a game. Craig Alexander was much more "hands on" -- better in some ways.
COREY COLE: Management thought it was beyond suggestive, hence made Lori change her lines.

MIKE: hey lori or cory or BOTH , short question here: How much did you guys like communicate with the background artists? like did you give them descriptions, or were you actually able to talk to them and give them pointers on different backgrounds??
LORI COLE: It depended upon the game. Mostly, I would have approval rights for all the art.
COREY COLE: Lori has an art background. She worked closely with the background artists, starting by giving them short written descriptions, then working with their preliminary sketches to make sure each scene did what it needed to do.

PALADIN VALIANT: Is there any chance you would release the original ideadocuments as well as the designplans to give us an idea how the game was developed and the problems it faced and solved?
COREY COLE: Paladin_Valiant -- No, we don't have the rights to those. Sierra owns them (but probably doesn't have copies. :-) )
LORI COLE: I could certainly release the original proposals. They really were very different then what the games evolved to.


-THE GAMES THEMSELVES

ANONT: Did you have fun making Quest for Glory?
COREY COLE: When it's good, it's really, really good. When it's bad, it's like being stretched on the rack. It can be really frustrating trying to deal with short-sighted management, trying to make nearly-impossible deadlines, etc. And we're never quite sure if our games are actually good until the fans tell us so. :-)

ELSA: I have a question about the Hero in QFG.. and another: 1. how old was he? 2. what timespan did the games cover? I mean, in the Hero's world... how much older did he get from game 1 to game 4 or 5?
LORI COLE: The Hero in QG1 was as old as the player wanted him to be.
COREY COLE: Do you have an answer for Elsa? I'd guess "18" and a year per episode.

SWIFT11: Just wondering, Lori, Corey, what's the heros' real name? Does he even have one?
COREY COLE: "Whatever you want it to be."
LORI COLE: We always wanted the player to name the Hero.The Hero was the player's Avatar into the world of Gloriana.

ELSA: Corey, tell me about Elsa... her character fascinates me..
COREY COLE: Basically, the Baron of Spielburg had a son who was a wastrel and not very bright, and a daughter who had the makings of a true heroine and worked hard at it.But the Baron (and the Barony) were caught up in tradition that said only males could inherit, so the wrong child was destined to be the next Baron. And Elsa became an even better fighter as a side-effect of Baba Yaga's curse (knowing B.Y., that was probably intentional).

PSEUDONYM: Why did you have that odd kinda side-view figting in qfg4?
LORI COLE: pseudonym, I loved that style of combat. Much prefered it to the one in Qg2.
Corey Cole: I thought the QG4 combat was pretty cool. Maybe it was relief because someone else designed and programmed it. :-)

PSYBERUS:Lori and Corey, you use the names Erasmus and Fenrus, and these friendly characters appear throughout the games... are they in any way meant to represent you?
LORI COLE:To some extent, Erasmus and Fenrus are very similar to our personalities.

PALADIN VALIANT:So since you are creating those characters based on actual persons i wonder who Rakeesh is, or Ad Avis. Any person in particular?
LORI COLE:Sometimes, just sometimes, I'm Rakeesh.
COREY COLE:Ad Avis was named as an insult to Bill Davis. He was Creative Director at Sierra during QG2 and we didn't get along very well with him. In later consideration, some of his decisions were probably good for the company, though. Al-Skurva was a similar insult to Bill Skirvin, an art manager we had trouble with. The whole QG2 situation was on some level based on stuff going on at Sierra at the time

ANTHENOR:Another repeating ingredient was pizza. Are you addicted, Fenrus & Erasmus?
LORI COLE:Pizza made a great running joke, Anthenor

PSYBERUS:Antwerp is a space name isn't it?
COREY COLE:A friend who is very ticklish told us that she used the code word "Antwerp" to mean, "This really isn't funny, and I'm not enjoying it anymore. Stop RIGHT NOW and I MEAN IT!!" And it's just a funny-sounding city name, so we used it...

PALADIN VALIANT:Fenrus about the Paladin. I liked the paladin however it was a bit to easy to become a Paladin. The player never really had to choose between the rewarding and the honourable option. I feel playing the Paladin was too easy, just always being the goodieguy, Besides it payed off with all the extra skills and the possibilities to use Magic as well. A paladin imho should be a character who indeed sacrafics his own life for the poor and people in need. This might result in the player giving real sacrafices and thus hard choices, this way the player would become a true paladin. In short the paladinidea was a very nice idea and the dialogues about it were perfect, especially the dialogues with rakeesh, but it could have been a lot better
COREY COLE:Yes, but would it really be fun to play that way, Paladin_Valiant? Most players want to be powerful. Scorpio got really ticked off at us when we made it so Shella had to die in Shannara. It was supposed to be a poignant sacrifice on her part, but just didn't come across right. Sometimes we try something that just doesn't work. :-(
LORI COLE: The Paladin was always a special character, and there were traps in the game that would prevent a player from becoming a Paladin.However, if you played a good game, you could be a paladin.
PALADIN VALIANT:well yes powerfull erasmus, but the idea of the Paladin is not a all powerfull character. I think that was the mistake. HybrId characters are fun and it's always good to be strong enough to crush everyone. However it conflicted with the idea of the paladin IMHO. Well fenrus there were traps yes, but most of those traps were quit obvious. And they were added to the game in the purpose of being a trap. But it was not like the total way of the paladin was worked out
LORI COLE:No, I understand your point, Paladin_Valiant. That was part of the problem with the QG design. Because we effectively wrote 4 games at the same time -- The Thief, Fighter, MU, and Paladin. We just couldn't concentrate on any one character class.

PALADIN VALIANT:What is your top5 of events or parts in the game that could be improved
COREY COLE:I mostly didn't like the character designs of the QG1 VGA game. The claymation idea was good, but the art wasn't, mostly. Except for Fenrus's face in QG VGA. I still have the clay statue they used for the face.

COCO: Why did Bruno try to lure me into danger everytime?
COREY COLE:Bruno was something a little different we did... in games before QG1, pretty much everything a character in the game told you was true. In QG1, we tried to give you clues that Bruno was absolute scum... so you were supposed to realize that he would lie to you
LORI COLE:Bruno was designed to be a pain in the ass, and down right nasty. You can't trust everyone you meet.

PSYBERUS:concerning WIT, if the wizard didn't go, would he be able to become an advanced wizard still? (not in game, but in theory)?
LORI COLE:WIT would be like going to college to get a degree -- you can get a job without it, but you need it to win the respect of the professional wizard.
COREY COLE:I would say so. It's kind of like the EOF... You don't get the fancy hat, but you're still what you are. EOF was, by the way, a minor wordplay -- stands for "End of File" in old computer terminology, a subtle hint that maybe it wasn't the greatest goal to which to aspire.

AMIDALA:Whatever happened to the missing points in qfg3? Does it have anything to do with the part where Uhura enters your hut?
COREY COLE:I don't remember "missing points in QG3". Was it impossible to get the max score? The shipping of QG3 was one of the "bad times" in software development. Lori and I went on a long-planned trip (to the World SF Convention in Orlando), secure in the knowledge that the game wasn't going to ship for at least a month. The project manager tried to push it out the door while we were gone.... Fortunately, the systems team stopped it because there was a major system bug that had to be fixed. I say "fortunately", because when I returned and playtested the about-to-be-shipped version, I discovered that there were four different bugs, each of which made it impossible to complete the game as one of the classes!!!! In other words, nobody could have gotten through the game. As it was, the game shipped with at least two serious bugs -- If you had been a Magic User and became a Paladin, you might not be able to solve one of the puzzles that required Throwing skill... And if you were a Fighter who qualified for Paladin in some ways, but not in others, the game ended up in an infinite loop because two rooms were coded two different ways.

MAGICK CAT:What was the inspiration for the waffle walker?
LORI COLE:The Waffle Walker was some artist playing around. We always called the main character the "Ego" at Sierra...And we had an animation called the "Ego Walker". One artist made the "Eggo Walker" and the Awful Waffle Walker was born!I always tried to incorporate any art or joke I could. Qfg was always a colaboration of people and ideas.

SAFFIRU:did you want the thief to do more in QFG3?
COREY COLE:We always wanted the Thief to do more. Unfortunately, Thief scenarios tend to be more programming-intensive than the others.

MAGICK CAT:I heard once that when the series ended there was maybe going to be a take off, featuring one of the simbambi (I can't spell its too late) tribe being a new hero, was there ever any truth to that?
LORI COLE:I never heard the rumor, Magick_Cat.
COREY COLE:Actually, the rumor is a bit reversed. The entire game of QG3 was in a sense a take-off -- the original plan was for a four game series, those that became 1, 2, 4, and 5. We inserted 3 because we felt 4 would be too difficult right after 2. And because another designer at Sierra (Ellen Guon, who went on to become the lead writer for Wing Commander 2 at Origin) said, "I know what QG3 will be -- It will be in Tarna and follow up on Rakeesh and Uhura." It was such a good idea, we did it!

PSYBERUS:What about spells like the one Katrina cast at Ad avis in 4 (gold sparkle attack spell) did that have an actual design behind it, or was some gold colored offensive magic?
LORI COLE:The gold sparkle effect was supposed to be a variation on the Dragon Fire Spell. The art just wasn't programmed.
BRASSFIRE: Thermonuclear? Who needs that?, Gabriel: I never killed anyone with "boom" but myself.
COREY COLE:Good, wouldn't want things to be *too* easy, would you? :-) Boom was really useful in the brigand's stronghold -- our son figured out you could use it to trap the teleporting mage. LORI COLE:Actually, you could win QG5 by using the Thermonuclear Spell in endgame. (You'd be dead, but you saved the world.)

THEDNM: was there a way in qfg 5 to save both katrina and erana from hades
LORI COLE:In QG5, I wanted to give the player a true delemna, who to save???However, if we had more design time, I would have found a loophole to let the player save both. It was a terrible delemna. Who do you love, who do you care for the most?

GABRIEL:I hated the voice actoress for Gnome Ann
LORI COLE:You should have heard the first person who recorded Ann, it was so ghastly, we re-recorded her lines. Elsa was also re-recorded. The first actress was totally fake. the second at least was a real German woman. I had to have her cut back her accent almost entirely.
COREY COLE:One problem with the QG5 voices is that neither Lori nor I was present for most of the recording sessions. They used a professional director, but that's nothing like having an intimate knowledge of how the character is supposed to fit into the game.

MIKE:oh oh i've been meaning to ask this since 1997, why did you guys choose to not have a voice-over for the narrator in qfg5, like you did in qfg4?? i LOVED that guy who did the narrators voice in number 4, his voice actually pulled you into the game
LORI COLE:I loved the narrator in QG4. Unfortunately, it was over 5000 lines of script for John Rhys-Davies, and that was too much for any actor.Besides, the narrator was a critical factor for the mood of QG4. Not so much at all for QG5
COREY COLE:Yes, Rhys-Davies called us "The CD-ROM from Hell" after he finished recording his part. His agent renegotiated the contract -- I think we had to pay him 3 times as much as originally scheduled -- and he still did it at bargain rates. I loved working with him!

MIKE:What made qfg5 so different from all other qfggames?. I missed the special spirit from the earlier games
COREY COLE:I didn't have much to do with the QG5 design, so it had fewer of "my" sort of puzzles -- maybe a little more arbitrary, but also more challenging. All the QG5 puzzles were strictly organic. Not a bad thing, but a different feel from say, 2 or 4.

PSEUDONYM:Was there ever a qfg5 expansion pack planned?
LORI COLE:Yes, we did plan for an expansion kit, even though we pretty much finished off the series.

ETC:Was there ever any serious talk about further sequels after the fifth game? Maybe I should already know this, but I've been out of the loop for a while.
LORI COLE:I really want to create the Quest for Glory World as a Multiplayer environment.

PSYBERUS:Corey and Lori, qfg changed over time, in that 1 wasn't so serious, the bad guy (baba) would play cards with erasmus and enry, yet as it went along the series became more deadly serious, which do you feel better represents qfg?
LORI COLE:I think the progression of the level of seriousness was a reflection of how involved we wanted the players to become in the game.
COREY COLE:But I liked the fun better. I put in a lot of the puns (but feel I overdid it in the later games).


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SIERRA

GABRIEL:Was working with sierra enjoyable?
LORI COLE:Working with Sierra was an incredible experience. There were days when I had to force myself to face work. There were days at Sierra that were wonderful. It was a roller coaster. Mostly, it was a pain in the ass.

GABRIEL:Just wondering.... Who designed Raseir....?
LORI COLE:Sierra designed Rasier. At the time I was working on QG2, Rasier was based on the working atmosphere of Sierra, and is an anagram of Sierra. Most of the musicians couldn't afford to live on Sierra salaries, so they had to be programmers or find jobs elsewhere.
COREY COLE:The rules in Raseir were parodies of actual rules that had been instituted at Sierra that year. They even had a time clock for programmers and artists! (Heresy.)

PALADIN VALIANT:Erasmus seeing that you had some much problems with Sierra at the qfg2time how did you manage to keep working there long enough to create qfg3-5
COREY COLE:We are masochists. That's all.:-) The other bad period was when they forced QG4 out the door long before the code was solid. Crashes everywhere. :-(
LORI COLE:Also, we made a profit on our games, so Sierra liked us.

JIM:Erasmus and Fenrus, sorry to ask again. Not sure if you saw it the first time. Should computer RPGs gain in popularity again, would you consider reopening the QFG series, pending Sierra invited you to do so, or would you prefer to do a similar but different game, or stay away from the genre all together?
COREY COLE:Highly unlikely it would ever happen. But of course we would consider it. Actually, we were going to do an Arena Combat game once upon a time, long before FPS's became popular. Then we proposed another that would have been a combat game with an economic system and minor role-playing. Not all games have to be adventure-style.
LORI COLE:Diablo is an rpg/adventure and is very popular. Final Fantasy has sold millions of copies.

PSYBERUS:There is often debate in hero6 as to what elements of the qfg game can be used... in terms of names and ideas, what beyond the name is copyrighted???
LORI COLE:I really think if anyone other than Corey and I used characters or places from Gloriana, no one from the current Sierra would ever know the difference. However, if Corey or I were to do a game, they might have someone check things to see if they can have a lawsuit to prevent our competition.Erasmus and Fenrus were characters long before the Quest series began. I created them as characters in a comic strip for our Fanzine.
COREY COLE:Why would we need to, Psyberus? Of course, anything public domain, like Baba Yaga, we could use anyway.Interestingly, Erasmus and Fenrus as Wizard and Rat predate QFG (we used them in a comic strip years before coming to Sierra), so we could probably reuse them.

JIM:Speaking of liontaurs...are those public domain, or copyrighted?
LORI COLE:Liontaurs are a name we came up with, but unless someone goes out and deliberately copyrights the word, it is up for grabs.

BRASSFIRE:But Hero6 is already being compared to QFG, wouldn't they at least look? Or do they think that we are too small to bother them?
COREY COLE:I think you're too small to bother them, Brassfire. Unless you try to go commercial and become very successful... then they might come after you.
LORI COLE:Mostly they aren't paying attention, because they aren't currently using the license. I really suspect Sierra will never do anything with the Glory license, unless they sell it to us.Money is more important than kids to companies.

COCO:What was wrong with the realm?
LORI COLE:I know the company in town is still making the Realm, and I'm astonished. It is still popular enough to be profitable.
Corey Cole:Funny story about the Realm... When it was almost completed, a manager at Sierra got the bright idea of calling it "Quest for Glory World" to take advantage of the license. We were asked to help come up with quests and puzzles for it. We were totally shocked to learn that none of them had been planned in advance; they were just going to be "added in" at the end of development. Fortunately, the idea got killed.

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EXPLORATI

PALADIN VALIANT:Fenrus and Erasmus what do you consider as your main company the explorati or the transolar games and if i may ask how do you earn your living?
COREY COLE:We work full time for Explorati. Transolar Games was an idea that never really came around. We keep the name and the Web site just in case we want to do something with it in the future.

ANONT:hey, just what is Explorati doing right now?
LORI COLE:Explorati is developing a system to do Massively multiplayer on-line RPGs

GABRIEL:Would u consider turning QFG into an EVERQUEST type game?
LORI COLE:We really are considering making it similar to Everquest, but keeping the QG philosophies. I really don't enjoy EQ

PALADIN VALIANT:Lori do you think creating a Massively multiplayer on-line RPG is possible at this moment? How many developers do you have on your exploratiteam to create the online qfgworld?
COREY COLE:Neither we nor Explorati have rights to the Quest for Glory name, characters, etc. Sierra retains those. We tried to buy them a few months ago, but they weren't interested. We may try again sometime next year, depending on how things go. Anyway, at the moment, we can design an MMORPG "similar to" QG, but we can't make the actual world of Gloriana.

PALADIN VALIANT:So, now that you don't have the rights but are looking for a multiplayergame will it will possibble at this moment to create such a game, do you have the support of enough people and the company itself?
LORI COLE:Yes, we could make a parallel version of Gloriana, and we may yet.

PALADIN VALIANT:How many developers do you currently have on the exploratiteam for this multiplayerproject and is everything coordinated over the net or at an actual location?
LORI COLE:Currently, the number of people at Explorati are around 20. Once we are funded, the number will rise dramatically.
COREY COLE:Explorati isn't looking for anyone currently, but we'll be needing a lot of artists in a few months and probably a few programmers. 3D artists, particularly those experienced in making lifelike characters and animating them, but also people who can make architectural building blocks that can be combined easily to make... well, architectural buildings. :-)One of the major goals of Explorati is to make it so that you don't have to be an employee of the company to create art, writing, or other assets for the system or to get rewarded for doing so.

DAEMIOUS:In a QFG MMORPG, how would you keep people playing? Unless you guys added new quests every week people would end up completing all of them and get bored with it.
COREY COLE:Shhhh, Daemious, it's the secret behind the Explorati company's approach to games.
Lori Cole:You have judged the problem with why on-line games are difficult to create, daemious.

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FANPROJECTS

PALADIN VALIANT:Corey what do you see as the major problems with gamecreation, and what can you recommend about using design and timeplans?
COREY COLE:The hardest problem is having good tools to start with. You want something that will make it easy to create lots of content (rooms, characters, dialogue, etc.). If you don't have the tools, it becomes an incredible effort to build anything large.

PALADIN VALIANT:Corey now that you speak of those tools, what would be the best way to start collecting the tools?
Corey Cole:These days, I'd look through Game Developer magazine and around the Web. At Sierra, we rolled all our own tools.

PALADIN VALIANT:What do you see as the most difficult problems to face in gamecreation and how they be avoided?
LORI COLE:The most difficult problem in designing games is to come up with all the ideas that the player will want to do, and make sure the player feels like you thought of him. Rule number 1: The players must have fun. Rule Number 2: The Game must challenge the player to the point of frustration without letting the player get frustrated.
COREY COLE:Getting the team to work together well. You want everyone to contribute and know they're important, but you also need a coherent central design vision to make sure all the elements fit together well

PALADIN VALIANT:How did you find the myths for the games and how did you choose to involve them in the game. Do you have any good sources for these myths?
LORI COLE:I have the sources for a wide variety of myths. I always researched the mythology of the area I based a game upon.I have a great book on the Masaaii of Africa, which was the model for the Simbani.I loved Baba Yaga as a character. I read several stories about her in my youth from the Boy Scout magazine, and later in Russian Mythology.I love Mythology. Be it Russian, or Japanese, I wanted the world of Gloriana to reflect the wonderful stories of this Earth, world wide.I have many fairy tale books, too.

PALADIN VALIANT: Lori, what would you like to see to be added at any games similair to qfg? are there any extra's you always wanted to have in such a game
. LORI COLE:What I want in a game, is the ability to really create a character. You wouldn't believe how many D&D characters I play. I love Mythology.Be it Russian, or Japanese, I wanted the world of Gloriana to reflect the wonderful stories of this Earth, world wide.

SWIFT1:Lori and Corey, have you seen the demo of hero6 yet? What do you think?
COREY COLE:I saw a version of it a year or so ago, imagine it's made some progress since. :-)

SAFFIRU:Fenrus and erasmus What do you like so far about hero6?
LORI COLE:What I like best about Hero6 is the people who support it.
COREY COLE:We really haven't seen any of hero6 except for a very early tech demo.The last hero6 version I downloaded (long time ago) crashed every time I tried to run it.

SAFFIRU:Do you have any suggestions for hero6?
LORI COLE:Well, what I always wanted to do with the Glory system was to allow the player to choose the race of his character. I wanted to play as a Liontaur or as a Gnome. But then again, I got to play every race and character in the Glory games, because I got to write the dialogue. Adventure games are very difficult to work with in a series, because you keep having to pull the character along without letting him seem weak or too powerful.

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ABOUT THEMSELF

ANTHENOR:Fenrus, Erasmus, what preparations did you make for today, did you cut off your phone, cancelled dinerparties?
LORI COLE:If we'd done that, we would have been on time!!

ANTHENOR:If i may ask what was your first computergames experience?
LORI COLE: My first computer experience was playing the original "Adventure" and figuring out what a computer game was! My favorite computer games include Monkey Island 1, and Rogue.
COREY COLE:I started out using Wang calculators -- hand-punch chad out of cards, put them in things that looked like toasters. To make a program longer than 40 statements, had to daisy-chain multiple "toasters" together. Then my brother taught me how to program a Royal McBee LGP-30 (DRUM memory!!) in assembly language using paper tape. Personal computers weren't around back then. One of my favourite games is dungeonmaster. Awesome game, Rogue made more involving in a sense. :-)

ANTHENOR:Since you are in the game develloping industry, do you still enjoy playing games in your spare time?
COREY COLE:Anthenor -- What's "spare time"? Not sure I know that phrase. :-) LORI COLE:I've really played very few computer games, myself. I much rather play real role-playing games without the computer.

SPOFF:Just wondering, how do you guys tend to play RPGs? As powergamers, trying to build up your stats, etc, or with more RP in your RPGs?
COREY COLE: I am an absolute role player!

ANTHENOR:How do you handle fanmail? I can imagine you need several people to handle most of it... Qfg is well, err, still pretty popular...
COREY COLE:No, any time we get too much fan mail, we run out of time to answer it, so they stop writing after a while. ;-)

ANONT:Corey, you ever gonna update transolar.com?
COREY COLE:Probably not. :-) I keep getting distracted. We do have a digital camera now, so it would make sense to at least put pics up there (and let people know that Transolar Games is not currently an active company).

ANONT:hey Corey, I've been accepted to the Information Science and Technology academy at UNO. When I get my degree in computer programming, can I work for you?
COREY COLE:Only if we actually start running a company. :-) But you can apply to Explorati when you get out. :-)

ANTHENOR: Erasmus, Fenrus, being game developpers, how dependend are you from your pc's and do you update your hardware frequently?
COREY COLE:We're usually a generation behind, but at this point I'm working on a pre-release Pentium 4 system and we just got Fenrus a new laptop (Toshiba... this is our 4th Toshiba laptop) with a P3/750.And it has a hard drive that won't quit, at least for a month or so, before I fill it up. 10 GB. Before Intel decided to give me a free PC, I was using a Dell P2/450 that cost me an arm and a leg.

ANONT:so.... what are your political views?
COREY COLE:Our political views are in some sense in the games -- We believe strongly in the importance of the individual, and the right of the individual to overrule traditional laws when they aren't "good".Problem with socialism is that there is little incentive to excel. OTOH, our current version of capitalism is broken, with too much disparity between the rewards of top managers (whether or not they excel) vs. everyone at the lower levels.

ANTHENOR:Isn't it difficult to have your work and personal life seperated?
COREY COLE:Yes and no (separating work and personal life)... It sometimes gets in the way... but we sometimes come up with our best ideas in discussions in the middle of the night. Hard on sleep, good on strengthening game design. :-)
LORI COLE:Who separates work from a personal life, Anthanor? We live our work around here.

ANTHENOR: Erasmus, Fenrus, if you were stranded on a deserted island, which character from your games would you like to encounter?
COREY COLE:Erana
LORI COLE:I'd like to meet Erasmus, because he could teleport us off the island!
COREY COLE:Yes, but would he, or would he get too distracted?