🚀 go-pugleaf

I found this interview with Mike Kulas at:

jojo's world charts

http://www.xs4all.nl:80/~jojo/

thought the newsgroup might be interested

Internet PC Games Charts

     Editorial

Eleven Odd Questions for Mike Kulas from Parallax (And Eleven Serious Answers)
==============================================================================
This is the first 'interview' in a series of interviews with people from the
gaming industry. I hope to have such an interview every week (or every few
weeks). If you have any questions yourself, or any names of people you would 
like to interrogate, just let me know...  The first victim in this series is
Mike Kulas, one of the developers of Descent and Descent 2. (Note: EVERYTHING
is written by Mike Kulas, except for the first eleven one-line questions.)

J: How did you end up at Parallax anyway?  Couldn't you find a decent job?
M: I applied at game companies all over the world, but when I told them
   I worked on Car & Driver, they kicked me out.

J: Why did you bother to develop Descent 2 while Quake is coming out soon?
M: Descent 2 is actually Quake.  Id granted Parallax the right to the
   Quake engine when John Carmack was thrown in jail for mounting a
   BFG on his Ferrari.

J: What teams do you consider to be your rivals?  What do you do about it?
M: We used to think we didn't have any, but last weekend I was in
   Chicago and when I saw all the hysteria over the Bulls, I realized
   they were legitimate contenders for the Parallax glory.
   So far we haven't done much about it, but I'm going to work on my
   jump shot.  Of course, I could annihilate that Jordan guy in a
   Kali game of Descent any day.

J: What are the essential differences between Descent and Pacman?
M: Descent has more letters.  Oh, Pacman has catchier music.  Oh, and
   Pacman has more of a plot.

J: How many copies did Descent sell?  And are you driving red Ferrari's yet?
M: Only three copies were sold, all to shifty guys in Taiwan who have
   their own shrink wrap machines.
   No Ferraris yet.  See above.

J: What if we called Roberta Williams and ask her to write a story for 
   Descent 3?
M: Well, she'd probably do it, but she'd put in a scene where one robot
   commits an unnatural act upon another and we'd get a nasty RSAC rating.
   But Ken would be a natural for the role of the Vulcan Bot.

J: How many man-hours went into the development of Descent? And Descent 2?
M: Descent took us about 20,000 man hours.  For Descent 2 it was only
   four hours because John Carmack actually wrote the whole thing on
   his laptop while waiting in the drive-through at the Taco Bell in
   Mesquite.

J: When is Descent: The Movie coming out?  Has Spielberg contacted you yet?
M: Descent: The Movie came out several months ago to uniformly putrid
   reviews.  Then they re-edited it and serialized it for television as
   Central Park West.
   Spielberg calls me every night on his T3 line and I annihilate him
   in an Anarchy game.  Then he calls on the voice line to plead for a
   hacked version of the exe.  But I never pick it up.

J: How many lines of code makes Descent 2?  How many lines are copied from 
   Doom?
M: Well, like I said, John wrote the whole thing.  It's basically warmed
   over Doom, but he had to add another couple of table lookups to support
   the two additional degrees of freedom, the polygon objects, the
   dynamic lighting, the arbitrary geometry, the dynamic physics system,
   the quality network play, the non-deterministic AI, the higher
   resolution modes, the cockpit, the multiple simultaneous 3d views,
   the control configurability and the Guide-Bot.

J: What is the average work:sleep:free time ratio among your team members?
M: Well the owners sleep a lot and the serfs work all the time, so it's
   a pretty good mix.

J: Who had the uncanny idea of referring to our Games Charts on your posters?
M: Some marketing weenie at Interplay.  You can bet if a Parallax weenie
   came up with the idea we'd have put the ID number in a 96 point font.
   (By the way, it's 1565!)

M: Six Odd Questions for Jojo from Mike Kulas (with Six Truthful Answers)
==============================================================================

Is it true that 92% of the votes for Command & Conquer come from IP
addresses in southern California?
   Yes.  But then 94% of the votes for Descent come from IP addresses
   in Champaign, Illinois and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Has anyone actually played Galactic Civilizations?
   Yes.  The authors, their nannies and the washroom monitor, which
   explains the 300 votes every week.

How much would I have to pay you to keep you from counting votes for Quake?
   Your usual weekly check should do.

Is it true you're the second most famous guy in The Netherlands after
that kid who stuck his finger in the dike?
   That was me, too!

What do people in The Netherlands do after they're done reading the
Top 100 chart?
   Stick their finger in a hole and wait for the next one.

Do you think we'd get some extra votes if I gave away a Descent 2 cheat?
   Couldn't hurt.

You sold me.  Try JOSHUAAKIRA!

At this point, a slip of paper fell out of Mike's pocket with the
following notes:

   Our rivals are Id, LookingGlass, LucasArts and some really hungry guys
   in a basement.  We buy their games.

   Descent sold about 300,000 copies.  We mostly drive Japanese economy
   cars.  Plus a Mustang.

   Descent 1 was about 120 person months of work.  Descent 2 estimated to
   be about 80 additional person months.

   There will probably never be a Descent movie.  I heard Spielberg's
   son plays Descent, but I don't know if that's true.

   A wild guess is Descent 2 has about 250,000 lines of code, not
   including data.

   The Descent 2 guys are cranking, but the rest of the company is
   encouraged to work rational hours again.

Mike Kulas
Parallax Software
==============================================================================
Disclaimer: ALL of the text under 'Six Odd Questions for Jojo' was written by
MIKE, not by me (unfortunately). I vowed to include an exact copy of his
answers in this edition of the charts, and now I pay the price.

Next week: Eleven Odd Questions for Tim Sweeney from Epic MegaGames!

 If you have anything to ask or tell us, please email us at the address mentioned below. Have fun! 

    Jurgen 'jojo' Appelo / pcg...@worldcharts.nl / w...@xs4all.nl 


-- 
	John
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