You asked her questions and she answered! Here are the answers to the questions you and your fellow players posted to Assistant Lead Programmer Jennifer "JChan" Chan.
[ Mardy] What were the challenges with working on an older game like EverQuest? Were there specific coding issues you had to learn to work with?
- With any product that's been out there for a while there's always the issue of change management. Of course, there are the clear bugs that everyone agrees needs to be fixed, but past that point you start to enter the gray areas. What may seem like an improvement to the devs, can't be changed since it "always been done" that way. Plus, with so many years of code in place no one person can effectively read the entire code base.
[ Jedis] If you were given free reign to work on revamping one system of EQ, from the ground up, what would it be and why?
- That's a tough one, you can't stay happy as a coder on this team without a strong drive to revamp and improve things. We've already done major improvements to the inventory system and the chat system. So, the next big one that comes to mind is the spell / AA system. It's one of the oldest and we've added so much cruft to it. Just making it more efficient and consolidated would be a major improvement to performance not only to the servers but to the clients as well. Plus going forward making any new spells effects would take just a fraction of the time it takes now. There are so many enhancements that we could add to it such as better spell stacking. However, we've been hesitant to make major revamps of that magnitude since it's spread across so many different systems and with just the efficiency changes there's a high risk of majorly breaking something without a lot of easily measurable gain.
[ Battleblade-Xegony] What impact if any do you see coming from the use of voice recognition, motion sensing, and other alternative forms of input which first appeared thirty years ago?
- As consumer products become more and more advanced and ever so much more end-user friendly and available, I think we will see the industry responding with some very impressive stuff. Look at today with multi-point touch screens available on pretty much any high end smartphone. People that weren't once gamers now can play almost anytime ANYWHERE. Gamers (and non-Gamers) will be allowed more freedom of expression and no longer restricted by any mental or physical pigeon hole... It's going to change the level of the playing field for everything.
[ Kbroomall] I often wonder if Dev's can enjoy a game they have programmed. Do you play EQ and if so what class do you prefer?
- I really do play EQ when I'm away from my dev den! The biggest trick to enjoying your own game is to just ignore any issues you may find while playing. I have a character in every class. Of course with so many different classes I can find one to fit any mood I am in or to accommodate any group I go wandering about Norrath looking for adventure with. Each class has their strengths and weaknesses and part of the enjoyment for me is playing each class in their current state and seeing how the balance changes across time.
[ Naugrin] Will you eventually take on sklug in a sword fight cuz "there can be only one?" Jk.... What do you think of the eq community? I would think we are an interesting study group lol.
- Yes. Tomorrow. 5PM. Stay tuned for more details. But seriously, I LOVE YOU MAN! Ok really… seriously you guys and gals are great. For the most part you're all fun to hang out with and I really appreciate the attention you give to our work. It's an effort of love and thanks for keeping the game real.
Thanks JChan!
