1) Hello [R-DEV]AfterDune, could you tell us a bit about yourself so our readers can get to know who you are?
Sure. I'm AfterDune, or AD, as most people call me these days. In the real world, my name is Mark. I'm 29 years old and live in the Netherlands with my beautiful wife. Yes, I'm a married man for over a year now (my wedding anniversary was last week
). I work for a large insurance company as a software developer. In my spare time, I love to go to the movies, or watch them at home and play some videogames (though there usually isn't as much time for the latter as I'd want 
).
2) Since how long have you been a member of the DEV team and how did it happen? What is your role within this team?
Oh, let me think... I became a forummember early 2007. After playing PR for a while, I wanted to shoot some videos. The videos I made were "noticed" by the dev team and soon after was asked to join the team as a Contributor, to join the cinematics department. The ideas was to work with UK Force (he was still young then
) to make a video about the British Forces and what realistic strategies and formations would look like in a video game. Unfortunately, the project took so long, we cancelled it after a long while (to be honest, I would still love to see something like that in the future).After a while, I got promoted to Developer. Since then, I have been part of the management team for about a year (or so) and made several official videos for PR (background movies, teasers, trailers), a podcast, voice-overs, AD Framework, Dutch Forces, Vietnam, etc, etc.
3) Could you give us your opinion about the evolution of Project Reality since its beginning; a revolution broke out with the v0.9? How do you see Project Reality ArmA2, like a revolution as well?
I think PR started a revolution the minute PR was born
. Na, I think I started playing a couple of months before v0.4 was released. The way I see it, every version of PR brings so much new stuff, I don't think I can point out one version and say, -that's- the version that made all the difference. Each new version comes with more awesomeness - and bugs, despite the many hours of testing.I think PR for ArmA 2 is a very nice move. The amount of time, effort and -care- that is spent on that project is immense. I sincerely hope PR:A2 will be a big revolution in ArmA's PvP experience.
4) A new lease of life for PR or a standalone mod completely different? You have made a podcast about it by the way but we will discuss it later...
PR:A2 is the next big thing in the world of PR. Of course, we will continue to develop PR1, as long as there are developers willing to do so.
PR2 is still a Proof of Concept and people are working hard on that. I hope to see a stand-alone version of PR some day, where we are in full control, without (many) engine limitations holding us back. But, a stand-alone game is much harder to create than a mod and thus will take even longer to create considering the size of the team.
I know you have been doing tremendous work for Project Reality and I?d like you to talk about it so I will ask you some questions about your accomplishments.
5) First off, you created PR's first trailer and teaser videos. How was it going, how did you do it and with whom? Can you describe your work in a few words please?
Well, I basically read the (massive!) changelogs and pick things I think would be nice to see featured in a video. I post a proposal and together with the team, we come up with things we want to see featured. How, is all up to me, though everyone is free to post ideas and what not. When we have a good understanding of the what and how, we schedule filming sessions with the team and try to make the best of it basically. After each filming session, I try to make concept videos featuring all the good scenes we have captured. Of course, I put some music underneath it, etc, etc, more fun to watch then. It usually takes around 6 "exports" as I call it before we have reached a final video - and even then there's still lots that _could_ be changed, but heck, we don't want a trailer to delay a release
.Making a trailer is all about teamwork. It's not a one-man show, at least not for me. Together, we come up with ideas, together we capture the scenes and together we work towards the end result. I think it's really great to see so many guys from so many different countries working together and give birth to awesomeness
.6) I know you have been in the administration using AD Framework, could you tell us on what occasion?
Back when I was in a clan (.:iGi:. - I'm Going In) and had our own servers, we used BF2CC. We experienced a lot of crashes and decided to try to run the server without it. It ran much better, but we lost the in-game admin controls. So... I created a very simple admintool called "iGi Admin". You could kick/ban players and edit the maplist. Soon after, Smart Balancing was born - similar to autobalance, but smarter.
Other server admins wanted to try the scripts as well and one thing led to another....... and a long while later, the "AD Framework" was there. I must say I'm very pleased with it. It's also great to read how well other server admins like the tool and that more and more servers are running it. I'd never thought it would be so succesful
.Players may not know ADF that well. You can recognize it when servers offer in-game commands to players, like !shownext, !admins, etc. And of course there's the (optional) "message of appreciation", where every x minutes, a servermessage is displayed they're running ADF.
7) We should start on this famous official podcast, the very first on PR:ArmA2. How did you prepare it? Did unexpected things happen? Was it hard to regroup all the interviewees like Deadfast, Motherdear, Trinyscourge, etc? Would you mind giving us some details?
Hmmmmm, how did we prepare it again... It hasn't even been that long - I'm getting old, that's for sure
. UK Force had the idea of organizing a "PR Podcast" and thought it would be a good idea if I'd be the host of the show. People seem to love my voice I guess .Anyways, we let the community ask questions to the developers and UK Force filtered them and passed them to me. I tried to make a couple of categories, so we could group the questions a bit. We then picked a date and time that suited most of us and well, basically started talking, I asked the questions, they answered, etc, etc. It was a very fun thing to do, real fun. Especially when Gaz poked Deadfast with "vagina", causing Deadfast to lose total control of what he was about to say, or when Burton almost choked to death when I suddenly dragged him into the (teamspeak) channel right when he took a bite from a burger and wanted to speak anyways
. Great time, great times indeed.Not all developers could be present at the time, so in the days after the official recording, I talked to them separately and edited everything in, as if they were present during the official recording.
After I put everything together, I passed the audiofiles to Twisted Helix, who did some amazing post-processing on them, to make it sound a lot better (compared to the raw version I sent him).
I had a lot of fun doing the podcast and if it's up to me, you'll see more of them in the future.
8 ) You also work on PR:Vietnam, do you have any bits of information about this project ? What is its progress so far? Do you have pictures?
Vietnam has been announced over a year ago, on April Fools, after Trahn Lee donated allEve Of Destruction assets to PR. We created a very quick, dirty and nasty trailer about it, to let the community think were working on Vietnam. The actual joke was... it wasn't a joke. Progress went up and down after that. Most of us were too busy with real life or the next version of PR, so Vietnam got pushed back. After a time of silence, I picked it up again and started working on a new map, called Dien Duong. That map started as a testmap, but soon grew to become a lot more than that. I created some videos to go along with that, but as always, real life gets in the way and forces you to spend time on non-digital things - things that are more important than a video game. When I got back, I wanted to work on a little side-project, before spending more time on Vietnam. We'll talk about that little side-project later
.9) I know there aren't a lot of people working on this, do you want to say something concerning a possible recruiting drive or just ask for more involvement from the community?
Sure, people from the community can help with a lot of things. Thing is though, most people out there that have the skills, are already working on PR or other mods, or aren't interested (yes, that's possible
). But sure, if you have the skills, show what you can and you may be brought on the team. I'd love to see more people working on Vietnam .10) The last subject I would like to discuss with you is regarding Project Normandy ?, so AfterDune can you explain what this project is all about? Do you have any pictures of your work?
Project Normandy is the little sideproject I mentioned earlier. Every now and then, someone creates a new thread on the forums, asking if we will make a PR WW2 mod as well. Many people love the WW2 era, but want to play it with PR gameplay. You know, request kits, deployables, voip & teamwork, etc.
Well anyways, one day, another thread was created, but this one was slightly different. Instead of the usual "wouldn't it be cool if..." or "when are the devs going to...", this person suggested the -community- could have a go at this, instead of the devs. A couple of pages later, I decided to give them a little hand, by contacting developers of oldBF2 WW2 mods. I found Battlegroup Frontlines, a (dead) BF2 mod featuring the east front, Germans vs Russians. They sent me a list of BGF assets PR and this mini-mod would be allowed to use. A really nice gesture I might say!
After a couple of weeks, nobody did anything with the assets... Weird, as many people wanted it, many people said they'd help.. yet nobody stepped up to actually do something.
I got curious, so looked at some BGF assets myself. I found some very interesting things, so started working on a little map where I could put those assets on. I believe the original idea was to create screenshots or even a little video about what it would look like, if a PR WW2 was ever born. Really, it was never meant to become more than that
. But you know how things go...Right now, Project Normandy features a 2x2km "campaign" map*, two new factions, lots of weapons, vehicles, deployables, etc, etc. It's actually quite insane when you think about it
.* I call it a campaign map, 'cause it sounds cool. LOL. No, the way I see it, there are a couple of stages you have to go through, hence the "campaign". Let me tell you what you can expect...
The ramp is lowered, you and your teammates storm the beach. Chaos everywhere, I can tell you that! Explosions all around you. The one and only objective you have on that beach, is to get to the shingles and live! The razorwire near the shingles is blown up already. You can still see some AD Bangalores lying around, along with ammo and medpacks. Best for you to heal up son, you're not there yet!
COVERING FIRE!! Smoke up the place and run, run, RUN! I so hope you've made it this far. I'm sure most of you haven't, but don't worry, you'll get there soon enough. Near "East Point" it's absolutely mandatory you brought someone with you carrying a grappling hook. Think of "East Point" as theThink of "East Point" as the Pointe du Hoc of this map - hell in a bottle.
Now, assuming you lost only your left ***-cheak, your objective is to take the first flags one by one. After that, you should be able to bring in some reinforcements and move up to capture the next set of flags. There's a "Bunker Complex" and "Control Center" you are definitely wanting to capture. After that, you and your buddies will move more in-land and have to fight over large areas. Expect area-names as "Le Nord", "Moyen" and "Region de l'Ouest". And don't forget "Centre Ville", your final objective - zee German main
.
I've always said my job is done when PN is released. Others can then take over if they want, add more maps, weapons, etc.
You can see the "TNT" , it's modelled by [R-CON]Adriaan, textured by [R-DEV]Spush. TNT is going to be the "C4" of Project Normandy:
ok, well, I'm going to show you some other screenshots, just to please you but to do this you must click on the links
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/278/screen076l.jpg
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/928/screen079.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/U50aQ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/pgypo.jpg
11) The gamers of Project Reality are always expecting a big release and every time we are so very surprised by their revolution. Do you happen to have some tiny bits of info for the next one?
To be honest, me being busy with Vietnam, my personal life and now Project Normandy... I have to admit I'm not fully aware of all the good stuff you'll find in the next version. What I do know, is that the team has spent a lot of time fixing things, optimizing maps, models, etc.
12) To finish this interview, do you have something to say to our readers today? Do you have a message to pass on?
I'd like to apologize for my wall of text
. I don't really have any "last words" other than thank you for this interview! I like to show to all readers something special , an Extra Bonus....
[CENTER]
[CENTER]
I would like to finish with.[/CENTER]
"Click on the magic formula"
oh well
ops:"
