An interview with Matt Toschlog has recently been published online. It details Mr. Toschlog's involvement with Reactor Zero, Quantum Signal, and Parallax. It also gives a well-rounded picture of Mr. Toschlog as a person.
Well, it wasn't really an \"interview\" as much as it was a story on him. Regardless, it's interesting to see what former Descent developers are up to all these years later.
A good read indeed, but was anyone else troubled by his assertion that \"Art skills aren’t important for gaming programmers\"? As a software engineer who also enjoys various creative pursuits, I'm having a hard time agreeing with that. I'd argue that nurturing one's creativity through art can also enhance problem-solving skills, which are essential to programming. Plus, an engaging game needs at least some visual appeal, and wouldn't it benefit the programmer to have artistic capabilities that could help him marry the game's artistic elements--which must be handled by SOMEBODY on the team--to the techincal ones? Wouldn't an art background help the programmer better imagine how the final aesthetic should turn out, and better understand how to manipulate the tools at his disposal to produce the desired result? It should at least make for prettier explosions.
Diedel wrote:Oh. Looks like I must be careful not to get paranoid here.
Too late for that.
You haven't seen true insanity yet.
Sedwick,
imo Matt is right. I am not a very gifted artist (well, I am a good potter, but that's it), yet I (think I, cough) am a good programmer and would be a good game programmer, too. Creativity doesn't need to express itself in what is commonly considered art.
I remember that the ports were nearly done with a few bugs to work out, at least with Mac... which is too bad as the Mac OS has changed now and it the port might not be compatible. .. oh geez.. did I say that out loud?! -_-
If I win the lottery, I'll not bother asking anyone for any rights. I'd just make a game that would be Descent 4 as it's supposed to be, and call it \"Invasion 4 Descentrs\"!
