Developer Interviews

[Legend]

We will start to interview our Developers here, one after one.

[Mr_Awesome]

should be interesting  ;D

[Legend]

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Good day and welcome to our first developer interview. Hypernoma , please introduce yourself.

Hypernoma: Good evening!

Hypernoma: Outside of running NordInvasion I have the delight of studying law (for my 5th year) and being a poor Scotsman stuck in the sunny city of London

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion : You may be one of only a few who call London sunny . Well, how did you got into Nordinvasion and escpecially into Development ?

Hypernoma: Well there's more sun than in Scotland so it's pretty tropical!

Hypernoma: I first started playing NordInvasion at the end of november 2011 with my MM regiment. I had a pretty screwed up sleep cycle in those days and one night I was playing on Rich's NY NordInvasion server.
ConquerorWorm was playing on that server and invited players to join the teamspeak channel. That was my first night playing with Worm(he let me use his wormbane!) and the start of a beautiful friendship
Rich and I became the first NordInvasion game admins as Jez and Worm were struggling to keep track of the nonsense going on on servers (SK!).
I offered to help Worm with anything he needed beyond being on the servers and he asked me to take over the banner project implementing player banners into the texture files for use in-game.
I must have been doing that for a week or two when the infamous roll-back occurred. That was the night I became a developer, being thrown in the deep end with angry players everywhere raging non-stop.
Worm and I were working on the database for a good 11 hours after the rollback to try and fix everything and I guess we got it all done in the end seeing as we're still here!

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: That`s a decent history ! What is your role in the development team ?

Hypernoma: I think I've held just about every position in the development team except for head of mapping. Hande is just too good! I took over from Worm as Head Developer about a year ago now. My role just now is fairly limited due to my insane workload in RL but thankfully I have a pretty awesome team to pick up my slack!

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Yeah, some players just forget that you have a real life to care about too. What do you like on Nordinvasion the most ?

Hypernoma: Hmmm it would actually be the rare occasion that I get to actually play! With all the work that has gone on for the last patch and the increasing number of players that seem to need disciplined, it leaves very little time to get on a server with a good team and play. I've been working on my "new" longbowman for a very long time now and I am still only level 34!

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: I see. Well, hopefully you will find some more time to actually play the mod you are developing in the near future. What do you hate in Nordinvasion the most ?

Hypernoma: It has to be the manner that a minority of the community insist on conducting themselves in. I hate players breaking the rules, glitching maps or exploiting any little feature they can get their hands on. I appreciate that players want to progress and be the best but cheating is not the way to do it. It is insulting and infuriating to see our hard work abused and then have players tell us why they shouldn't be punished for abusing our work.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Understandable. Seeing you as the current main developer, where do you think will the mod be in one year? (also regarding Bannerlord).

Hypernoma: Haha what Bannerlord? I'm amazed that NordInvasion is still running and so is Jez. He asks me from time to time if we've killed NI yet.
Worm asks if I've managed to break it yet... I have a lot of support from my predecessors! It has amazed us that NordInvasion has survived such a long time and the player base has grown to its present size.
We rarely drop below 500 players a day, often reaching as high as 700 on the weekend (a record I want to beat is 776!!).
As long as we can continue to find new ways to expand and develop the (limited) warband system I'm sure we'll continue pushing out updates.
We have a worryingly large list of ideas in the developer forum on what to do next... Ideally in 1 year NordInvasion will still be going strong and that record will have been smashed! Regarding Bannerlord, it is very difficult to predict how we will react to that and if there will be a "NordInvasion2".
While the idea sounds wonderful, it's so difficult to know how Taleworlds are getting on and what exactly they are doing the modding system! I'm afraid I'm going to have to return to my forum stance of " "who knows?" ('cause I don't)."

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Fair enough. As it currently seems, the only viable tactics to beat NI is to either kite or cade up a spot. Are you happy with the current mechanics, and\or what would you like to change ?

Hypernoma: Haha not particularly! As to what needs changed? The entire AI... Warband's AI is so unbelievably stupid it makes working on a PvE mod a challenge!
Kiting was the old favourite making bots run in a nice big circle while snipers could shoot the bots. Before that it was cav archery... Now we have shieldwalls.
I do miss the old days of soloing on my demi-god commando but that was equally ridiculous in its own way. We have implemented a few changes (Trickster bombs and Thor's Hammer) to make shieldwalls a bit more interesting but it does remain a shieldwall... I have a few ideas in mind for a future patch that should liven things up but I really can't talk about them here...

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: What is your Idea of a top-notched tactic then ?

Hypernoma: I have ragged a bit on the shieldwall above, but my ideal tactic that I see so rarely and would love to see more of is a proper mopving shieldwall!
I used to be able to find players in the open with a moving, flexible shieldwall on the US central servers at about 3am but I hardly ever see any anymore.
It was so much fun to be shouting "wheel left" or trying to support the flank with archers running around just behind us and players with pikes moving to where each bot was rather than spamming overheads for minutes at a time.
There was also no opportunity for afk shielding or everyone died! For me, those shieldwalls were the most fun and most challenging and I would love to get out with a good team and try it on the new hardmode!

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: That sounds very interesting! Hopefully we can test this out soon. Thank you for taking the time for this interview, and the endles stress developing Nordinvasion! Keep up the good work and see you on the battlefield. Any last words ?

Hypernoma: Only that I look forward to seeing someone defeat Odin! If players want to find good legendaries, they know where to go!

[YuriTheRed]

YuriTheRed: Good day and welcome to our  developer interview. MrGuarnere , please introduce yourself.

MrGuarnere: Hi, I'm MrGuarnere, or MrG as some prefer to call me. I am 25, born in Poland but living in the UK. I am a software developer working for a small company developing various web based systems.


YuriTheRed: : When did you first started playing NI, and how did you learn about NI's existance?

MrGuarnere: I started playing NI early January 2012. I've only been playing Mount and Blade itself for around 1 year when I downloaded cRPG (boooooo!) and joined a clan there. After a few months of playing it me and some of the guys from the clan moved to M&M which we played for a month or two (I believe me and Hyper were in the same regiment in M&M but don't think we had the same names as we do now so we didn't know eachother). One of the guys then told me about this cool mod he'd been playing called NordInvasion, so I thought what the heck lets give it a go and I did.


YuriTheRed: : How did you become NI dev, what is your job in NI dev team?

MrGuarnere: During the early days when NI was still growing there were not so many admins to look after the 10 or so servers that were available so people were finding different ways to abuse the game. Some of the older players will remember the days when clans would jump onto a server and then tell everyone else to leave in order to decrease the number of enemies that would spawn. This went on for a while and got to a point where no one could play the game because they were being told to leave. I got really sick of this, so I found the NI forum and then NI IRC and spoke to CoWorm about this issue. He then made me a admin of NI to kick and punish all these trouble makers (think I was 3rd or 4th admin, not sure as Sphinx was made admin at similar time). From them on I spent the next year or so helping out with NI in any way I could, taking on jobs from helping people on IRC to organising house events, making the NI trailer, trying to design and find new weapons for the game. Then, after around a year of doing this there was a big structural change in the NI management and there was a need for a new Dev so Hyper and Barristan very kindly promoted me. I started off helping on the NI code itself, trying to add various new bits to the game, but it was very quickly discovered that I sucked at this! My strength is in database and website management, so I have been doing that ever since.


YuriTheRed: :What do you like in NI community, and what do you dislike in it?

MrGuarnere: I like that the community is still here! I don't think anyone really expected this mod to have thrived as much as it has, but we have a very generous community that keep the servers running and very hard working devs and admins keeping the mod alive. Except from a small number of trouble makers the majority of the community is nice and helpful to eachother which makes the game enjoyable to play. I'll never forget the moment when I was playing NI for my first time and saw Blondin in his full plate gear running around with an Obsidian axe and then he dropped it for me to play with! I love that, he wanted me to try it and have fun with it even though he had to use some crappy sword. What I dislike....hmm I think it must be all the people that try to find quick and easy way to make money, like making 200 accounts and selling all gear just to get 20k gold, meaning that our database grows and costs us more money to keep going. I dislike all the people that scam other players, even though they will be found out and banned, just for few hunderd thousand gold...Oh and I dislike people following me in game


YuriTheRed: : Is there any juicy teasers for future changes in NI you wish to share us?

MrGuarnere: I am probably the worst person to ask this question, I don't even know what wave we are on most of the time or what the map is called, so I have no clue what is planned for the future! All I know is that myself and Naozumi (other web dev) have some cool things planned for the website, trying to make it more user friendly and visual. The NI Updater/Launcher was something I wanted to implement long time ago and started working on it but then RL took over and I dropped it, so I am really grateful for Naozumi for picking that up and making it happen. That's something I am hoping to expand and make more useful, so make sure you all keep your updaters up to date (sry, bad joke ).

MrGuarnere: However, I can say that I have been thinking about NI Trailer #2. That's all I can say


YuriTheRed: : Is there any special message you would want to sent to NI community?

MrGuarnere: I'd like to say thank you to the admins for working hard keeping our servers clean and tidy, thank you to the donators for covering the costs of the servers and thank you to all the players playing this mod as without them we wouldn't be making it. We've had a lot of fun making this throughout the last couple of years and hope that the mod continues to grow.

[Legend]

Well, it is the first time for me we did an audio interview (also it was on the fly) so bare with me Anyways, here you go :
https://soundcloud.com/ncrypt/sennis-interview

[YuriTheRed]

YuriTheRed : Good day and welcome to our developer interview. Barristan , please introduce yourself.

Barristan: Well I'm an Ausssie and the Development Administrator, which means I pretty much oversee the admins and the some of the other devs as Hyper's number 2


YuriTheRed :  When did you first started playing NI, and how did you learn about NI's existance?

Barristan : A friend of mine, who I played a bit of CRPG with pestered me to play it with him, then I got hooked. Have been playing for just over 12 months I would say.


YuriTheRed :  How did you become NI dev, what is your job in NI dev team?

Barristan Well, we all pretty much do a bit of everything. My job is to oversee the senior admins, deal with complaints about the admins and generally support them in their jobs. I also go a fair amount in the database and item development. Over time, I've done just about everything though. I got involved after I became an AU game admin and mentioned to Worm that I might be interested in helping out more. I knew nothing of modding but I was eager to learn and he more or less showed me the ropes.


YuriTheRed : Are you satisfied with the current NI tactic (cading)?

Barristan: Not really, I would like there to be more to it. That said, when you are getting it right and the team works as a team, then the game is at its best. I used to run a lot of VLKA events and the thing about NI I loved the most was when everyone saw themselves as a piece in the machine of death dealing pain to nords.


YuriTheRed : what kind of tactic would you perfer? And how would you achive it?

Barristan: I would like to see more mobile warfare. I don't just want to punish players into dying if they stand their ground. I would like there to be incentives for players to fight the nords at different locations on the map. But the code behind that is very difficult.


YuriTheRed : What are future plans of dev team?

Barristan: Well we don't like to make lots of promises but we do try lots of things in our discussions. We clearly would love the campaign to come back and right now we are expanding the number of player items by a huge amount. My main aim is to provide a sense of the wider war for houses and to get the more involved in the overall conflict. I mean, which house would not want to have a castle.


YuriTheRed : Where do you see yourself and where NI in a year?

Barristan: Well, I hope to see us still at it. Right now the Dev team has an awesome skill set. With Naozumi and G working on webcode the options on our table are huge. We spent too long without proper PhP coders and now we are making up for lost time.


YuriTheRed : What do you like in NI community, and what do you dislike in it?

Barristan: I really enjoy the playerbase for the most part. I wish I had time to play more, although I have leveled up a couple of secret alts Probably the worst part are the cheaters. The other day Senni and I spent the better part of two days adding items to the database and into the game, one little mistake on our part and there were people just waiting to exploit. It makes you wonder why we put the effort in, in the first place. But generally I am pretty happy.


YuriTheRed : Is there any special message or word of thank, you would want to sent to NI community?

Barristan:Well, I would say that you guys are almost without exception an amazing group to play with. Making new things for people and seeing them go out and eagerly employ your work makes it all worthwhile.

[Legend]

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Greetings , welcome to our Nordinvasion developer interviews. Huscarlton Banks,  please introduce yourself.

Huscarlton Banks: Hello, I'm Huscarlton_Banks, one of the developers of NI. I recently graduated with a Bachelor's in Biology and I live in New York, in the United States.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Congratulations on your Bachelor. How did you find nordinvasion and how did you got into the development of it ?

Huscarlton Banks: I started playing around February 2012, after following a link from the GK clan forums. After that, I hosted a few servers for a while, and I became friends with a few admins which led to Worm recruiting me to the admin team. From there, I was recruited as a developer after fixing a few scripts.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Every story seems to go back to worm Well, how would you describe your role in the development team ?

Huscarlton Banks: I handle scripting, and try to find ways to make the mod challenging without making it too difficult or unenjoyable, which is a bit hard with bad AI.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Speaking of bad AI, any future plans to improve it ?

Huscarlton Banks: For now, I'm focusing on fixing the tendency of bots to stop advancing when they have a ranged weapon behind walls, but it's been proving a bit difficult.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Is there some more information about that  you want to share right now ?

Huscarlton Banks: Nope.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: All right When you compare your work with the work of the other developers, would you say you have the most work or is it fairly even ?

Huscarlton Banks: It's usually fairly even, though I'd say the administrators probably have more work just dealing with the playerbase.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Hehe, well fair enough. Imagine for a moment you could everything code in, within a blink of an eye. Which feature would you implement, and which feature would you remove from Ni ?

Huscarlton Banks: Intelligent AI, Barricades.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Interesting. Speaking of barricades, as it seems the only viable options to beat ni right now is either kiting or cading up. Are you happy with that game mechanics, and\or what would you like to change ?

Huscarlton Banks: Players would probably have more fun with an open battle, but there are a lot of reasons why it can't happen with AI, and if those reasons were removed, shieldwalls and kiting would be strong enough to remove any challenge from the game.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: So you are basically unhappy but don`t see another way ?

Huscarlton Banks: Well, I wouldn't say that, you just can't get the same experience playing a PvE mod as you can a PvP mod.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Fair enough. Where do you see Nordinvasion in one year ?

Huscarlton Banks: Jez: Have you killed NI yet?
Worm: Have you broken NI yet?
Hyper: Nope.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: XD Good answer. Beware, tricky question : What do you think about the community of Ni ?

Huscarlton Banks: The majority of the community is nice, but there's always going to be a small minority that trolls or tries to get ahead in less than legitimate ways, just like any gaming community. It's better to think that I work for the former, than the latter.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: All right, thanks for your time and good to have the guy who mostly stays in the shadows and does his work quietly in the background.Thanks for showing up and see you on the battlefield! Any last words ?

Huscarlton Banks: Expect more surprises in the future.

[YuriTheRed]

YuriTheRed:Good day and welcome to our developer interview. Hande , please introduce yourself.

Hande: Hoy. I'm Hande ,22 year old and I live in Finland. I love to drink beer.


YuriTheRed:  When did you first started playing NI, and how did you learn about NI's existance?

Hande: Uhm.. That is looong time ago but if I remember right I heard about NordInvasion from some of my Mercenaries mod friends.


YuriTheRed:  How did you become NI dev, what is your job in NI dev team?

Hande: Well.. When I started to play NI I noticed that maps are horrible (Jez, you are bad scener ! ). And then I wanted to help this mod by offering my sceneing skills to mod. Jez accepted me in and soon he made me to be his map developer and Community manager. Nowdays I still do these same jobs and also help around by doing module stuff and hosting our forums.


YuriTheRed: Are you satisfied with the current NI tactic (cading)?

Hande: Yes and no. I don't like to see when players place too many cades at once and die to get more. Cading is nice when it is clean.


YuriTheRed:  When and how did you first started mapping?

Hande: Uhm.. I started sceneing then when Warband got released. I started Finnish clan and hosted our server. Soon Native maps got boring and it was hard to find OSP maps at that time. II had no other choice but to start making new maps myself.


YuriTheRed: How are you satisfied with current maps of NI?

Hande: Yes I am. As most of you older players notice, we have been adding old maps back to NordInvasion but as better version. It is also nice to see that our community gets better in our Scene Contests.


YuriTheRed: What are future plans of dev team?

Hande: House Tournament !!  That is all I can tell now.


YuriTheRed: Is it true you don't talk on TS, and why is that so?

Hande: I do sometimes but mostly only then when I'm drunk.


YuriTheRed: Where do you see yourself and where NI in a year?

Hande: Hard to tell..I'm going to study a new profession in the fall so don't know if I still have time to work around.


YuriTheRed: What do you like in NI community, and what do you dislike in it?

Hande: I like most of our players but I can't play this mod in peace when I use Hande name ingame. So stop stalking game score screen for my name! It is really annoying!!


YuriTheRed: Is there any special message or word of thank, you would want to sent to NI community?

Hande: Come play World of Tanks with me if you play in EU region. I can play all tier matches!! Oh.. thanks donators for keeping this mod alive by donating money to servers !

[YuriTheRed]

YuriTheRed: Good day and welcome to our  developer interview. Naozumi , please introduce yourself

Naozumi: Good Morning,
Naozumi: I am Naozumi of course, and I generally look after the website. During the day I run the entire IT systems across Scotland for one the largest Charitable organisations in the UK. In my free time I am also a freelance developer, having graduated from Aberdeen University a number or years ago.


YuriTheRed: When did you first started playing NI, and how did you learn about NI's existance?

Naozumi: I know another developer within the NordInvasion community (need I say who?) and they were looking for  help with webissues. They came and asked if I would help out and fix some stuff and thats actually how I got started. Its a little bit unusual as I know most devs were long time players of the game before being asked to join the dev team where as I was asked to join because of my IT and Development skills. From
Naozumi:  that I actually started playing NI properly.


YuriTheRed: Is there any juicy teasers for future changes in NI you wish to share us?

Naozumi: hmmm. Wondered when that question would come up haha
Naozumi: teasers... well an exciting new feature is the correct stats on the website
Naozumi: we are also working on overhauling the site to look nicer
Naozumi: but in terms of actual new gameplay features
Naozumi: its all very much in the air just now


YuriTheRed : What do you like in NI community, and what do you dislike in it?

Naozumi: I always find it interesting to see what players think and NI has a great community that are always willing to engage. You can ask for something on NI like a translation and you can get a host of people wanting to help. Sometimes I do think they forget that this is a thing we do in our spare time for no recompence but overall I dont think there is anything I would say I disliked


YuriTheRed: Where do you see yourself and where NI in a year?

Naozumi: I'd like to see a new website for NI. I'd also like to think that weapons and such will be well balanced and that we might get some way to show off houses and how they are each doing. I also remember there was a campaign attempted at one time and that could be quite nice if it were to make a come back, but will have to see what happens. Bannerlord is coming too and we don't quite know what to expect yet beyond
Naozumi:  promises to make it more mod friendly and apparent support for Steam Workshop. And if the latter is true then we really might see NI explode in the number of players which would be fantastic


YuriTheRed: Is there any special message you would want to sent to NI community?

Naozumi: Just to say thank you for everything and for sticking with us through all the issues. The support here is fantastic and its the old cliche but their support is what makes me want to come back and work on the mod. Thanks!

[Legend]

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Hello and welcome to our Developer Interview series, Birdtalon please introduce yourself.

[OG] Birdtalon: Hi there, I'm Birdtalon, or Lee if you want to call me by my real name. I've been playing Mount and Blade for a couple of years now and other video games even longer. I currently live in the South East of the UK and it's actually sunny for once!

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: The term "sunny" seems to be used in every possible circumstance, must be a dev-thingy . Jokes aside, how did you find into nordinvasion and further on into development ?

[OG] Birdtalon: Quite by accident actually. Like quite a few people, I learned about Nord Invasion through my old Mount and Musket regiment. First I had doubts about playing it due to the "grind" aspect associated with any game which has persistent characters but I started playing with a few friends nonetheless.
I started to enjoy playing and visited the forums and IRC often. As far as I remember that's where I met CoWorm and the other developers. I started playing with them on Nord Invasion for a bit and went on teamspeak after a while.
I think the first time I started playing with them a lot was when I mentioned DayZ, which was pretty new at the time. One thing I remember was when CoWorm said something along the lines of "it doesn't look very good, doubt I'll play that much". A few days later and we were all playing it together for hours.
After that I just played a lot with the Developers, now my friends instead of the scary guys nobody wants to talk to. Eventually I became a game admin and soon after became a Developer. Mainly just from talking with Coworm and the others about improvements to the website and such and showing interest in the way that Nord Invasion worked.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Interesting. Seeing you as a retired developer, how did that happen and is there a possibility you will return developing nordinvasion ?

[OG] Birdtalon: Firstly, I very much doubt I would return to being a developer again. Merely because of the fact I have "moved on" so to speak and now have other things to work on. As to the reason why I decided to leave the team. Well, all I will say is I had a few disagreements with the direction which the mod was taking at the time.
Nothing personal, I just didn't like some of the changes which were being made at the time, not just to the mod but to the admin and development team as well. I didn't really want to be involved in any politics or disagreements so I just decided to leave quietly.
I would like to stress however that I did not want to leave any bad feelings with or about anybody and I think that the current team is doing a great job with the mod!

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Oh i can smell the rumors already ^^. Nice and honest statement. Where do you see the mod in one year ?

[OG] Birdtalon: Hm, to be completely honest. I wouldn't be able to say, you never know what is on the horizon, and as much as we would hate it to happen - the mod may not even be running in a year. However, if the developer and admin teams keep doing the great work that they are and the donators keep supporting it I think Nord Invasion has the capacity to grow even bigger than it already is with new content. I think a great job has been done with the new 0.5.0 patch.
I think that with the influx of players created through the release of the new Mount and Blade II, whenever what may be, Nord Invasion still has a long way to grow before it reaches it's full potential; and I believe that with the people who are behind it at the moment it can achieve great things.

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: Good to hear ! Coming back to your statement that you moved on, what is your current and\or future project ?

[OG] Birdtalon: Well, I am working on an idea which I've been playing about with for a long time. A few friends and I are creating a network of communities called "Objective Gaming" which is designed to help and support new communities to set up and grow larger. You can check out the website at http://objectivegaming.com/ but be warned it is far from finished and still in it's infancy stages!

Lost Legend :ingame Nordinvasion: A community to help out communities ? Sounds... , well like a nice idea. I will definitely check this out. Well, Lee i am out of questions. Any last words ?

[OG] Birdtalon: Well, considering I only pop into NI to check on things from time to time nowadays I'd just like to say a big thank you to everyone who still plays and supports this mod. The friends and people we meet here will remember each other for a long time and I think that everyone here should make good of the community here for as long as they can. Props to all of you and good luck!