Today we’ve got an interview with Achaea’s Producer – Justin Walsh. Enjoy!
Q. Tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been with Iron Realms, what have you done with the company, and what’d you do before that?
A. I’ve been a member of the Iron Realms staff since 2008, transitioning from a volunteer admin position I started in 2005. Before transitioning to work full time for Iron Realms, I worked in the IT sector of the educational industry. In my time here, I’ve done everything from driving roleplay as a player-facing god, through to designing and programming up new game systems, all the way up to Lead Producer for Achaea.
Outside of the games, I also work more broadly for Iron Realms as its Chief Technical Officer, helping advance the technical elements of the company, everything from server reliability to overseeing development of our Nexus client and other technologies.
Q. Was it intimidating being the producer on an entirely new game vs. Achaea, which had been around for a long time before your tenure as producer?
A. It definitely has intimidating factors! With an established game, you have years of history to build on – from established storylines, all the way through to knowing how the players chose to interact with the various game elements influencing the design of both roleplay and system changes. With a new game, you’re starting from scratch. While this clean-slate is liberating in its freedom, does raise some questions in the back of your mind as to whether it will translate to the entirely new player-base when the game opens.
Q. Can you describe a bit what your job as producer is? What are your overarching responsibilities?
A. A game producer is a very broad umbrella of responsibility, especially in a small studio like Iron Realms, where we don’t have massive teams to share the load. The core of the role is to do everything in our power to ensure that the game is a success — See, broad! So, this ranges in everything from designing, implementing, improving game systems and happenings to keep players engaged with the game, through to recruiting, mentoring. and ensuring the success of team members, all the way through all elements of customer service, and outreach to try and bring in new players!
Q. What’re you working on currently? Any details possible?
A. Right at this very moment, I’m working on elements of the shipboard PVE options. We’re testing and tweaking the AI surrounding spawned NPC ships, which has involved a huge amount of both carnage wrought upon my poor ship, and to the countless enemy space pirate vessels that have met their demise at the hands of my canons and missiles!
Q. Other than the sci-fi theme, how do you think Starmourn is differentiated from the other IRE MUDs?
A. Starting from a relatively clean slate with Starmourn has allowed us to work on some of the pipedreams and “wouldn’t it be nice if we could…” bucket list items that would be a nightmare to try and retrofit into an established game. One example that is exciting is blurring the lines between players and NPCs in terms of interaction and combat – there’s very little in the way of “this ability only works to/against players” or “this interaction only works against NPCs”, which is a refreshing change.
This clean slate approach has allowed us to integrate ships and space into the core of the game, rather than feeling like a minigame or an addon. You might be on a quest planet-side, and the next step of the quest might have you running back to your ship to go and hunt down some scumbag pirate that just escaped in his own vessel, to get a code to use when hacking an access terminal to unlock a door and rescue hostages on the other side.
Q. How do you think of roleplay vs. mechanics when developing new system? Is one more important than the other?
A. I think it varies from system to system, and how the players will interact and be influenced by it.
Something along the lines of a class/profession, that has a very large impact on the roleplay of the players, we generally start with a thematic design, rooted heavily in the roleplay sphere, and then move on to the mechanical components to fit inside the roleplay theme.
On the other hand, something like asteroid mining, it is a mechanical system first, and then we try to incorporate as many roleplay elements into those mechanics to add as much depth and lore there inside the constraints of the mechanics.
Q. If you had to pick one part of Starmourn you’re most excited about, what would it be?
A. Picking one is a tough one, I’ve covered a few of the ones I’m really excited about in the last few questions, but one element I’m really looking forward to players being able to enjoy is the overall story arc that takes place over your character’s progression through the game. Everything is tied together, from the storyline of the new player introduction all the way through to the maximum level. Every few levels, you’ll take another step on this journey. Don’t worry though, your story is far from over even when you complete the arc. As they say, when one book closes, another one opens!
Q. Which player race is your favorite?
A. I’ve been smitten by the Elgan race since I saw the first concept art for them, so much attitude in such a little package! A close second is the Krona, which are one of the more different races that step outside of the typical humanoid boundaries – I can’t wait to see what happens to them once the players start digging into their lore and expanding it with their roleplay.
Q. How is Starmourn going to make money? With credits like other Iron Realms games? If so, what kinds of things will you be able to buy at launch?
A. We will have credits, like the rest of the Iron Realms games, which will be used to either turn into lessons, or purchase artefacts. For launch, we’ll generally be focussing on offering artefacts that are more general use and utility, vs anything that impacts combat in a meaningful way.
We are implementing a few new skills and systems that don’t rely on lessons too, which will be fun, allowing you to progress and advance entirely through in-game actions!
Q. The Nabia race (NPCs) is mentioned a few times as being serious drug dealers. Will there be actual drugs in the game? If so, will they have effects, or just be cosmetic?
A. The drug element is definitely present in the game, many of your interactions with NPCs will touch on their feelings towards the subject. As for how players take or make drugs, no, they won’t be purely cosmetic – but that’s something for another time.
Q. How is player-killing going to be handled? Can people just kill anyone they want whenever they want? How do you stop bullying and outright abuse of people if so?
A. Balancing player-killing is definitely a major element in the design of the game, and there’s just so many different playstyles that we try to cover. We’ll likely launch with a basic set of “RP PVP” guidelines, so that actions have consequences, but it’s not a free-for-all gankfest. Call someone a dirty kithlicker while cruising through Feral Space? Yeah, you’re probably going to get shot at, but if you’re just walking around browsing the shops on the W’hoorn homeworld of Benu Wen, and haven’t done anything to tick someone off, you’ll should be pretty safe.
In the event that things go too far, we will have some recourse there, and the admin team will step in for people going out of their way to grief other players unnecessarily.
Q. When will Starmourn be out, damn it? We need to know!
A. Getting closer every day! We’re getting close to a stage now that all the mechanical systems are in place and working, but we’ve still got a lot of creation work to get things fleshed out! As I type this, our awesome building team just finished polishing and playtesting all the racial homeworlds, and each one of those is between 150 and 300 rooms! I can’t wait for opening day so you can see all the hard work.
Q. Is it true that you’ve done the Kessel Run in 10 parsecs?
A. 9 parsecs!
Our apologies! 9 parsecs. Thanks for participating, Justin!
Just put up two new pages, one on Starship Combat and on on Starship Destruction and Replacement! Check them out, let us know here what you think, or join the discussion on the Starmourn forums.
Let’s talk about tradeskills!
We’ll have six tradeskills at launch, in two categories: Custom Design and Item Creation.
Tradeskills in the Custom Design category are Fashion, Cuisine, and Jewelry, while the Item Creation category has WeaponMods, ArmorMods, and ShipMods.
In the Custom Design tradeskills, you’ll be creating design patterns for clothing, food/drink, and jewelry that are completely custom, meaning that you’ll write all the descriptive text for them. Then, you’ll submit them for admin approval which must be granted before you can create items from those patterns. There’ll be a one-time cost in credits to buy a license to use these tradeskills, similar to some of other other games, due to the fact that the admin have to hand-approve your patterns. These are the tradeskills favored by those who enjoy and are good at descriptive and evocative writing.
On the other side, we have Item Creation, where tradeskills make items that aren’t customized in the same way. Typically, these are items that would be mass produced because they get used up a a lot. High-volume vs. custom creation. Our initial Item Creation tradeskills are all mods (modifications) for weapons, bodyarmor, and ships that grant bonuses or maluses of various kinds to those things.
However, you can’t just create one out of thin air – you need to earn the knowledge for each mod first, by finding and reverse-engineering mods that get dropped when hunting NPCs. Reverse-engineering them will provide you with some % of the knowledge needed to make that mod going forward, as well as some parts specific to that mod.
Once you have 100% knowledge of that mod, you can start crafting that mod, using the parts. (Important to note that, of course, crafted mods can’t be reverse-engineered. Only dropped mods can.) Once you run out of parts, you’ll need to obtain more, which is how we’ll enforce some scarcity in the system, so that everyone isn’t always running around with the best mods. Mods will also be used up regularly, creating opportunity for diligent crafters.
And that’s what we’ll have for crafting at launch!
Of course, we’ll be adding many more crafting skills post-launch, and have tossed around ideas from custom drug crafting (you too can be a space scumbag!) to crafting entire buildings for other players to use as housing. But, Starmourn will end up being far more expansive than what it is at launch, and what seems like a good idea now might not once we start getting feedback from people after we launch.
We’ve put up the first video showing off our space flight in Starmourn. Enjoy!
I’m happy to present to you a short interview with Laura Martz, Starmourn’s lead builder for the last 16 months or so. Although almost everyone who works for Iron Realms started out as a player of our games, we reached out to the wider MUD community when hiring a lead builder, and although we had some great candidates apply, Laura got the position and is killing it!
Let’s let her tell you about herself and her building activities in her words:
She’s quite the builder, and has taken more than a few heads with that axe.
Matt: So, Laura, tell us about your background in MUDs.
Laura: I first stumbled onto MUDs in 2005, when I logged onto Armageddon. As I’m an avid reader, writer, gamer, and roleplayer it was love at first permanent death. I started staffing and building there not long after I started playing, and did that with semi-regularity until last year, when I was hired by Iron Realms Entertainment. I adore maneuvering through code challenges mixed with the descriptive nature of a world that relies more on imagination than something as limited as rendered images. Creating a place that players can enjoy has always been a deeply fulfilling hobby…and now, occupation. I’m really fortunate! Writing for Iron Realms is really the best job ever. And, until graphics cards catch up to my awesome brain, I doubt I’ll ever leave text-based gaming as a primary source of entertainment in my life.
Matt: What was your favorite part about building for Armageddon?
Laura: Finding new ways to challenge myself to make areas interesting was (and still is) one of my favorite parts of building. I like making areas feel lush and alive and surprising. So… secret hideaways, easter eggs, scripts to handle npc behavior, interesting maps. In Armageddon, when I started building, most of the world was well established, and so areas were much smaller and more detailed. My goal was always to evoke an experience for the player, tell a story they’d want to fill in the gaps of – whether that is with a crumbling shanty or a noble’s estate. I’m bringing all of that to Starmourn, and having a great time.
Matt: How are you finding building on Starmourn to be?
Laura: Completely awesome. There’s a lot of amazing features for builders, from custom exits to elevations to instances to hacking to props to datashards to the quest system to progging… the sheer amount of creative tools we have at our disposal to make areas multi-layered and immersive is fantastic. They’re all fun to play with and fit together in different ways. I love IRE’s graphical mapping system, which was a new experience for me – and I could not live without it, now.
Matt: What’s your favorite part of building?
Laura: Honestly? Spreadsheets. I love producing a lot of stuff at once, and I couldn’t do it without google sheets helping me plan out a hundred npcs at once (for example) or a bunch of prop tables for environments. As for actual inside-the-game building…ugh, really tough to say. The fact that there’s so many different things I like to do keeps me hopping, though. Once I churn out a bunch of rooms, writing npcs starts to seem really appealing, and when that’s done, I’m all excited about progging, or quests, or some other aspect.
Matt: Can you describe the rough mental process you go through when designing an area?
Laura: I think of it like getting a seed of an idea that I nurture into growth step by step. It might be as simple as a couple of key words (for instance ‘abandoned spacestation’), which I then need to flesh out. I’ll look at images and inspirational artwork, read our extensive wiki, ponder where in space it’s located and what the spacestation’s original purpose was and what it may have looked like when it wasn’t abandoned, ruminate over key locations in the area (a medbay, crew quarters, a charging station for bots), consider what sort of NPCs I’ll need to create (roaming, glitchy, old security bots, motionless laser turrets). I also think a lot about what players will actually be able to do in the area as far as quests and such go. I’ll jot all this stuff down as notes in a file, work out a map on graph paper (I have a lot of graph paper maps in my house right now!) and when it comes time to actually coding and building things out, the process is really easy and fast.
Matt: What’s your favorite area that you’ve designed and built so far on Starmourn?
Laura: This is the toughest question that there is. I have built a lot of areas in Starmourn, and I love something about all of them. Benu Wen, the W’hoorn homeworld, has one of my favorite monsters in the game (a three-legged poisonous tripod-like dinosaur called a tridactyl), and I love how the lower gravity makes all the trees spindly and tall. There’s an area on the surface of the planet Song I designed that is devastated by nuclear destruction and filled with mutants. I love nuclear devastation AND mutants! Oldtown, in Scatterhome, is a creepy, half-flooded labyrinth of ruins deep in the asteroid, filled with roaming Bushraki gangs. I love ruins, labyrinths, and gangs! Gunurash III, the Krona homeworld, is near and dear to my heart, as it was the first area I worked on and I love its giant bug monsters and rocky, arid harshness. This is a really hard question, Matt. 😛
Matt: What kinds of things do you like doing when you’re not working on Starmourn? Do any of them influence your building work?
Laura: I’m an avid reader, and I love digging into new sci fi to help keep my inspirational synapses firing. So yeah, my hobbies actively influence my work on Starmourn. My favorite (sci fi) authors include Neal Stephenson, Kage Baker, William Gibson, James S.A. Corey, Rosemary Kirstein (finish the Steerswoman series, lady!!), Vernor Vinge, Kurt Vonnegut, Liu Cixin, Becky Chambers, Scott Westerfeld, Marissa Meyers, Ian McDonald and…well, many more!! I absolutely love fantasy as well, but my tastes have run more towards science fiction for several years now. As previously mentioned, I’m a big gamer as well, with an embarassing amount of hours invested into Minecraft and Terraria.
Matt: What do you think players are going to like best about the areas in Starmourn?
Laura: The sheer variety. We have every conceivable sort of environment anyone could possibly want to visit/do battle in with their character. Want a lava planet? We have it. Want a water planet? We have it. Want forests? Yes. Frozen forests? Yes. Frozen oceans? Yes. Deserts? Yes. Mountains, beaches, lush valleys, airless moons, yes. Sailing ships, spaceships, shipyards, space stations, shuttles, budding colonies, established towns, peaceful farms, factories, populated asteroids, unpopulated asteroids, corrupt megalopolises, ruins, shining spires…we have it all. You’re going to love it. You’ll never want to leave.
Matt: Thanks Laura! And thanks for reading, folks. I hope you feel a tiny bit more connected to our hard-working team than you did before! In a couple weeks, I’ll do an interview with Justin, our producer, as well.
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