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| - The one technical limitation I’d most like to be without is the massive amount of inconsistency between different PCs and the compatibility problems it causes. At the moment, every time we do a game engine update we have to test it on multiple operating systems, multiple browsers, multiple graphics cards, multiple Java versions and multiple speed/memory computers with multiple anti-virus programs. The number of possible combinations is insane! We have a whole stack of computers just for testing but even then we can only cover a tiny fraction of combinations. To be able to write the code just once and know that if it works on my computer, it will work on everyone else’s as well - that would be wonderful. Voice chat is something we have been thinking about doing. It’s certainly possible but has all sorts of challenges e.g. bandwidth use, making ‘report abuse’ work, etc. so isn’t likely to happen in the imminent future. The graphics have been changed repeatedly throughout the history of RuneScape and every time people have asked if they can have an option to keep the old ones. I’m not even sure which particular set of graphics you consider to be the ‘old’ ones! If every time we were asked, we had put in an option to keep something (not just graphics) the ‘old way’, the options page would probably be a truly enormous mess of about 1,000 options by now! It would be completely boggling and a huge amount of work to maintain as we’d then have to test against those thousands of options with every update! Even as it is we now have to test every update in both SD and HD mode, in resizable mode and windowed mode and against all the options we do have. To have an options screen with thousands of options would be stunningly impractical. Not many. There are about three people who understand the RS Classic engine at the moment. Until recently there were only two but Mod Jack H has been doing a lot of work on it in preparation for relaunching it. There are also probably only about five people here who still know how to write scripts for RS Classic. It’s very, very old and most of our staff were employed after it was no longer in use. Depends what you mean by lag. We have a big update in the works that should make the graphics use less CPU and run smoother without reducing the quality. It should also mean more people will be able to run HD mode. If you mean network lag, there isn’t a lot we can do about that as it is usually caused by problems on the Internet, not problems on our servers. We do, however, try to design our games as much as possible so the occasional bit of lag isn’t fatal and we will continue to try to improve that. Mikeboi101 asks: What are you personally concerned the most about today in RuneScape? Lately there has been the "Merching" epeidemic, how concerned are you about this and do you feel that further actions will be necessary to contain the damage(s) they are causing? The attempts to price manipulate on the Grand Exchange are annoying but not a massive concern in the grand scheme of things. They are fairly easy to spot heuristically and we already have updates in the works to make it so this sort of thing doesn’t work (the price just won’t change). Cantristenon asks: Are you planning to add a new Continent? The one we live has started to reach its borders and seem like finished. RuneScape's world map is also pretty small compared to many other MMORPGS so it would make sense to enlarge it in that way. Yes, a new continent seems likely...eventually! Not at the moment. While it would be graphically attractive, it wouldn’t really give more than a few minutes of enjoyment if it was purely cosmetic. We could add it and make it affect the actual game (e.g. certain shops only open at certain times), however, I experimented with that once before and making it so you had to wait until the right time to do certain things mostly just proved rather annoying. It might happen one day but there are other things we can do first which I think are more exciting. I don’t think luck is too dominant but I can understand how people get frustrated when they get a sudden run of bad luck. Unfortunately, statistically, a sudden run of good or bad luck in a truly random system is a lot more likely than you might think. This is why you can sometimes not get any good drops for far longer than you expect and then suddenly get two good ones in a single go. I’ve wondered about making it less random by using random number tables rather than making each random decision in isolation, such that after a roll of the die is ‘used up’ you are less likely to get that result again until you have also had the other results the die can give. This would leave it somewhat random but make it impossible to get a run of bad or good luck. However, I’m not sure, and wonder if removing that would take something away from the game. That was a progress report of what we were planning at the time, not a ‘promise’. Unless the sentence starts with "We promise..." then you should assume we are simply being open about our plans and trying to involve and inform our players but that our plans might, of course, change. Trying to claim we promised something we didn’t just puts us off being open and talking about the future. RSC high scores are not currently planned. Djpailo asks: With the plans to move onto DirectX, what contingency plans are in place to ensure RuneScape will still be playable on even the most basic computers? DirectX will be offered in addition to the existing graphics modes. The existing software and OpenGL modes will remain available as well. In fact, we are currently also working on an update that should make RuneScape work better than ever on basic computers. Yes. Some of the technology has already been used in other updates. A lot of the time you can’t tell but taking just one (of many) examples, we added a feature to allow players to interact with things without having to have a visible line to them. This has already been used in the Chosen Commander (yes, I know it came out first - we used it before Mobilising Armies was even finished!) and Missing My Mummy quests. That’s only one example of many improvements we added to the engine for Mobilising Armies being used elsewhere. I’d personally like to see the NPC stack icons used in more places, as I think they could really help keep things clearer in crowded areas in general. Maximum experience is unlikely to rise. It’s already a long way above the maximum level cap. Zhang Fee asks: A lot of players did mentioned, that your IP (internet Protocol) has effect on several things in RuneScape. If Players click in the same tick rate on something the Player with the better IP gets it. For example: Flag at Castle Wars, Attacking a Monster in non-multi area, closing and opening doors/gates. Are you going to change this in the future? Yes, we are planning on fixing this shortly. This idea is currently on hold because it was made pretty clear by our players that they didn’t want us to incentivise it and without that it isn’t likely to be economical. We are looking at alternative methods of enhancing your security instead. ShamusHand asks: In your opinion, do you think RuneScape will ever surpass it's current engine limitations, like having our characters walk in a grid, or having the game run in 600 millisecond 'ticks'? Do you have any more advanced graphic features planned (bloom, Depth of Field, etc)? Do you think we'll ever have the ability to control our characters with the keyboard, like some other MMO's? Have you been spying on us? Are you one of our staff in disguise? :P These questions are remarkably similar to questions we have been asking ourselves internally. To answer your questions: maybe, yes and yes. Well, I think having a theme for a whole year may be overdoing it a bit. Next year will just be the year of awesomeness. Depends on how much practice you’ve had. Well, all the hardworking staff here who have created the game, of course! I just made the game engine, everyone else has made an awesome game using that engine. I’d either still be trying (I don’t give up easily!), or I’d be making a different computer game instead. Someone else asked me this in an interview recently, so I’ll cheat and use the answer I gave last time. What worked for me was sticking to what I had a real passion for and what I was good at. I never sat down and said to myself "I want to make a hugely successful game and make lots of money", that was never the aim and I think if it had been it wouldn't have worked. I also think it is important to have realistic goals. If my initial objective had been to create a game as massive as RuneScape, it would have seemed like an impossible task. I'd have been totally daunted and would never have got anywhere. Instead, focus on what you can realistically do - make a simple game, certainly don't start with an MMO. Most importantly, set an achievable goal you will enjoy. Make a simple game for the love of making that simple game as well as you possibly can and seeing just how well you can make it. Just because it's simple and achievable, doesn't mean it can't be beautifully crafted and something to be proud of. It wasn’t really a sudden, overnight decision. I’d been working on a self-employed basis for a while, so moving to running a company and employing a few other staff wasn’t actually a massive transition, so I don’t think anyone was hugely surprised. Yes, I still have it - it still runs. Not anything like finished enough to put on our website but one day, I really should post a YouTube video of it running. Yes, definitely. Lots of our staff play the game for fun in their spare time on ordinary (non-Mod) characters (e.g. at weekends and evenings). Some of them are surprisingly high-level. I have an in-game character which I use to play the game normally, the way everyone else does. Very few people know it is me, not even the people on my Friends List. Yes, thanks. Watch this space... Eh? I’m still here! Technically it is possible, but there isn’t really any point having any more than 2 billion, so it’s really unlikely to become a high enough priority to happen any time soon. Yes, we have plans to fix the bank so members’ items go into a members’ section when you go back to F2P and so your bank doesn’t get messed up. Not that often, I have to admit. It isn’t planned, it’s done in my spare time so just happens when I feel like it. I haven’t had much spare time lately, though. I, of course, read the comments to find the constructive criticism and to get ideas for what can be improved but the overreaction I totally ignore. Ranting mindlessly without even trying the update obviously doesn’t achieve anything, only well-reasoned comments do. We’ve been trying to be a lot less secretive lately. We’ve never really meant to be secretive, we were just very busy working on the game! We’re now trying to take a bit more time to talk to you also, however, we do still like to keep some surprises in store and have to be careful not to promise things we can’t or might not be able to deliver. Just for fun. Directly in Java. Java SE for both client and server. Our own custom framework. It was developed originally by me and has since been worked on by a few other people at Jagex. It’s a continually evolving language. The RuneScript used by RuneScape these days is totally different to the RuneScript used by RS Classic. It has similarities to various other languages, but is unique. 1.
* What is your daily job? Are you content developer? Game engine writing? Thinking about new skills? Eating cabbage? 2.
* What content would you like to see in RuneScape? 3.
* How do you feel about MechScape? 4.
* What do you expect from MechScape? 5.
* What skill do you think should get the biggest update? 6.
* How different is the game engine 26-aug-2009 vs game engine 1-jan-2009 1.
* Game engine developer and also some management and design overview. 2.
* More penguins! Lots more penguins! 3.
* Excited. 4.
* I think it’s going to be big! 5.
* At the moment, Smithing seems overdue, but I want to update most of them. 6.
* We have changed thousands of lines of code! We are currently focussing on making the 3D engine more platform independent, so it is easier to port in the future. Our new 3D engine, RuneTek 5 (RT5), has been heavily rewritten to make this possible. We think it better reflects our values, which have always been about making great games. They are currently in Nevada, USA. No, this is unlikely to happen. Wow, it’s difficult to choose just one! I’ll be blatantly biased and say Arcanists on FunOrb.com. If you want me to choose a non-Jagex game, I still think the original Half-Life 2 is hard to beat. No, I had no idea. I thought it was just another game, that like all the ones before would be ‘done’ in a few months and I’d be on to the next one. I never imagined I’d still be making it nine years later! I’m happy with it, but there is still a LOT more I want to improve. PvP seems to be one of the hardest areas of the game to get right and certainly one of the most controversial areas to adjust even slightly. It’s difficult because any change will inevitably slightly help one player, but at the expense of another and the person who loses out WILL then complain, loudly! I don’t think PvP has been through particularly more revisions than many other aspects of the game but unavoidably, every time it’s changed, it’s controversial and a big deal! I’m still determined to get it right, though. At the moment, I’m happier with the state of PvP in the game than I have been for a long time and the number of people we see currently choosing to PvP backs up that it’s more popular than ever. All the time. :P I’d love to do a RuneScape movie. It would be very good for my ego! Not sure if it will ever happen, though, it would be a truly enormous undertaking! Not something to do lightly. DeviousMUD isn’t really playable; it was more of a tech test. It runs, but has barely any content. It certainly wouldn’t be possible to release on FunOrb. I keep meaning to post a video of it but haven’t got round to it yet! I suspect the inspiration has more come from other fantasy books, games and films. It’s hard to be sure - it’s just what feels right! The client has already been ported to 64-bit and should work on 64-bit operating systems right now! We test the client on 64-bit Vista (with 64-bit Java) as part of our standard compatibility testing process each week.
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