Rydia Interviews Felorin, January 21, 2002

Q. Let's talk about the rumors. There's quite a few... *holds out a scroll that rolls down and travels across the floor* Anything you want to clear up? :-D

A. Some true and some untrue. Most untrue. Is that a good enough answer? :-) The lunatic that claimed three years ago the CIA was investigating Dragon's Eye was clearly wrong, by the way. The CIA invesigates things in foreign countries (or foreigners in the US), the FBI investigates Americans so it would have been them. If you're going to be a ranting lunatic, get the details of your story right. :-)

Q. What makes you passionate about your work and what you do for Furcadia?

A. Um, that's quite a question. Making computer games is my life's work, my passion, my hobby, my purpose for being on the planet. And especially huge multiplayer internet worlds, and especially especially Furcadia! It brings people around the world closer together and promotes communication and understanding, which is one step closer to ending racism and war. It lets people meet and fall in love and get married - like Emerald Flame and I are going to, and many others. Regular computer games NEVER make that happen. Furcadia in particular is part of the "democratization of art". Writing and drawing and composing music and such are not just for a few Beethovens supported by wealthy nobles or kings so that they don't have to do other work. Ordinary people can not only make creative works, even low quality ones - but they can share them instantly and easily with a handful of friends, or hundreds, thousands, or millions of people. That's a very important trend for a lot of reasons and we want to encourage it as much as we can. Roleplaying can be theraputic for people working out issues or sides of their personality they're afraid or unable to try out in real life. And besides, Talzhemir and I have always been NUTS about the anthropomorphic characters, like in Aesop's Fables, cartoons, furry fandom, etc. etc. I've gone by the nickname cat since I was 16 and first encountered Samurai Cat art and stories. :-) I also really like working for myself, always have.

Q. ...nobody to answer to ;p

A. Felorin has to answer to Emmie, and sometimes Talzhemir if she has her sword out. But he's still the head guy. :-D Does that answer your question? :-D Oh, I didn't even mention why I love DragonSpeak so much! DragonSpeak is something I could on for as long again about, maybe we should just move on. It is the part of the system that technologically and design wise I'm the most proud of, though I'm very pleased with the server technology I've made overall. Designed to be able to handle huge number of furres all in one world, and be very efficient. (We'll get all the remaining bugs fixed SOME day, too!)

Q. Do you have any advice to those who look up to you?

A. Since I was young, I always tried to go up to successful writers, artists, or whoever was at a sci-fi convention I was visiting and just chat with them like they were a normal person. I figured they'd appreciate it more than someone going nuts about them and their work. Though I make a point, when I see an obscure new writer, to ask them for an autograph - THEY I figure are still probably happy for the occasional rare compliment. :-D Programming is a crazy business. If you stick with it and get good at it, you can get a good paying job somewhere, there's a shortage of programmers.It's harder to get a programming job in games, usually pays less, makes you work longer hours, and sometimes they treat you worse. Fair warning. Anyway to develop your skills, the main thing is "Make up your mind to be obsessively determined to FINISH things". Most programmers don't finish stuff. A few do. The ones that do are worth their weight in gold. I also see a lot of programmers that ask questions, of me or of other people, and seem to have this "lost sheep" attitude that either someone will tell them how to do the new thing, or they won't be able to do it, period. The other advice is that you NEVER accept the idea that you can't figure out how to make the computer do something. If some people don't tell you, you could ask others - but a smart programmer would post to a Usenet message board where thousands of people will read it, the ones that don't answer easily ignore you without being perceived as rude, and maybe one or two people tell you. But asking other people isn't the way the strongest programmers tend to learn at all. You get sample source code and look through it and modify it and learn stuff. You find web sites and books about the subject and read them and learn more. And you figure stuff out by trial and error. You say "MAYBE it works this way, maybe it works that OTHER way. Which is it?" Why go ask someone? Write a program that would work if your first guess is right. After you try the program, you KNOW whether you guess is right or wrong. Teach yourself things. Figure things out. That's what really sharp programmers do.

Q. Rydia: Do you have any favorite programmers in Furc?

A. For one thing, I try to like all Furcadia players roughly equally. Whether they program or don't program. Whether I know them or never met them. I don't want to play "favorites". It's rough to deal with people's expectations when you have 25,000 or more regular players, and a lot of them would like to chat with the creator. I knew this would happen when we had a few dozen players and hung around with most of them... Then a few hundred, a few thousand... Someday we'll have 100,000 regulars, then a million. People will be even LESS able to get a chance to chat with Felorin or Talzhemir. Anyway I do try to be polite to everyone, whether it's the first time I met them or the twentieth. Whether I remember meeting them before or can't recall. But of course I'm only human. Timo's certainly my favorite programmer because he does work that makes the game better and helps me do my job so I don't have to do it alone. Of course we pay him to, but he's still my favorite. :-D And like I said, I'm only human, and I do like the people here that are my close friends - or my fiancee'! - a bit better than the average person. :-) The people I have a harder time being polite to are the people who try to crash the server, or dedicate all their time to annoying other people. Easier to deal with than them, but still sometimes a strain to my patience, are people who have no respect for or understanding of the fact that I don't have an unlimited amount of time to spend talking to THEM whenever they want to talk to me, even if I barely know them. Most people are very polite and understanding about leaving me alone if I'm busy. But a few people are very insistent, and try to talk my ear off every time they see me, even if they don't have anything to talk about and are just bored. I think it should be the job of my best friends to talk my ear off about nothing when they're bored. :-D I will confess I like the programmers that are independent and try to accomplish things on their own a bit better. And the ones that don't brag that they've STARTED a cool new program, but rather only brag when they've FINISHED one. ;-)

Q. Can you give us a preview of what's to come?

A. What's to come? You could look at the last newsletter. I might have a few more clues since I wrote that, tucked up my kimono sleeve... *Felorin rummages around in his kimono sleeve* We're considering making multicolored mouse cursors that you can patch just like you patch everything else in Furcadia. And something a clever ferret suggested (I think she was a ferret) to make it more practical to do things with floors with different elevations. These are all maybes, and not necessarily in the next couple of updates if they go in at all, of course. Just things we're thinking about. :-) I really want to work on making dreams download faster too, but that's going to be very hard work and isn't likely to be done any time soon.

Q. Let's talk about Emmy ^.^

A. Emmy is very beautiful, smart, talented, and sweet, and she's not sitting behind me looking at my screen insisting that I say that. :-D That sounds like a joke but she's really not. She woulda thwapped me with a pillow if she were sitting there when I typed something like that. ;-)

Q. What do you love the most about her?

A. What I love most about her? That's a hard question. So many nice things to choose from. I'm tempted to maybe say that she's got enough tastes in common with me, and enough tolerance of things where we differ, to accept me the way I am, as eccentric as that is. Well, 99% anyway - everything except for pants legs that are too short.

Q. Well, we weren't sure what she didn't like about the length of your pants, too long or too short, but thanks for clearing that up :P

A. Apparently that's more of an issue than people staring at me 'cause Youlanda painted my toenails purple. Go figure. I'll say I like her smile and her laugh best. Then her kisses and cuddles. And next her kind and generous heart, that drives her to work so hard to help so many people, all the time. But put that accepting me the way I am in there somewhere. I dunno. :-)

Q. Anything you want to change about her?

A. I think if I could change one thing about Emerald, I'd have a genie grant me a wish to make her health perfect forever. So she'd never have to catch a cold or flu again, hurt her paw like she did last summer, or anything.

Q. Outside of Furcadia what are your favorite hobbies?

A. I collect hobbies. Many of which involve collecting other things. I collect comics, fantasy, sci-fi, and furry art, dragons, stuffed animals, stuffed dragons... I love to travel, go to zoos and movies, try out new restaurants, shop, fold origami... And I'm simply mad about Dance Dance Revolution. Also collecting all kinds of games, board games especially and computer and video games. And playing them.

Q. Is there anything you'd like others to know about you?

A. I love to read too, and to write. And to go to the Fat Man's jam nights and bang on drums and sing. There's a lot I'd like others to know about me. That's why I'm a professional artist. :-D I would like to be remembered for the quotes "Live in your hopes, not in your fears" and "Information is the currency of the future", even after I'm dead. And Furcadia, too."

Q. Anything else?

A. And I'd like to promote tolerance and creativity in the world, and reduce the amount of jealousy, violence, bigotry, etc. I also very, very much want people to know that the finest belgian chocolates are even better than the best swiss chocolate. :-) That goes double for anybody who has acquired the reprehensible habit of giving me birthday presents! Also, anything is better if it has stripes on it. That's why I lean towards things like tigers, zebras, Aquafresh toothpaste, and Irish Spring soap. ;-)

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