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Subspace Radio Interviews Tumerboy

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited April 2012 in Galactic News Network [PC]
In a recent interview, Subspace Radio sat down to talk with Environment Artist Nick Duguid. Listen to the recording, and read the transcript, here.


Link to the news article.
Post edited by Unknown User on

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  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    Had a great time doing the interview! Tumerboy is awesome and I, on behalf of SSR, want to again thank him and Cryptic for giving us the opportunity to sit down and talk STO
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    Thanks again Creamy. And apologies again for being kind of spacey (ha!) that day. I'll try to bear listening to myself ramble this afternoon.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    ranscriber(s): Berryshine [Typist], Yumene [Verification]
    Date: April 8, 2012
    Original Air Date: April 10, 2012

    --- START ---
    [Music playing]
    Creamy: Right, welcome to Subspace Radio, the voice of Star Trek Online. I am DJ Creamy
    Tumer: Whoo!
    Creamy: [laughs] And I am sitting down here, more or less, with Cryptic Tumerboy. Why don’t you say what up?
    Tumer: What up.
    Creamy: What’s going on? We are here, we are going to be doing a little bit of an interview so I say we just get right into this. And, uh, first of all, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?
    Tumer: I’m Tumerboy, AKA Nick. I’ve been working at Cryptic for far too long now, what is it … seven, seven years at the end of the month. And, uh, been here since the CoH days, been moved from project to project a few times and most recently now, I’m on Star Trek.
    Creamy: Excellent.
    Tumer: Environment artist, um I model the world that you run around in, or, I guess in Star Trek’s case, you might fly around in, I guess.
    Creamy: Very cool. I know one of the burning questions that I’ve seen popped up here and there on the forums and in our chat and stuff is; what’s up with the taco?
    Tumer: [laughs] [scrambled] in Champions, there’s a big bad guy name Takofanes, spelled T-a-k-o-p-h-a-n-e-s, I think, and there’s always debate about how to pronounce his name and many people, both in the office and players of the game, call him Taco-fans or Taco-face or Taco-something something. Shortly after I started posting on the Champs forums there was a thread about how to pronounce his name and I mentioned that we all call him Taco-face around here and I just drew them up what I had in mind when I said Tacoface, and then as a joke I just put that over the default avatar and, expecting that at some point I would swap it out for something else but it kinda stuck and struck a chord with people and then I am Tacoface.
    Creamy: Alright, sounds interesting. Um, we’d like to know about Tumerboy the man. Who are you, and what makes you, you?
    Tumer: Uh, well [laughs] The Tumerboy kinda makes me me. I, let’s see, I’m thirty-one, I’m from Santa Cruz, just over [scrambled] and when I was ten I was diagnosed with a craniopharyngioma, so that’s where the whole Tumerboy thing came from. It’s a brain tumor, happens at the base of the brain by the pituitary gland and optic priasm and, um, a couple surgeries, another recurrence and surgery, then radiation therapy and then lots of meds ever since. Uh, where I am. Me the man? I don’t know, what do you want to know?
    Creamy: Ah, well, what do you like to do in your free time, do you play STO, do you still play Champs, what else, you know?
    Tumer: I haven’t played Champs in a while, I am trying to get through STO but I kinda got sidetracked by Mass Effect 3 for a little bit [scrambled] that’s all finished I’ll probably pick back up where I left off in STO. I was, when I started the project I started a new character. I hadn’t really played since STO launched. So I started a new character and I’ve been working my way up through the ranks without dev magic to autolevel me or anything. I think, uh, when I left off, I was about lieutenant nine, maybe. Can’t remember. Somewhere around there. Uh … in my free time? Yeah. Games, TV, Movies, uh, what else? I volunteer in a tank museum up in Portola Valley [scrambled] with board games, roleplaying games, we do all sorts of games. Games , games, games.
    Creamy: Very cool. Ah, I just lost my [laughs] all over the place here. Okay, we’ll edit that part out. [laughs] We have a question from KirianDarkstar on the forums. Basically, what do you do at Cryptic and I know you said you’re an environmental artist, but a little bit more detail on that, and what’s a typical day at the office like for you?
    Tumer: Uh, so … what I do. Uh … everything. Texturing to modelling to lighting to layouts. Material creation is pretty much all, all are on my shoulders or an environment artist’s shoulders. Um, in a lot of companies they will split a lot of that up so, um, we’ll have a level designer who’ll whitebox out the whole area, then we’ll have a modeller come back and model the whole thing out to match up with the white box and the level texture artist can come through and pass on that. One of the things that’s nice about Cryptic is that we, we the environment artists, do all of that. So at the moment I’m laying out, uhm the map for a new, uh, five man, and [scrambled] for us, because we are persistent, or we keep working on the game after we launch. That involves a lot of reuse of assets we already have. So, I’m taking the, uh, kit from some Romulan mining mission, forgive me I haven’t played through everything yet, and rearranging it and tweaking it and putting it in a new environment, adding grass and trees and turning it into a new mission using some of the old assets. We might make some new stuff for this, but not necessarily. You know, sometimes we, you know, some things call for entirely new things, like Utopia Planitia that you guys will see tomorrow, that we’re showing pictures of, that was all brand new modelling using a lot of textures from Earth Spacedock and other spacedock textures we already had, so I don’t think I really made any, well, I did make some new textures for that, and then [scrambled] laid out lighting and all, and, uh, trying to make it look awesome, detailing any props and such, so there’s a lot of reuse in that, so we’ll take … I built the entire room, the hall, the whole hallway and design center, but then you’ll see a lot of the same assets you’ve seen in other places so, um, we got some plants sitting around that you’re gonna see, uh, the replicator’s reused, a lot of consoles and stuff we’ll reuse like that. Um, we can’t, with the amount of stuff we have to make in an MMO, we really can’t afford to make brand new things for every mission, so we try to reuse and change things up and, and, you know, make it less apparent that we’re reusing what we have to. So, that mostly covers it. My typical day [scrambled] so, you’re expected to work an eight hour day and be here between the hours of eight thirty and ten thirty, so if you want to come in earlier and leave at five thirty, that’s fine, if you want to come in at ten thirty and leave later, that’s fine too. I, I’m an early bird and I can’t help it, so I’m awake at six, six-thirty and as soon as I’m awake and showered I come in, which usually gives me three, four hours of uninterrupted work before everybody else shows up. Uh, and then I’ll take off at five, five thirty. Most days. Some days I’ll stay a little later.
    Creamy: Alright. One question we had posted from one of our listeners, I actually didn’t write it down because I’m terrible, um, what is different from working with Champs and Star Trek Online, is there any difference?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    Tumer: Hmm …
    Creamy: What’s cool about it, what’s not?
    Tumer: There’s, there’s [scrambled] Star Trek does stuff differently, you know, every project that we do, we try to learn from previous mistakes, or at least try to do something different to make up for where we saw previous problems. So, Star Trek has, um, has things organised in a much different way than Champions did, so that was what really took me the most time to learn when I came on over here. Uh, you know, in terms of better or worse, it’s hard to tell.I think that, we are still all one company, we still share all knowledge and resources and, you know, and help each other out, so there isn’t a ton of difference between one and the other, it’s mostly just learning my way around and, you know, I guess with all that asset reuse we have to know where to find the things that we’re looking for. So it’s a lot of time learning where [scrambled] when you go to a new kitchen you have to figure out where the glasses are and where the herbs and spices are. So ...better, worse. I don’t know. There’s certainly a bigger art team here, which is nice. Um, yeah, we actually have multiple environment artists, which Champs couldn’t afford towards the end. Towards my end, it’s obviously still going. And … yeah, I don’t know, it’s pretty comparable, it’s the same work environment on both for the most part.
    Creamy: Okay, and what would you like to see happen in Star Trek Online as we move forward?
    Tumer: Um, I’m still learning the game and learning what we have got and what we haven’t got, so, uh, what would I like to see? Uh, you know, I am up for more KDF stuff, I’m up for more pvp, yeah, I’d love to see more factions added, but I totally understand why we won’t do that until the Klingon stuff is finished. Um, I personally like working on social zones, so I would love to, there was a lot of talk when I started of redoing DS9. I don’t think that’s really feasible in the short term, but it would be fun to do in the long term, even ESD. It functions, but, uh, the layout kinda bugs me sometimes, there’s stuff I would like to change in some of those things, um, overall for the game, I’m not a numbers guy, I really don’t, I couldn’t care less what percent my console is giving me, it’s more about the visceral feel of me playing, so as long as me playing, I feel like a badass, I feel like I’m doing damage and having a good time, that’s good enough for me. Um [scrambled] It’s all visual and, what I’m saying, more that tactile feel than actual numbers. I get bored when people start quoting numbers about, you know, something doing this much more percent. I don’t care.
    Creamy: [laughs]
    Tumer: So, you know, I’m not gonna be the guy who complains about, or wants, some specific console to do something specific. I am the guy who, I might some certain ship in the game because I like it a lot, or, um, I want something to feel more badass like I said, but a lot of that can come from effects and not necessarily be doing any more damage, it just looks like its more effective. I dunno. I’m probably rambling on at this point so I’m going to shut it.
    Creamy: That’s alright, man. Um, from one of our listeners, Kali-fal, he wants to know what’s on the agenda that you can talk about, that’s something cool that’s coming up or what is the working being done at the moment as far as your department goes.
    Tumer: Um, I guess I’m working on a five-man now. We just started it so there’s not a whole lot to talk about there. But just before this I was doing some preliminary work with starbases, which is pretty exciting. Um, again, can’t really talk much about it, but we were figuring out sizes, I was building the actual bases themselves, uh, the exteriors I should say. And, uh, figuring out how big they are, what we want to do there, what kind of other assets we need around, uh, just all the kind of preliminary, not quite whitebox work, but more, just the, you know, we have it all on paper will but will this actually function once we put it into the game.
    Creamy: Okay, in reference to this, that class Y planet map we saw on Twitter.
    Tumer: [laughs] Yeah, that was Sam. Uh, I don’t remember exactly what’s going on there. There were some good guesses on the forums and some of the [scrambled] know about it. I have not been involved in that map, so I don’t know a lot about it.
    Creamy: I was trying to prise some Tholian stuff out of you, but I guess that’s not gonna happen.
    Tumer: No, I cannot confirm Tholians at all, ever, uh, hint hint, wink wink.
    Creamy: Okay [laughs] Finger on the side of the nose, message received. Um, I know, uh, one of our DJs, Concentus and, uh, and one of our listeners named Brex were curious about ship interiors. Um, and possibly more specifically about race and class specific. You know, are we ever gonna see maybe, or do you even know, maybe a Vulcan interior for the D’kyr and I know we saw, uh, like, for the Jem’Hadar ship there was an actual Jem’Hadar bridge. Are we gonna see that for Gorn ships or Orion ships or specific race specific interiors?
    Tumer: Probably [scrambled] heard any of that. I haven’t built any of those bridges, uh, the Cardassian bridge was built by another artist here, the Bortas bridge was built by the same guy who did the class Y planet you guys were looking at. Uh, and the Odyssey bridge was built by Logan before he left. So, I haven’t really, I haven’t done anything on interiors yet. Um, I think that would be cool, I can certainly envision us doing that and would not be surprised at all if we did more, uh, more specific interiors for other races. I think a lot of that comes down to, um, if we launch like a Vulcan interior, we probably wouldn’t spend time to do a D’kyr specific set, but maybe if we launched another Vulcan ship we might do a bridge or interior for that that could then be used for the D’kyr. Um, I don’t really know, this is all speculation, there really isn’t any plans [scrambled] but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was.
    Creamy: Okay, and one thing I know people are screaming about, um, customising interiors. And chance of that happening? Or do you know anything about that?
    Tumer: I, yeah, no, uh. I mean, again, the interior stuff I have not heard anything about plans to work on interiors at all. Um, I would love to do it, but there are other things in the works first, or things that I am working on in the meantime. I think that we’re trying to focus on starbases at the moment and maybe once those are done we could focus back on ship interiors and trying to incorporate more customisation in there. Uh, but I haven’t heard anything, you know, any plans for that. But I’m not the guy who plans that, that’s all, that all comes from above. I know what I’m doing for the next [scrambled] somebody does, but when it gets to those couple weeks then they come by and tell me what it is I’m working on, so I probably can’t help you with, you know, grand plans.
    Creamy: Okay. Somebody wanted to know, again, I didn’t write this down because I was scrambling around at one point, did you work, did you personally work on Bajor?
    Tumer: I did work on Bajor but I didn’t build the map as you see it, the map was already built by another guy who left just before I started and it was mostly complete. I just did more finishing touches, uh, you know, I built the Bajoran exchange and bank and mail consoles and fixed lighting issues and added some more details, you know, just little kinda tweaks and fixes more than anything else. I’m not responsible for the overall map, I was kinda the last one to touch it.
    Creamy: You can sure take credit for it, for I know it was a fantastic looking map.
    Tumer: [laughs] Yeah, it was all me.
    Creamy: [laughs] Uh, a day/night cycle for Risa like the day/night cycle on Bajor, I know I’d personally love to see that, I’d love to see Risa at suns set, there should be two suns.
    Tumer: Uh huh [scrambled] I haven’t seen Risa yet, there’s a lot of complaints of it not feeling enough like a resort, I know that there’s complaints about it, you know, not having anything to really do there, and sure, we could do a day and night cycle pass for it. I did do the sky file on Bajor, or I should say I modified the sky file, the sky file already existed, but, uh I added the moons and things, um, it’s doable but day/night cycles take a lot more time to figure out and to tweak and get right because you’re not doing one time of day, you’re doing, you know, potentially twenty four times a day. Usually we’re not actually [scrambled] we’re setting it at noon and then six and then midnight and then six or something, so we have a couple times [scrambled] but, yeah, I would love to do the work for it, just, uh, coming up with the time and figuring where that sits in the schedule. Seems like that would probably be good for an event, maybe we do something that takes place on Risa that warrants a, you know, couple of weeks to touch Risa up and add it, modify the sky file and, you know, dress it up better. But, again, there are no plans that I know of for the moment.
    Creamy: Okay. Um, moving on to a couple more questions from the forums here, Roach from the forums asks, weather effects. Where are they and why do we not have them in ground zones?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    Thanks very much to those guys for making a transcript!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    Tumer: [laughs] Weather effects are kinda an interesting problem at Cryptic. We’ve talked about them forever [scrambled] and we looked into doing it in Champs, and in Monster Island in Champs we did kind of a hacky attempts to get some changing weather. We can certainly make it, we can do right now where, you know, where there’s weather, whether it’s snowy and blizzarding or rainy or whatever, where that is just persistent and that map is always set to be that way. We can’t do anything right now with current tech that would allow us to change the weather on the fly. So we couldn’t make it where, if you’re standing in one place the clouds roll in and then it starts raining and then they go away and then it gets clear and sunny. Um, we might be able to do, to set up a map where you, as you run through the map you pass through several volumes that change things, so maybe it starts off nice and sunny, and as you move through the map it gets [scrambled] rain, but if you ran backwards through the map it would clear off again. Uh, we just don’t have the tech to do proper, you know, weather effects like that, where it’s actually changing on the fly. Static weather effects, where this is just a blizzardy planet, that’s totally doable. We just need effects time and, you know, the proper environment to apply that to.
    Creamy: Okay, and Roach also wants to know your personal opinion, where did all those bikini clad women hide those phasers when Klingons could go on a shooting spree on Risa?
    Tumer: Oh, uh, well, you know. That’s a woman’s secret. You don’t ask ladies about that. That’s their business.
    Creamy: [laughs] I just, I got a real kick out of that question. Um, Blitzy asked, can you make the nice lighting effects stay when you change your costume on a planet?
    Tumer: Make the nice lighting effects stay when you [scrambled]
    Creamy: I guess when you change costumes on a planet the lighting on the costume changes, I don’t
    Tumer: Hang on a minute [hums] No, that didn’t work. Okay, my dev magic is not functioning ingame right now
    Creamy: uh-oh.
    Tumer: Oh, there it goes. Uh, I don’t know what they’re seeing, but I certainly look like I’m being lit normally. I guess if they aren’t seeing that then they should file a bug because it should just update, you should get the same lighting on whatever character you happen to be, no matter what costume you happen to be wearing.
    Creamy: Okay. Um, what is on, oh, Radkip asks, what is on the horizon for ground maps? I know we talked a little bit about this before, but they were a little more specific. With Taris escaping from Facility, quote, ‘I can’t remember’, and the D’Deridex Defender prototypes being mistakenly launched from the Romulan shipyards, will we be getting a Romulan themed map shortly? And teaser or even just any in-house-
    Tumer: [laughs] I don’t know of any Romulan themed maps. I think that would be cool. I actually really like the Romulans. My, my, my kind of, uh, what do I say, my pet ship that I want to see in-game is the D’Deridex, but I don’t know of any Romulan missions coming up, uh, that would be cool, but, yeah. No plans to my knowledge.
    Creamy: Okay, um, and I want to say, you really stick your neck out there on the forums and kinda take a lot of heat.
    Tumer: [laughs] Yeah, I put my foot in my mouth rather often.
    Creamy: Yeah, it’s great. We all love to see you guys, devs in general, posting. Um, why do you act like a lightning rod? You seem to take a lot of heat.
    Tumer: [laughs] Um, I don’t mean to, I just, I don’t know, I just like to interact, I like talking to you guys and [scrambled] I think the yellow name is what acts like a lightning rod, I don’t think that it's anything I specifically do, but I think that as soon as someone sees yellow in a name they want to tell them everything, you know, when I jump in game and I have a pink name, within minutes everyone is trying to tell me their idea for the game and, you know, some of them might be great, some of them might not be so great but I can’t even remember any of them by the end of, by the time I log off because there were so many thrown at me so quickly. And of course that leads to people feeling frustrated that we’re not listening to them and, you know, I certainly am listening, it's just hard to keep track of all of it. Um, so, why am I a lightning rod? I think its just the name, I think its just the colour of my name and the fact that I, you know, that I actually bother to show up on the forums so [scrambled] were flooded with devs no one would care as much.
    Creamy: [laughs] Alright, another burning question; Taco Bell, Del Taco or Mighty Taco?
    Tumer: Oh, nuts to that. We live in San Jose, man, there’s good taco places all over the place. None of them are chains.
    Creamy: Oh, that’s true. Yeah, I’m from the northeast, we’re pretty much limited to our four choices of taco here. I’m a Taco Bell guy because that’s all we’ve got here, but, yeah.
    Tumer: No, no no. That’s nothing, man. If you want real tacos come on out and visit us, we got good Mexican food around here.
    Creamy: I definitely might have to do that. Are we possibly going to see you in Vegas at the convention in August?
    Tumer: You know, I’d love to. I actually sent BranFlakes a note, uh, asking if we were gonna do anything, or like, what the plan was, because I haven’t heard much, and if we, you know, if I might be able to get the company to cover any of it, which would be super awesome. I’ve never been to the Star Trek Vegas con, it’d be a lot of fun [scrambled] if it’s a choice, for me its a choice between that and PAX if I am paying with my own money, and I’ll probably end up going to PAX ‘cause that’s where my friend’s going to and I’ve gone to in the past and I’ve enjoyed it. Um, so if the company wants to cover at least hotel or air fare or something, then I’m all for going to Vegas too. But, yeah, I’m not sure yet. I think it’d be cool.
    Creamy: ‘cause from what I heard last year it sounds like an absolute blast. I’m going this year, I’ve saved my pennies
    Tumer: Ooh, nice.
    Creamy: And I’ll be there. I know a bunch of our DJs are going, we’d really like to see, you know, you guys from Cryptic there, just to hang out, buy you guys a drink.
    Tumer: I’m sure some of our people will be around. I know Zero was looking into it and I’m sure Brandon is going to be there if nothing else, but I don’t know a lot myself yet, I’m still waiting to hear back about that.
    Creamy: Alright then. Well, um, I want to thank you for your time, for sitting down with us and, uh,
    Tumer: Yeah, no worries, man
    Creamy: … shooting everything around and, um, gonna throw it out there, you are listening to Subspace Radio, the voice of Star Trek Online. I am DJ Creamy and this guy is
    Tumer: Tumerboy
    Creamy: I want to say-
    Tumer: Tacohead
    Creamy: What’s that?
    Tumer: Tacoface, Tacokit-head, Taco … whatever.
    Creamy: Works for me. So, again, thanks for sitting down and we’ll catch you guys out there and we’ll see you on the forums.
    Tumer: Yo man, take it easy.

    --- END ---
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    Tumerboy wrote: »
    Thanks again Creamy. And apologies again for being kind of spacey (ha!) that day. I'll try to bear listening to myself ramble this afternoon.

    No worries...I have to hear myself ramble every week during my show
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    Hehe, I kinda want to know what you thought of the ME3 ending Tumber!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    not the greatest, but nothing bad enough to warrant the backlash it got.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    Thanks for a good interview Subspace Radio and Tumerboy.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    Managed to listen. Sorry for the horrible audio on my end. :/
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    thanks a lot for the transcript, some good info in there. sounds like there is supposed to be something romulan related here soon, i believe with shuttles and the vault last i heard?

    once you get a character to level cap you will proboly start caring more about the numbers Tumerboy, all your equipment till then is basically irreverent, unless you pvp often. and you should! would love to have a dev with real pvp experience, even if you arent one of the systems devs.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    thanks a lot for the transcript, some good info in there. sounds like there is supposed to be something romulan related here soon, i believe with shuttles and the vault last i heard?

    once you get a character to level cap you will proboly start caring more about the numbers Tumerboy, all your equipment till then is basically irreverent, unless you pvp often. and you should! would love to have a dev with real pvp experience, even if you arent one of the systems devs.

    another dev has said that the updated vault etc will include the rest of the reman space set.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    Tumerboy wrote: »
    Managed to listen. Sorry for the horrible audio on my end. :/

    I think that was just Skype being funky like it usually is
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2012
    thanks a lot for the transcript, some good info in there. sounds like there is supposed to be something romulan related here soon, i believe with shuttles and the vault last i heard?

    once you get a character to level cap you will proboly start caring more about the numbers Tumerboy, all your equipment till then is basically irreverent, unless you pvp often. and you should! would love to have a dev with real pvp experience, even if you arent one of the systems devs.

    I think what he meant is he doesn't care what kind of meat is in his taco :) LOL

    Although it would be cool if we had a costume for our b'rels that was a taco with the pylons/cannons sticking out... and our salsa flashing that bring red salsa color when we fire a torpedo. If it could do that I wouldn't care about stats either.
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