From Star Trek Game Information
This Interview with Chris Graham of Assimilation Software took place on the 1st July 2002.
Armada Universe: Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Chris: I'm a 19 year old natural born programmer from the UK who's just done his first year at University studying Computer Science (The University Of Sheffield). I am also an obsessive fan of the Borg from Star Trek.
Armada Universe: Are you a Star Trek fan and which shows are your preferred viewing?
Chris: Well apart from being obsessive about the Borg, I love all trek. I suppose I like Voyager best, but only due to all those Borg episodes. I loved the DS9 CGI sequences they did for the Dominion War and I love the way TNG actually makes you think about philosophy and so on. My favourite film of all time has to be First Contact (I wonder why...). I am also a fan of many other programs, including B5, the X-Files, and so on but none of them have such a rich universe as Star Trek has.
Armada Universe: How did you get involved with the Star Trek Gaming Community?
Chris: Well interestingly enough, I started Assimsoft way before I knew of it. I'd been learning to write games for quite some time, with my last working project being a kind of real-time Worms-clone but the CGI sequences from First Contact made me decide that it would be great if you could actually do battles like that in a computer game. So I decided that that would be my next project. Over two years later I'm still here.
Armada Universe: What Star Trek Games do you own?
Chris: I own Elite Force, Armada, Birth of the Federation and Klingon Honor Guard. All great games.
Armada Universe: Do you have a favourite Star Trek game?
Chris: That is a tough race between Elite Force and BOTF. BOTF is incredibly addictive to me, but the immersion of Elite Force is just wonderful.
Armada Universe: Have you modded any of them?
Chris: Nope. I made a Doom 2 mod once, and experimented with Duke Nukem 3D, but since then I have been concentrating on programming so much I haven't had time.
Armada Universe: Have you been involved in any modding projects?
Chris: Not really. I've helped Darkdrone and Cythronic get some things converted though.
Armada Universe: Can you tell us about Assimilation Software?
Chris: I'd love to. Assimilation Software is trying to start a revolution in Star Trek gaming by creating the first ever big open source Star Trek game. Well actually since we started this has developed into a trilogy of epic adventures. It will take quite some time before we are done, but when we are, we will change the Star Trek gaming scene forever.
We are always looking for new team members; specifically, we need voice overs, music and level planning done. Our website is at http://www.assimsoft.com and our development is almost completely open, so you can contribute on the forum and download the latest alphas.
Armada Universe: Who is on the team at Assimilation Software?
Chris: I'm the Team Leader and Lead Programmer. Chris Hannosset is in charge of AI Programming. Gus does graphics, first-person mapping, some CGI, made our website design and does a lot of team building. Gideon helps out from time to time. Scott Searvogel does a little FPS mapping. Robbie Goacher does a whole lot of FPS mapping. There are also some other FPS people who may be helping soon, but I am taking a back seat to this. pompellid has done some music and voiceovers. Kode works on Graphics, Storyline, and helps out a lot organising things on the forums. Graeme is our trek tech guy who is great with LCARS graphics, and the storyline. Steven is learning CGI animation very fast indeed, and works on the storyline. Kevin does graphics for us. I hope I haven't missed anyone out!
Armada Universe: What are your main goals?
Chris: We intend to create a trilogy of Star Trek games based around an ongoing and very complex storyline, that feature First person maps (Elite force style), Space battles (Klingon Academy style), and CGI animations.
Armada Universe: What projects are you currently working on?
Chris: Our first game is called "The Resistance: Final Line" and is the primary development we are doing. But we have also been planning the storylines for the second two games: "The Resistance: Dark Incursion" and "The Resistance: Aftermath". We are still at a stage where the engine we are writing hasn't fully developed (its called the "ass engine") So most of the work is actually going towards that. Steven is working on "The Assimsoft Mod Pack" which is going to provide overhauls to a number of major games (Armada being the first).
The UTMV is what our in-house editor package has turned into. It allows editing of hardpoints for all versions of Armada and SFC, and viewing for almost all trek game formats around. It is the only Bridge Commander nif file viewer available to our knowledge, as we worked out most of the specs for that format. The milkshape plugins for milkshape, that I have written allow SFC exporting/importing and Armada exporting. I was experimenting with Bridge Commander exporting but we just don't know enough about the format yet to see why it doesn't work.
And finally there's the Trek Reference Database, a public database of trek reference material.
Armada Universe: What has been the most enjoyable experience of working at Assimilation Software so far?
Chris: I think when I was writing the importers for the various trek file formats out there, so the in-house editor could load the files up was great. I'd spend maybe a few hours programming and debugging, then finally I could load up these models and see them displayed in all their 3D glory within my own tool. I could rotate, zoom, and so on. It's a brilliant fusion of technology and art.
Armada Universe: You are currently working on The Ultimate Trek Mod Viewer, which is a very handy modding tool for quite a few Star Trek games. How did the idea for this come about?
Chris: Well I knew I would have to have a 3D editor for our engine, so we could get stuff in and hack it around. When I realised how many great Armada ships there were out there, and I found the Armada SOD file specification document, I realised if I wrote an importer and got permissions from the authors we would have the whole fleet we needed for our game in no time.
As I became aware of more formats I researched them and implemented them. In the end I had done so many I realised that it would be great to release my tool as a one program viewer for everything. It only took about 3 hours to knock it into the form of the UTMV. After I announced it a bit, The Great One came to me asking for me to implement hardpoint viewing, I did so and I got more requests for full hardpoint editing. So I did that as it was a great feeling to be able to do something useful for people (in comparison to a game that was still probably going to take years of work to finish). Someone asked me then to write a SOD exporter plugin for milkshape I had never used the program before but was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was. So I also made some SFC plugins which the SFC community were also quite pleased with to say the least. I didn't realise it but they'd been wanting these plugins for a very long time.
Armada Universe: How has The Ultimate Trek Mod Viewer been received in the Star Trek Gaming Community?
Chris: Generally, very well. I got a lot of people thanking me for it. There are always a few people who can't get things to work and flame it but I have learnt that its inevitable and to cope with it.
Armada Universe: You have also created the Trek Reference Database, can you tell us about that?
Chris: Pneumonic81 posted a message on the Taldren forums asking for someone to create the ultimate site of modding reference material. I had actually been doing something similar except I was only collecting episode references of where material could be seen. I decided to write a PHP system that was a bit like a forum organised into a topic hierarchy that anyone could post material into. It worked very nicely indeed and gave me an opportunity to learn PHP. I decided to put some of my own material in so I made about 1000 pictures from my video collection and put them into the system. The only problem at the moment is that of bandwidth but I hope to have that sorted out soon.
Armada Universe: What would be ideal for Assimilation Software and modders in general with the release of future Star Trek games?
Chris: I think one very simple thing developers can do is to release file specifications for their 3D formats. That way developers could knock up tools for those formats very quickly indeed which would give the communities something to work with.
Armada Universe: Do you have any ambition to become a part of the gaming industry, if you do what?
Chris: I would indeed like to be a professional games programmer. Unfortunately its a highly competitive industry (due to all the people wanting to be in it) which means very long hours for relatively low pay and an extremely difficult job. I haven't decided whether I could cope with that or not.
Armada Universe: And finally, what plans does Assimilation Software have for the future?
Chris: To change the face of Star Trek gaming by opening out everything to the users. That way, games can be modified down to the source code level if necessary and other peoples mods could be incorporated into new versions, and the games would never have to die because the most talented users could keep updating them.
Assimilation Software
