Can you explain exactly what you do as the Director of Engineering?
Well, I have a hat that says director – so I have to wear that every day. From a general level, I oversee engineering operations, making sure that our development meets both our short-term and long-term goals. Our short-term goals are launch and product stability, as well as product (client / simulation / server) feature sets. Our long-term goals are licensing opportunities and expansion into other industries that require simulation technology. One a day-to-day basis, I meet with staff and check on status. When appropriate we meet in my office or the conference room to work out problems that come up. Another daily task is that I coordinate the release of simulation or server changes, and ensure that QA receives enough information so they can test appropriately. About the final part of any day is working with our contractors and resolving any problems that come up and evaluating our progress and schedule.

Has your previous experience in the telecommunications and petroleum industries properly prepared you for a massively multiplayer online game?
There are a lot of similarities between the information stored in the telecommunications / petroleum industries and a simulated game world. In our everyday world, there are trees, buildings, structures, equipment, etc. and lots of information associated to those items. There are great solutions to storing all that information and being able to manage that information effectively. We use those same solutions that work in our everyday world to manage the data in the world of Horizons. One of the really cool things for us is that when you place all the information about Horizons side by side with data from, say, the United States – you can’t really tell the difference.

Who do you work most closely with in the Engineering department?
There isn’t anyone in particular I work with most.

What's an average day in the life of Rick Simmons like?
Without getting into details about how I get up and shower, my day usually starts with reviewing the support emails for any critical issues that might have been reported overnight. I’ve got a task list that I use to keep track of the various developments in progress. Through out the day I meet with staff and check on status. Where appropriate we meet in my office or the conference room to work out problems that come up. We have customers using the Evolution technology for various projects. With our licensing of the technology, we have made a very conscious decision not to divert any development resources away from Horizons until Horizons is complete. If there are support issues for these customers, I work to resolve those problems with minimal impact to the development of Horizons. Another major task is that I coordinate the release of simulation or server changes, and ensure that QA receives enough information so they can test appropriately. About the final part of any day is working with our contractors and resolving any problems that come up and evaluating our progress and schedule.

Are there ways to optimize my game performance?
Within the game, one of the best ways to improve performance is to modify the performance settings located on the options window. General system changes that help are to close all other applications and make sure there are no application running in the background that use network resources (like spyware apps).

Will dynamic changes to the world slow down game performance? If not, how “real-time” will these dynamic changes be?
We’ve put a lot of work into making dynamic changes, like the terrain becoming blighted, have minimal impact while playing. This information does require extra processing and will use up some bandwidth, but we’ve made both those operations occur in the background. The changes are as real time as a developer sitting at a computer, making the change, and suddenly the change occurs on every player’s computer at the same time. Even we’re impressed by how easily we can change the world at run time.

How did you arrive at the number of 5000 when deciding the limit of concurrent logged-in users?
There are a number of factors that go into the maximum number of concurrent users on a server.

There is the size of the world and the number of ‘things’ that can be done. From an extreme viewpoint, we don’t want to have a server with 100,000 players, and everyone competing for access to the one merchant that is in the game world. The larger the world, the more players it can hold.

We use a commercial database, so there is a limit to the maximum number of transactions that can be performed each second on a reasonable hardware platform.

The server software can have limits related to the number of players in the world, and the processing of that information. This can be because of software design, or limitations within a set of hardware. For example, we could increase the user count by an extra 10,000 but we would need to spend an exorbitant amount per shard to reach that number of users – not very economical. This reason of economics applies limits to the database as well.

We took all these numbers into account when determining what we felt was a reasonable number of concurrent users. As the world grows and we continue to expand the world, we will be modifying our maximum number of concurrent users.

What is the neatest thing you have engineered?
I can’t think of anything in particular – in general, Horizons has been the most exciting project I’ve worked on because of such a wide variety of tasks and disciplines being brought together to make a completed project.

What is the strangest thing you have seen in your department?
I saw the game, Tango of Blood, on a Pocket PC. That is definitely the strangest, most unexpected thing I’ve ever seen. Who would have ever thought Tango of Blood would be ported to a Pocket PC.

What will the in-game mapping functionality be like since Horizons: Empire of Istaria is a seamless world?
Maps for the world of Horizons follow the same solution as the real world – you have maps that cover a specific region and if you want information outside that region you look at another map. For the in game interface we have an auto-scrolling interface that centers on your current position or point of interest.

From a gaming standpoint - What is your favorite aspect of Horizons?
I like the community building aspect of Horizons. It takes the resource and trade skills systems and allows players to permanently modify the world. We have a lot more that we’re going to do with community building and am looking forward to those systems being released to players. There is nothing I’d like to see better than an entire city built, defended and governed by players.

From a technical standpoint - What is your favorite aspect of Horizons?
Technically, we wanted to create a platform for the development of simulated worlds. When creating a product, it is easy to pigeon hole the technology so it is not capable of expanding beyond the original design. With Horizons, we wanted to be able to answer “Yes” when designers asked, “Can we…”. I think we have done a really excellent job in providing that platform and the flexibility to grow Horizons beyond the game it is today.

In your opinion, what makes Horizons unique?
Horizons is unique because of the extensibility and speed at which we can change the game world, both in layout of the world, as well as the game play in the world. Our process to add a new feature into the game is very easy and efficient. For example, if someone requests that we add a specific feature to guilds or chat, we can often accomplish that change in hours, or days, but it is very rare for a change to take weeks. This flexibility is a combination of the database, simulation, network layer and client all being built with flexibility and extensibility in mind.

As an engineer, don't you just think that Gnome Tinkerers are the best?!
Heh heh – definitely - and they look pretty cool when they jump too.

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