Cleaver interview/Part 2

In May 2005, Cleaver agreed to be interviewed in a Ventrilo chat session hosted by Bluetta. Questions were posed by a variety of guests, who either contributed to winning Cleaver in the auction, or won a ticket in three events Bluetta hosted. Llama recorded the interview. Part two is transcribed below.

Java, pirates and parties

Bluetta:	Okay, on to Dorel.
Dorel:	I was just wondering how the deal with Ubisoft has been going so far?
Bluetta:	Didn't we ask that already?
Cleaver:	Yeah, didn't I just answer that? Got a different question?
Dorel:	Not offhand, no.
Bluetta:	Okay, we'll move back to Ridestowe.
Ridestowe:	This is kind of, not a multi-parter question, but something along the lines of that. First, you were speaking earlier about the new games, this third dimension thing. I know that you've done Puzzle Pirates in Java, how do you expect to handle the coding for this 3d game?
Cleaver:	Actually it's all in Java. Jack spent a bit of time hacking, I can't remember the name of the Java thing, it might be JGL, it's essentially an open GL engine, although I think that might be a grand word for it, on top of running in Java, and it runs on Linux and Windows, I think even on the Mac. It kinda works. We're hoping to possibly do some stuff with this game, we may try and compile it. Because we're using a lot less of the libraries, we're not using Swing, essentially, which is all the user interface. So we're hoping we might be able to compile the executable for this game into native code and not have to ship the 12MB JVM with every installer as we do now for Puzzle Pirates. So still sticking with Java, for our sins. Sometimes I wonder about the wisdom of that, but my engineers are kind of, somewhat religious about it, and it's what they love. Certainly they can produce very well with it, so that's a fine arguement for sticking with it.
Ridestowe:	I have one more. Can I be your intern? Please.
Cleaver:	(laughs) We already have one. As I think I said, Lizthegrey is going to be interning with us, she's just pestering me about when she can come in. We certainly would consider it. Drop me an e-mail and we can discuss it. It's not out of the question, and I would like to take more interns on. We're not terribly well set up for it right now, we have a paucity of desks and chairs and computers, but we do have a bit more room. I'm a big believer in having young talent at the mill. We're gonna pay our interns, just not very well. No-one gets paid very well at our company.
Bluetta:	Moving on to Maiden, because Stevedave you already asked a question, I'm going to people that haven't asked questions yet, but I see you, don't worry. Go ahead Maiden.
Maiden:	Alright Cleaver, I want to know, why pirates? Have you always had a soft spot for them? Why not cowboys, why not intergalactic space exploration, colonization. Why pirates?
Cleaver:	Pirates are cool. Arr. That's actually got a lot to do with it. Yeah, I have always had a soft spot for pirates. I think my earliest memories is being a little kid in the back garden with a pirate treasure map that my babysitter had made and she'd burnt the edges, and there was X marks the spot and so on. This is where it gets somewhat personal, my father was working in the movie business and he was there and he was "Yeah, I'm going away". He was off to St. Lucia or somewhere, I didn't have any fucking idea where that was, excuse my french, and he points at the map and says, "Yeah, it's there, treasure island". So, I looked at the map and thought "Wow, my dad's going to a pirate island". So yeah, I'm kind of into pirates from a young age. I suppose I didn't really think about it much until sometime around, I think it was '99, when I'd been on the Middle Earth project and it got cancelled. I was digging around and thinking I want to do a different game and I was very tired of orcs and goblins and trolls and magicians and all the rest of it. It came to me actually as sort of an incipient bubble of people being interested in pirates. I think I went to a pirate party and it was just immediately obvious that being a pirate was lots of fun. Everyone knows what to say. This is so important. The fact that you can go on Puzzle Pirates and say "ahoy" and everyone like "ahoy, arr, matey", really really important. Then you look at the activities of pirates, it totally fits with MMOs. You're in a crew, with your mates, sailing around, getting booty. What more do you need for an MMO. It just all cascaded into place. What didn't come into place right then was what the core mechanic was. I sat on the idea of this game called Yohoho that had pirates in it, until I came up with the puzzle thing.
Bluetta:	If nothing else, I see that everybody is very excited that Cleaver dropped the F-bomb. You guys (laughs).
Cleaver:	I'm so bad.
Bluetta:	Maiden, did you have anything else, or was that it?
Maiden:	I just wanted to add a book suggestion, it's in my comments. It's a British book, very funny. Pirates meet scientists, Darwin's involved. It's just amusing if anyone wants to read.
Cleaver:	What's the book?
Maiden:	It's called "The pirates in an adventure with scientists" by Gideon Dafoe.
Bluetta:	Onto Pisces, through Dorel, her medium.
Dorel:	She has a screaming kid that she doesn't want on the mic, so I'll fill in for her. She was just wondering when the next YPP party is going to be?
Cleaver:	Good question. I don't know. I would love to have one. One of the issues is that last year we were profitable, and we're not right now. So spending a lot of money on a party is a little bit, not quite on the list of priorities. That's going to change real soon now. Then we'll be back in the money, it will all be great. So I'm actually thinking, not San Francisco, but maybe, and I should really get moving on this, my tentative idea is the "Pirates in Paradise festival". It takes place in Florida, I think it's Key West, just around Thanksgiving. I think the idea of hijacking a pirate festival to have our pirate party is kind of amusing. Just being in a sea of other piratey people would just be fun. Also I like the idea of being somewhere where we can get on a boat and sail around, and somewhere we can have cocktails by the sea. I think being in a beachy place would be nice. That's what I'm thinking, but we'll have to get our skates on. I definitely want to have something this year. Probably later in the year, when we're feeling a bit mroe fat with cash.
Bluetta:	Llama is asking through chat if you have ordered your Llama designed doubloons from Scupperer yet?
Cleaver:	I thought I had, I'm not sure if I've formally ordered them or not. He asked me when he originally posted it up, did we want a bunch. "Of course," we said, "yeah we want a bunch". I think Nemo told him we want a bunch too. Quite what a bunch is I can't remember. So yes, but I'm not sure if they're counted in the running total or not. I mean to check in on that with him. They're cool.
Bluetta:	I think I'm going to ask a question. I'm just curious, the game's grown a lot in the past year, unfortunately I and a bunch of people here weren't around for beta, but there's rumours that you used to actually have time to be able to play the game with everyone and pillage, and do events with everyone. Do you miss doing that, actually playing your game?
Cleaver:	Yes. I really do, it's kind of tragic. I'm just a busy boy these days. The game is a lot bigger, and so it's tougher. I'd like to spend more time on it, and my ratings suck. So embarrassing.
Jacquilynne (?):	Couldn't you just have some code for that?
Cleaver:	That would just be so wrong. That would be so against the spirit of the whole thing. Like "Yeah it's a skill based game, apart from Cleaver, who's got all Ultimates". Everyone would just laugh at me anyway. Anyone who cares knows that I'm not that good. If I was like GrandMaster or something. If I work at it I'm sure I could get to somewhere at least respectable, but I just haven't spent the time working at it. Bad Cleaver, naughty Cleaver, no cookie.
Bluetta:	At any point Cleaver, if your time is done with us. I know we originally sort of agreed half an hour but it's totally up to you, if there's more questions, whether you want to stick around or not.
Cleaver:	I'm happy hanging out for a bit. I had to come home to use my computer at home. I'm home! It's 6:30pm which is strange enough. It's very nice being at my house. We've got plenty of time.