**I've heard that Nintendo has tried to talk you into making "Pokemon 2002" where you trade through the galaxy for Galactic Pokemon. Any truth to this?**
I don't expect Pokemon to be still around in 2002. I know this is radical thinking, but I base it on my market research and the precedent set by Pogs (tradable disk game for those who don't remember).
That's probably just wishful thinking, though :)
**Any chance you could tell us a few of the things planned for the real sequel?**
That's so wide open at this point that I wouldn't want to pin it down. The opportunities will largely dictate the form of the project. If it's possible to interest a game publisher in the project, then the sky's the limit. If I'm forced to continue developing as a "lone gunman", or with a small team, the scope of the project would be severely limited. That's not to say that it wouldn't be an enjoyable game. Just that it would likely be another small market game, hopefully a slightly bigger step in the right direction than Trade Wars 2002.
Things are at a very early stage right now. There are two other individuals involved with the project, and a third being considered. The two I will name are Bil Simser and John Glynn. Bil has been around the BBS scene for awhile, and was involved in the MBBS version of LORD (to name only one project). He also authored the CDX DirectX toolkit, and is publishing a book on DirectX RTS game design (yes, there WILL be graphics :). John is a very talented musician (music too!). He has a web-based recording business, Lead Mine Pond Productions (https://www.leadminepond.com), an eclectic musical style, and for some odd reason, a desire to score computer games.
Our plan is to put together a working prototype game and shop that around to some publishers. If anyone takes an interest, we'll forge ahead with a full-scale adaptation of Trade Wars 2002. If not, that won't deter us. We'll simply scale back on the production and plan to release the game TWGS-style.
Regardless of how large the production becomes, it is my goal to continue to release the game for hosting by small gameops just as Trade Wars 2002 always has been.
**What lies in the future for Tradewars 2002 and the Tradewars license?**
My view of Trade Wars 2002 is that it's a part of computer history and was a classic before I ever started poking around the code. My goal is to leave the current version of the game in a highly playable state so it can continue to be enjoyed in a spirit of nostalgia well into the future. As for the license, the name has a great deal of recognition value, and I'd be crazy not to attempt to utilize that. If I don't, somebody else will. There are already several other "Trade Wars" game projects out there :(
**Speaking of that, there have been quite a few games lately that make use of the "space trading" genre that Tradewars revolutionized and kept alive all these years such as the upcoming Freelancer and the now canned Privateer Online. (Thank those bastards at EA for the later) I've seen a lot of articles about these games that keep saying how they wish Tradewars was still around. What do you think both players and webmasters can do to tell people that Tradewars is still alive?**
I have personally been quiet about the current project. I want to have TWGS running smoothly before giving it any major push. It has come a long way and I think it makes a pretty good impression at this point. But with only a little bit of serious play, the game bugs start to show up and many people will not stick around long enough to see them fixed. Once I'm satisfied with the stability of the game and server, I'd want to try to get word out to the over 17,000 people who registered Trade Wars 2002 since 1990, and the untold number of players. The best way is probably word of mouth. The game server tends to get its own word out, as shown by the number of people who have registered over the last year despite the fact that I have never advertised.
Actually, if and when that time comes, the two best approaches that I know of will be news reports/interviews in relevant online and printed publications, and exposure through the major shareware download sites. A mention on any one of those sites can get the word out to thousands of people who will be at least curious about what's going on with Trade Wars these days.
**Is EIS planning to hire any interns soon? Uh.....a friend of mine...yea that it, who goes to school and yells a lot on his webpage he does on the side said he'd be really interested. He said he'd only work for McDonald's Hamburgers.**
Actually, that's a tough issue for me. One of my highest goals right now is just to reach a point where I can HIRE anyone. I have far too many things that I'd like to accomplish, yet I'm still too small to properly compensate anyone for their help. I'm constantly being offered help in many forms (except money, of course :), but volunteers can't provide the kind of effort that I need. I need people who can take the lead in various projects, and you simply can't ask someone to do that for free. Actually, the first thing I need is someone who knows how to run a business, and then perhaps the rest could follow. I have my nose too much in the code to do what needs to be done to keep EIS moving forward. Maybe I should have gone for a business degree instead of engineering :(
**What do you plan to add to TWGS in the near future?**
There are so many directions I need to go. Security needs to be improved (ie, added). I want to rewrite the server in two parts, a server core and an administration client, so the efficient server core can run in the background, even as a service, and the admin client can be run only when needed, local or remote. I want to add a feature to broadcast game information from TWGS sites to an EIS game list server, and provide a web site where players can search for their next game (similar to Micro's automated Trade Wars listings). I want to generalize the server so that it serves Trade Wars games, but can also serve other games designed for it (I'm working on rights to port Legends of the Red Dragon as the next title). There are many other smaller goals, and I'm always receiving valuable feature requests from customers.
**Will Barefoot ever stop talking about "fixing" tradewars 2002? (You don't have to answer this :D)**
No comment :)
**What kind of games to do you play?**
I enjoy all kinds of games, but I try not to play them too much because I can waste a lot of time there. On the other hand, it's important to keep up with developments in the industry. I recently played and finished Homeworld, Age of Empires II, Myth II, and Baldur's Gate. I'm most interested in strategy games, which tend to be RTS these days.
**Favorite Breakfast Cereal?**
I never stick to one brand very long. Variety is the key :)