| Apolyton: |
Do you still play C:CtP and/or CtP2 yourself? If not, when was the last time you played it?
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| David Ray: |
Last time I played it was about a year and a half ago. Although fairly recently a friend of mine who I've met since leaving Activision discovered CTP2 and started playing it. He called me over to see it and told me that I should try it out if I hadn't already because he knew I liked strategy games. That was good for laugh. 
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| Apolyton: |
Have you ever played CtP2 (or C:CtP for that matter) with any of the fan-made mods? If so, which one(s) and what did you think of them? Many of
the fan-made creations make dramatic changes to the original concept (that you no doubt invested a lot of time and effort in). What's your opinion on where the fan community has taken the game?
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| David Ray: |
I've never tried any of the mods. I'm not really a mod kinda guy, I don't normally download mods for any games I play. I play them as designed, and
then move on to the next game. With that said, I'm very happy that there are so many mods available, I think it's a great thing that we created something so flexible that you've been able to (most) customize it the way you want, that was part of our original goals.
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| Apolyton: |
Have you played any of the newer Civ(-like) games, particularly Civilization III (but also Rise of Nations, Master of Orion III, Galactic Civilizations), and what do you think of them?
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| David Ray: |
I've played most of them, but none of them really grabbed me like the originals did. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I don't have as much free time in my life anymore, so it's harder to get into "epic" games. These days I'm favoring the type of game that you can play for a short period of time and then go off to do something else.
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| Apolyton: |
What games do you like to play in your own time anyway?
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| David Ray: |
Lately I've been playing [first-person shooters (FPS)] and [real-time strategy (RTS) games] mostly. Most recent games have been Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Elite Forces II, Jedi Knight II, Command & Conquer: Generals, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and I've been a longtime addict of Everquest. I also really like the popcap.com games.
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| Apolyton: |
Now the source code will be released, fans are probably going to change a lot of things about CtP2. What would you personally most like to see changed about CtP2 as it stands today?
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| David Ray: |
I don't really have an answer to that. Everything I wanted in the game got put in before release. Mostly what I'd like to see is that the mod makers get the things they need/want to make modding easier.
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| Apolyton: |
What do you expect will the benefits for the Civilization community in general and CtP2 community in particular be? What do you think that we can expect to see coming from this? What are you hoping for, if anything?
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| David Ray: |
I think that you guys will earn a new appreciation for how hard it actually is to develop a game like this. :) The source code to a major game is rather daunting undertaking. It takes years of several very talented people to develop a game like this, I think a lot of people don't have a full apreciation of that. I think that seeing the source code will help that understanding.
As for what I'm hoping for, pretty much just that you guys get what you want out of it. I've read a few threads on the forums about featuers that some of you are hoping for. I hope that you guys can figure out ways of getting what you wanted.
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| Apolyton: |
What do you think of idea itself that the code is being released to the public? Do you applaud this opportunity for the fans to improve the game
further, or are you perhaps a bit reluctant to see your creation publicised for all to see and change as they see fit (running the risk that your hard labour will be ridiculed, mutilated or otherwise abused)?
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| David Ray: |
I love the idea of open source. It's really hard to make money if what you work on is open source from the beginning, but I applaud companies that turn things open source after they've done their runs. I learned a lot from reading the source to Doom and Descent when those companies released the source. I think it's an outstanding community service to do this.
I'm not worried at all about the code being "mutilated". Not terribly worried about being ridiculed either, but I ask that the people who are trying to figure out why we did things they way we did keep in mind what the min-spec for the game was when we shipped. Things like the caps on sprites and stuff. When you have 1GB of RAM it's easy to forget that the min[imum] spec for this game was 64MB. When you have a 3Ghz computer, it's easy to forget that the min spec was for 166Mhz. Times have changed, a lot, since we released this game.
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