Back To Meet The Devs

1. What is your name and/or nickname?

hi, im katie, also known as k80, kt, and if im feeling especially schizoid, ill select from amongst ktee, k8y, k8t, and kaytee as well.

2. How did you come to work at Turbine?

mmmm. sad to say it, but it was as boring and simple as 'school connections'. i knew (of) a bunch of turbine engineers from my cs department at brown. there was a guy i knew from the lab who had spent time off writing a ton of our early net, database, and server code. when he found out id turned in a resume at a job fair, he went on and on and on about how turbine was such an awesome place to work, and how id really like the people there, etc. i was hooked. and it turned out to be true. ;)

3. What other jobs have you had?

spent all my summers working for various startups that decided they could sponsor an intern for a few months. its been really fun trucking myself all over the country, living in new places for a bit. and i had a couple of TA positions while i was in school, which was also fun, in a sort of trial-by-fire, bonding-through-pain kind of way.

4. Do you work on anything else besides AC (and can you tell us about it)?

of course we cant talk about it!
(shhhh -- new engine projects)

5. If you could add or change one thing in AC, what would that be?

personally, i two favorite AC feature dreams. one from a neat engineering perspective, and one from a playability perspective.

playability: user-driven aliasing on the client! how great would it be if we could write a generic aliasing system so you could effectively shorthand your friends nasty 3000-char-long names, or switch effortlessly between telling to 18 different people all at the same time?

engineering: ok, so when i wrote the treasure system, i designed it with a slick little system to apply different modifications to different types of objects (obviously modifiable swords have different stats than modifiable armor, or modifiable jewelry... ever wonder how that works?). the pipe dream at the end of the design goal was to even pump _creatures_ through the treasure system! it would be really really cool to add a bit more data, and set up some rules, so that every generated shore dillo had slightly different stats and attributes. it would make creature appraisal more useful, it would add to the realism of the game, _and_ it would really utilize a cute little system i took the time to arrange, in a very interesting way.

sadly (for me!), i think our content&design team has about twelve million other features they would prefer for us to spend our limited engineering time on first.

6. What's the most amusing or embarrassing death you've had or witnessed in AC?

not sure why im writing this out, but here it is:

i had this problem for a really long time where i would loose my pants every time i died. i tried collecting some death items, but i guess i was a little too half-hearted about it, cuz the pants! the pants always went!

one night id been sitting at my desk, playing for _hours_, and my bladder was making me miserable, so i asked my buddy justin (who sits about two feet from my right elbow) to keep an eye on me as i went off to the girls room, b/c i was in the middle of a looooong run.

and i made this big deal about him not getting me killed while i was in the bathroom.

when i came back, everyone in the weenie room got all excited, cuz sure enough, justin had gotten me killed, had no idea where id lost the body, and MY PANTS WERE GONE!!!!! i was seeing red.

as it turned out, i actually hadnt died. all a big joke. he just de-pantsed my poor little character and the rest of the team all played their parts. guess i looked like a big dork.

ok, so thats not so bad. but heres the embarassing part. the weeners had specially compiled a client and snuck it onto my play machine. hacked it to fake a special death message. and the death message had this line about my character loosing her pants. and id missed it! didnt even notice! what a way for a joke to fall flat. didnt even notice... _that_ was pretty embarassing, in a different sort of way. bleh.

7. Are you in an allegiance and do your allegiance members know you're at Turbine?

yeah, well, im in the big t-down turbine allegiance.

8. Have you played any other MMORPGs and are you looking forward to any upcoming ones?

uuhhmmm... not so much. kindof dont have too much time for plaing games outside of work these days...

9. What's the current in-office LAN game?

jeez dont know. admission: besides AC, the only game i really play at all is nethack. yah yah yah. i say it *rules*.

10. Favourites:

music: it changes. i like a lot of stuff. currently in my car: lauryn hill, stereolab, paul oakenfold, juno reactor, the controls, bjork bjork bjork, getz/gilberto 1&2, the sugarcubes, sarah mclauchlan, no doubt, dangelo, mark farina, towa tei, zap mama, macy grey, buju banton, . when i run i alternate between DRB and db. i just think theres so much musical genius in the world, it would be a shame to limit yourself to any one genre.

film: no idea. run lola run, the sixth sense, american beauty, and legend of the drunken master 2 were all really high on my list of current faves.

food: salty, spicy, or sour. anything with loads of fat. fat makes everything taste better.

sport: dont really care. sometimes i watch football with a friend of mine.

computer game: nethack.

11. What was the first computer game you played?

zork? i think? maybe it was a zork clone. was there a similar game called adventure? mmph.

12. What would you like appreciative fans to send as gifts?

public adoration.

heh.

13. Did you get your pre-patch Greater Shadow Armour in time?

baah. no. i did buy a couple gerties daggers way back when. but i think i gave them all away.

14. Fasten and then zip or zip and then fasten?

pants?
wierd question.
fasten, zip.
duh.

15. Because of the lead- and asbestos-lined walls at Turbine's offices, you all survive the apocalypse - who'd get voted Supreme Leader?

oops! gotta go! im late for a phonecall!

+kt!