#1392403 - 08/06/04 01:44 AM
KOE from the inside out
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Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 55
Xeidos2
Junior Member
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Junior Member
Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 55
Colorado
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For most of it's existence, KOE was a bit of a mystery to members of this and other forums. I thought I'd post a few short paragraphs about what it was like working at Aspect Simulations and working on KOE before they close up shop here on the KOE forum.
There's no logic to the sequence of things written down. I'm just writing as things come to mind.
One of the things I hope to do is to let you know how close and how far off base some of you were in trying to imagine what was going on here the last year or so.
Here's the first installment:
Why Aspect was located in Denver.
The founding members of Aspect were all recruited to work on G2Interactives’s attempt at making Falcon 5. Gary had moved there from Oregon, while Neal Hall and Mat Herman had moved there from Texas. Gary was recruited because he had been lead programmer on Falcon 3. Neal had done terrain on Fly II and Mat had worked at Atomic Games in Houston. The reason G2 Interactive was in Denver was because one of the top organizers of G2I lived in Denver. Well the times at G2I were utterly awful from what I was told. Whenever I asked about it everyone shook their heads, got a pained expression on their face and walked away because it was too painful for them to remember. One person said the only good thing that came of it was that it brought together the people that would form Aspect Simulations. The Falcon 5 effort folded up and G2 Interactive moved away. Gary and Neal decided to stick together and try to make their own flight sim. They formed Aspect Simulations, LLC and started writing code for a WW1 flight sim, which would become KOE. The first 3d artist was named Sly (I was told his last name but I didn’t write it down and have forgotten it). The first plane made was the Fokker Dr.1.
The name I asked how the name Aspect Simulations was chosen. I was told there was no special meaning or purpose behind it. They had written several names down on a piece of paper and Aspect was chosen not because it was a favorite but because it was the one name that was least objected to.
The office. I was amused when some people said they were going to come to Denver and look us up to find out what was happening to KOE. They never would have found us. We were located in an ordinary office building that was located in the middle of an ordinary complex, that was located in the part of Denver called the DTC, or Denver Technical Center. The only thing remarkable about the place was that there was an open field across the road that had a bunch of praire dogs living there. Being from the mid-west, seeing praire dogs was a new experience for me. The only indication that Aspect was even there was a little 6” by 6” glass placard outside the inner hallway door. If a person drove by there was no way they would know we were even there, unless they drove through the parking lot late at night and saw people working at computers and moving joysticks.
When people wrote on the forums about Aspect and they were trying to imagine what we were up to while working on KOE, I got the impression they thought we must be some company with 30 or 40 people and a large office support staff. The fact was there never was any support staff. The most we ever had in the office was four people. Ed worked for us remotely (he shuttled between the US and the UK).
The office was just one room on the ground floor. One door to an inner hallway and one door to the parking lot. No one had a phone at their desk. Everyone except me had a cell phone. I think I’m the only one on the planet without one and I’d like to keep it that way. Gary and Neal being the partners of the company had the glassed - in areas with doors that could be shut. Mat and I had pods. I arrived in October of 2003. The others had only been in this office a few months before I arrived. You could tell these guys were really focused on their work because there was nothing posted on the walls or any other kind of office decorations. It was down right boring to look at to tell the truth. Of course there was no need to be fancy or impressive as we never had any visitors. I hung some pictures on my walls of an airship and Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis just to liven things up a bit. I printed out picture’s of Mark Miller’s model of the LeRhone engine and had them stuck up like a sailor’s pin-up collection. I tried to make the place look like a game company by bringing the biggest model airplane I had and hanging it from the ceiling, like they do in hobby shops. Everybody liked it, but no one else followed my example.
We all had the same kind of computers and the same kind of office chairs. The first order of business when I arrived was to assemble my own office chair. I was told it was an aptitude test. If I could read and follow instructions and put the chair together so that it would be safe to sit in, I’d be allowed to stay. I did alright and never was sure if they were joking or not.
Living in Denver The first order of business after moving here from Ohio (after making the chair) was to get used to the altitude. The area where we are located is about 6000’ above sea level, which is 5200 feet higher than what I’m used to. Also the air is super dry. It took me over a month to get used to it. I still get winded after just walking up a flight of stairs.
Denver is the land of big SUV’s and giant pickup trucks. But to my surprise I found most drivers share the road well and everyone I’ve met has been friendly. I can’t say the same about Ohio and California.
That’s it for the first installment.
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#1392404 - 08/06/04 01:53 AM
Re: KOE from the inside out
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**DONOTDELETE**
Unregistered
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Anonymous
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Well, now. If you continue to have trouble finding work as a computer artist, you'd do well to go into writing. Thanks.
Quasar
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#1392407 - 08/06/04 02:49 AM
Re: KOE from the inside out
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Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 1,080
FlyXwire
Member
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Member
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 1,080
St.Charles, Missouri U.S.A.
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Very interesting reading, and I appreciate you're including these personal anecdotes and insights too. Oh, just a suggestion.........you might want to wrap it all up before "Chapter Six" though. Hey, who needs a cell phone anyway (makes two John).
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#1392408 - 08/06/04 02:51 AM
Re: KOE from the inside out
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**DONOTDELETE**
Unregistered
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Anonymous
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EH, no cell phones and beepers for me either... hell no chairs for that matter, my systems have always been on a coffee type table and i sit on the floor, as its always been since 1990 I dont think ive ever used chairs in the places ive lived ;P
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#1392414 - 08/06/04 07:40 PM
Re: KOE from the inside out
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**DONOTDELETE**
Unregistered
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Anonymous
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Tried on occasion, just doesnt suit me for around the house. My Girlfriend who's into all that metaphysical stuff (not me) says it must have something to do with making me feel grounded.... ill buy that for a dollar.
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#1392415 - 08/06/04 10:34 PM
Re: KOE from the inside out
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**DONOTDELETE**
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Anonymous
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Excellent stories, Thanks!. the stories and the e-mail you posted will keep me coming back here. I have to have a cell phone for work, I'm sure I look like the stero typical cellphone yapping driver going too slow then too fast taking up 2 lanes and have lost the ability to use turn signals. Wish that I didn't but the world has become too pushy not to have one.
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#1392416 - 08/07/04 02:41 AM
Re: KOE from the inside out
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Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 55
Xeidos2
Junior Member
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Junior Member
Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 55
Colorado
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Some more comments about working in the office. It was the quietess place I've ever worked. It was more quiet than a library. Everybody listened to music, but they all used headphones. I had to buy a set when I first got to Denver. I bought a cheap one with a short cord and I kept choking myself when I moved around my desk. The only time people talked and had a conversation was about 15 minutes after quitting time. (No body left early) People quickly learned not to let me tell a sea story from my Navy days for once I got started it was hard to shut me off. Nobody went out for lunch. After a couple of weeks I found out why. There weren't any eating places close by and the ones you could drive to were twice as expensive as what I was used to. So I started packing lunch like the others. Well Neal didn't pack a lunch. He would come out of his cave and get a Dr. Pepper and then go back into his cave (he kept his office lights low all the time and it looked like a cave) and we wouldn't see him again till the end of the day. As a group we went out to lunch only twice. The first time was when I first arrived. The second time was when I took everyone out to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight. There's a restaurant right at the edge of the tarmack at the airport in Centennial. It's one of the busiest GA airports in the USA. We sat and watched the planes come and go and tried to figure out how the frame rate managed to stay so high. The buffalo burgers were good too. Another thing about this office that made it different than a regular game company was that everyone except myself had a family to go home to. It's amazing how having a wife and kids grows a person up and makes them more mature. Of course from overhearing Mat's phone conversations (when you work in pods it's impossible not to overhear)it sounded like he was was the ring leader or a three-ring circus. Kind of what you expect when someone has 4 small kids. That's it for tonight. I'll quit before I get to chapter 11.
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#1392418 - 08/07/04 03:08 PM
Re: KOE from the inside out
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 9,522
Wklink
Permanent Latrine Orderly
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Permanent Latrine Orderly
Hotshot
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 9,522
Olympia, Washington
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Interesting.
So, what did you think of the beers there.
Laughing Lab was one of my favorates.
Was at Ft. Carson (just down the road at Colorado Springs for those that don't know) for about three years.
I love Colorado. I plan on retiring there. I have about four acres that I bought up in the mountains west of Denver. You think 6K is high, I am at 9 thousand feet there.
I highly recommend folks check out that area. Denver is too big for me (small town boy, anything over 150 thousand is too big for me) but the entire area is really pleasant to live in. What strikes me about Colorado is how sunny it is there. Even on the worst days you can almost always expect the sun to come out.
I really do miss it. If I can find them I will post some of the latest shots of me up near my land.
The artist formerly known as SimHq Tom Cofield
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#1392419 - 08/07/04 05:13 PM
Re: KOE from the inside out
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Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 55
Xeidos2
Junior Member
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Junior Member
Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 55
Colorado
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I'm sure I'll lose what little credibility I have left with the forum members when I say this, but I don't drink beer. I tried it a little at art school and while in the Navy, but I never acquired a taste for it. Coors is just down the road so I'm sure Denver people know their beer, but I'm not one of them. I've been in the Denver area 10 months, but I haven't been downtown yet. I live in Parker, which is on the SE corner of Denver. I look to the NW and see suburban sprawl reaching all the way to the mountains. I look to the south and I see Pike's Peak. To the SW it's still open praire. I saw a hawk catch his lunch while walking to the grocery store last week. Lots of reminders all around that I'm in the west. Sometimes I'm tempted to go buy a cowboy hat so I'll fit in with the locals, but I know they'd never let me back home in Ohio if I did. Colorado has had a bad drought the last couple years and I never saw it rain until just a few months ago. Now we're in what they call the monsoon season. Every morning has been sunny and bright. But around 3 o'clock it starts to cloud over and at 5 o'clock there's a big thunderstorm rolling through and by 6 the skies are clear again. It's so regular you can set your clock by it. I find it interesting that the Avsim people are having their big convention here this year. (Avsim is a large forum for MSFS people) Apparently the big attractions is that they've arranged for their attendees to have access to the big UAL full-motion simulators which are located here. I paniced a little bit when I thought they also might be coming to Denver to look up Aspect and to string us up for not answering our e-mails about KOE.
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#1392420 - 08/08/04 02:39 AM
Re: KOE from the inside out
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Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 55
Xeidos2
Junior Member
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Junior Member
Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 55
Colorado
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Office discussions and work assignments.
No politics discussed. At least not when I was around. You see, I was the last one to join the team of people who worked in the office. I got the feeling that politics had been discussed quite a bit before I arrived and whenever the subject came up, rather than open up old wounds, people just moved the conversation onto other things.
Traffic wasn't too bad. Mat was about the only one who got stuck in bad jams.
Snow was an issue. The winter before I arrived the whole city had been buried under 5 feet of snow in one day. The whole place came to a standstill for two days while people tried to dig out. Everybody had stories to tell me about what happened to them during the big snow of 03. Well because of this all the old timers got nervous whenever the snow started to come down, thinking that we might get snowed in again. Everybody had computers set up at home, so we'd all burn CD's with our current files and people would take the cd's home with them so they could keep working at home just in case they got snowed in again. That happened two or three times. The cities around here do a real good job of keeping the roads clear so driving wasn't a problem. The coldest it ever got was -10 degrees F. The more unusal thing was how long the snow kept coming. We were still getting 1 or 2 inches of snow until the middle of May.
We all had war stories about working at other game companies.
Neal's favorite subjects were astronomy and the Kansas City Chiefs. He also knew a tremendous amount about all sorts of things to do with Pitcairin Island (sp?) (the place where the mutineers from HMS Bounty escaped to)
Gary had flying stories from flying his Pitts Special between Oregon and Colorado.
Mat had stories to tell too, but he would only allow himself time to tell one at a time. After the first story he'd stop and say, "Gotta get back to work." Of course we all had more stories to tell but after Mat went back to work, the rest of us would too. No one wanted to look like a slacker. Mat was one of the most disciplined people regarding time management that I've ever met. It was obvious why Gary had him be in charge of keeping things on schedule. Mat was also in charge of building up the data base for the campaign element in KOE. While he said he didn't know much about WW1 when he started on the project, within a few months he had become a walking encyclipedia of details. He knew way too much about all the different ranks in the German service and all of their different medals and the history of the different French squadrons and a lot of other things. He knew all of these weird career paths that different pilots had taken and he plagued Gary with a thousand questions, trying to figure out how to design things so that the game could accurately reflect history. He and Gary spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to manage all the massive amounts of information he had collected. Mat was a like a kid at Christmas time the first time he saw the game build a map with all of his aerodromes in place. Then he changed the date and the aerodromes moved and the front lines shifted. It was like watching Thomas Edison when the first light bulb went on.
Gary and Neal did the programming. I have no idea how programmers do what they do. In the staff meetings I'd be excused whenever the topic turned to programming. While I enjoy listening to people talk when they know what they're talking about, even if I don't understand the subject, they'd still ask me to leave. I guess they didn't want to be distracted by watching my eyes glaze over. About the only story about Gary others might be interested in is Gary and his track ball. Gary has this track ball that's unlike any I've seen before. I was completely baffled by it the one time I tried to use it. Gary was showing me KOE for one of the first times and a mouse click was required for going on and I was completely stumped by how the track ball worked. I was feeling stupid until someone said Gary doesn't need to password protect his computer because nobody can get on it because nobody else can figure out how his trackball works.
I was the one man art department. I'll save my story for the next chapter.
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#1392422 - 08/08/04 11:01 AM
Re: KOE from the inside out
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Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 1,080
FlyXwire
Member
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Member
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 1,080
St.Charles, Missouri U.S.A.
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This is totally cool!!! What a gem of a "behind the doors" look at indy game development! Geesh, you guys had a tremendous work-ethic too.............as it stands now it certainly sounds like much must have been accomplished in the build process (who could just up and throw all this hard work away.......besides Destineer that is). :rolleyes: Xeidos2, did you do the internal modeling for KOE's aircraft: [img] http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0UwAAAGYaw...441495553218358[/img] This is fantastic art in itself, and always amazed me as do the necessity of the detail. Was this "inside-out" modeling approach deemed the most authentic way to build the aircraft from the ground up, so that questions about fore-and-aft balance (CG), and fuel consumption weight shift for example could be incorporated into the flight modeling code.............not to mention providing the "underneath" layer for enabling KOE's damage modeling system? Don't let me interrupt your story-telling Xeidos2, but is this asking questions as the plot evolves ok (as long as we're not asking you to reveal any trade secrets that is)?
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Exodus
by RedOneAlpha. 04/18/24 05:46 PM
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