Interview with Grenadiac
(Farklem)How did you get into modding Halo?
(Grenadiac)I saw PfhorSlayer's flamethrower mod for xbox in August of 2003. He was starting a project called Halo Map Expander, where you could extract some of the resources from Halo cache files. I joined up with guys like MonoxideC, Iron_Forge, Aztec...a bunch of other guys I can't remember now. I made it my mission to figure out the world bsp geometry, and that's how it all started.
(Farklem)Have you modded any other games prior to Halo?
(Grenadiac)I was on a total conversion mod team for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for about 1 year. We eventually gave up because the editing kit that was released wasn't powerful enough to accomplish what we wanted - unlike the Halo Editing Kit :)
(Farklem)How did you figure out the map files to be able to create Spark Edit?
(Grenadiac)Well, that was a real pain. I had some help on the mapfile format (especially bitmaps) from the other developer guys, but mostly it was painful reverse engineering. I have a notebook full of my mistakes and discoveries over the course of 4 or 5 months. Figuring out the bsp was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done. If you are interested, I started an essay that you can get here:
www.halomods.com/users/grenadiac/bsp_tut.zip
(Farklem)What inspired you to create halomods.com?
(Grenadiac)This is really kind of funny. Halomods started out as a small, personal site for my projects and for HaloPC map reviews. Then Source and MR-T emailed me saying they liked the domain name and wanted to help, and they overhauled it. I remember being excited when I got 100 hits a day - now it gets about 85,000 a day. I am still shocked to this day at how big it has become.
(Farklem)Have you ever released a Mod?
(Grenadiac)Actually, I never have released a mod for Halo.
(Farklem)Do you plan on releasing a Mod?
(Grenadiac)Well, I do have something I am working on...you will have to wait and see :)
(Farklem)What is your typical day like?
(Grenadiac)Well, as far as the site goes...I don't have a lot of time to work on it because of real life. I guess I spend a lot of time deleting emails and monitoring the forums, and trying to stop some of the nonsense that happens. When I do get some free time, I spend it coding of course. It is all worth it when somebody comes up with something creative and new for Halo though.
(Farklem)What current project(s) are working on?
(Grenadiac)I am working on Sentinel and putting together some advanced tutorials for the community.
(Farklem)What is Sentinel?
(Grenadiac)Sentinel is an app that will let you see what you have installed versus a server's map rotation. You will be able to download the maps easily. In addition, you can manage a dedicated server with a gui interface. We have some other plans for it that are still secret...you will have to wait and see :)
(Farklem)Are you planning on upgrading Spark Edit to work with Halo CE maps?
(Grenadiac)I am looking into this, yes.
(Farklem)So about your background. How old are you? How did you get into programming?
(Grenadiac)I am a software engineer in real life. I am 31 years old and I've been programming since I was probably 9 years old hehe. I had one of those TRS-80 computers with 16k of RAM (woot!) and a tape recorder for a disk drive...man those things were hilarious. I would say I've been a real programmer for about 9 years though.
(Farklem)Anything else you would like to say?
(Grenadiac)Well, I guess I would like to thank all the great guys that are keeping this community going, especially those that have been here since the start...too many to list but you know who you are ;)
(Farklem)I would like to thank you for doing this interview Grenadiac!
ROFL
