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Matt Dawson, the Lead Developer of Links Extreme, shares his insights into bringing this unique golf game to the market.
Zone: What is your official job title and what department/division do you work for?
Matt: I am the "lead developer" for Links Extreme. I am part of the Links Development team. The next project I will be working on is the next generation Links game that is scheduled to ship sometime next year.
Zone: Describe your job and the part of Links Extreme you were in charge of.
Matt: As the lead developer I was part of the design and idea meetings. I also divvied out tasks to the other four programmers who worked on Links Extreme. The part of the program that I spent the most time on and am proudest of is the animation system. Prior to Extreme we had a really limited animation system and any new animation that we wanted was a real pain to add. The new system made it much easier, and was a necessity, to do the kinds of things we wanted to do in Extreme.
Zone: What do you like most about your job?
Matt: I enjoy being able to be part of creating ideas and making design decisions, and seeing new ideas go from being ideas to being part of a shipping product that many other people can enjoy.
Zone: What do you like most about working in the gaming industry?
Matt: Making computer games is something that I wanted to do ever since I was a kid. I had given up on that dream at one point because I thought it was impractical but then I found out about an opening at Access, applied, and got the job. I like being part of an industry whose products bring enjoyment to people.
Zone: Are you an avid online golf player?
Matt: Nope. After spending months of intensive effort building a golf game I'm ready for something else. Currently, my favorite game is Age of Empires. We do have many people here who spend a great amount of time online with our game.
Zone: What made you decide to create/publish this game?
Matt: It's been an idea floating around here for along time, longer than I've been part of the company, in fact. We wanted to do a game that was a little less serious than Links LS and had a little more attitude. Many, many ideas were put forward and a few were selected to be part of Links Extreme. We have plenty more ideas for an "Extreme II" if this game goes over well.
Zone: What were some of the major challenges to completing this project?
Matt: Probably the biggest challenge was that when we started on this project (July 1998) we didn't really have a complete vision of what the final product would be. Each part of the game has evolved significantly, hopefully in a positive way, since that time. We were originally hoping to finish up before Christmas, but as parts of the game fell into place we could see that adding something here and changing something there would make the game more fun and engrossing. Another big challenge was that Links LS 99 was still in progress when we started working on Extreme. At that point, it was a shared code base and we had to be really careful whenever we merged changes from the LS99 code that it didn't break features that we had, but it didn't. During that period we spent 1-2 days a week dealing with problems related to merging code.
Zone: What do you like best about Links Extreme?
Matt: My personal favorite part of Links Extreme is the Demolition Driving Range. It's also the part of the game that has evolved the most since we originally started the project. At first, we thought it would be a two player battleship sort of game where each player would try to hit targets set up by the other player. As things progressed, someone (I don't remember who), had the idea of making a shooting gallery and it blossomed from there. I like the Demolition Driving Range because it's more action packed than any normal type of golf game could be. The only thing better than shooting balls at the ball collector on a real driving range would be to shoot exploding balls at the ball collector. That's the idea that became the basis of the Demolition Driving Range.
Zone: Is there anything you wish you could add to Links Extreme or change about it?
Matt: There were many, many more ideas put forward as possible parts of Links Extreme than we could possibly do. There were many good ideas that we simply didn't have time to do. As it is right now, Links Extreme is a pretty well rounded game and should have something for almost every golfer. I am really happy with the way it turned out.
Zone: Any other comments or suggestions you'd like to share with your Zone players?
Matt: On the first level of the driving range, try hitting Big Al in the privates when he's lit up. You'll get a bunch of extra points (especially if you are in 4x bonus). There are other "sweet" spots on Big Al in other levels, but you'll have to search for them yourself.
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