Interview with Scott Naylor, Designer on Wipeout 3 & SE

[Task]

Actually, Lance, what you're talking about is an Atl-atl. The spear itself is called an Assegai. Also known as an Assagai. Slender, like a javelin, metal tip, shaft usually made of dogwood. The atl-atl is used to hurl such spears longer distances and with greater force, as you described.
- J, who plays too many RPGs.

[Lance]

.
actually i am wrong
that will teach me [i hope] to rely on a thirty-year-old memory of seeing a diagram of how the thing works. i should have researched first. it seems that the 19th century Bantu assegai itself is a relatively short spear [compared to the old greek ones used as defenses against horsemen] of about 9 feet length. [i imagine that modern-day ones favoured by the survivalist cult are much shorter and relatively heavier]
an alternate version of the thrower name that i found when i looked while ago is Atlcatl. i wonder if that means that Aztecs also had spear-throwers. their language group is the one where one you usually find the atl letter combination
.

[infoxicated]

Erm... quite.

That's it folks - the window of opperchancity has passed - I'll be getting those questions answered as soon as I can now - thanks for taking part

[stin]

Is the reply coming yet? :-?

stin

[infoxicated]

I keep pestering him for it and apparently he's "working on it".

He is contacting people he no longer works with (and maybe hasn't seen in a while) in order to answer the questions more fully, so that's what's taking the time

[infoxicated]

Finally, Scott has furnished me with the answers - they can be found in the features section of the main site... or you could click :

http://www.wipeoutzone.com/features....y&featureid=86

But that'll open in a new window

A very big thank you to Scott for taking his time to do this - he's been a bit jaded these last few months, so to put the effort in for us is fantastic.

Hope you all enjoy it

[FoxZero]

very interesting, esp the part about the cloak. im gonna have to try that sometime..

big thanks to scott for the info!

[Lance]

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thanks to Scott for his patience in pursuing the answers.

the Wip3out team did a great job to turn out such a complete game with so few bugs in only 7 months. so many good decisions made, including the prototypes!

i found out about that aspect of the cloak when i was too unskilled to maneuver around the opponents all the time [okay, it stiLL happens sometimes] and just crushed through them, it was fun! now i sometimes do it on purpose
.

[Task]

A marvelous first-person look into the software development environment for WO3...

Yay Scott!

[xEik]

Very instructing.
Big thanks to Scott.

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[zargz]

cool pic in the beging of the interview!
ok now i'll read it ..

[infoxicated]

cool pic in the beging of the interview!

Erm... yeah... sure!

All I had time to knock up in my bleary eyed state before bedtime last night. I'll probably pad it out with a couple of choice W3 screens at some point

[jmoid]

Asolutely spot on, thank you Scott, and thank you Infox for organising it!