Associate Spotlight : Ted Southard

Welcome to the first Associate Spotlight blog! Up first is Ted Southard of DigitalFlux Entertainment. I had a chance to meet up with Ted at the San Francisco GDC this year, and talk about some of the cool stuff he is working on, which he has since gone into some detail in a few of his development blogs.

One word that comes to mind when talking with Ted is "driven". He has this sort of charged energy around him that just seems to propel him towards his goals. I'll let him describe in his own words some of the things that brought him to the industry, among other things.

Development is hard work. Ted lives near an ocean of his own sweat.
First off, please tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, and what do you do?

I live in Brooklyn, New York, and I am a network administrator (currently unemployed, for any hiring game companies in NYC that might be reading this, hint-hint, wink-wink).

How long have you been a member of this community and how did you first come across GarageGames and Torque?

My profile page tells me that I’ve been around for just a hair over eight years now. Back in March of 2001, I was looking to create some games (RTS and FPS at the time), and figured to give the V-12 (now Torque 3D) Engine a shot. I became much more active around 2003/4, when I shifted focus to Epic Frontiers and some other projects.

Epic Frontiers has a really sweet conversation system.
What first drew you into the world of games and development?

Oh, this goes way back. My dad owned a deli/candy store in Queens in the 80s, where I grew up, and we had a couple of arcade machines in the back of the store. Aside from stealing way too many quarters to play the games, we got an IBM PCjr and I started learning GW Basic so I could make clones of games such as Gauntlet, Zork, and others. The games didn’t work out too well (gameloop fail- c’mon, I was like 11!), but I loved the attempts just the same (I did make a hell of a paint program though!). Later on, I bought a Thinkpad laptop while in the Marines, and bought Xwing vs Tie Fighter, and got into mods and indie development via Usenet groups, and was hooked since.

Are you currently an active gamer? What did/do you play?

Sadly, my Xbox has thrown the Red Ring of Gnashed Teeth at me, but ordinarily, Call of Duty, Splinter Cell, and some RTS games. Ironically, though I’m working on an MMO, I don’t play many (they lose me after about 3 days, on average), but I am waiting for The Old Republic to come out (much fried chicken has been sacrificed to the hopes of it being good).

What do you consider your main specialties or interests as far as development?

My specialties lay in gameplay scripting/coding, and AI/AE (Artificial Emotion), which is fun. I’m running a fairly large deficit in ideas I would like to test versus those that I’ve tested, but the ones I have tested have gained a fair amount of attention (AIGameDev.com did a small write-up on my Interrogative dialog technology a few months back). In the next year, I’ll be coming out with some things that I think will show off some more of those skills.

Do you have any experiences with Torque that you would like to share?

Torque is serving me very well in the creation of my MMO, Epic Frontiers, and I’ve developed an Excel > TGB > TGEA/T3D workflow that helps with rapid prototyping. Tool creation is very fast, and the engine is taking everything I can throw at it so far. One of my best technologies, the dialog system named Interrogative, is currently implemented completely in Torque Script, and I didn’t strain the scripting in any way to do it. So, I’ve been continually impressed by the technology in the engine.

Tunnel Breaker is one of Ted's newly finished games.
Have you gone to any games industry conventions? What was your purpose in attending?

As a matter of fact, I went to about a half-dozen in the past few months, as part of my preliminary PR swing for Epic Frontiers, and my company, DigitalFlux Entertainment, LLC, in general. The more important ones were GDC in San Francisco, where I spent a few days in the Garage Games booth (and demoed Epic Frontiers and its Interrogative technology for one of the guys who worked on Xwing vs. Tie Fighter, which pretty much brought me into this whole thing in the first place!). I also made it out to IMGDC 3.0 in Las Vegas, which I also sponsored, and had a great time discussing MMOs with people like Richard Bartle, Jonathon Stevens, and many others. I can’t say enough about going to conferences, and I’ve begun submitting abstracts regarding Interrogative, so hopefully I’ll be speaking at a conference this fall as well. There is also the Austin GDC, which I am planning to make due to the large number of MMO people that show up to it (not to mention Indies).

What do you do outside of the realm of game development for fun?

First and foremost, I like adventure travel, and have been to places like Egypt, Galapagos, Machu Picchu and the mountains of Ethiopia (where I learned just how cold Africa can be), among a dozen other places. I also like to keep active here and try to keep fit, hike, and lots of reading- everything from tech books, to travel journals, to war memoirs, to novels.



I would like to thank Ted for taking the time from his busy schedule of kicking ass and taking names, to answer these questions and give us a little insight into what he's been doing.

Thanks for reading. More Associate Spotlights to come.