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Exaflop's Rebirth An Interview With James Sharman 
Exaflop.Org, one of the oldest game development-related web sites still in operation, was recently kicked back into action. They've got new features, new articles, and even more to come. So why are they back? What's changed since the last time you visited? I decided to ask James Sharman, game programmer and exaflop web master, just these things. Have a read... How about telling us a bit about yourself? After leaving university I joined SCI, first off I wrote SWIV 3D, followed by SWIV 3D Assault, the extended version with hardware support for the US market, published by Interplay. I then spent a worrying amount of time bouncing around between various small jobs (including the Direct3D support for Carmageddon 2 before leaving earlier this year). I have now setup my own business. My primary work at the moment is developing a cool 3d engine for IO Productions that is to be used in their as-yet un-named title that will be published by Infogrames. Why exactly did you start Exaflop? That's a tough question. There was never a day when I decided I was going to start a developer web site... it just kind of evolved. Nearly 5 years ago now I signed up with Demon Internet who (being the nice chaps they were) gave me some free web space. The thing about being a techy with free webspace is that you just have to put something on it, so naturally I started putting up a few bits and pieces of programming information. A few years down the line we shelled out some money and started hosting on a proper server with the shiny new .org domain we have now. I guess the only real answer to that question is something between "It seemed like good idea at the time" and "I enjoy it". For those who didn't read it on your site, what does "Exaflop" mean and why would you name your site that? Well strictly speaking an exaflop is a measurement of computing performance that's just under a million times more powerful than the fastest supercomputers about today, the sequence that starts off in familiar territory for most users goes kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa. Of course I still haven't explained why we called our site that, so here goes. Back in the early days of university Richard (The other webmaster@exaflop) and I were talking about being a demo/hacking/general nerd group, of course coming up with a name is always the hardest part. Richard had just finished a book called WetWare that contained a couple of smart robots who called themselves the 'Exaflop hackers', Rich suggested the name and it stuck. When Demon Internet asked for an account name for my dial up account (with the free web space) it was the first word I could think of that hadn't been taken, then the name just kind of stuck all the way to Exaflop.org. Besides, we think it's a cool name. Incidentally the two robots from the book were called Oozer and Emul, the names are still used by Richard and I on systems like IRC. For those who remember exaflop back in the old days, what's changed now that you've kicked life back into the site? Well, the biggest change happened a few months ago, and that was Richard and I deciding that we wanted to make something of the site rather than letting it rott. We started out discussing lots of things we could change or add to the site. We had been developing things behind the scenes for about a month, then we started uploading the new stuff. We have added a regular poll, regular editorial articles covering current events and expanded the news coverage to include items of interest beyond our own little corner of the web. We have given the site a facelift with some new graphics and a new layout. The biggest changes are yet to come though. What new features are coming up on the site? Well, we have large number of new documents that will be appearing alongside the creation of a few new document sections. The Poll will gain extra functionality, handing control of the poll topic over to our readers by means of a voting system and suggestion form. We have a new book section in the works that will include reviews submitted by readers and ourselves. We have also approached several people with regard to doing some interviews although we are not 100% sure if we want to do this yet; although the response from potential interviewees has been positive. After all this talk, what better to do than visit Exaflop.Org??? Or you can return to flipcode |