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The holotable was not quite promised to be in the original thing; it was one of those things we decided was so badass that we had to put it in. Paul, that's your baby, right?

TL;DRPaul Reindell says the holotable was decided about two weeks before release and he built its interaction code in a rush, finishing hours before release while also supporting ship interactions.

Paul ReindellSanta Monica Programmer

Yeah, actually. You decided, I think, two weeks before. They were like, hey, Paul, finish the holotable. And I was killing myself to build up the whole code behind it. The whole interaction, it's not an easy thing. There's nothing standardized. We could use a normal 2D menu, but Chris was always like, oh, I want to have this awesome holographic 3D model-driven table with animations here and transitions there. So I really killed myself to build this out. I think I finished it at 5 in the morning, one day before we released, so it was really super close to get this in. And besides that, I always had to support Dan for all the interactions, like entering the ship and opening doors and sitting down in the seats. I also wrote a lot of code to actually make the interaction of the ship happen. So I always had to switch between, okay, more holotable work, and then Dan was like, oh, and I need this door to have functionality to go on and off. We don't actually have triggers for that. Hacking something in really fast to get this working, then back to the holotable, and just a crazy two weeks.

Wingman's Hangar›ep037 . September 6, 2013·
Published on this date.6 Sep 2013