I understand that Mark is both a feature programmer and a Bugsmasher at CIG. Do you typically get assigned to squash your own bugs? Also, Bugsmashing seems to be largely (entirely?) directed at coding errors. Does CIG have a similar system in place to smash design 'bugs'? How do smashing code bugs and fixing design errors compare?asked by Amontillado

So, this all kind of lumps into one big thing – I know I'm always talking to the engineers and I'm always talking to the designers and stuff. Design is kind of a weird thing in that designers are the glue for a lot of different departments – and all the departments here at CIG, they work closely, like hand-in-hand, like how many times do you work with designers-Mark Abent: Oh, all the time.

...at least, like every day, and then also, how many times do you work with artists?So every single department is, to use the word cyclical, they all work together, they all- because you and Mark McColl will always work on stuff together.

Mhm.

So the tech content team, the tech artists, the regular artists when they are making geometry – if the geometry isn't working right with the tech then you have to go back. I know that Ariel was working on the port editor stuff-MA: Yeah.

So he's working with the artists big time over the past two-three months, he's been working- and then also working with the designers as well to make sure when they use the tools they can kind of go from there so it's like- I don't really think that it is a specific system to the whole entire company but every department has their own processes in which they handle the bug, like some of the stuff with the ships, I know you and Kirk talk a bunch because Kirk's like "hey, what's going on with this? what's going with this?" and you and Sherman were talking about some of the weapon stuff, what last week?

Probably.

Was it the week- or- I don't even remember..

Well, it's like, with the new Item 2.0 stuff, since we're changing a lot of the systems I'll go to design and go "hey, this is how I'm thinking of implementing it" because those are the guys that are actually going to do the brute force work of "here's the xml, here's the records, stick it all together" and I'll go "here's the flow I'm thinking, what do you have an opinion on? What do you think?" And they'll give me feedback, then I'll go to evil Mark or Mark McColl and- all other Marks are evil-RV: Even this one.

Even this one, [laughs]

[laughs]

I'll go to also- evil Mark because he'll do the asset and animations to link those together with the items so design has specific area, tech design has a specific area, so I'll go to each one to make sure that when I'm making this new stuff that they both work together.

Yeah. So it's a big mix, there's a- everybody has their own process and what they need, and it really depends what the bug is and what they need for it – who to talk to.