Welcome and Introductions (Post Hello's Here)

[BuzWeaver]

Hello All.

[Cairenn]

Hi BuzWeaver.

[Greeen]

And another hello!
*waves*

Played since EU early beta. Nagged alot on Codie forums (same forum name as here)

Came by this site via Xukii.

*waves again and pulls out some nice Longbottem pipeweed, smokes a pipe*

[Thaloss]

Hello all! So far I love the game, I'm on the Landroval (not sure about the spelling) server. My main is Selethen, also Thaloss and Machete. I may try my hand at this interface thing. Great site guys!

[Cairenn]

Welcome to the site Greeen and Thaloss.

[Frosty]

Hey Everone, I'm Frosty and I've been working at Turbine for over six years now.

I'm "the guy" that came up with and implemented the skinning technology that
our engine uses.

My day job is the Tools Technical Lead for the game engine team overseeing our content pipeline all the way from the modeling software through our world building tools and into the packed .dat files your client uses. I'm one of about a dozen engineers that work on the "Turbine Engine" that is used internally for our different games.

Last year, I took a sabatical from my normal job and helped program the UI for LOTRO. I worked with a different dozen or so game systems engineers who are responsible for crafting the game on top of the Turbine engine.

Some of the questions I have the capacity to investigate or answer are:
- Can we get more IDs defined for our skins? (Yes, looking into it.)
- Why doesn't skinning work? (We all remember this one from closed beta - my bad.)
- Why did you choose such a weird XML format? (I'm an XML newb and this was easy.)
- What's your favorite vegetable? (Probably ketchup.)
- What was that hint you dropped about new skinning features being available in the month 1 patch? (What hint? I don't remember saying anything about that...)

Some of the questions I really don't know about:
- What are the sizes and alpha-ness of all the artwork?
- Blah blah blah artistic question blah click buzz?
- If a train leaves Chicago at 8am travelling 60mph and a girl is on the train and wants to buy 15 apples at 35 cents each, what time will the train reach Detroit if all the apples are Macintosh and not Granny Smiths?

-P

p.s. and the first initial is "P", not a one-eyed-tongue-sticking-out cyclops.

[Cairenn]

Thanks for the expanded introduction Frosty!

And I don't think very much of that train, Granny Smiths ftw!

[Windburn]

We even prefer Granny Smiths all the way over the other side of the Pacific, here in Australia! That train is *really* in the wrong business!


Ohhh, and I'm just here to say a quick hello!
I'm eager to get my hands dirty with this new skinning system (since it's sooo easy to work with). I'm a bit like Mr. Frosty here, except infinitely worse. I couldn't even tell you where the start or end to an xml file is, so I'm really glad it's implemented the way it is.

Looking forward to getting to know you all, I see lots of familiar (and talented!) faces from over at wowi, and I'm loving the direction this is going too!

Ciao ciao,

- Windburn

PS: Come say hi to me over on Vilya if you get a chance!
Character name is Evensong (A minstrel, so I'll even play you a ballad or two!)

[Cairenn]

Hi Windburn!

[Sabar]

Hi all.

First thing when I started to play LOTRO? "Man, this interface could use some fixing!" Being familiar with WoW and EQ2 Interface, I naturally expected there to be a website for LOTRO and here I am. Jumping into the modding scene early, makes it easier than getting in late. I'm a bad artist but I still like creating things, funny that. I'm a much better technical drawer than a creative one, but I try anyways.

More interested in the raw mechanics of the UI, but that isn't changable yet, so I might as well try skinning!