The following article is from the Amiga Nutta web site.

I recently met up with the World Foundry team on IRC and the following interview took place. World Foundry are the team who ware currently working on Explorer 2260 and Maim & Mangle. It is made up of Chris Page, George Hornmoen and Ed Collins. I will hopefully be bringing you further interviews with the World Foundry team and other games developers in the future. BTW, the Dave you see popping up with a few comments now and then is me. :)

First of all maybe a little introduction is in order.... Who are you, what do you do in WF, and also out of it etc...
Chris I'm Chris Page, I'm the main designer of Explorer2260 and currently 3rd year student at Manchester university (England).
George OK here goes: George Hornmoen, I work for Atlantic Systems Group in Fredericton, NB, Canada. I've got a university degree in Computer Science, graduated in may, 1996. In World Foundry - main designer of M&M, and responsible for the network protocols used in our games.
Ed I'm Ed Collins, recently graduated from University of Ulster with a HND in Computing and has been helping Chris develop Explorer with graphics, CEG work and some programming.

How did you all start programming on the Amiga?
Chris I started back in ohh.. 88 using amiga BASIC :) I then progressed through AMOS, AMOSPro and Blitz finally ending up in C and ASM as they are the only ones which give me the control I need. I have entirely taught myself, mostly from books and examples.
Ed I only really had experience with programming from my Uni course. I had tried Blitz Basic and Amos but not till recently started learning C to write one of the game editors for Explorer. In this case the Star map editor. Chris has provided a lot of help in my learning the language.
George Hmm - I think it was back in 94. I had toyed around with some little programs, but nothing serious. After seeing most of the good games companies abandon us, I started working on a few ideas. I finally settled upon M&M last year, but after its done I hope to resurrect and spice up some of the old ideas.
Chris I tend to code mostly in C unless speed/efficency are paramount as I don't like asm a great deal. I used to use DICE but I'll shortly be using StormC (as soon as Blittersoft get it in stock, or hell freezes over (whichever happens first)).
George I started in C, and then dipped my toes in Assembler. I prefer C for most things, except when assembler is necessary.
George I didn't get a copy of the RKRM's until January 96, so up until then I was essentially crippled.

How did you folks meet and found World Foundry?
Chris Ermm.. I think it was mostly because of Explorer.... I was making a lot of noise about it and Ed and George got in contact with me.
Chris I believe it was Ed who contacted me first, I nearly turned him down too :)
Chris Then George contacted me and mentioned M&M
Ed I saw the mail posting on the Pure Amiga mail list saying about this new game Explorer 2260 he was working on. I replied and offered my services for graphics, joined the mail list and while it developed I became the sort of second in command.
George I think it was January / February of this year when I contacted him about a few networking / engine options.
Chris I got interested in that and we got talking.
Ed Then Chris introduced me into George and we eventually decided to join together to form World foundry.
Ed That first mail to Chris was way back in Oct 96.
Chris We get along very well considering we cover nearly a quarter of the globe and we are out of contact half the day :) Mostly we share expertise and ideas and tend to be good at hammering out things....

Why the name World Foundry? Any reason behind it?
George We would like to think that our games have more depth than the average offering.
George Thus, it almost has a 'world of its own'.
George :-) The name fell into place shortly after.
Ed And we have created a universe of our own.
Ed Making worlds.
George Yep :-).

You have pretty much committed yourself to Vulcan at a very early stage. What were the reasons for this?
Chris We get on well with Vulcan. They have quite a good developer support mechanism compared to other houses.
Ed Wide distribution.
Chris And Paul is so damn enthusiastic about everything :)
George Vulcan - we like them, they are prepared to support us fully with the PPC option. Shame about AI's lack of news this weekend...
Ed And good experience in publishing games.
Dave Yeah, AI were kinda disappointing.
Chris KINDA???
George Yep - AI had pretty much promised specs and the whole 9 yards. I'm pretty much pissed about the lack of info.

While on the subject of AI. What do you think they have to do to get the Amiga back again?
Ed Sticking with 68K processors will be a major disaster.
Ed Go with PPC. Really only logical choice I feel.
Chris Apart from wake up and realise that the 68K is so dead you could use it as wormfodder?
George Faith cannot keep us going forever, this weekend was supposed to be *hard* info, not more reteric.
Ed The use of Phase 5 PPC boards till a PPC OS 4 with 68K emulation would be the best thing to do.
Dave People are still living on promises and that just ain't right.
George My opinion: PPC, PCI/AGP based Hardware, Full Amiga OS 4.0 [PPC native], based specs inline with Macs and PC's.
George Make a package fully out of the box - Amigas still do not come standard with CD-ROMs.
Chris That would level the playing field and reduce the base price.
Ed The same migration that Macs did from 68Ks.
George After this of course, we will need *marketing*, and AI will have to convince SW houses to come back to the Amiga, this may require money.
George This will take a lot of work and time, and they should have started yesterday.
George Sorry - I've got a strong view on this, even more opportunity's seem to be slipping away as time goes on.
George :-) OK - after being bombarded by us, next question?
Chris :) Ok, I'll stop now :)
George :-)

You are very Pro CD-ROM/PPC, do you not think you are taking a chance by developing your games with this primarily in mind?
Chris Yes. But you never get rewards if you don't take risks. Maybe AI could try taking some.
Ed We need games thar can compete with PC games. So fast processors and CDs are needed.

Time for some talk about the games themselves. For the people that don't know, what is Explorer 2260? And the same for Maim & Mangle while we're at it.
George M&M is going to be *the* real-time strategy wargame for the Amiga, specifically focusing on the war aspect, with very little resource management [unlike other excellent games like Foundation].
Chris Explorer2260 is a deep space trading, exploration simulation based in a dynamic galaxy which changes around the player as the game progresses. Everything from political maneuvering to full scale wars can occur. The player can also undertake deepspace exploration outside known space.. and there will be a lot more outside there than rocks!
George ..More.. It will be a fun game in the style of Dune 2, or C&C, something which Red Alert seems to have forgotten.
Chris Also the player can undertake mining, trading, military service, corporate contracts, can advertise on the futuristic internet, StarNET, and much much much more :).
Chris Oh, and you can own everything from a one man dingy up to a quarter of a million pop space station.
Ed That seems to have explained things.

The current features list if Explorer and to an Extent Main & Mangle are very big. There have been comments on the newsgroups that they will never be finished. What do you have to say in reply to this?
Ed Oh risky question Dave. :)
Ed They will be done.
Ed or Death (Terry Pratchett's Discworld) would say THEY WILL BE DONE.
Chris :) Everyone has a right to their own opinion. We believe that they are not only possible but achievable.
Chris We wouldn't have set out without knowing this could be done.
George That is something that is valid. My primary concern now is making everything fit in. I have scaled back the online library aspect and the R&D aspect may be scaled back a bit.
Chris Much of Explorer has been designed completely and just needs full coding.
George The key is we are taking them one step at a time, from the foundation up ;-)
Ed Amiga owners haven't been used to games of this scale so they naturally don't believe they could happen.
Chris And we think on the same wavelength; something very helpful for this sort of thing.
George It will take more time than other games, given their scope and our small status. They will be finished eventually, just a matter of time.

So there will be a stage where you say, right, no more new features?
Chris Indeed. I have already reached that stage in much of Explorer. What is going on now is just refining of ideas.
George Oh definitely - that has already happened with M&M in my situation. Unless it is small / or a very useful feature, it won't be considered. The mailing list has been a great source of ideas, but is possible to go overboard at times.
George I've already turned down several suggestions, just because the thing has to be finished.
George It's too easy to fall into 'Analysis Paralysis'.
Chris Like the recent 'pseudo-science' discussion on exp2260. None of that has even been considered as it is too far out.
George Yep - and mostly off topic for a game. Despite the personal hopes of some people on the lists, they are only games [entertainment] after all.

Will there be any patches etc that you release after the games release adding extra features etc?
Chris Most probably. We have already discussed patched which could be used to refine the universe to keep old version in line with future revisions.
George Yep - hopefully we will be able to make these freely available via the web. This is of course subject to Vulcan's approval.

Regarding the games coding, how much is actually done for both of them?
George Officially we can't go into specifics of the coding.
Chris We can't tell you I'm afraid. Not allowed to give out progress under terms of the contract.
Chris Sorry about that.
George I'm currently testing out my network knowledge ;-).

For Explorer, do you see Phoenix as being a big competitor to Explorer?
Chris Well, Phoenix isn't really the same sort of thing.....
George To add to that, I personally think that Explorer and Phoenix can happily co-exist. Phoenix seems to be aimed more at the WC style of things, and Explorer is more Frontier / Elite styled...
Ed I don't think so. Phoenix is more of a privateer game. Linear story and limited places and things to do in comparison.
Ed More like WC 3 or 4 style of game.
Chris Despite some personal disagreements we had initially we tend to avoid commenting on each (Phoenix and Explorer) other now.
George They really are not after the same market. Most people could buy both and be very happy about the choice - they cater to different styles of games players.
Dave Mr. Henn wasn't so kind about the game to start off with ;)
Chris To say the least.
Ed He eventually changed his mind. and has used the likes of us in some of his newsgroups discussions to support his theories.
George Not really - we are on good terms with them now. I have even seen Mr. Henn use our games as support in debates on usenet with people ;-)

Are the any features in the games that you are particularly proud of or think will be really good?
George Yes - I'm hoping the 3D terrain, coupled with the Line of Sight and Line of Fire stuff will be well received.
George Also, the nighttime combat will be pretty neat as well.
Chris I think that the DUM and StarNET will stand out in Explorer.
Chris Anyway, I really have to go I'm afraid. Time run out here :(
ChrisAny last things?
Dave One more question..
Dave When will they be released? :P
Chris :P Won't tell ya :)
George :-P? Official - they will be released when they are finished....

Right, thats the end of the interview, there will probably be another part in a couple of weeks looking at each game in more detail. If there are any questions that you would like me to put to them then just email them to me and I'll see what I can do.