Interview with Psych0Fred

[Unit 33]

I emailed Psych0Fred recently to ask a couple of questions... and he replied, what a nice chap.

Firstly, were you disappointed in the abandonment of some content such as extra classes and maps?

The first one didn't really have any extra classes I can think of. Stuff that I added or released in a lot of cases was just the fruits of developers getting a feel for the engine and how long things take. I would have liked the LAAT/C just because it looked really cool dropping off an ATTE, but it was an extra animation that ate p memory. We didn't have any playable maps that I can think of that we didn't produce, and they all underwent many and sometimes drastic revision. We had ideas for more and empty worlds, but again it comes back to starting with the 'must have's' and looking at the time a resources involved. We made each game in about a  year. I would have liked more detail on some of the maps, but the engine could only support so much. A more detailed Bespin would have been nice. I originaly wanted it to be like an outdoor shopping mall with lots of cover rather than have lots of wide open spaces.

Were there conflicting "visions" of the final product? Were these responsible for the late changes to the game between the initial trailers and the finished product?

When I first started working on it there was a different creative director and the proof of concept map was much more realistic looking -- that's kind of what I am expecting if the Battlefield team at EA work on it. But Lucasarts wanted it to be less realistic presumably so it gets rated for comic book violence. The only thing I can think of that changed was the maps just evolved. All of the designers worked on each of the maps at some point. Geonosis was mine but while I like the way but turned out the original idea was a king of the hill map. In the end the hill got flattened. I wanted it to be more like the film Hamburger Hill but with Clone Troopers.

Some of the concept art and the final HUD appears to insinuate that the game was meant to mimic a holographic simulation... is this the case?

No, the goal was always to re-create the battles from the films and expanded universe.

I would also like to know why you've been so wonderfully generous to the modding community by publicly releasing various assets?

I don't know, I used to enjoy modding so I know what it's like. You have all the tools we had to create the game so I'd like to see people do even better than we did with our tight schedule.

[Led]

Very nice--thanks for contacting him, and I'm grateful that he has been such a help to us all.

I hope that he has been able to peek at your work and the work of our other modders to see what his/pandemic's generosity has helped create 

[Phobos]

Nice interview and I have to agree with fred about cc. It would be much more fun with lots of cover (something like jai nollan). Maybe some modders can recreate cloud city mall and king of the hill geonosis?

What was the proof of concept map?

[411Remnant]

is he that gentlemen form that deviant art page whom made some of the battlefront 1 models?

[Led]

No, that is a different person.

[Unit 33]

is he that gentlemen form that deviant art page whom made some of the battlefront 1 models?

No he's another gentleman.
http://www.swbfgamers.com/index.php?topic=5968

[Ltin]

do we know where psych0Fred works? was he with pandemic when it was closed?

[Phobos]

do we know where psych0Fred works? was he with pandemic when it was closed?

he used to work with pandemic as a bf1 and bf2 developer until they closed down. now he works for sony i believe.

[Ltin]

he used to work with pandemic as a bf1 and bf2 developer until they closed down. now he works for sony i believe.

he was developting bf2 still?
On a serious note, how many people worked for pandemic when ea shut them down?

[Kit Fisto]

Hey this is great! I always love reading/watching production videos or articles on games or movies I enjoy a lot. Thanks for this! It would be great to have an interview from him about just an average day working on the game. It was 10 years ago though so I don't know how much he will remember.

[Phobos]

Hey this is great! I always love reading/watching production videos or articles on games or movies I enjoy a lot. Thanks for this! It would be great to have an interview from him about just an average day working on the game. It was 10 years ago though so I don't know how much he will remember.

I have re-read all the designer diaries recently. I wish Fred had written one too.

All diaries contained below
[spoiler]Greg Borrud - Executive Producer

Hello everyone and welcome to the first in a series of Designer Diaries that will document our progress on a new game we're creating - Star Wars Battlefront. My name is Greg Borrud and I'm the Executive Producer on the game. Over the next couple of months we are going to be bringing you some pretty cool diaries which will give you some insight into the progress of the game - not just from my perspective, but from a number of people on the team including programmers, designers, artists, and sound designers. We hope to give a real behind-the-scenes look at our development process and track the progress of the team as we get closer and closer to shipping the game. But before I kick it off, let me give you a little background on how this game came to be.
We started working on Star Wars Battlefront here at Pandemic Studios in November of 2002. We established our goal for the game right away. We wanted to create an online shooter title for the Xbox, PS2, and PC which would allow for team strategy and would feature battles and worlds from every one of the six Star Wars films. The game would be the ultimate Star Wars fan's dream. It would allow you to do nearly everything and anything that you had seen in the movies, from fighting in the trenches on Hoth to manning a Republic Gunship on Geonosis.
Once we had a clear vision on what we wanted to create, we got together with the core team members and started to develop a comprehensive design document. This is always one of the more exciting times on a project because at this point, the sky is the limit. If you can dream it, we can at least consider it. All kinds of ideas got tossed around and a lot of them got tossed out - but in the end we settled on a simple, yet elegant design which would give players what they wanted from this type of game, while at the same time introduce a number of new gameplay ideas which we hope will really catch on.
In coming up with the Design Doc we also tried to establish what the game had to deliver. We wanted to make sure we always stayed on target. In the end, we narrowed our list of 'must do' features to the following:
The game must be balanced. We knew from a lot of our Real Time Strategy game development at Pandemic that balance is a critical part to making an online game that people play forever. We felt it was critical to get a build up and going as soon as possible with all the units and features so we could have several months of tweaking and refining until we felt we had it just right.
The game should encourage team play. Although free-for-all shooters are fun - we wanted to make sure Star Wars Battlefront rewarded those who played as a team. This shows up in our unit and vehicle design. There are even great examples of team play in the Star Wars movies. For example - how do you take out an AT-AT? With a snow speeder. But as you'll remember in The Empire Strikes Back it takes two people to take down an AT-AT. One to fly the speeder and another to shoot the Tow Cable. If we could get this kind of cooperation in our game we knew we would haven gotten it right.
The game should also be fun to play in Single Player. We are building this game for the multiplayer crowd, but we also realize there are a lot of Star Wars fans out there who don't like multiplayer games. They still want the fantasy of fighting in the greatest battles in the Galaxy. So we've come up with a number of cool and unique ideas for single player to make this a truly fun and rewarding experience for those people. Single Player is usually an afterthought with online shooters, but we wanted to make sure we gave it the appropriate attention.
The game must fulfill the Star Wars fantasy. For every world we pick or battle we design we consult the films. We've literally watched them hundreds of times and are constantly thinking about what the key fantasies and visuals are that come from the movies. We want to capture each one of those in the game. So all the big ground battles are there and we're putting in all the appropriate touches to make it feel as real and authentic as possible.
In this game you must be able to kill Ewoks and Gungans. Enough said!
There are a hundred other features in addition to these and I'm sure we'll be covering them all in the upcoming months. But in the end, we believe if we remain true to these five fundamentals, we will have attained our goal and at the same time created a game that we can all be truly proud of.
So I better get back to work. We'll be back in a month with another report from the Battlefront.

Juan Sanchez - Lead Animator

What's up, everyone? My name is Juan Sanchez and I'm the Lead Animator for Star Wars Battlefront. I'll be giving you a look into the exciting world of the Animation and Effects development process on this project. Thanks to the miracle of our proprietary tools, bringing Animation and Effects (what is often referred to as a frightening and misunderstood ordeal) to your console has been a pleasant and streamlined process. I hope that you will find this development diary enjoyable and informative!
Getting the characters and vehicles moving around in the game involves initially creating them as static objects using a 3D modeling package. For Star Wars Battlefront, we use a program called SoftImage: XSI. Once created, the models then go through a process known as "boning and skinning". Now this may sound dirty at first, but it's actually a process of placing bones inside the objects and following that up by applying a special deformer. The special deformer has adopted many slang terms, such as enveloping, weighting, or skinning. Attaching this to the object allows it to conform to the movement of the bones under specific physics and such. The bones are then "rigged", which means applying control objects to the bones that determine its behavior. For example, we don't want a shoulder joint to act like an elbow under 800 megatons of gravity! Finally, after all that, it can be animated. Voila! Characters run and jump while other things might open flaps for wind resistance to make tight turns or just move around to look cool. Once the animations are done, they need to be exported to the engine using our in-house exporter so that Designers can put the completed assets into the game.
Particle effects were created using our in-house particle editor. A particle effect is basically composed of a set of "emitters" that spit out particles. Particles can be a billboard: a flat texture plane that is always facing the camera or the ground like what you see most games' tree leaves made out of. They can be a streak or spark, which is a segmented texture plane that conforms to the trajectory and velocity that the particle is being shot out at. Or it can just be a regular piece of geometry, such as a chunk off an exploding vehicle. These particles are launched by the emitter by giving it an initial offset, velocity, color, rotation, and size. After the particle is ejected, it can change all of these properties during its lifetime to achieve the effect needed. There are also attributes to handle how it renders on screen, such as transparency and blurring. So, in the example of an explosion, the emitter might shoot out a bunch of orange, semi-translucent particles. Those particles then multiply themselves like amoeba and spread out while changing colors between red, orange, and yellow. Finally, near the end of an explosion, the emitter realizes that some particles are dying and shoots out some larger chunks that have their own emitters attached, which then push out some streaks of red and black for a smoky look. Of course, all of that has to be tweaked because we want cool explosions that are 3D and have depth. In the end, players get an AT-AT that explodes from the inside out with hunks of it flying everywhere as it crumples to the ground!
That's not all! The open, free-roaming environments of Star Wars Battlefront introduce some interesting restrictions that we had to set for the characters, vehicles, and effects to achieve our goals. For example, we have to keep bone counts as low as possible because one of our biggest concerns is calculating all the animations. As we all know, math is hard and that's what all those processors inside consoles and PCs have to do. Sharing animations across characters and weapon-types was necessary to fit all of it into the available memory, as well. Also, a low resolution version of all the characters and their skeletons were needed since putting all of them together on the screen at once would slow things down. Finally, particle counts on all the effects needed to be restricted somewhat because there is a lot of action going on at once.
Well, that about sums it up for Animation and Effects! Look for another peek into the minds on the Battlefront in a month!

John Northan - Lead Programmer

Welcome to my developer diary. My name is John Northan and I'm a programmer on Star Wars Battlefront at Pandemic Studios, specializing in game Artificial Intelligence. My plan is to give you an insight into several challenging technical issues that we've worked on whilst developing Battlefront: creating a massive battlefield sensation, encouraging emergent AI environment interaction, and developing distinct soldier behaviors, such as assault, scout and repair.
One of the great sensations to come from watching the Star Wars movies are the massive battle sequences. We want the player to feel like they are in the midst of those battles, such as down on the surface of Hoth running amongst giant AT-ATs or taking a defensive position in the snow trenches. To achieve this, we need to simulate great numbers of soldiers, ground-based vehicles, and flyers. In Battlefront's single player experience, the majority of these entities need to be controlled by AI. The AI for each entity is calculated at several different layers. At the highest level, the strategic AI, examples of the types of critical decisions that need to be made are: which command post to attack, which enemy to engage, which weapon is most appropriate, and whether to interrupt a current action because a thrown grenade has just been spotted. At the lower levels, the controller AI, examples of the types of immediate decisions that need to be made are: how fast and in what direction to move, where to aim a weapon in order to hit a moving target, and whether to alter course in order to avoid a collision.
The technical difficulty in juggling all this strategic and control AI for a large number of soldiers and vehicles is that it must all be achieved with low CPU usage. For example, in Battlefront, we allow the AI about five to ten percent of CPU time. One of our solutions was to realize that high-level strategic decisions could be made much less frequently than the lower level controls. Decisions, therefore, are made at differing time intervals, dependent upon their urgency. For example, when a soldier is running through a battlefield, he needs only to evaluate which command post to attack every few seconds, whereas he needs to make weapon aiming decisions continuously.
One of the leading-edge AI techniques in use in games at the moment is for characters to react to the environment intelligently. Examples of this are soldiers in combat seeking cover behind barriers or snipers hiding out on rooftops. This emergent behavior is achieved in Battlefront by the placement of hint nodes within the world. We have a variety of hint nodes that our Level Designers can populate the word with, such as "cover" nodes to designate strategic positions to fire on the enemy from, "snipe" hints for concealed, long-range firing positions, and "minefield" hints for areas where mines could be laid. It is the emergent use of these hints that can give an AI-controlled soldier the appearance of intelligent environment use.
We have put much time during the development of Battlefront into distinct soldier behaviors. When running through a battlefield, it is possible to notice each behavior: there will be trooper soldiers directly engaging the enemy, sniper soldiers staying hidden at the periphery of the battle, assault soldiers attempting to outflank and destroy enemy vehicles, and repair soldiers busy healing the wounded. The trooper soldiers have the most variety of behavior. Upon spotting an enemy, they will select a method of attack, based upon factors such as weapon availability and enemy mobility. For example, a trooper soldier armed with just a pistol will try to get up close to a target, dodging and weaving, whereas a trooper armed with a long-range rifle will go prone, reducing the potential for shot error. Troopers will use cover hints to use natural environmental barriers to hide from the enemy. If a cover position is compromised the soldier will run for another barrier from which to take cover.
Sniper soldiers tend to avoid direct combat. They prefer to look for strategic snipe positions, from which they can pick off enemy soldiers with a precise, long-range rifle. If their snipe position is discovered, they will pull out a pistol and make a fighting retreat. Assault soldiers seek out enemy vehicles. At long range, they will go prone and fire a low-error shot at their target. If the vehicle approaches they will attempt to outflank, heading to the backside of the vehicle, where it tends to be most vulnerable. Repair soldiers will follow other soldiers into battle, re-supplying them with ammo, and healing them if injured. Of course, if fired upon, they will interrupt their healing behavior and immediately engage in combat.
That's the quick and comprehensive look into the world of Infantry-based AI! We've also developed many other behaviors and stylized nodes to handle such things as the many, many different types of vehicles or emplacements that can be used! It would be silly to describe all of our secrets, though, wouldn't it!
Keep a look out for these soldier behaviors and more whilst you're mowing them all down in the Battlefront!

Dean Betton - Lead Artist

YES!! I get to make Stormtroopers and Wookies and DARTH VADER!!! That was my first reaction when I started working on Star Wars Battlefront. It was a fanboy's dream come true. Hi, my name is Dean Betton and I am the Lead Artist for the above mentioned game. Together with Co-Lead Matt Palmer, we work together to direct the art team in creating a vast array of exotic worlds and characters that have appeared in the Star Wars universe.
Matt and I use a proprietary world editor that allows us to create the actual world that the game takes place in. With the editor we start off with a flat plane grid. Then we use the terrain manipulation tools to create the various heights to get the desired height map of the landscape. Once we have done this we can then start to lay down the terrain textures. We can use several textures in the editor but for memory issues we try to not go over five. However, the editor allows us to blend and overlay these to give us quite a bit of variation.
Once we are happy with the landscape we can then start to populate the worlds with various models that have been created from our art team. What we put in the world depends on the world that we are working on. For instance, Endor is a forest world so the level is mainly made up of trees of various shapes and sizes and the only other main objects are the Ewok village and the Imperial Bunker. Yet other levels can be made up of a larger number of different objects like Bespin's Cloud City or Tatooine's Mos Eisley Space port. These worlds are made up of a large number of different buildings and lots of smaller props to make the world look very populated and more like a dense city.
We use Softimage XSI to create these models. It's not commonly used throughout the gaming world but it's an underestimated program. Its modeling tools are very versatile and easy to create in game geometry. So Pandemic has used this for several years now with much success.
Once we start to get the models from our modeling team we then start to place them according to an initial level layout that has been provided to us by the design team. Once this initial layout is roughly placed we then pass this on to the designers so that they can test it out for game play and decide whether certain elements work or not. Then changes are made according to their instructions until the best layout is achieved. From here we then start to add the bells and whistles that make the level come alive such as lighting effects, cloud layers, foliage layers etc. The end result is a series of worlds that look as realistic and as dynamic as their movie counterparts.
We have created vehicles for Star Wars Battlefront that people are going to love to play such as the AT-ST and AT-AT walkers and the speederbike. Although we were able to delve into the Lucas archives to draw upon their vast reference libraries, some vehicles have never been seen in three dimensions before. In these situations, we had to call upon the talents of our concept art team to create drawings to use as reference when creating ships such as the CIS MAF or the Rebel Walker.
The best part of the job for me has without a doubt been the opportunity to create all the characters that will be available for the game. There is such a wide variety available that the player is really going to be spoiled with who they want to play. I have been able to scour the Lucas archives for reference for all our characters and it's been a fun process in creating them.
First off, I take as much reference as possible whether it is photos, concepts or even the old Star Wars toys. Then from here I start to model it out in XSI. Because of the large number of characters in the game (over 20 and growing including the secret hero characters) I have created a base mesh that can then be sculpted and shaped in XSI to fit the character that I am making.
Although the model is complete, the character is still just a flat shaded mesh. So I then texture it, which means applying an image created in an art package called Photoshop. I start by getting together all the photo reference I can and start to build up a texture that I can apply to the mesh. Usually a texture is built up using a mixture of photo reference and hand painted work but no matter how it is created it has to fit on to the mesh seamlessly and look as life-like as possible. This can take quite a bit of time, painting a bit, applying it to the mesh, checking the position, tweaking the UV's (the model's texture coordinates that line the mesh up with the texture) and then going back and forth in this manner until everything is seamless. The end result is a finished character everyone knows and loves straight from the movies.
Once the modeling and texturing is done then the character is passed on to our animation team to get 'skinned and rigged' but you have already heard about this process in a previous diary from our Lead Animator Juan Sanchez.
So there you have it, a look into the artistic process on our game. I hope this has been an interesting read for you and has given you a little insight into how the art team works here with the Star Wars Battlefront team at Pandemic Studios. I hope that when you load the game up you have as much fun playing the game as we have had creating it for you.
All the best and Cheers from DEAN BETTON.

Nick Peck - Sound Supervisor & Lead Sound Designer

Sound design for all video games pretty much follows the same process: You start by identifying what sounds are needed in the game (X-wing engines, Super Battledroid wrist blaster fire, etc), then you create the sounds, and then you integrate the sounds into the game itself through programming. In Star Wars games like Battlefront, we create our assets through a combination of processing existing sounds from the film, and making new sounds in the same style, always pushing the envelope of creativity while trying to remain true to Ben Burtt's original vision.
In Battlefront, we have taken pains to make sure the signature blaster sounds, vehicle engines, and background ambiences are faithful to the original films. We've researched and pulled the original sounds wherever possible, and then augmented them to make them really pop within a video game context.
Foley is the art of recording sounds made by humans Πfootsteps, the rustle of clothing, the clink of armor or weapons, and so forth. Because so much of the action in Battlefront takes place on the level of an individual unit, such as a stormtrooper or rebel pilot, I decided to go record all new foley for the game. We went to Skywalker Ranch, and spent two long days recording movement for every character possible within the game, on every possible surface (dirt, stone, metal, wood, etc). We used the original props and shoes on the same foley stage, with the same engineer and audio settings that were used in the film, for absolute authenticity. Creating and integrating these 1200 foley sounds into the game was a painstaking and detailed process, but the results are worth it, adding a subtle layer of realism to Battlefront.
Vehicle engines are another element of this game that is getting special treatment. Typically, engines use single loops that get pitched up and down relative to the acceleration of the player. In our case, we decided to split all vehicle engine sounds into 3 loops, broken down by frequency: low rumbles, midrange growls, and high frequency whines. In this way, we can model the engine sounds more realistically, creating separate amplitude and pitch curves for each frequency range. The net result is that the game engines behave more like engines in the real world, while still maintaining their Star Wars flavor.
Working with Stewart Miles, Chris Fusco, Andrew Cheney, and Jim Diaz on this project has been enormously satisfying for me. Each of these audio professionals is a top flight guy, and have shown me once again that great things get done the old fashioned way: through teamwork.
Stay tuned...we'll be back in a month with another report from the Battlefront.

Jens Andersen - Lead Designer

Hi, my name is Jens Andersen and I am the Lead Designer on Star Wars Battlefront.  It has been a long road for us here at Pandemic and we're almost at the end of it.  The journey has been as challenging as it has been rewarding and I look forward to the day when it finally gets in your hands.  And if you are anything like me, you've been waiting for a game like this for a long time.
The Star Wars universe is so rich and vast that you can really get lost in the possibilities.  If you aren't disciplined enough to know what your goals are and how to achieve them then you can't give yourself the freedom to get creative without endangering the core of your game. LucasArts definitely understands the power of their license and the passion of their fans and it was important for us to realize this as we moved forward during pre production so that we could clearly show them what our intentions were with the game.
After being in the business for some time, I have seen how design docs have been used and put together and I have always found it rather disappointing.  The docs were either way to vague, more like extended pitch docs, or they were simply left by the way side once the first set of changes to the game were made.  It was my hope to change this.  To me, the design document represents the creative vision of the game presented in a technical format. It was quite a challenge to maintain creativity while trying to be as methodical and thorough as possible. This is the balance I alluded to earlier.
A colleague of mine had turned me on to engineering specs which are documents used by engineers to map out their intentions before working on a project. I took a look and eventually decided to adopt something similarǠsomething that would allow anyone who had a question about a feature access to the large concept of said feature, but also the various nuances I had imagined when conceptualizing it.
This method leads to a lot of label making, defining terms and making sure that each concept is clearly stated and not crossing streams with other features.  In the end, this worked out wonderfully and the design document received a lot of praise from LucasArts and it brought an incredible amount of focus to the initial implementation of the game.
This was no easy challenge, however. Technical writing is very different from creative writing and requires careful reasoning and planning.  The first thing to remember is to never assume anyone knows what you are talking about. Even if it is the most basic and ancient of game mechanics, don't assume you don't need to define it for the purpose of your document.  Define everything.
The first step is coming up with the goals you have for a given feature.  Each section of the DD starts with a goals breakdown.  For Example, the character selection process whereby a player selects their unit type and spawns into the world had the following goals:
Concise - To provide a clear and easy way to choose a character type. To make the unit selection as fast andstreamlined as it can be for the player to get in game.
Consistent  - To maintain cohesion between the four armies on each screen of the character selection.
Informative  - To make available all necessary information about each unit without becoming officious.
Efficient  - To leverage as much existing game art as possible. To have minimal requirements on memoryresources.
Beautiful  - To be cutting edge in appearance and keeping pace with the latest graphical innovations. To maintain aconsistent feel with any in game counter parts.
Now these are some pretty broad statements, which is good because they are meant to be the overall guiding factors as you write up the more detailed section of the feature. They are meant to be touchstones or sounding boards. And every aspect of the feature should be able to relate back to these statements. If it doesn't, then it most likely isn't helping you achieve your goal and should be more closely scrutinized or abandoned.
After the goals were defined, I moved into what I called the Requirements for the feature. These were the nuts and bolts and what was going to be needed to achieve these goals. So, for example, if you are writing up your unit AI section you'll want to define what the various layers of AI are.  You'll start with the overall layers for every unit in the game down to the specifics for each individual's role. Each defined in turn so that you build the system from the foundation up.
Once the requirements are all defined, I provide a series of test cases or benchmarks. Test cases and benchmarks are things that the programmers, artists and designers can use to make sure they have met the requirements listed for the feature. If the test case fails or the benchmark is not met then they need to go back and try again.
Having this kind of structure did two things: it sent a clear and precise message to anyone who read it what we were trying to build and, more importantly, it lets you change and augment features with confidence because you could account for all of the ripples that change would cause.  It was very clear to see how and what that would affect because the relationship of the features was so clearly laid out.
Game development has changed a lot since I entered the field. The size of the teams, scope of the features and expectations of consumers has greatly increased. The amount of information that has to be conveyed across the teams to get a game completed is staggering. It is essential that people have a central cache of information that represents the direction of the game.
So the point is to be thorough in your designs.  The more specific and clear you can be during the planning stages, the easier it will be for your team to see what's coming down the road. Sounds kind of obvious, but it's surprising how little this is practiced. I found it to be an incredibly useful tool for me on Star Wars Battlefront and I look forward to working on perfecting the technique on my next project. I know you'll enjoy the game when it comes out in September...it truly has a lot to offer.

[/spoiler]

edit: I suppose this could sort of count as one
http://www.swbfgamers.com/index.php?topic=6039.0

[{PLA}gdh92]

It's always nice to know that the designers of these games are decent people who are willing to spend time talking to the players. Thanks for getting this Unit (and thanks to Pshyc0fred obviously). Those developer diaries are an interesting read as well.

[Kit Fisto]

Thanks for those articles Phobos! We should hit up those people and ask them about Battlefront!

[tirpider]

comic book violence
I think that might be key to SWBF's appeal.  All the other shooters are going for this gritty, realistic look.  While the other games are trying to look like news footage, SWBF is comfortable being a humble video game.  It still has the action, but is approachable in a way that HD hand grenades aren't.


I like Fred.
When you are studying all the different areas of modding, you always seem to run across a contribution from him.  From advice and tools, to full on assets, he has been a consistent name I run across in just about every corner of the various SWBF communities.