2. Meet the Devs
In this month’s issue we would like to tell you a little more about
Dan “Kamikaze” Tracy.
 Hello there readers! My name is Dan Tracy (aka Kamikaze). I am 20
years old and live in western Canada. I am currently one of the Lead
Developers on the MWLL project as well as the Lead Modeler. My current
works include modeling mechs, vehicles and weapons for Mech Warrior:
Living Legends and to import them into Quake Wars: Enemy Territory. In
addition I am also responsible for the quality control of all the 3d
models that are committed from the various modelers. I also dabble a
bit in coding and as such I’ve taken on the responsibility to coding
the different weapon and equipment components for the Mechs.
To give you some history of my modding experience, I started back in
1995 with Starcraft and building some “User Map Settings” (UMS) maps,
I continued to play around with Starcraft for about 3 years. I then
hopped from game to game not really satisfied with any multiplayer
title until the release of MechWarrior 4. This was the first game I
ever joined an online Clan and I also spent close to 5 years not only
playing, but building some maps and making movies. Some may know of
the funny GANFHN video I made back when MSN Gaming Zone still hosted
MW4. If not, here’s a link. Before playing Mech 4, I did play a
little bit of Mech 2 and 3, but the online team play didn’t pull me in
until 4. Mech 4 was the game that pulled me into the Battletech
universe. Even though it wasn’t the best representation of Battletech,
I loved the aspect of these hulking machines of war walking the
battlefield and destroying anything standing in their path.
I later retired from MW4 due to the constant internal conflicts
between the online clans that I played with, not to mention the now
stale gameplay of MW4. I once again began game hopping to RTS games
like Ground Control and Rome Total War (and making some maps for them
too just to mess around with), FPS games like Call of Duty 2 and Half
Life 2. I stopped moving around when I started playing Battlefield 2
on a regular basis. This game was the first time I ever encountered a
full battlefield perspective, Planes, Tanks, Infantry all shoved
together on a single map battling it out for domination. It really
impressed me. However, I began to miss my 10 meter 70 ton Mechs.
After a few years of playing BF2, I moved onto playing an RPG known as
Never Winter Nights. In there I found an excellent toolset in which to
create online RPG worlds. From there I started an epic MMO concept
called Chronicles of the Empire and started heavy work on that
project. I had gotten a good foot hold in the creation of that mod for
NWN, but was frustrated in the limitations of the engine. Sean
(Criminal) knew of my frustrations with it, so he invited me to put
aside that project and help him with a new project called “Battletech
2142”. This was brief attempt at creating a mod for 2142 but we were
plagued by engine limitations. The decision was made by Criminal to
port over the mod to Enemy Territory: Quake Wars in December ’06 and
rename the mod MechWarrior: Living Legends.
The main reason why I am working on this mod is that there hasn’t been
a decent Mech/Battletech game in the past 5 years and the fan base is
slowly dying out. How ever, I believe this mod will revive the life of
the Battletech fan base and should provide a proper scale when it
comes to BattleMechs.
I look
forward to seeing you all on the Battlefield whether it’s in my sights
or shoulder to shoulder…will you be a living legend - or a forgotten
casualty?
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