Ichtyo Broome: "When we finally achieve the target, we are definitely too tired to fight"

Here comes the first exclusive interview for Compete With Me!
Let me introduce a great Second Life vehicles scripter, who's name is well-known to those who values the freedom of adjusting your car for themselves, because his scripts allow you to adjust, without exaggeration, everything in your car to make it a perfect ride for you. And today Compete With Me! got an opportunity to get to know him even better.
Ladies, gentlemen and racers - Ichtyo Broome, the one who made one of Lindens contact him directly, who knows what Second Life lacks, who scripted cars for Racers Island and who writes each of his script with all love he's got.

How it all began
- How long have you been working with programming languages at all? Or was the LSL the first language you've learned?
- Well...I am involved in Programming languages and Formatting (like HTML... never say to a RL programmers that HTML is a programming language...they Are Picky and get ANGRY) languages since 1995... starting with HTML, Java Script, Action Script (FLASH)..and then Java.. AJAX... etc etc..as I am a web designer in RL. Last programming language I've met is LSL.
- And comparing with other languages, could you say it was easier or harder to learn LSL?
- LSL has a syntax similar to C...then is a very useful base to learn the way programming languages works. Actually, complexity is just a matter of how long you talk that language every day....as for every kind of language..as for english..or russian..
- I see :) How long have you been into scripting in Second Life?
- Since I started in 2007.... I immediately...tried to break things.... opening prims....and breaking....reopening and rebreaking.....I remember once... (ages ago) when I tried to create a physical chain of one hundred of rings... and physics engines of SL still did not allowed that amount of physical prims... well the sim crashed..and Prospero Linden in person came to me and said: hey Guy..if you wanna my attention no need to do this mess..just send me an IM.
- Oh wow, one of the Lindens himself? That was really serious, I believe.
- The sim disappeared from the Map... they restarted it... and then he came to me.... but he was kind.
- Definitely, after crashing the whole sim :) Are many of your experiments this risky?
- Well sometimes..but as you can see from the results... in my cars engines..sometimes worths too... As often programmers write at the end of the coding in the comments...."who dare wins"
- True. The script in the last one is outstanding. Are all your cars this detailed in options?
- Well, actually the GT3 series will use a gran turismo car as for the real one... so ..like a main stream car... sport version obviously... like a Porsche or a Bmw...or an Audi...a little enhanched.... and well the "Basic" I sell will have a lot of tuning setting avalaible, as a real race sport car should....but to avoid tricksters, the GT3 exclusive version we will use in 2RAW will have the tuning settings locked. [Yes, Ichtyo provides the cars for the next series at 2RAW! - Kay T.]  Of course we tested them for weeks with the best sl drivers and found a proper tuning that will give a great sensation of driving, along with the option to select among several cinematic camera styles to provide the real driving simulation emotions for the drivers. So, all the pilots will have the same chance as the car is the same for everybody, just some options like camera or chassis color.
- And how much attention you pay on making it closer to realistic ones? As we all know, there are different rules for real and digital racing, different conditions...
- On this specific engine, the drift race one, I've spent 4 years to find the best compromise possible between sl physics engine...(this is not Playstation you know) and the limits of LSL and a real cool fun driving simulation.

Creators and their problems
- Not many games around offer the possibility to build the engine of their cars. And with LSL, even a rookie can learn variables, constans, trigonometry... and of course math and programming. So SL maybe is not like an XBox, but much more educational than a shooting game. SL offers many opportunities to the ones that have the ears to hear...
- Freedom followed by responsibility for what you've done?
- Eh, this is a good question. Well, SL is like a huge city, like in BladeRunner. You can find everything, like in a cyber novel. Many clues matter: the environment (not everything depends on us). But lots of things depend on us too, of course: the way we behave, we interact, we use our knowledge. And since we are ready to learn, well, depends how much we dedicate to the learning; of course you can just do shopping, it's always much less expensive than in real so less dangerous for ours pockets.
- With freedom Second Life offers we can change the environment around us literally every day - do you think this world (the second world) changes fast?
- Well... since Linden Lab is continuing to invest into its toy [Is the proof and the Linden Lab, has hired Rod Humble as ITS executive.Humble new chief is a veteran of Electronic Arts, where he served as executive vice president for the EA Play label and ran Sims business. He has an impressive background in games - Kay T.]., improving and updating  the physics (as they are doing) the sculpts, then the meshes...well actually SL is the most realistic game of all... the one that evolves more...so the users - follows the creator flow I guess.... they evolve too.....this is the cool thing about SL...It Moves Ahead. There is a Play Station game, called Grand Theft Auto, the cool thing about that game is that is the way the character is controlled by the player, interacts with the environment differently from many games: you can walk, drive a car, a helicopter, or even steal a car to another character and drive it or pocket too lol. Well SL is even more than GTA, and woah.. you can even create the game, or the plot of the story in here.
- Do you think such a dynamic progress is good for SL or you could say it should slow down a little to save something that doesn't require any other corrections?
- Limits actually, for an "average user" like me....remains one, the size of the sims...actually the Open Grid platforms offer the possibility to have wider than 255 meters sim. But if Linden Lab would give us the possibility to have dunno... er.. let's say 3 km side sims..... with the same amount of prims (15000).. well, I would not ask for more... And the answer is ..NO....progress is a mandatory thing, this is what I think at least.
- The lack of what hurts creators more, prims or space?
- Space indeed. Can you imagine a city..a whatever environment of 5km side instead of 255 meters? SL would bypass instantly any other multiplayer game. And I am quite sure for LL to expand from 255 meters to 5000 is just a question of vectors. Simple math: 0 lags as we can reach the 4096 meters in height, therefore we could do the same in width. To increase the number of prims.. is a hot matter. Since each object is allocated as memory in a database, can you imagine 15000 prims - let's say 6 face and 6 textures each prims, one script per prim. SL scripting time allows 0.04 seconds of timing, means 20 instructions per second * 15000, plus all the huge amount of scripted stuff and hairs and coloured textures and "30000 prims belt" some women use in here - is a lot of data, 20 times each second. So yes..just a wider sim for me would be fine and reasonable, with the same number of prims. But for now it is just a dream.


Scripting and selling
- Few cares of the number of scripts.... I remember once I sent a IM to a hat creator (as scripter I always care, you know). His hat was 150 prims, and the resizer script system he was using... was 150 scripts *laughs*. So I sent him an IM and said: hey man, your hat is great, but 150 scripts to resize it is a madness. I can do the job with one script, I'll send you for free. He replied that I was unkind and said: do your business do not care of others... no comment. And I offered a free help... some are really er... close minded.
- Yes, that's where I agree - Second Life needs to be descripted as much as possible
- The hat was really nice but it is an old question - form against structure. Shape makers don't consider the importance of the scripting part, so they don't invest (pay the scripter what it should). And scripters consider shapes a silly things. It is a war started 5000 years ago.
- I know what you mean - some good in one thing, some in another, and they should collaborate
- The hard thing.... in programming is that code is a something you do not see, like in RL. So people really hardly pay you what it's worth. While a cool hat maybe is worth, for example, 5000 L$, the script inside is not. Not fair at all.
- Do you leave reviews to the items you buy?
- Ehm.... I am a lazy boy... but I speak good with friends of the stuff if it was well done and scripted. Sometimes chat is the best advertising.
- Since we're talking about the market, do you find it hard to compete with other creators? And what is the key to the financial success on your field, in your opinion?
- Well, as in RL....competition is a cruel challenge: no rules, some would be ready to kill you virtually....and..er..I have not a key...and if I had...I would not say ... *grins*. All I can say, a basic rule is to create a product that is affordable..and cool... One of the first rules of marketing is "the sensation the customer have when he/she arrives at home and unpack the stuff"; if you tricked the customer, then he will speak bad of you to everybody.


About the virtual world and his colleagues
- Do you think some real things can be replaced with digital ones?
- Well... let's think about educationals environments...like classrooms. Now flash...htlm..youtube are are avalaible in here, voice conferences too. Well..yes.. in some cases yes... SL can.
- How about our field, motorsports and other sport competitions?
- ...WE WANT BIGGER SIMS:::HEY MR. PHILIP:::DO YOU HEAR US? *laughs* Well, if the scripting is good, well, why not. It's still not at a game platform like playstation of course, but as I said here are many levels of game. Here you have some satisfaction PlayStation or XBox will never be able to give you, like to tune an engine, from the weight distribution, mass, downforce. To be inside the code... is like... place your hands in the matrix. Pure beauty for the brain. So..I would say yes..sl allows even a cooler racing experience. For some. For some other...less intelligent..no. *giggles* I am joking, of course.
- Have you raced a lot before?
- Well I am into races since years.. I was engine maker and vehicle..in racers island..(owner is Eddie Mathieson) for two years I did..the stock and the drift cars (I had a partner that built the chassis). Eddie teached me a lot... about the management and how to build a car, lots of hints..he is definitely a generous man. But well, to the answer. Honestly, I am definitely a better engineer than a driver.
- As I can see, scripters don't compete a lot for customers, or for work :) Or it's just you?
- Well, depends. Actually I found much more issues and envy in the shape maker field. Yes scripters are usually less.....er...Killer, and I do not know why.. maybe we should?
- True, guess it requires less effort to make a shape than to write a script.
- I think there is a thing that cool down the relations bertween scripters. Respect... too many hours on the mac or PC...too many cigarettes smoked on that deadline of code.... so when we finally achieve the target we are definitely too tired to fight I guess...and yes, respect too. But some shapes...well...mesmerizes you..isn't it? Even if the creator is a bast***.
- That's true, talented people are not always easy-going.
- Rarrely! With two R :-) But scripters are a band apart..no? a sacred circle..all calm..like Wise Oraculs.

*then we had to move somewhere else for a while - Lindens started a rolling restart.*

Searching peace of mind 
- Such dedicated people, like scripters or racers - good racers - usually don't have time for the personal life in Second Life, or do they? Like, you don't go out too much, don't party, don't just hang out... not in a relationship... don't spend time for what usually is defined as fun in SL.
- Well, I am a traveler. I am often wandering for SL new sims and old ones. Rarely I go to "party", I prefer exploring. And about relationships. Well, SL have two sides, like every story :-) I will not explain you...which ones are. Up to the reader's fantasy.
- OK, fair enough :)
- Would be too easy to say that here people often with the complicity of a monitor do not behave properly honesty. But sometimes I was wrong too. So I am inside the group of SL users not the most evil, not the most saint. We all after all hide behind the monitor: some more, some less.
- And you prefer to remain distance from such things?
- I am ready to be involved...SL offers many things. SL is a refuge, is a chance, is a hell and a paradise. And often could be even that chance to meet a person you could have never met in RL - so why to close that door? But..well.. always with ...caution! But please no random TP to DJ PARTY without even a HI..howdy?
- I hear you, so you're just not pushing yourself into it?
- Let me asnwer british way : no comment.


*then I finally got to look around me*


- What's this place, by the way?
- It is trudeau yacht home. Her shop was here, now just her house. She is the best boat maker of SL, I have all her boats. I often sail SL sea, it is very relaxing.
- And that's how you spend your free time? Exploring and sailing?
- Well, let's say 80% of time I am scripting or..taking classes in scripting from higher level scripters. And the 20% - wandering or...well chatting.

G e c k o  EVO

*He invited me to have a look at another sim with a track, Edo Japan*


- This track is amazing...a little laggy due to the huge amount of sculpts for weak computers but amazing.....
- You test cars here?
- Of course.


*The sim was beautiful indeed, full-rezzed, half-rezzed. So Ichtyo have took me for a ride around it by one of his cars, sculpted one - G e c k o EVO. When he found out I'm going to take some pictures here as well, he rezzed another car - G r e t a 3.0 a beautiful convertible, his favorited one. It felt so straight he put his soul into it, even included a getting-into-the-car animation - something vehicle builders rarely add. There even was a stereo - so we had a ride with a pleasant jazz music playing, while the sun was rising. That was just a stunning sight.
We were going to finish the interview here, but the rolling restart got us again - so we came back to 2RAW*



- Do you have any future plans for your second life? As a scriptor, as a resident.
- In October, I met a RL designer ..we found an agreement and with the help of another SL content creator we imported to SL astonishing car shapes..original designs...the thing worked for a while but as in RL happens..business partnerships...do not last always..forever - so actually my scripts/engines are without a decent shape... I am willing to meet a good shape maker for my scripts in the future, as now I do not have one.
- You work with old shapes now? Didn't know.
- Or I buy in the market not customs one..but my dream is to have custom and just made for me shapes...as my scripts are totally...personalized..each car I do is a different feeling, sounds..etc. Each one a different personality, as it should. Regarding the resident side... I have not a plan :-)
- Well, wish you'll find one you will enjoy to work together with.
- Thanks. And [to all the readers of the blog] remember not to drive when drunk!


It was a big pleasure to have you for Compete With Me!, Ichtyo. Thanks for your time, and I wish you lots and lots of creative success and wins.

Another news is - Ichtyo is sponsoring the next racing series at 2RAW with cars, personally scripted for us! I've drove it myself, and ought to say you have to search real hard to find something that handles as good as this one. Stay tuned - it starts right when the current series ends!