As many of you are aware, the Hostile Intent development team is switching to working full force on the Source engine. This switch leaves the current HI out of development, with nothing (except for the map pack) to fill the gap between HI and HI:PR. Recently Charles announced that the development of HI on HL1 wont stop, instead its development will be carried out by the community in a project called Hostile Intent Community Development, or HICD.

To get more on this, I sat down with RoooR, HICD’s head, and asked him a few questions about the project and its plans.

-swatman-: First off, introduce yourself. What, if anything, do you do? How long have you been with the community?
RoooR: My name is JJ, I live in Georgia, USA. I have a wife and two boys. As far as HICD goes, I am the lead guy. With a project like this, the contributions of the community will be crucial. I am here to ensure that there is accountability and progress in the further development of HI on HL, and to maintain a close relationship to the HI Dev team. I have been playing HI since the spring of last year, and for the last several months I have gotten to play alongside many of the Devs and testers in ERT. I am not a Dev, but they can trust that I will not allow community politics, complaining, or other "community" pitfalls to interfere with HICD. I want to thank Charles and the team for allowing me the opportunity to choke on this monster for a while:)

-swatman-: What spurred you to step up and take the position as leaders of HICD?
RoooR: I had seen what happened to DDay:Normandy, a Q2 mod, during its "community development". The Devs left the game to the community and moved on with other things. What came from this were different dlls for the game, and a fractured split community that played different games. HI is a great game, and I know there is massive potential for HI on HL. I would not have been able to watch HI on HL turn out like DDay did. I mentioned something like this to some of the team, and it turns out that they had talked about this before. I am not a game developer, but I am a true HI fan, and I will take whatever bumps on the head I have to take in this process, as long as it truly brings the talents of this community to fruition.

-swatman-: How are you planning to run HICD? Will it be a closed dev team, or can anyone sign up and submit content?
RoooR: There will be an "Advisory Board" which will act as the HICD Dev team. We will make sure that standards are met for WIPs. We will also discuss any content created by the community and submitted to us for inclusion into HI. I knew from the start I had better get some of our best and brightest to help me keep things smooth. There are liasons from the Dev team on the AB, which at the time are Ikusa and Squad. Now, outside of the AB, all the community is invited and welcomed to contribute your talents.

-swatman-: How do you plan on getting the community invovled with HICD? Who can help, and what are you looking for talent wise?
RoooR: Once the AB is finalized, we will start posting in the HICD dev journal, which will be as transparent as possible of a look into HICD as we can give people, and the forums are an open book. As far as talents, we really need coders who can dedicate time to implementing the content created in this project. New weapons and things dont just happen.

-swatman-: What are some basic plans for HICD? Any features to the game that you personally want to see implemented?
RoooR: My first goal for HICD will be to implement the healthy amount of wonderful content the Dev team had before the 1.4 release that didn't make it out the door. I would like to see the code optimized as well, but that is not in the immediate future. MY personal goals would be to find a way to add a lean that WORKS, and find a definitive answer on the player hull issues. I would like to see the rag doll stuff added at some point also.

I would like to thank RoooR for his time both with the interview and HICD. To all of you mappers, modelers, and coders out there, be sure to stop by the HICD forums and try to help either by being on the board, or by submitting content.

We at HI would like to thank the community for their time, effort, and continued support of Hostile Intent. Thank you, and let's work together for a better HI.