Intel Depot

This got me to thinking waaaaaay back to 2006 when many of the OFPEC staffers would load up OFP and literally spend hours playing MFCTI. It gave us a chance to unwind, even during some tense times at OFPEC. Back to life in 2009, I've been working closely with Bedges, OFPEC's uber-talented web admin and he agreed to answer a few questions for us.

Who are you and what do you do in real life?

My name is Bedges R. McClaverty and I'm a web developer for a Scottish University.

What was your first job at OFPEC?

I was invited (along with Planck) to become a moderator on the Editors Depot forum boards. That would have been May 2005.

What was it that sparked your interest in Operation Flashpoint?

Hmmm. I suppose it was a combination of factors. I was out of work at the time, having just spent four years at art school getting a useless qualification. The main thing I got from those 4 years was an interest in developing interactive experiences rather than static artifacts, and I went back to college for two years to study Multimedia Computing. The curriculum was out of date by about 6 years, but at least I learned how to use Photoshop and how to code basic HTML. Unfortunately those skills didn't get me much closer to finding a job so I ended up on the dole with plenty of time to get stoned, play games and build useless websites that no-one but me would ever look at.

I was at a friend's house for a smoke one evening and he and some mates were having a LAN party - multiplayer OFP. I recall asking him why he spent so long hiding in bushes, and he said he was catching his breath. I laughed and asked him why, and he whispered "Because they might hear me..."

Despite his obvious enthusiasm and the evident immersion of the experience, I didn't think much of the graphics and naturally assumed the game must be shite. However, my mate is seldom wrong about games, so on his recommendation I took a loan of his GOTY edition to try it for myself. I installed it at home, played for about 10 minutes and switched off, because for me this "immersive experience" consisted mainly of being killed by a group of 4 green pixels hiding somewhere in a background of green pixels, over and over and over again.

At that point I started Googling for "Operation Flashpoint cheats", and was surprised to find none. The next time I went round for a smoke he asked how I was getting on, and I told him of my frustration. He explained that it was a matter of gaming style, and for the next couple of hazy hours we discussed games and their various aspects until he said "Of course, if you find the campaign too difficult, maybe you could set up your own mission to practice... you realise there's also a mission editor?"

I returned home with the sole intent of putting myself in a tank and killing as many 4-pixel AIs as I could. I opened the mission editor and realised I didn't have a clue where to begin. I'm not a great believer in Reading The Fucking Manual, so I Googled "Operation Flashpoint mission editor" and found myself at Bohemia Interactive forums. I spent all of 10 minutes there: the site was just too cumbersome to use and the threads frequently spiralled in and out of topic. The second result in the Google list led me to OFPEC.

A few searches revealed the setCaptive command, and a couple of tutorials later I was satisfying my revengeful anti-AI bloodlust. It bothered me that they didn't shoot back, so I went back into OFPEC to find an invulnerability command. I didn't find it, but by that time I was beginning to see that there was an entire engine which could be controlled with a fairly simple scripting language, and the more I learned about the editing side of it the more potential I saw in OFP for creating the kind of rich interactive experiences I'd been thinking about for the previous 6 years.

Why don't you own a copy of Armed Assault?

2 reasons:

a) my rig isn't good enough to run it, and
b) from what I can tell the game isn't worth the money it would take to upgrade my rig in order to play it.

If you don't play Armed Assault why do you still help out OFPEC?

Unfinished business. When Planck and I took up the Site Admin roles in August 2006 I was still out of work and had plenty of time to devote to rebuilding the site. I did what I could but I lacked the skills to do a proper job of it so it was pretty basic stuff. Since being employed as a web developer I've finally built up the required expertise, so over the last two years it's simply been a case of finishing what I started.

What do you think about the history of OFPEC? I understand you helped write the article and spoke to many of the admins who directed OFPEC?

Aye, that was interesting - I was stoked even to get a response to be quite honest, especially from LustyPooh who I'd always assumed had just dropped off the map. Working on the history article has given me a much better understanding of the broad strokes of OFPEC, which is refreshing after spending so much time peering at the coalface up close. It's quite encouraging to realise that the issues plaguing the site and the wider Community nowadays have all been gone through before, and they've always been overcome - until the next time.

It's also bizarre to think that the site has been up for 7 years. Those readers with kids older than 7 years will possibly appreciate how paradoxically long and short a time that is.

For those who may not have seen Bedges face in MSN or while playing OFP, Bedges is a hairy guy! How long have you had that big beard?

About a foot and a half, not much longer than that.

I've had a beard since school, believe it or not, and I suspect that it was my practice shaving sessions when I was 6 and my grandad let me use real shaving foam which predisposed my face to fuzziness. I always kept it tidy up until a few years back when I was out of work and didn't give a fuck about anything much less my appearance. Then Lord of the Rings came out and suddenly I was fashionable. Do not take me for some conjuror of cheap tricks. Aye.

The last couple of years, most of the website coding was your work. How was it?

Interesting. I used it as a testing ground for stuff I was doing at work. I'm glad I had input from the rest of the staff on the finer details, especially Hoz, because it's the real experience of using the interface which reveals what's missing and what could be improved.

On the negative side, since I held the majority of the coding cards I had an unprecedented amount of influence over the development of the site, and although I worked hard to incorporate feature requests from staff, any suggestions which I didn't feel would genuinely improve the site were disregarded - in a couple of cases quite abruptly. I quit the Joint Site Admin role at the beginning of 2008 and took a 6-month holiday from the site due to an argument over an on-site chat client.

I've always viewed OFPEC purely as a web design exercise, and I daresay that has often blinded me to other possibilities. I'm occasionally guilty of strutting around behind the scenes as if I own the place, and while I could argue it's always been with the quality of the website in mind, it is pretty arrogant and clearly a sign that it's high time I moved on.

It has to be said though that for all the coding in the world, there wouldn't be a website without a web server on which to host it, and it was MachoMan who set that up. And there wouldn't be a server if we hadn't received a couple of astoundingly generous donations from staffers with which to lease it. And to top it all, if there wasn't a Community who continue to seek knowledge about editing there wouldn't be much reason to have a website in the first place. The technical shit is just one cog in a larger machine.

Are you happy with the current OFPEC website?

Aye, it'll do.

Do you still play Operation Flashpoint?

I don't have time to play any games these days. I still have a vague wish to finish the campaign I started a few years back, but as to whether that ever happens... we shall see.

What do you foresee for OFPEC in the future.

More of the same most likely. OFPEC only does a few things, but it does them pretty well. The success or failure of the site therefore depends on the members, and whether they continue to use the site. I get the feeling Community enthusiasm is generally waning across the board, and I'm not convinced ArmAII will represent enough of a leap in technology or creative potential to build it up again. I also doubt very much that whatever editing capabilities Codemaster's Dragon Rising has will even come close to what's possible with BIS' software, but who knows. Maybe it'll be just what's needed to inject some lively competition into the genre and boost activity once again.

Has your participation in OFPEC taught you anything?

Plenty, about a variety of subjects, and too many to mention here in any great detail. I will say that it has been a pleasure to have contact with so many folks from across the planet in such a helpful and supportive environment, and that in itself has taught me a great deal.

What are OFP and ArmA's greatest shortcomings?

I'm not sure software can be said to have shortcomings without the context of user expectation. If I have no expectations of the software, I can't be disappointed and therefore won't identify shortcomings. There was a lot of expectation in the Community before ArmA was released which ended up turning to disappointment, so it follows that ArmA has a fuckload of shortcomings. Not everyone agrees about what they are though ;)

Besides which, if I've learned anything from editing OFP it's that there's always a way to achieve what you need to do - the work produced by Spooner and Mandoble and others proves that beyond doubt.

Why don't links come in extra-tough versions that are less likely to break?

Because Durex make condoms, not websites.