Interview with Jca

[s]interview[/s]First I want to give special thanks for everything you have done for the Broodwar community! In bold my questions, then ~ his answers.

You know the routine, the usual: age, sex, location, favorite race?
~ 33 years old, male, Paris (France), Terran.

Do you work anywhere? Or study or both?
~ I work for my own little company as an independent software developer.

How much time do you spend Programming and how much time you spend gaming?
~ On a working day, I spend between 4 and 8 hours programming, and from 0 to 3 gaming. By gaming I mean hanging on BNET and playing.

What do you like more?
~ Programming cause I know what I am doing :)

Jaja!. We know you are Gosu at Programming but how good are you at Broodwar?
~ Unfortunately, I'm very bad at BW. My APM is usually around 70 and I lose 99% of my games on Battlenet if I do not specify "noobs" in the game title.

Do you ever play online in Battlenet?
~ Almost every day.

How many days total of work you think you spent on making BWChart?
~ I didn’t count. Many.

BWCoach?
~ Probably a full week. A lot of the code was taken from APM Live!

Wow, that’s fast even using apm’s code. Why do you do this? Is it your love for Broodwar? Recognition? Programming practice? You obviously do not do it for money.
~ Indeed it's not for money. I think it's just the opportunity to mix two passions of mine: programming and gaming. Also it's always very satisfying for a programmer to see his work used by many people. It means you created something that matters, even if it's only for a video game.

What do you think of all the polemic that is always created prior the release of your programs?
~ I think there was lot of polemic on BWCoach only. Very exaggerated in my opinion.

Has Blizzard ever contacted you directly or indirectly about your work?
~ Nope, why would they?

Well if they have not contacted you by now it means they do NOT consider any of your programs ‘hacks’. I just wanted to settle that score with anyone out there that still thinks otherwise. You know that at ladder abuse in Battlenet you had to submit a replay with a complaint. Do you think Blizzard had a BWchart program-like analyzer of their own?
~ No. I think Blizzard only ban people who were obviously using some winbots or stuff like that. I doubt they put any resources (=paid people) to check replays and ban cheaters. I mean, how many thousands of requests would they have to deal with if they really took that seriously? Unfortunately for Broodwar, hackers and cheaters are here to stay because Broodwar was written 5 years ago and it does not include any strong technique to defeat them. With all that said, there is a solution to reduce the cheating on ladders: BWScanner.

From the history section in your site we know your program BWchart uses the code of another program called Superview made by rocketeer. Who exactly is rocketeer?
~ I do not know ;) A talented programmer from WGTour, that's for sure.

Can you give us a short summary of the history of the making of BWchart and BWcoach?
~ It's all on the web site. I saw ElkY on french TV. Thought the game was cool, started playing it and wondered why they didn’t put some charts at the end of the game like they do in AOM. Heard about the Superview program and started BWChart from there. Then came all the other programs.

Yes our readers can check at » History of BWchart.com

How many total downloads, adding all your programs, have you had? How many from Korea? How many from China?
~ Hard to say. All versions included, it's more than 200 000 of bwchart.exe alone from my site. Same from ygclan.com (Korea) and around 80 000 on Yaoyuan.com (China). Of course most of those downloads are people upgrading a previous versions. I evaluate the total number of users of BWChart to around 50 000 users now.

How fast do you think Broodwar is growing in China, judging by the hits and downloads at your site from this country?
~ I have no idea. You should ask toptalent or Emlary about that.

I will. Which of your programs is the most used by Koreans?
~ BWChart without a doubt.

What do you think of having a web site that has received half a million hits?
~ It's fun :) Pity I do not get a cent for every hit.

Has it ever dawned upon you, how much you have influenced and done for the Broodwar/Starcraft Community?
~ From the donations I received, it seems more like nobody ever heard about BWChart, RWA and all that stuff, so I remain realistic. The tools are nice, they bring some "fresh blood" into the BW world but that's all. Oh yeah, it also made everyone care about their APM ;)

What will the future of BWSentinel be?
~ It will not be :) I stopped working on it a while ago. I think BWScanner (by TravelToAiur) is much better so I do not see the point in working any more on BWSentinel. Besides it's really too much work to maintain all those tools so I had to make a choice.

What are your next projects?
~ Nothing planned for now.

Nothing?! You have been spoiling us. Any last shouts? Who would you like to thank or recognize publicly?
~ I'd like to thank the guys who wrote Broodwar. People tend to be harsh with Blizzard these days because they obviously do not give a damn about Broodwar any more, even though Broodwar is a much better game than WC3. But let's not forget the team of people (Developers, Graphical Artists, Musicians, Testers, etc) who invented Starcraft and then Broodwar. It's a masterpiece. I would love to meet those guys and know what they are doing now.

I will like to thank you again for your time and effort Jca. You know we will all be waiting for your next projects. END OF INTERVIEW

I truly did wish every one had donated a cent for every hit. Had there been physically a jar at his feet like in old times' street musicians I am pretty sure he would indeed have had half a million cents.

Links
BWChart.com - Jca's site