Interview with Whist - the main core developer for Median XL:S

Hello guys ! I'm glad to present you an short interview with Whist - the main core developer for Median XL:S
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Anh///
Hello whist. Introduce yourself please.

whist
Hey, I'm whist. I'm a developer for the Median XL project, specifically targeted on the core engine development, for quite a few years now. In my everyday life I work as a developer professionally as well.

Anh///
How long have you been doing mods for Diablo 2? Have you ever had any projects before MXL:S?

whist
For too long? Seriously, I don't know anymore, but I've been in the modding scene for at least a decade now. My first projects weren't really serious, it was mostly my learning process. I started with the classics, like dropmods and bossmods. Then I moved to some more complicated ideas and started acquiring experience. One or two years later, my first serious project modding was started, which was named "whist mod" (yep, really original right?). The project was never finished, for quite a few reasons. I was not so serious about it, I wasn't scoping my ideas, I had no precise task list nor a precise goal for a MVP or anything, and eventually circumstances led me to join Marco to work on Median XL.

Anh///
When and why did you decide to make a new core for MedianXL? How long did it take you to start development from nothing? And how long was the development of MXLS entirely?

whist
It's kinda funny how all of this happened. At the time I was working on my project, whist mod, and Marco was just starting to talk about his new project, Median XL: Sigma. He was himself starting to get into some simple code edits to the game's core engine. At that time I had access to the staff section on Marco's forums (even though I wasn't really staff), and as an innocent joke I said to Marco I should just drop my mod and work with him on this Sigma project, doing the core engine work, and somehow we talked about it seriously, and the rest is history. That's about 6 years ago.

That being said, I'd say the sigma project didn't really start there. Sure, I was.... doing stuff? on it. But we had no clear goal, no clearly defined MVP, and Marco himself wasn't super involved, it was more like, just me doing "cool stuff" on my own. I'd say, about 2-3 years ago, we actually sat down, with the rest of the team which had grown in the meantime (suchbalance had joined us for example), and we started defining an actual set of tasks required for a release MVP.

Anh///
As far as i know that before you joined the MXL team, you've been working on project called "U Die MXL", what was that?

whist
This was a few years before I joined Marco. At this time, Brother Laz was still the one maintaining and updating Median XL, and I was young hacker wannabe that thought hacks were "kewl". Median XL being a mod that extensively changes the game's internal functioning, most classic hacking tools available out there didn't work, and so I made it my own "challenge" to hack this mod. I used a character editor named "U die Too", created by SVR, and tweaked it to work with Median XL. My "mod" of the character editor was then named "U die MXL". Back in the days I really didn't have any considerable programming skills, and these were actually my first steps in this stuff. The editor really was just half working and had so many bugs, but hey, it worked. I wouldn't say I'm really proud of all of this, and it's also quite ironic considering I'm now one of the developers for the same mod I had hacked a few years before, but this is part of my history and I did learn a lot out of it.

Anh///
Can you reveal a bit of the development process as part of a team? What is your role? What do the others do?

whist
Marco is the one that started the project after Brother Laz left. He's mostly the project manager, and he was the one to put the team together I'd say. He also works on the actual content along with suchbalance, so you could say they're both content creators/designers. Then we have aahz, our sysadmin guy. He handles all the infrastructure, managing machines, servers, access control, etc. Our realm environment wouldn't exist without him. There's Quirinus, which worked on a bunch of things that were really great for the Median XL project as a whole, such as the documentation, the launcher, and a few other utilities. Then we have Rishab and Gavin, which handle a lot of the "community" part of the project, and Gavin also manages a few other things like the creation of changelogs, bug tracking, and a lot of other stuff we don't necessarily have a lot of time to do on our own, so he's a really great help. And there's me of course, which as previously described, works mostly on the game's core engine. Behind the scenes I also work (as much as possible) on everything that is code design/architecture, source control (git), and automation of our processes (CI/CD).

Anh///
Do you see any future for MXL? Will we see any cool new features in the near future? Maybe a new independent game based on modern game engines? Do you see any problems for MXL’s future progression?

whist
As far as remaking Median XL on our own independent game engine goes, this isn't in our plans and it will most likely never will be. We hear this a lot, people ask this question a lot, and truth is it really isn't that simple. For starters, Median XL still relies on a LOT of assets, lore and stuff from Blizzard's intellectual property, and therefore going "independent" would also require replacing all of these. That means we need artists, to produce a really considerable quantity of graphical assets, unit animations, sounds and what not. And we'd also need to basically create our own universe to stray away from Diablo's lore.

As for the future of Median XL, we simply don't know what the future holds. We try to not think about it too much and just continue making the game as fun as possible. For us, I'd say Median XL represents the true sequel to Diablo II, and we're gonna continue on upgrading it for as long as we can.

Anh///
What is the activity schedule for developers if a season takes about 3 months?

whist
This is a pretty intense development cycle to be honest. Seasons only last about 3 months, and at the same time we have so many ideas, and we want to bring as much new content as we can every season. The development for next season usually starts only 2-3 weeks, maybe a month after the latest season was released. Of course, in those "slack weeks", there's still some development going on, for bugs that happened with the new release, or some balancing issues that need addressing. And 2-3 weeks before the official release, we also have a "beta" season on our test realm, on which a few trusted players (mostly moderators) will play and report issues. This beta phase helps a lot discovering issues before the new patch is released on the live realm.

Anh///
How does the project feel right now in terms of finances? Is it profitable or at least enough to pay for servers/site/discord server?

whist
I'm not gonna give numbers, but yes, the expenses required for the project to live on are covered by the donations. The Median XL infrastructure consists of a little more than 60 game servers, the realm server, a forum, and a few more "internal" machines, like our internal build server, the test realm, etc. Of course all of this isn't free, and even has a considerable cost, and the project couldn't live on without the great support of the community.

Anh///
How can people support MXL?

whist
They can donate via Paypal in exchange of trade gold, or subscribe to our Patreon, which will grant them a few benefits. And for those that can't donate money, just bringing new players (friends, family, etc) also works. And finally, just hearing from people that they like the mod and enjoy playing it, is always a warm feeling to our heart. We spend a lot of our personal time on this project, we work hard on it, and we do our best to provide the community with a great experience, so hearing good feedback from the community is always really appreciated.

donate: https://forum.median-xl.com/donate.php
patreon: https://www.patreon.com/medianxl

Anh///
Do you have any words to say for the MXL community all over the world?

whist
I have a lot to say. As it's been said already, the project wouldn't be possible without the support of the community that supports us in different ways all over the world. You're all part of the team in a way, you're all participating to this project with us. And a special thanks to those who have been here for many years now, always providing good feedback, appreciative comments and kind words. We also get hateful comments, people that complain, that are never satisfied with anything, and while those are very discouraging, we keep going because of those that are grateful for our work and let us know. And as long as we have this support, we'll keep going and provide the best gaming experience we can.

Anh///
Thank you so much for your time and for such great answers!

Special Credits:
To whist for his time and cool expirience
To entire MXL team for their work
To Ben- for his help

I like the mod and I enjoy playing it. Good stuff, especially for new players or even some old timer, who dont know history of median/sigma. Waiting for more similar stuff, no reason not to do or make things like this. GJ ALL

always Ben- for his help. FeelsOkayMan

Ben- OkayChamp

Ben- OMEGALUL

Ben- for president PogChamp

tbh when i read "interview" for a moment i thought its was gonna be like those real life interview videos lol

I've loved D2 since I was a kid and Median brought that feeling back to me.
Really appreciated for devs and their amazing work, for real.
You guys brought me back memories of my childhood.
Keep up the good work. Love from Korea :salut:

Here is Brother's Laz interview from 2012 the original creator of median series.

https://www.pcinvasion.com/path-of-exil ... -diablo-3/

Back then he was working on a small project for PoE.
He speaks from his experience about median, describing how he would have made things differently (he is quite crtiical about median to this day, but for many D2 fans his version of the mod was the best one and many players wanted him back.
He was also critical about D3 and speaks about economy in aRPG games (feels like he understands players like noone else).

Enjoy :!:

Great stuff! It's crazy how much a few people can do with some hard dedication! Always nice to hear how things work behind the scenes.