Here's an interview with Joseph Knight, the creator of SLP Studio, the great program that let's you make mods for AoE, and extract and view the DRS files. I used it to get some of the lost units on this site, and without it I doubt I would have been inspired to create it. Thanks!

1. How did you originally get involved with Age of Empires?
A) I honestly don't remember. I think that a friend may have purchased it and I started playing it on their machine. Soon enough I had purchased my own copies and was playing from home on a LAN we built in our apartment building. ;-)

2. What other games/games series are you interested in and why?
A) I like the Age series a lot because of the strategy, but I'm also a big fan of the Descent series because I like the 3D environment.

3. How did you get involved in programming?
A) Well, that stories a bit longer, the first computer I came in contact with was a Timex Sinclair 2000 which had 4K of RAM (that's right 4K) expandable to 8K. It saved on a tape, and you programmed it by pressing special command keys, like a Goto key or Run key. Anyway, we eventually purchased an Atari computer which I quickly learned to program in Atari's built in BASIC language. When we finally got an IBM compatible, the first thing I looked for was a programming language, and then I learned GWBasic, which
converted easily into QBasic and then into Visual Basic. I've also programmed a bit in Apple Basic (for the Apple IIe) Commodore Basic, Logo, Pascal, C++ for DOS, and recently I've been trying to learn C++ Builder, although my free time isn't what it used to be. ;-)

4) What got you interested in programming?
A) The idea that I could make the computer do whatever I wanted was a lot of fun. Then the challenge of figuring out _how_ to solve a problem in the computer language was fun as well. Building my own utilities was fun too. Then on the PC, I used to enjoy writing level editors for different shareware games I had downloaded.

5) What motivated you to create utilities for the Age series?
A) Well, I saw that the DRS file had been opened and I saw how popular Taunt wave files had become and I thought, hey, why can't we change the graphics for the program? So I started looking through the SLP files and a few months later, out came my programs. ;-)

6) What motivated you to create SLP Studio?
A) After writing the DOS command line utility, and getting a number of confused E-Mails about it, I decided it would be better to integrate the whole thing into a single program in the Windows environment.

7) Do you have any long terms plans with programs? (ie SLP Studio 2?)
A) I'd really like to develop a new version of SLP Studio that is fully compatible with Rise of Rome and Age of Kings. I also thought it might be a good idea to develop a program that simply allowed you to extract the graphics of the game based on the names of the units, etc, rather than having to look through based on the number of the graphic.

8) What compiler or other programs do you use to do most of your programming in?
A) At the moment I use Visual Basic 5.0, I _really_ want to learn Borland C++ Builder and write the new programs in that language. Unfortunately, I think I'll be sticking with VB for now simply because it's familiar and if I continue with the new language, the new programs will never be released!

9) Do you have any advice for some newer programmers/potential programmer's?
A) Well, keep working at it, don't _ever_ be afraid to ask for advice or help, and if there's a problem that's _really_ got you stuck, don't give up, you'll get it eventually. ;-) Also, learning programming a bit like learning a new language, I don't know if that's helpful or scary, but that's what it's a bit like. ;-)

10) If you could have ES design and produce a game for you, what would it be like?
A) That's be hard to say, I have a number of ideas, but I certainly like the products they've produced so far.

Thanks alot to Joseph Knight, who graciously agreed to this interview.