Xbox-Scene Interview with The Joker/TJ_CRS (Team Avalaunch// www.teamavalaunch.com - Avalaunch forums)

Xbox-Scene:: Could you introduce yourself?

The Joker:: I'm The Joker, 29 years old norwegian regular guy that has had interest in programming for ages. I've worked for Eidos and Opera Software till now.
Right now I work in an innovation company owned by some friends and myself, we invent stuff for whoever needs new things or simply make whatever we feel like and see if anyone want to buy it. Parasouns D1 is our current large project.

Xbox-Scene:: What made you get into computers and programming?

The Joker:: I think it was due to poor computer ( oric-1 ) and the poor set of games to it that forced me to "make my own stuff". After that I was a bit onn and off, but I was really jacked into gear when I met up on blazed and lys. They are really skilled and structurized programmers and I've got a lot to learn from them, just the same feeling I had when I wrote my first program at age 6.

Xbox-Scene:: What's your favorite game (all time - any consoles/PC)?

The Joker:: Oooh, that's a tough one. I think I'm gonna have to rewind a little back in time and equal the first place between 3 games : Dreamweb, Zak McKracken and The Dig. ( thought a lot about this and I just can't make up my mind )

Xbox-Scene:: Did you learn something while developing Xbox software?

The Joker:: Yes, tons. You learn most when you have a good time and is truly interested in what you're doing, and developing together with the people I hang out with in team avalaunch is responsible for most of my current xbox knowledge. Also belive they have made me to a better programmer, because I try to get to their level - and they are real proffessionals when it comes to programming. They make the most structured/cleanest/nicest code I've seen in my life, and they take real advantage of what the compiler has to offer. And THAT is how one is supposed to program.

Xbox-Scene:: Besides developing, do you also use your Xbox to play games or use some homebrew programs?

The Joker:: Yes, quite frequently. The xbox scene has made it very enjoyable to use an xbox. I use it a lot for playback of movies (XBMC), but I'm weak for well made games and tools. I belive emulators has a lot to offer here, but many backs off because it offers simply too much ( who want to spin through 4000 amiga games anyway )

Xbox-Scene:: Do you own a dev/debug xbox or did you make one yourself based on a retail Xbox?

The Joker:: All programmers in team avalaunch uses converted retail xboxes with great success. I don't think a real developer kit would make any big difference, except for the value of the coolness. The problem is the new xboxes. If we mess up our xboxes now - we would end up with an xbox that has too small bios to take the dev.kernel and the kernel wouldn't support the focus chip. Wish someone would solve that problem for the developers of the xbox.

Xbox-Scene:: For people that are new in the Xbox scene could you describe Avalaunch and it's main features.

The Joker:: Avalaunch is a boot up dashboard who aim's at making things as easy as possible for the user. Features and expanding the limits counts more than the placement of the text and bells/whistles for us atm.
The main and unique features would be :
- the best file manager you can get to the xbox ( atm )
- the fastest pc (qwix) => xbox and xbox => xbox transferrate using our own system called boostmode.
- Downloadable savegames from internet by a simple click on the game.
- Live streaming music like xbm* does.
- It has online skins that updates twice or once a minute usign web services found on the web
- It has telnet and irc clients, as well as RSS feeds.
- Download skins from internet through a few clicks inside avalaunch.
- It's made to increase the experience in many ways together with Qwix.
- IP telephony, it has both server and client built into avalaunch. It accepts multiple connections and uses between 0 and 2k/s per user with no noticeably latency nor lossy sound.
- it's an innovative dash that tries to make new standards on the xbox by working on unusual things people never thought about.
- Quickstart feature allowing direct boots to a program/last run app/game.

Xbox-Scene:: One of the main reasons people name why they don't use avalaunch as main dashboard is because they can't flash their modchip with it, will we ever see this feature in Avalaunch?

The Joker:: I think you will see that feature in the future, but it has low priority. Evox, FlashX and raincoat already covers this area, altho it'd be sweet to have it in there - it's a feature that is really little used. In average it's used appx once a year per user, so we decided we'd rather put in efforts into figuring out new things.

Xbox-Scene:: How far along are you in implementing XLink KAI support?

The Joker:: Very far. Just waiting for KAI to fix a few things and get out a final version We're gonna release the sources of this library without any type of licence with the interest of getting more support to the xlink scene. Also heard there's a second lib coming out by wishi, and we talked together to see if we could make things as good as possible. He's also waiting for the same things as we are.

Xbox-Scene:: Will we see any modchip control in feature versions of Avalaunch? For Xecuter3/Xenium/SmartXX ?

The Joker:: Team Xecuter has been the only ones that has been willing to talk to us, the rest has just ignored us. Reverse engineering these things is not gonna happen, either they want their products to be user friendly or they wont. Team Xecuter have been very helpful and have already given us the samplecode to control and take advantage of their next kit, which has at least from the inside - really impressed me.

Xbox-Scene:: There were plans to build a complete new UI/Skin system for avalaunch. Is this still planned and can you tell us a bit more about it?

The Joker:: Yes, it's in the planning and it's being made. Lys has worked on the system, but he hurt his back a while ago and couldn't code for a very long time. Now he's cured and started moving - so real life takes it's toll More than that I can't say, lys is the man that knows the stuff about it.

Xbox-Scene:: Are there any plans to implement MPEG videos in Avalaunch?

The Joker:: No, ava will never become a mediaplayer. However, a better implementation towards xbmc can be promised as well as simple playback support of vmw's. Wmv was added in avalaunch 0.42 mid last year and disabled till we found a better way to use it.

Xbox-Scene:: How are the HDD features and research (defragmenting, ...) progressing?

The Joker:: Our harddisk libs are growing for every week, and the last weeks has been very interesting as we figured out some funny things about the hdd's registers and command set. Not sure where it will take us, but we're doing this to learn, ain't we ?
Concerning the defragging and scandisk, we got a little problem when paulB knocked out the 137gb limit. By doing that it went from being hard to fit in the hdd sectormap into memory - to totally impossible. So what we got to do is to find a different way to solve the local sector-database using virtual memory. It was a huge breakthrough, but it kinda demanded some major rewrites

Xbox-Scene:: Last may you showed us Avalaunch running on an LE xbox with an LCD screen attached displaying the IP of the box. Do you plan to release this to the public?

The Joker:: It was actually released puclibly 2 weeks later, but the ones that tried it figured it was useless due to tiny chars and that it was hard to read on any other distance than a nose-length from the xbox. Fun to make, but it wasn't really useful, so we didn't take it to the next step taking away the chip in between.

Xbox-Scene:: You worked in a webbrowser company in the past, any chance we could see a http client (mozilla or any other port) on Xbox?

The Joker:: Yes, it's a good chance I'll work more on that part when my 3 year restriction contract runs out from opera software. We already made a html parser and a basic web-engine to download webpages and pull out the interesting stuff, which is the way we made ACAM and APOD, as well as the skin engine and a few other things. However, it will be limited. Don't expect an internet explorer replacement, it'll show simple webpages without mad certificates and nuts CSS support. Frames and html as well as widgets ? sure.

Xbox-Scene:: What are the plans on the short term with Avalaunch?

The Joker:: New ftp server. The previous one was slapped together over the night, so it was in serious need of replacements.
New ui. We're still using the debug one we just made as we went early last year.
Complete the KAI support
More internet features.
Optimizing some minor things, we're not too happy about the current speeds.
More hardware control. We have learned a lot about a few issues regarding the hardware lately, a lot about the conexant and a lot about the focus chip =)

Xbox-Scene:: What's the future/roadmap (on the longer term) of the project?

The Joker:: I think it's a lot up to the community around us. They have shaped ava to what it is today, and I think that listening to our users will keep it interesting and fun for us all. But UI will be the big thing for a while now. Also gonna see if we can get in a little more harddisk focus. Bells and whistles will keep coming ofcourse, it's what we love to create

Xbox-Scene:: Any other Xbox related projects you are or will be working on?

The Joker:: Well... We help a lot of people with developement. Some for the XBMC team, some for the common developer that just got started - but needs a hand to get going. Other than that I don't know about any other project any of us are doing than just team avalaunch related developement.

Xbox-Scene:: Is there any way people can help/support the Avalaunch project?

The Joker:: Yes, come to our efnet channel #avalaunch on irc and simply talk to us. Help forming the avalaunch community, which is forming the goals of the team. Some people wants to help out programming as well, but it's few people that has the knowledge that we'd need from a programmer.

Xbox-Scene:: What have been the toughest challenges so far?

The Joker:: Boostmode.
Making a system that can copy 250.000.000.000 characters (or appx 250 gb as it boringly enough is called ) with max speed without a single byte loss takes not only an totally insane amount of time to test and bugfix, but a single byte lost will cause everything to fail. It took 6 people a full month to make and tune before it was ready to release. But it was all worth it. It was new, it was something noone ever had thought about and it was so fast it was nuts So far, it was also the feature that was most enjoyable to create imho.

Xbox-Scene:: Anything else you'd like to add to this interview?

The Joker:: Yes. I'm happy that I've had the privilege to work in this team. I would like to thank them for every moment I've spendt here, they are the most skilled and fun set of people I've met in any scene. Also want to add that team xlink ( www.xboxlink.co.uk ) and teamx4 ( www.xbox-saves.com / www.megaxkey.com ) has really showed us that cooperation between teams is truly the only way to make progress in the world of technology.
And one last thing, many people think I'm the brain behind (team) avalaunch or lead programmer. This is the wrong impression. The reason is that I spend a little more time into talking to users, so they automatically think that I'm one of the hardcore people. The way it really works is that one voice in the team is as loud as any other. We work for noone - including ourselves

Xbox-Scene:: Thanks for your time.

The Joker:: likewise.