An Interview with iKALiZER’s Christophe Gossa

I got a chance to catch up with the programer of iKALiZER for an interview. I asked him about upcoming features, estimated release dates, and about his motivation for allowing iKALiZER to interface with Urban Terror. So, without further ado, here is the interview!

Hi Christophe, it’s nice to be corresponding with you.

Hi Allen.

First and foremost, I’d like to know a little about you.

Well, my name is Christophe, I’m 34 years old, and I am a professional programmer who works at a little French corporation (I’m French). I like fishing for shark, watching TV, and having some bud (just joking!). Lately, however, my life has been derailed by some illness in my family; in particular I have had to take a leave of absence from work for more than 4 months. Other than that, there’s not really much else to know. I’m not really a hardcore gamer, but I do have some favorite games such as: Elite, Quake 3, Mirror’s Edge Time Trials, Urban Terror, Zelda, etc.

I’m sorry to hear about your family; I hope things get better for you soon, and maybe with this article some players in the UrT community will send you some get well soon cards and some free beer!

Thanks for your support.

Well to start off, how and why did you start working on iKALiZER?

I’ve been playing UrbanTerror since around 2002 or 2003 and I’ve been playing Quake3 Arena for a very long time (I have the box game). Since I started playing, I had always wanted to enable “A3D sound” in Quake 3 Arena, but I was never very successful (there were too many bugs). With the last release of Quake3, the “A3D sound” had been removed. I thought to myself: “Oh no! I was crying inside!” Anyway, in 2006, I began to play Urban Terror more and because of that my skill level grew. Even though I was getting better at the game, I was still very frustrated to be playing with such a bad sound environment. So, in early 2007, I made up my mind and decided to download the source code of ID Tech 3 and ioQuake 3 (which had become GPL during 2005). After having seen the source code, I decided to make some minor updates in the audio: like adding Dolby Pro Logic I/II encoding. I also added many more “minor” updates. With those updates, the project SAM was born! I decided to send (for testing) my updates of the modified ioQuake 3 to icculus forums [Editor’s note: icculus.org hosts the source code for ioquake3]. After disagreement with some forum members, however, I decided to stop the project. Even though I stopped the project (which was little more than a year old), the idea of improved sound was not dead and at the end of 2007 I decided to try again from a blank slate and brought SAM back to life as a new project “SAM/iKALiZER!”

So you’ve been working on iKALiZER since…

I’ll try to provide an estimate: The actual current release of iKALiZER (0.22.00b) has taken about 12-15 months (of full time work), or possibly more. The audio technology in iKALiZER, has taken me more than 5-7 months to implement, and several months more to polish (including optimization and debugging). Specifically, however, the kind of time one needs to understand and implement all the research involved in Psycho-acoustic, Hybrid HRTF, Holographic and Virtual Holographic Sound is approximately 5-10 years. I personally have been doing research in this area since 1992.  iKALiZER takes advantage of my experience in that “oh so special” domain.

Wow, sounds like a lot of work. How is it that you are able to provide it free for the Urban Terror Community?

Actually iKALiZER is not free to me, as it costs me lot of money to develop without any external help. For example, I pay for web hosting, domain names, software tools (like Microsoft MSDN), and test hardware. That said, iKALiZER will remain free of charge to users of open-source projects. I hope to develop a dual license program in the future for commercial applications such as in the video game industry.

That makes sense. Also related to all the work that you put into it, I’d hate to see iKALiZER not be usable with Urban Terror 4.2. Will it?

I have no direct relationship with the Fronzen Sand team. I originally hoped to finish the next iKALiZER before UrbanTerror 4.2, but I think this will be very difficult (if not near impossible) because I’ve had to delay the project too much this past year. But I’d like to emphasize that work is still continuing on the project. So, all I can say is, “wait and see”… LOL!

What are your future plans for iKALiZER, besides the Mac/Linux support you’ve written about on the Urban Terror Forums?

I’d like to implement some interesting things such as an update service that will keep users of iKALiZER “updated”, a system control center that will allow users to access all settings in a simple and intuitive interface, profile support, and server side processing. Server side processing would only be with a local server of course, and would be very useful during LAN parties and for low power client computers. Some other ideas I have are to provide a wrapper between OpenAL/DirectSound & iKALiZER, and an iKALiZER library that will work with OpenGL or DirectX.

The features you’re thinking about do sound very interesting if not revolutionary. Now to the question I’ve been anticipating: when can we expect Linux and Mac support?

The current iKALiZER build (0.22.00b) isn’t fast enough. I’ve decided to stop trying to fix it and focus on the next generation. So, for iKALiZER 0.22.00b, there won’t be any updates (such as a Mac build or a Linux build), or bug fixes. But before you get too disappointed, I want to tell you that the second generation of iKALiZER is a total redesign that will be natively cross-platform for Intel/AMD x86 processors. For development I use 2 virtual machines (which is very slow but it works): Kubuntu 8.04 and Windows XP SP3. So the next version will have Linux support, even if the current version does not. As for Mac support, I need more time and more money!

Can you elaborate on why you decided to redesign it?

Here are some of the drawbacks of the current version of iKALiZER and why I’m redesigning it: the implementation code in ioQuake3 / ioUrbanTerror is very complex and consumes a lot of processing time. For me, this means that the audio mixing is not fast enough and audio latency is too high. I also feel that the sound immersion is not good enough as there is no elevation support, nor a good realization of distance perception. I hope to address these problems in the next version, and the new implementation will be much cleaner, easier, and FASTER!

That’s good news. When is it coming out : – )?

I can’t exactly provide a date for the next release. During 2010? Summer 2010? Christmas 2010?

Do you still play Urban Terror? If you do, what is your pseudonym/handle, and do you belong to any clans?

I play less since 2008, but my previous pseudonym was “[FR]KaNDai”. From 2008 on my pseudo has been “[ikalizer]christophe”. I’ve never been in a clan, or you could say I’m a clan all by myself! .

Does iKALiZER support any other q3 based games (such as open arena)?

When the next version is completed, I’ll suggest to all those who use the ID Tech 3 open source engine to implement native calls to iKALiZER. So, I guess you could say it’s possible.

Any thoughts about Urban Terror?

Well, to all those cheaters out there I’d like to say: Stop cheating!!! Stop cheating!!! Stop cheating!!! I’d also like to convince myself to stop camping on Riyadh (though, Riyadh is very useful to test iKALiZER).

That’s good to know. Continuing, I noticed on the Urban Terror forums there was some concern about the project’s license. Do you care to elaborate on that?

About iKALiZER and Open Source / GPL licensing… iKALiZER is closed source like Microsoft’s DirectX or Intel/Matrox/ATI/nVidia OpenGL drivers. Applications (like ioQuake3 or ioUrbanTerror) can do a simple call to iKALiZER to achieve compatibility. When distributing, iKALiZER needs to be provided separately of the open source project package or of application packages that use GPL licensing. But, it’s not that difficult, as iKALiZER could be on the same server, just not in the same package or file. There’s no contradiction between iKALiZER and all GPL licences and open source projects.

You mean insofar of compatibility, kind of like how the new anti-cheat will supposedly be closed-source but also provided with the game.

Correct.

Is there anything else I may have forgotten to ask about with regard to iKALiZER that might be interesting?

Well, the name iKALiZER took a lot of work to settle upon. I started by writing a list of over one hundred potential names. I specifically wanted a name whose pronunciation is very close to the project’s aims. It had to be an available domain and not overused on the internet. I also tested this list of names on people around me, and iKALiZER was the winner

Also interesting is that I code using only 2 programming languages: C (sometimes C++) and x86/x64 assembler. I know other assemblers and languages like Basic, Pascal, PHP, Javascript, but I prefer C and x86/x64 ASM.

Unrelated to iKALiZER, what are your future plans?

My life is pretty stressful currently so I guess you could say I’d like to take some holidays off to be more efficient (upon the return!). I’d also like to watch all available episodes of the first Doctor Who Classic series (send me money for that LOL!). My time is currently shared between my family, my professional job and iKALiZER.

Anything else you’d like to give “props,” or tell to the internet?

I have a lot of favorite movies, TV shows and anime. Those include Doctor Who, Stargate SG1, Kare Kano, Lain, the Matrix, MacGyver, Rapyuta, Jacky Chan films, Ai Yori Aoshi (Only the first 4 episodes), Onegai Sensei, Shawshank Redemption, Ranma, Naushika, lots of french movies like Les bronzes font du ski, Les visiteurs, Leon, La cité de la peur, Les tontons flingueurs, Le père noël est une ordure, Papy fait de la résistance, and many, MANY others.

Hahaha! Wasn’t expecting it, but thanks for the list. Like I mentioned earlier, I hope things get better for your family and it was a pleasure interviewing you.

You’re welcome, and thanks for your support. I hope my English was not too bad and provides a good understanding to all non-specialists (I’ve tried to not be too technical).

You can contact Christophe Gossa, the developer of iKALiZER at:

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