People at PulseCode

Hana Ohkawa : Lead Designer

Hana spent her freshman and sophomore years at the United States Military Academy at West Point before transferring to MIT in 1992. She received her Bachelor's in Physics in 1994 and dual Master's in Physics and Electrical Engineering in 1997. She spent most of her graduate days programming in lab and nights playing video games. Hana brought the game concept for Shark of the Seven to PulseCode Interactive in early 1998. Her favorite games include X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, the Megaman X series, Zork Grand Inquisitor, Earthworm Jim, the Curse of Monkey Island and Croc.

Hana's comments: "My pet peeve is photorealistic textures on poorly animated or constructed models. I think it's just plain creepy when an obviously polygonal 'man' has a pasted on expression which doesn't change, and obviously canned repetitive movement. Even when it's well done, the people still seem like zombies. I always found it unsettling when peoples eyes never moved. The realistic textures make it worse."

In Shark of the Seven, we tried for stylized but realistic creatures. When you do a dolphin too realistically, he loses his cuteness. At the same time, we wanted the player to believe that he/she is really a shark, swimming off the coast of South Africa.

I think the movement of the creatures is a real technological accomplishment. Steve Schlueter, our lead programmer, is a real genius with matrices! Even in the newest, highest end arcade game I've seen, [omitted game name], the movement of the creatures looks canned and unrelated to their translation in space."

Stephen Schlueter : Lead Programmer

Steve has had an interest in programming and electronics since early childhood. While in high school, he wrote his own version of Tetris for the Apple IIe in assembly language. Steve's technical aspirations brought him to MIT, where he majored in electrical engineering and computer science. He received the award for best project in the Digital Design Laboratory, commonly regarded as the most difficult EE course at MIT. After graduating with a simultaneous Bachelor's and Master's in 1997, he went to work for IS Robotics, a leading company in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence research. In his spare time he was actively programming, successfully writing shareware, and developing 3-D engines. This engine research turned out to be a perfect match for the Shark of the Seven game concept. Steve joined PulseCode Interactive in late 1998. His favorite games include X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, Hexen II, the Megaman X series, and Thief.

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