Interview with jens_vdp

dembol : Hello. Thank you for having agreed to answer my questions. Here is the first one: What do devs do? What are your duties?

jens : Hi, as i really liked your previous interview with notatol, i didn't

see any reason why i'd not answer some questions myself.

Though, i want to apologize in advance for my limited english skills.

What developers do? Fixing daily issues/bugs and developing new stuff.

My main responsibility was to lead the contributor project. Helping

them out with things they want to make and put it online. Another part

of my job is making new stuff myself. Fixing bugs is not my main duty,

but of course, when there are problems and no other dev is available,

i will fix it myself.

d : How does Dev's day look like? How many hours do you spend on the CBM?

j: There's not really a schedule for that, because we are all doing it in

our free time :p. Since i'm doing an internship for school at the

moment my day looks like:

Waking up, checking if daily update ran smoothly and if there are no

other big problems, leave to work. During work, charazay is open the

whole day, so i check forums all the time and communicate with Phua

and Leo, but i have no database acces over there. So when i come home

and i have no basketball training myself, or i'm not going out with

friends, i'm working on my graduation project for school and working

on some stuff for charazay. (I try to devide that time equally atm).

During the week i'm online for 10-15 hours a day, but really working,

about 2-3 hours. In the weekend, it can be up to 5 hours.

So let's say i'm working for charazay about 20 hours in an average

week for now. When i graduated at the end of june, i'll have more time

again.

d: Recently there have been problems with the server. What were the

problems and were they resolved?

j: There have been a few problems. Some problems were located on the

server itself, so we couldn't do anything to that. Another main issue

was an increment of serverload due to an increment of data. Since

then, we are trying to optimize our stuff every day, to prevent this

in the future again. This contains rewriting scripts to make them

faster, optimizing our database,... .

d: Do you think contact with the community is good enough? If not,

what should be improved?

j: Charazay has a really great community and i believe we should

constantly work on the communication with them. This has been big

problem some time ago, but we are doing our best to improve this now.

We are recently trying to use the 'known issues' on the helpdesk page

again, as well doing some more announcements with information.

d: How does the game engine works? I know maybe I ask too much, so you

don't have to be precise. Hehehe ;-)

j: Haha, nice try :D. Of course i cannot answer much on this. The most

important thing you should know is that we are using a defensive and

offensive potential for each layer, as explained in the manual.

d: There are rumours, that the gameplay in CBM is too random. Are you

doing anything in order to change this? What about 3pt shooting?

j: I agree that the engine is far from perfect. As you might noticed, we

created a topic in the CBM forum about the engine. We are

investigating all the issues that users are posting there and we will

be looking into making a better engine.

Though, any minor change in the engine can have a big influence. Not

only on the result of the engine/match, but also on a long lasting

team strategy (training, transfers,..).

So except for small fixed and small adjustments, we will certainly not

change important issues in a short period.

d: Many people think that the idea with the bookmaker is not good, and

the crew should deal with more important things. What is your opinion

about this?

j: There was a deal with betsafe to try some stuff on our site. The

intentions were certainly better, than some of you experienced it. The

main goal was to bring international matches more into the spotlight

with this. I can only say this only took 1 hour of dev time to do make

this, so it's not that we are not working on other stuff because of

this.

d: What are the requirements to become a dev?

j: Loving the game/basketball and have good developing skills i guess :)

It's also important that the devs can work as a team and respect the

coding standards. We have only three devs now, but we might have the

best 'team' since a very long time.

d: Do you have financial benefits of being dev?

j: For me personally, it's not a secret. I get 75 euro a month. Based on

an average month i work for charazay, it's about 0,8 euro per hour.

Just to emphasis that a i'm not a developer of charazay for the money,

but because i'm addicted to the game.

d: Will the next season gearing up some revolutionary changes in the game?

j: All changes will be announced in time. We already announced the

sponsor contracts and the decrement of the importance of experience.

Furthermore we are evaluating the engine and testing some fixes in it.

We are also working on some new projects which will be announced when

they are ready to be implemented.

Maybe i can reveal something here: There will be a huge change in a

few weeks, maybe the biggest change ever. More info will be announced

very soon.

d: Will CBM continue to exist until the end of the world?

j: Hard to predict. It all depends on how things will evolve on the

internet and if we can jump on that train of evolution. Personally, i

have a feeling that the interest in online manger games has strongly

decreased in the last two years, while it was really 'hot' 4 years

ago. Though, i hope charazay will be there for a long time and we will

do everything to achieve that.

d: Who will be the World Cup champion in seniors NT? Why?

j: USA will definitely be the team to beat, but i believe Spain should be

able to get the title. Grimo is an experienced user and i believe he

will manage to set up a balanced roster with the big pool of players

that Spain has.

d: Now something about you. What is your name, where you live, how

old are you, what do you do every day.

j: Ii'm Jens Vandeput, living in Belgium, near Brussels. I'm 23years old

and almost graduating as web developer. I already passed my exams,

just need to finish my internship and my graduation project. So

actually i should be spending less time (or even keep away) on

charazay until the end of june, but i'm afraid that i'm too addicted

:)

Besides charazay and school/internship, i'm a Basketball coach and a

musician. Next season i will be coaching an U18 team and an U21 team.

Since a serious knee injury i'm not playing on the court myself

anymore.

About the music, i'm a certificated Sound Engineer, but also playing

bass guitar and a bit of piano and acoustic guitar as well. It's just

a hobby, i'm not playing in a band anymore. It can really bring me

some rest in a stressy period, or just as a break when developing.

d: Are you interested in other sports besides basketball?

j: Yeah, actually i'm following quite a lot of sports. Besides

basketball, mainly: soccer, tennis, F1 and cycling.

d: Who will be the champion in the NBA? Why?

j: First of all I want to say that it's pretty hard to follow the NBA in

Belgium. You need a special (paying) option on TV, to be able to watch

it. So, i'm only following some matches on internet from time to time,

certainly during the play offs. To be really honest, i'm not a big fan

of NBA basketball. As a youth coach i'm working for hours with

kids/guys to learn them the fundamentals of basketball, but if you

look to an NBA match you hardly see some teamplay and I see

travellings all the time. Of course the NBA has some extremely great

athletic players, which can bring some more dunks and other show

elements. It's amusing to watch sometimes, but i prefer another style

of basketball.

To predict the champion it's hard, as i didn't see all the teams

playing this season, but i guess it will be hard to beat Miami..

d: Who will win the Champion League? Barcelona or ManUtd?

j: It's a great final, both teams deserve to be there. But i really hope

Barcelona will win. It's just so great to watch them. All working hard

for the team, all playing technically so great. In my opinion, they

are showing the best soccer i've ever seen.

d: Do you have any advices for new users?

j: Get a good tutor who can help you out and answer all your questions.

If you want to achieve something, don't be afraid to buy an older

player to make you win, but don't forget to think on a longer term by

doing for example some great transfer deals where you can get some

more money out after some seasons.

d: Thank you again. I'm glad that someone from the "top" agreed to

answer my questions.

j: No thanks.

Thank you for the translation LUKAS