Q. What Plugins have you developed and what do they do?
A. I have written and released;
Thirdeye, Buzzard, Ascus, Valet and Deadeye Color System (DCS).

Thirdeye, Buzzard and Ascus are radar extenders that are each focused on a separate task.
Thirdeye, shows monsters and players in the area and what they are wielding.
Buzzard, shows corpses in the area that have not been looted yet.
Ascus shows portals, houses and lifestones, and checks periodically for open houses and shows the settlement they are in.

Valet, swaps Ammo out to match the the bow to match the bow being equipped.

The last and by far my most popular is Deadeye Color System (DCS). it simply allowed you to see what colors of armor and clothing without the need to try it on.

Q. What was/is the 1st Plugin/3rd party Application you programmed?
A. My first released Plugin for AC was Thirdeye. The first release of Thirdeye promptly go me kicked out of Decal Developers Community because it showed PKs, that was corrected and was re-release then next day without that "feature". I was accepted back in the community and I have been a little more sensitive with what is acceptable for public use.

Thirdeye grew to the point it was going to able a see everything but later realized it had little use. I reduced the scope of what it saw to do exactly what I wanted, monsters and players in the area. The ability to see corpses became Buzzard and the ability to see house, Lifestone and portals became Ascus. I left items to Bandit Sight/2, which was much more advanced at finding items than my plugins. I found having multiple plugins running allows me to have all the windows open at once when needed. So I could watch for mobs while checking loot on corpses.

Q. What inspired you to write it/them?
A. Like all my projects it I was looking for excuse to learn a new area of programming, in this case it writing a C++ COM modules. I enjoyed playing AC and written some trivial plugins for myself in VBScript so I decided to make a real Plugin. At the time
Sixth Sense was mostly unsupported showing its age and Bandit Sight/2 has not come about yet. I thought would be interesting to see everything that was in AC and I wanted a little more control of what was being displayed while hunting.

Q. What was the biggest obstacle you had/have to overcome in writing your Plugins/3rd party Applications?
A. Single most difficult obstacle was getting starting example code to follow. All published examples where in Visual Basic, which I had little desire or need to learn. I finally found enough examples in C++ to get started. Once started, I found programming for Decal was fairly straight forward.

Q. What is your favorite language to program in?
A. By far C#. Since writing Deadeye Color System (DCS) in C#. I have not even thought about using another language, I then used C# to rewrite Thirdeye in about two weeks where had been spending months on it in C++. I highly recommend it to anyone thinking about writing a Plugin. (I now have a assignment developing in C#).

Q. How long have you been programming in general/with Decal Applications?
A. I have been programming for 30 years, started my senior year in high school then majored computer science in college. I have been programming for 25 years professionally, but mostly Accounting Applications in Mainframe COBOL. I have also been programming for fun in Various languages most of that time, there are few languages or platforms I have not tried. I started playing with Decal with VBScript when the decal source was published on Sourceforge in the Fall of 2001, I quickly moved to C++ before trying anything serious.

Q. Have you felt the overall contribution of the decal programming community has been positive on the game?
A. I was happy that Microsoft/ Turbine allowed it. Whether it was positive or negative overall, that is for them to decide. I enjoy writing plugins as much or more as playing Asheron's Call, so for me it has been nothing but positive.

Q. What Plugins/3rd party Application other than your own, do you use?
A. When I was playing use Bandit Sight/2 for sifting through item and Sapphire for buffs and occasionally used TradeBot.

Q. What can we look forward to in upcoming versions of your Plugins/3rd party Applications?
A. Sadly, I cannot work on any plugins because of possible conflicts of interest at work with my new assignment at work.

I am hoping for some inspired people to take over my plugins and and their own enhancements to them. I have made all the source code available at my web site
Ciper's AC Plugins hoping someone would be inspired enough to take over them or base there own plugins on what is already done. Bake_Neko has taken Valet and made it his.

I am doing this for fun, so I will not feel bad if someone takes my code adds some features and re-releases it either as the new official source of the plugin or releases in under a new name. Hopefully the code will help others get started writing plugins.

Q. Do you still play AC and if so what Server/s do you frequent?
A. Currently, I am not playing Asheron's Call but am planning on returning when the expansion comes out. I started the day AC went retail on Harvestgain, then transferred to Wintersebb when it open. I likely will return to Wintersebb when the expansion comes out.

Q. What is your favorite Plugin/3rd party Application that you have written?
A. That is a tough one. I personally use Thirdeye and Buzzard at all times when playing. Ascus has made my characters unbelievably rich. But overall I think my favorite is Deadeye Color System (DCS), it whimsical, it adds nothing but fluff and fun to the AC. And because of that DCS, I have incredible matching outfits.