What are "boned road segments" as in RR2? Is the road dynamically generated?

Creating a track of that length in one mesh would bog the system to a crawl and take forever to download, so I invented a cool system where I create small segments of road with segment weightmaps and add a spine of bones that I can use to bend the road segment to any angle or incline in real time. By chaining a few of these together and leap-frogging them in front of the player a huge varied track can be created in a tiny download.

What's the history of your games on Shockwave.com?

I noticed ZipZaps and InitialD are not live any more, probably due to contract license stuff, but here's the list of dates for the live ones...

2002 June
My first every 3D attempt
http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/hurtleturtle

2003 August
(previously 2Fast2Furious game with licensed shells and real NOS)
http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/redline_rumble

2004 March
Innovative use of "boned" road segment meshes.
http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/rr2detonator

2004 July
Simple but fun 2D rendered graphics.
http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/rescueblade

2005 January
My most ambitious 3D title to date.
http://www.shockwave.com/sw/content/battlex

What are you working on now?

I've just completed a 3D commission for a major toy company, and I’m now in the research stage of a martial art title. It's nice to mix my own personal games with the more serious commercial projects.

The best thing about my job is the huge variety, and the satisfaction of really having created something purely by my own efforts. The worst aspect is the constant battle to shoehorn a full 3D game into a 1MB file, as well as keeping all the PC hardware and OS combinations running smoothly. Also working seven days a week to tight deadlines with no-one to delegate anything to is not recommended. :)

Thanks for taking time to talk to us Richard. You can see his work at shockwave.com. There's also a thriving Shockwave section on NewTek's forum.