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Have fun!
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News of the dog
Regular visitors to our homepage might remember the picture of the youngest member of our 3D team. Just like the game, which was still in its infancy at the time, the dog was small and fairly unfinished – if you can say that about a dog.
Meanwhile, the dog has quickly grown, not unlike the game. And while the game still fits into its box without any problem, the dog is now having some difficulty fitting under the desks.
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The team
 This is how the team presents itself in the latest issue of an Austrian PC magazine. We couldn't resist showing you this classic team portrait.
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A walk through the studio
This time, we won't give you just one fleeting little look into our studio but show you an amazing 25 pictures per second. Unvarnished, unedited... the true goings-on within a team of developers at work.
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Christmas tree
Let us demonstrate to you a little belatedly, that we're all for upholding local traditions at our studio. So, before we must finally take it down again, have a final glimpse at our Christmas tree of this season. True, it may look somewhat unusual, but at least it's not artificial and won't have to be thrown out after Christmas.
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Games you can touch
It's a well-known fact that computer work is bad for your health. This applies in particular if you sit motionless in front of the screen for hours on end. At our Ebensee studio, we try to avoid this by playing a round of table soccer every now and then. And, to be honest, after all this virtual gaming, a game that you can actually touch is rather nice for a change!
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Gone to the dogs?
The latest addition to our studio could encourage malicious-minded people to maintain that we are slowly going to the dogs. After all, the number of dogs here has doubled over the last month.
The new-comer is a young labrador lady called "Farah". Not really house-trained yet, she keeps her owner and master Martin on the go. Right now, she is still small and cute - but wait another six months, and people might decide that they'd rather not be fresh around her. With a bit of luck, by then she will also have learned that shoes, model cars and cables are not to be chewed on.
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Bugs - the awesome truth
 It's not an easy life being a tester of computer games. Always looking for bugs. And if one finds one, no one is really happy about it. A terrible job really.
This photo gives you a quick first insight into the daily routine of our bug hunter Jürgen Maier and reveals the whole shocking truth. Not for the timid!
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And the dog just keeps on barking
 We really cannot recommend our studio dog “Filou” as a means of transport. He is just a bit too small for this purpose. But he's just right to act as an alarm system for mailmen and other people not familiar with the studio and does his job excellently and at top volume.
If he's not busy barking at strangers or licking the feet of people he knows, he sleeps peacefully in Petra's office.
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A new face
 It's the right time and place to introduce a new face.
Christian Charbula supports us as a programmer in the Ebensee studio since June 2003. His main task is artificial intelligence. He can be made responsible later on if the opponents are too stupid or clever. But we are optimistic that he will design the opponent's personalities so that there is exactly the right opponent for each player.
If not ... his email address is ...a bit later perhaps;-)
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Knotted leads
 Berni is not only our chief programmer, but also our system administrator. When everything grinds to a halt again on the network or the server gives up the ghost, his help is needed.
Here you can see him engaged in a – seemingly impossible – search for a dead-end in the studio network. In his defense it must be said that this local jam on the data highway was resolved within a very short time.
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Trucks - real life and modeling
There is a reason why it is Martin Weinacht who makes all the truck models for our game. After school he followed the lure of money and adventure. So he decided to spend his days from then on in the driver's cab of trucks. His adventure stories about journeys along narrow mountain roads, about brake failures, burst tires and suchlike are legendary.
His job at our studio seems much less hazardous. But then, crashes of our 3D-Studio program at the worst possible moment might be just as nerve-racking at times.
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Round and round
 For Industry Giant 2, the Austrian model train manufacturer Roco published a special edition of a digital starter set. One of these much sought-after collector's items is in our studio now. Here you can admire it in its full magnificence.
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Woeful Wednesday
 Our coffee machine is cleaned every Wednesday morning. It is a fact well-known to everybody in the studio. The procedure always takes place at the same time. - And yet, inexplicably and bafflingly, almost every week, you will be able to observe a small cluster of people gathering in front of the machine at that exact time. They wait with long, impatient faces for the cleaning procedure to end and the machine to finally start working again.
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Monitoring is necessary
Developing games is an expensive and time-consuming business. Whereas not so long ago, programmers would simply program away, developers are now aiming to plan and monitor all procedures as meticulously as possible. Therefore detailed project plans are drawn up and adherence to them is continuously being monitored.
Sabine is the one responsible for this supervision at our Ebensee studio. She begins her rounds every day at 4 p.m. sharp and collects the daily status reports from each worker.
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It always pays to learn a trade
 It does have its advantages that some of us originally learned a solid trade. The inspectorate for industrial safety ordered us to build in an additional banister because our stairway is too wide by 5 cm. So Joe, in order to save the company enormous costs, dusted off his skills as a qualified carpenter and built and assembled his own banister. And lo and behold... it's still doing what it's supposed to do.
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Model building department
 As you have seen in the past, we've got some fairly talented model builders in our studio. We don't want to keep their latest piece of work from you: a model in the shape of a Transport Giant Airbus A380.
It was built and painstakingly painted by Jürgen Wagner, and the original can be admired in our meeting room.
Incidentally, this is already the second model, as the first one crashed while he was painting it.
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Death from heat
 Despite ventilation, the extreme temperatures of this summer can make computers give up the ghost without prior warning. In this case, even an emergency operation by Doctor Stuhlmann couldn't help resuscitate the patient. So the machine is disembowelled and its innards carefully put aside for future transplantations.
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Summer heat
What do you do when computers start switching themselves off due to extreme summer temperatures? Rent an air-conditioned office? Wrong... ventilating fans are a much cheaper alternative to cool the machines down. As a useful side effect, the users quite enjoy the cooler air as well.
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The Green Parlor
Where do you gather in a developers' studio for a social rather than an official meeting? Why, at the coffee machine, of course.
On this picture we see part of the team in our so-called Green Parlor. For the sake of the picture, we have even managed to persuade the smokers among us to do without their beloved cigarettes for a few minutes. Under normal circumstances, the smoke haze is so thick that flashlights won't penetrate it.
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Landscapes designed without the help of computers at all
 Joe Reitinger manages to produce landscapes even without computers. In his spare time he will tinker with dioramas or his little model railroad installation. The result is quite impressive – though hardly anyone at the studio really understands his decision to use the N scale.
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Programmers and rats
 This picture shows Markus Zeller's working place. His screen is closely guarded by a big plastic rat.
Incidentally, at one time this rat was almost instrumental in sending our Senior Cleaning Manager into the great Beyond when, unsuspectingly opening the coffee machine, she happened upon a huge rat. The colleagues who came up with this practical joke want to remain anonymous to this day, as they are still terrified of her revenge.
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Where's the problem?
 What does it mean when two programmers both stare at one monitor? There's a problem somewhere that they are trying to solve according to the principle “two heads are better than one”.
In defense of Berni and Markus it must however be said that they are just discussing joint interfaces for program parts.
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Unbearable!
 As our office does not have air-conditioning and the current long-lasting heat-wave causes tropical temperatures and acute oxygen deficiency in the upper floors, the graphic designers on the second floor have lately moved more of their meetings to the shadow of a leafy tree. It may not be much cooler there but the oxygen supply is more suited to survival.
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The developers in the blue house
 This is the whole team in front of the studio. The blue building in the background houses our team. A 100 years old former residential building for the workers of the nearby chemical industry, it had been neglected over many years, until it was almost only fit for demolition. Little by little, we have been doing the house up. And although it does not really meet the requirements to modern offices, we have grown quite fond of it and wouldn't want to replace it with a modern office building – though admittedly we wouldn't mind an air conditioning system on hot summer days.
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Friday, 10:00 a.m.
Every Friday morning the whole developers' team comes together in the meeting room. Each team member explains to the others what they have been doing in the course of the past week.
This is often not too difficult for the graphic designers, who in most cases can show the results of their work on the computer - while programmers occasionally must use a blackboard to try and give their willing but uncomprehending audience an understanding of some rather theoretical question.
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Punishment
 It's a tough job being in game developing. For example, at our Ebensee studio the studio management shows no mercy whatsoever on employees who haven't done their utmost, and gives them degrading extra work to do.
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