Martin Malamud, one of Malabar's owners, kindly took the time to answer our questions.

Q: Please give us a few details about your company - Malabar. What services do you offer?
A: Malabar is a young company created in 2001. However, we have had a great deal of previous experience in computer animation and programming. Malabar is dedicated to game design, computer animation, and software development related to those fields.

Q: Could you give us some information about KitoPizzas? What is it and how does it work?
A: KitoPizzas is our first game. It is oriented to children between the ages of 4 and 11. Its main character, Kito, is a pizza delivery man. His goal is to deliver the pizzas from the pizzeria to the three big heads that eat them. We have developed twelve different scenarios that Kito must travel through to reach his goal: a toy planet, an ice-cream planet, an underwater planet, a space travel scene, a middle age castle, etc.
This game is shown as a TV program. Children watch the game on their TVs and they play it using their phones. It is shown in Argentina and other countries in South America.

Q: How have you managed to interface your game with the phone?
A: We have developed a hardware interface between the phone line and the computer. We connect the phone line in one end and the computer serial port in the other. We read the tone signal directly from a wdl program as different digits.

Q: I heard that you have started to work at a new project. Can you tell us a few things about it?
A: We are now working on two new game projects: GURI GUAZU is a new game for children. Its main character, Guri, is a little American animal and its opponent is a fat hunter. Guri try to tease the hunter and set other animals free in different scenarios. FIRST TANGO IN BA, is a turistic game and didactical project related to tango. The player can see 3d realtime milongas, learn to dance tango, and live different adventures of Buenos Aires nightlife.

Q: How would you describe your max2gs plug-in? What does it do?
A: Max2gs is a max plugin that exports a max scene into gamestudio. It exports blocks with their textures, sprites, terrains, and place models and wmb files. It creates the wmp, the wad and the wdl files in one step. You can read more about it, download the demo version, and the user manual in www.malabar.tv\software.htm

Q: Which are max2gs’ advantages over the competition?
A: It is very powerful and simple to use. I don’t know another plugin that does the same thing.

Q: Do you plan to keep the low $18 price for your plug-in in the near future?
A: Yes, but we will add some optional extensions in the next future for a small fee. These are:
- bake2gs: creates and exports baked textures
- cam2gs: exports cameras animations
You can find more info in the next few days on www.malabar.tv\software.htm

Q: Please give us a few tips for beginners.
A: Here´s a tip. Look for other styles and uses for games. I think that games are a very powerful media and we need to investigate and create new ways to use them. Some of these possibilities are:
- educational uses;
- democratic and participative uses;
- medical uses (related to different handicaps);
- uses related to local cultures.

Thank you a lot, Martin.