The TAS Team
- Forester Lowenhart
- May 9, 2014
- 2 min read
PIONEERS IN SL JOUSTING
An occasional series of profiles featuring those who were first to create signature products and programs that advanced the SL Sport of Jousting.
ROMULUS NIKOLAIDIS, SLYDEL RAU ~ Armor Stall
Photo caption: Romulus profile picture with TAS Lance and Hud.
Romulus Nikolaides and Slydel Rau are the creators of the TAS lance offered by Amour Stall.
Version 1.0 of the TAS lance was made in January 2008. The Tiny lance followed in March, and the Hud and basic version was added in July 2008.
The most recent version of the TAS lance 4.0 was introduced in August of 2010. The TAS lance was the first to offer customization. You can change color and textures of the handle, hilt and shaft. It also introduced custom settings and the widest lance width & length available.
The two creators of the TAS first met in SL whilst shopping for an airplane. They ended up crashing one a few times together. The lance was Slydels idea. She did all the creative prim work, and Romulus did all the scripting.
“Slydel was always the driving force for new creations... she would come up with an idea, run it past me to see if I could make it work script wise.”
Slydel hails from Upstate New York but now lives in Florida. Romulus is a Database Architect, originally from England, not far from Birmingham (Worcestershire). He has lived in the U.S. for the past 13 years, now in Maryland.
He cites no early medieval influences other then coming from England, with its long history of castles and jousting.
“The Lance was a very difficult thing to script, the calculations of the angles and such drove me nuts. The hours we spent with weird test prims attached running at each other trying to make it work. Most of the other creations were quite easy by comparison.” He recalls.
In addition to the lance both are very proud of the horses, scripted to use the least amount of script resources as possible, especially for Jousting, even offering a menu selection for low lag.
“I still remember Slydel producing her first horse sculpties… quite the surprise.”
The TAS Horse V.1 was created January 2010. It was followed by The Ardenese in 2010, The Draft Horse in 2011 and the Destrier in 2012.
Romulous has scripted a lot of different things in SL. Boat, Spaceship, Houses, Castles, Babies and a teleporter. He also built the rezzing system for the Castles that Polaris.
But it is his work on jousting equipment that has earned he and Slydel a place in the history of SL Jousting. Many lilke their popular lance and horse, and the complete jousting solution they offer. The List and starting gates were first introduced in early 2008. Jousting Rings and a Target Dummy where as well. The Tournament Board came a year later in 2009. It was first to shout out passes and announce the next jousting pairs.
They have not pursued development work on jousting equipment in the last 2 years but their legacy lives on at many a joust.
