show his technology to a "gaming evangelist", and was readying demos on a PowerBook in the main hall of the San Jose Convention Centre. He never met the games evangelist as they never arrived at the meeting.Stuart Cheshire (the author of Bolo for Macintosh) was sitting behind Munkki as he was readying his demos and told him he would like to see a real 3D version of his technology to use in a 3D version of Bolo. Munkki said he would keep in touch if anything came from the 2D polygon work. Munkki met with Christian Fanz who was working on an Elite style game for Macintosh. Fanz was having difficulty making his 3D graphics fast enough for release. Following the advice of Cheshire, Munkki attempted to implement a BSP library. Both Cheshire and Fanz were impressed with the demo. Munkki wrote a few demos to show how the library was used, using spaceship models as samples. One of the demos allowed the player to drive around scenery. The idea of this was to verify that the objects were being sorted into correct visual order. Avara was created using the concept of this experimental stress test. Munkki wanted to create a battlezone style game, where a turret could move freely. He spent a few weeks before Christmas writing a simple networked game/demo which involved tanks with freely moving turrets. Munkki believed that it could be fun to allow the game to evolve by letting other shareware/freeware authors work on it, so he posted an article on comp.sys.mac.games inviting others to develop the game however they wanted. Andrew Welch, the president of Ambrosia software saw this article, leading to Avara becoming an Ambrosia title. The walking robot (H.E.C.T.O.R) originally didn't have a name and its ability to jump was only written when Munkki believed the game was ready for public release, aside from still requiring levels to play with. The idea of the walking and jumping robot slightly predates the engine. In addition to the walking animation code from 1992, Munkki had early sketches of H.E.C.T.O.R jumping, however, he didn't originally intend the function to be in the game. Welch frequently played Cheshire's Bolo, and insisted on Avara having internet play, however Munkki didn't think the program architecture and game were suitable for internet play. Despite this, in January 1996 he attempted to make Avara suitable for internet play, writing code