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| Doomworld: In my interview with Joel Huenik, he mentioned that you helped create some Dehacked effects for his conversion "All Hell's Breaking Loose." How did you get involved with that? Were there any particular things you did in that that you still think notable? |
| Mike: Hmm... honestly, his name sounds familiar, but I'm not familiar with the conversion (I have a horrible long-term memory)... it might be that he asked me for advice or how to do some of the specific hacks I did in my mods, or I might have just given him permission to take anything he wanted from my .DEHs (I never understood the attitude of not sharing in the Doom community)... |
| Another conversion you helped out on was "Marines Doom 2," a sequel to the famous "Marines Doom" which was actually used by the U.S. Military in training. What led you to become involved in that? |
| I saw the article on Marines Doom in PC Gamer and contacted Lt. Barnett about helping work on it. He was very responsive and was happy to have some input and help. I stayed in contact with him for a while and sent him all the changes I had made, but I never recieved another version from him, and eventually lost contact with him. I'm wasn't sure what ever ended up happening to Marines Doom... until 'NAM came out! |
| What sort of stuff did you make for Marines Doom 2? |
| I had a lot of fun
doing that... I added snipers and enemies that would play dead, land mines,
touched up the grnades, incendiary rockets, a few more enemies, a suicide
bomber that would run up and explode, a hostage, a commando, enemies that
could throw grenades, attack helicopters with machine guns and rockets,
an enemy that could call air stikes, crawling enemies, medics, etc (a lot
of which ended up in 'NAM which I still think is the most fun Co-op I've
played). It was also a lot of fun in DM... My
favorite was a mission I made where you had to make your way through an enemy installation and capture a traitor. He would run from you and you had three choices: capture him alive (blue key- would exit to an easy level), shoot him and take his body (yellow key- would exit to a "secret" level- much harder) or gib him and get nothing and be foreced to play the mission again. |
| Why was Marines Doom 2 never released? |
| I sent it to Joost at cdrom.com to be released but he held it up because it contained a modified Doom level. I never got around to taking the level out (it's the one I was describing in the previous question) so it never came out. I have everything I ever did and I plan on putting it up and releasing it now that I'm done with work on Heretic 2. |
| Overall, what project do you think showcased your best Dehacking work? |
| Hmm... that's a really hard question to answer since I really am proud of a lot of little things I did in each one. I think that Aliens Doom 3 was the most exciting because of the subject matter and pretty scary. Marines Doom had the most visceral gameplay because of the lethality of the enemies and all the stuff going on around you... but I guess Insane Weapons Doom was my personal favorite because I was able to do all the crazy stuff I wanted and I actually made a few complete levels for it! |
| How were you hired by Raven Software? |
| After the three
Doom conversions, I started messing with Ultimate Quake which seemed to
have infinite possibilities compared to Doom hacking. I threw in
everything I could, taking the approach of making a few cool monsters and
weapons, but mostly making player races and classes so you could be a Jedi
with a lightsaber and force powers (which were pretty similar to Jedi Knight
when it came out), a Predator, a Borg (you could assimilate monsters and
order them around), a Fremen, a Klingon, Xena (the chakram was one of the
weapons I'm most proud of), the Punisher, a Cowboy
with a pair of killer Six-Shooters, a Mage, a Tiger-Man, a Terminator, etc. I really had fun making all the different skills, abilities, weaknesses and weapons for all the classes. Doing Ultimate Quake was a real kick since I got in it at the very start (I thnk UQ and a handful of others were the first Quake mods out)... I was told by someone who had played UQ that Raven was hiring and I wasn't doing anything (I was in college skipping all my classes except film class so I could mess with UQ) so I sent them UQ and told them I could make their game "cool". They hired me anyway and I worked on Hexen II, then the Hexen II Mission Pack (Portal of Praevus), then we made HexenWorld and Perf and I made Siege. I've just finished work on Heretic 2 now (all that in a year and a half! They keep us busy here!) |
| Do you think your Dooming days have helped you any in your current position? |
| Absolutely! While I had made games in high school on my C-128, I probably never would have gotten into programming ever again if it hadn't been for DeHackEd, Aliens-TC, WinTex and all the other great utilities and resources and all the great people out there who made them. I seriously wouldn't be where I am today and in the profession I'm in if it weren't for Doom and all the great people in the editing community. |
| Where do you think you'd be right now if not for Doom? |
| Probably still in college racking up more loans and not going to class! Or maybe I would have gone to class and become rich and famous by now... Oh well, it's been a lot of fun, and I'd probably do it all over again. |
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