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| Doomworld: You've released three 32-level sets for deathmatch since Icarus. Were these side projects, or did they get full attention? |
| Ty: The first
one was Bloodlands,
and it was intended to be a real project by those who wanted to do DM-only
levels. Icarus had paid some attention to DM by altering some levels
specifically for DM play, and most levels did OK as DM levels (some very
well). But it wasn't the same thing, so we did Bloodlands.
Ragnarok was just starting up as well, but a lot of early work had to be
done by a small group to get that established, and level authors were getting
bored again.
Grievance and Pursuit were followons to Bloodlands, as is the current project Reclamation. We've had a lot of fun making and playing these, and they've met with pretty good reviews. We'll be up to 128 DM-only levels after Reclamation, but no one ever seems to get enough. It'll be interesting to see whether or not DM'ers like the Boom-specific features in Reclamation. |
| The original 12-level Eternal Doom was made by a group of hardcore Doomers who hung out in Compuserve action forums. How did Eternal Doom end up being a TeamTNT production? |
| I was a Compuserve member as well, in fact getting my start there before getting on the Internet in '94. Dr. Sleep was my mentor. I briefly became a sysop in the Gamers forum, and suggested that Eternal DOOM 2 be released on the Internet. When E3 came along, I was a member of the team and invited the team to join TeamTNT. That also allowed us to use the TeamTNT infrastructure (web, mail, FTP sites), which was easier on me too. |
| Did the original Eternal Doom team participate in the design or the construction of the later releases of Eternal Doom? |
| Some. They, like most groups, shifted as time went on. Some folks dropped out, some went on to become members of the commercial gaming community, and some are still working with the Eternal resources. |
| Why was there an "Eternal Doom 2" and an "Eternal Doom 3?" What caused there to be two separate releases? |
| It was just a matter of how many levels got released at a time. Think of it as episodes. With the size of most Eternal levels, building a dozen of them is like anyone else's megawad. |
| What instigated Eternal DM, and how long was it in production? |
| It was a fairly small group of folks who did that, and it was initially going to be done outside of TeamTNT. We were trying to decide what to do about use of non-original non-DOOM textures (like stuff from Heretic and Hexen), and our policies at that time wouldn't have allowed it to be released except if Eternal DOOM was already installed. We relaxed that a bit because it just wasn't practical for DM'ers to necessarily have downloaded a huge set of SP levels already, and brought that project back into the fold. |
| You're also the /idgames maintainer on CDROM.COM. The original maintainer was Joost Schuur. Did you have, or do you have, any contact or correspondence with him? |
| Sure, we communicate as needed. Not much, but we're going in different directions most of the time. |
| When were you first contacted about taking over Joost's position? Why? |
| Actually I think it came up in a discussion when we were releasing Eternal and moving it to the TeamTNT directory. Frans DeVries had been the one maintaining the DOOM (idgames) area, and was having to back down due to some RSI problems. Joost needed to concentrate on Quake, Unreal etc. He just happened to mention it in a note and like an idiot, I jumped in. |
| What do you do as /idgames maintainer? |
| Mostly it's pretty trivial stuff of receiving incoming stuff, checking it for validity and policy adherence, and moving it out into the right locations in the archive. There are emails almost every day, to some extent from the clueless newbie department but sometimes more interesting stuff. |
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