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When you hear of Iikka Keranen, you probably
immediately think of his well-known and well-loved series of Quake levels
which got him a job at ION Storm, where he currently works on Anachronox.
Or maybe you think of Airquake, the TC for which Iikka did all the mapping,
modeling, skinning, coding, etc etc. However, Iikka's first kick-ass
game add-ons came packaged in the form of Doom levels. In several
well-known Doom addons such as Dystopia
3 or the Addictive
series of deathmatch levels, Iikka worked his patented breed of magic,
stunning the Dooming world with not only his great level design but also
his capability to stretch the Doom engine to do things no one had ever
believed even remotely possible. |
| Doomworld: How did you first hear about, and then get hooked on Doom? |
| Iikka: Somebody brought it to the computer class... I ended up building Doom levels at the lab till 10pm almost every weekday as I didn't have a Doom-capable computer at home yet :) |
| What was it in Doom that made you want to create add-ons for it? |
| Um, how about the fact that it was possible? Also, it gave me a lot more freedom than other editable games of the time, as it wasn't based on "blocks" of any kind.. |
| What work have you done for Doom? How did you get involved? |
| A lot... Probably
25 Doom DM levels that never got any "press" since they weren't released
on the net (I didn't have a net connection.. But we had a LAN at school),
and then a large number of single player and DM levels in various Doom2
projects.
I got more "involved" after releasing my first Doom2 single player level on the internet (on "wad of the week" page of now forgotten Thomas Giboney), which got me into contact with Adelusion and we started Dystopia3... The rest is history. |
| Which ones of those WADs are you most proud of? |
| Dystopia3 is my most important work for various reasons... During its development Adel and I devised most of the "3D" tricks ever used in Doom engine, and I learned to make game textures. (Also I think it had the first non-standard use of the "Romero Head" explosion effect) |
| From all the special effects created for Doom most are from your hand, as well as Adel's. What made you strive to create these effects? |
| I seem to always try and top id's original work and do something that'll be really supported in their next generation of engines :) (Bridges in D2/Quake, Quake2-style stuff in Quake, and now round/organic stuff in Anachronox (Q2 engine)/Q3) |
| What is your favorite special effect you made for Doom? |
| It would be the 3d crossing hallways aka. perfect multiple floors, with two areas on top of each other with floor/ceiling texture between them.. I can't remember if I actually ever used it in a released wad (maybe in Requiem Map08?), but I used a variation I called "really deep water effect" (as opposed to the standard "deep water effect") in a DM level that was mostly underwater :) |
| Were there any special effects you really strived to make but couldn't quite figure out? |
| The only ones that proved undoable were things related to angled surfaces. Making tiny steps without the lower texture works to an extent, but it's not nearly perfect. |
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