Logo made by Armando 'vinkka' Carmona - http://vinkka.telefragged.com
 
Doomworld: Have you really played every single thing which has come into CDROM.COM?
 
Ty: No way.  If I recognize the author as someone who always follows the rules, I'll just check it for zip integrity and move it out.  Otherwise I'll download it and look through it in WinTex to check for policy problems like copyrighted id levels and such.  I rarely play anything any more, which is a shame, but there's no time.
 
What was the strangest file ever uploaded that you had to turn down?
 
Actually it's the stuff that gets uploaded that just doesn't belong at all that's amusing.  You wouldn't believe the number of people who upload cuteftp help files and stuff by accident.  I've even seen config files with passwords in them.  Sometimes there are Warez uploads, which are mostly just irritating because they take up a lot of space before I can get to them and nuke them.
 
Did TeamTNT ever really think about hacking the Doom source code before it was released, or were you all scrambling to get on top of things once it was?
 
We were thinking about it for a long time, and in fact as soon as it was vaguely known that the source would be released, we were in contact with id to try to get a prerelease.  We didn't get one, but we tried.
 
What were your original goals for the project?
 
Bug fixes and limit removals.  New features to give wad editors more freedom and power.
 
Now that Boom phase I is complete, do you feel that you met all these goals?
 
Yes.  I think we exceeded them, in fact.  It might not have been all the window-dressing that others have wanted for the player side of things, but it's giving authors a chance to make whole new environments for players.
 
One of the most prominent new features within Boom is the use of independent linedefs which are used as "gauges" which tell a floor how slippery to be, how fast wind should blow, etc etc.  Was this idea of basically making tangible vectors for certain effects completely original or was it "borrowed" from somewhere?
 
Original.
 
What made you decide not to add high resolution or mlook to Boom?  I have heard rumors of "unofficial" Boom versions which floated around within the team that included these changes.  Do you feel that TeamTNT has been "left behind" in any way by deciding not to add such new features to Boom?
 
There were never either of these things in any of the Boom builds that I recall, though some experiments were no doubt done.  We determined that we wanted to do these things right, and that we didn't have time for it.   

Mlook without good handling of skies and warping isn't good mlook, it's just a cute frill.  A monster you're looking down on shouldn't look like he's falling backward.  Better thought needed to go into aiming vs. looking.  As for high res, the PRBoom port for Windows has some of that, but scaling of status bar, HUD, messages, menus and so forth isn't done well in most ports, and we wanted to do it well or not at all. 

I don't feel at all that Boom is "behind" because of our prioritization of other things higher than mlook and hires.  That's our choice to make, after all.

 
What was once going to be "Boom phase 2" is now planned to be a source merger between many of the main ports like DOSDoom and glDoom.  Has work began in earnest on this merger?  Has the team drawn up definite plans for what features this merger will include?  Can you name any?
 
glDoom isn't part of it, though Bruce Lewis' WinDoom is.  We're not really moving forward at the moment, though various discussions have been held.  Both teams (TeamTNT and DOSDoom) wanted to release their "final" versions before diverting energy to the next engine.  We've done ours now, so we're just waiting for them.  With ours out of the way, we'll probably be more participative in discussions.  I'll be working on the group infrastructure over the next month or so and will try to get a web site going. 

Like a lot of things in this hobbyist environment, the activity comes in waves.  We just released our final version of Boom, and the DOSDoom team isn't quite ready with theirs yet.  We fully understand that they need to concentrate on their current work, and so we're not putting any pressure on anyone to move quickly.  We'll be doing a complete design from the ground up, and we need the full attention of all members for that.  In addition to TeamTNT folks (which includes Bruce Lewis and Florian Schulze) and the DOSDoom team, Udo Munk and Colin Phipps just joined the merger team as well, giving us a good cross-platform representation.  It'll be fun.

 
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