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icarusweb: That was quite a flaming you got about the Ola/texture thing. Recovered yet?
Nick: I wasn't particularly upset other than about the fact that I'd unintentionally made Ola so upset himself. I'd like to thank the people who were on my side in the whole thing, even though some of them were rather wrong.
icarusweb: Why do you think intellectual property is such a hot thing in the DooM community? And why do you think it particularly effects texture use?
Nick: I think people should state clearly what can and can't be used from their WADs. For example, say there's a WAD has new levels, music, textures and sound effects, and the author is happy to allow the music to be used by others, but not anything else. He should state this in the accompanying TXT file, or on a webpage.
icarusweb: Execution kicks ass. Was it fun to make as well?
Nick: Yeah, it was pretty fun to make, except for a time late last year when all the pressure was on me to convert virtually all the existing levels to the new textures.
icarusweb: The levels work really well with two players, where with most DM levels these days you have to play with more people than that to make it intersting. What do you think makes the difference?
Nick: The obvious answer to that is size. Generally speaking the smaller the number of players, the smaller the map should be. If there's to be a larger map designed for 1-on-1, it should make use of detail to keep the player's interest while they're searching for their opponent. Also, flow is important. Head-to-head maps shouldn't have too many corridors, otherwise you could end up looking for the other play for ages on a relatively small map.
Having said all that, I think large "hunter" style maps as are popular in Team Fortress classic are pretty cool.
icarusweb: Execution is, unsually, a primarily British project in terms of members - Do you think British Doomers get taken seriously by the rest of the community?
Nick: There aren't very many of us who people have actually heard of us, but it seems to me that yourself, Tom Robinson (myst), Adam Williamson, Simon Howard (fraggle), Vincent Fong (Vkiller), myself and others are generally well respected. Yeti's probably an exception, but he's left the community now, so who cares?
icarusweb: You've been amember of some very well recieved projects like Gothic DM II. Do you think this is cool, or do you worry that people will keep expecting more and more of you?
Nick: Compared to my current work, my early levels in Gothic DM II, the Darkening E1 and the Twice Risen pre-release kinda suck now :) I'm not too impressed with my Darkening E2 and Execution maps personally, as I had to make sure they ran without causing hundreds of VPOs and HOMs. The first map in SlaughterDM is probably the best map I have released.
So no, I'm not worried about people's expectations, because (IMHO) I'm getting better all the time. Not just at maps, but at textures and music as well. Recently, I've turned my hand to sprite editing too.
icarusweb: Do you think that there is a danger of a DooM community hierachy as someone suggested on the comment threads the other day?
Nick: There will always be people who are revered by the community no matter what they do; Anthony Czerwonka, Matt Dixon, Ola Bjorling and so on. There's people who'll be permanently hovering around the bottom of popularity as well; infamous people such as Gaving JCD and REoL so on. But other than those two groups of people, everyone is pretty much the same as long as they do something so people actually know who they are.
icarusweb: Doom's effects on society - your thoughts?
Nick: This is all really stupid really. Firstly, there's no way firing a gun on screen using a keyboard, mouse or joystick can teach you to fire and aim a weapon in real life. Secondly, I know that after a stressful day of studying, sitting back and blasting monsters into oblivion is more relaxing than having a massive argument with my flat-mates.
icarusweb: I saw a program on Channel 4 a couple of days ago that yet again blamed DooM for the wrongs of society (impressivly bad journalism). When do you think people are going to drop this?
Nick: I think that the subject will never go away; in fact, as games and computer graphics in general become more realistic, the problem will probably get worse.
icarusweb: What have you got planned for the future, DooM wise?
Nick: At the moment I'm moderating two projects both set in the same Doom "universe". Paradox is a 34 level TC for SkullTag featuring a new enemy, a group of evil humans from an alternate reality, who take advantage of our reality after we're weakend by the Hell Wars. Wrath is a PC for ZDoom made up of a series of Hubs set several years after Paradox and features the return of the hellspawn, who have evolved to be even more nasty.
I'm also going to finish to try to finish my DeathMatch project Surge 2 eventually.
icarusweb: Any un-doomy stuff we should know about?
Nick: Not really, except that I'm really really busy right now, with a load of university projects, a social life, financial problems, a girlfriend, and so on.
icarusweb: Tell me about it.
Nick: That's why my website (http://haunt.8m.com/doom) isn't update as often as it used to be.
icarusweb: What do you think of the new Icarusweb format?
Nick: Looks good; I only wish I could come up with a decent website design myself. As it as I barely know how to code HTML.
icarusweb: Finally, what's better: DooM, or the Simpsons?
Nick: Oh god, an almost impossible question... But since I spend more time with it, I'd have to say Doom.
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