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Carnevil-Skulltag Beta Interview
Welcome to yet another Doom DM Resource exclusive interview! This time we had a little chat with Skulltag el presidente and dictator for life, Brad Carney aka Carnevil. Skulltag is widely known around here as "CTF on crack", and the team is certainly gearing up for what looks to be a dynamite release. So, what exactly has been going on in the Skulltag team's blood-soaked world? Find out as we ask Brad for all the details...dmDoom: First off, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Carnevil: Sure. I'll try to leave out most of the boring stuff, too :) I'm a 19 year old college student living just outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who's of course really into games. I've pretty much been a gamer my whole life, starting with Intellivision when I was practically an infant. My mom pretty much used games as a babysitter for me, so I got very familiar and attached to games at a very young age, and have been ever since. It's always been a dream of mine to have my own gaming company, which I tried to make happen a few years ago. But, I was too young and inexperienced, and the timing was just bad, so thankfully it pretty much failed before it got off the ground. I've learned a lot and have also grown up a lot since then, so it's starting to become something I'm thinking about pursuing once again within the next few years or so.
dmDoom: Now, what exactly *is* Skulltag? Is it a little bit of Capture the Flag, a little bit of Deathtag, or both?
Carnevil: It's basically a combination of both. It combines the scoring of Deathtag with the whole "grab something and bring it somewhere" aspect of CTF. For those of you who aren't familiar with Deathtag, I guess the best way to describe ST would be "American Gladiators meets CTF." You know... obstacle courses, people shooting at you, etc., all after infiltrating the other team's base and capturing their "flag."
dmDoom: Why did you decide to do a project like Skulltag?
Carnevil: I first came up with the idea years ago. I mean, this was before even Quake 1 had come out. It was after I had started really getting into Deathtag on a local BBS where you could play Doom called the Battleground. For awhile I had been thinking about doing a Deathtag level, and then the idea for ST just came to me. I quickly whipped up a test level for it (which I still have), that heh, honestly didn't work out too well. For one, it just plain sucked :) I also had to do a lot of lame ass cheating to make it even remotely work due to the fact that the Doom engine was real limited at the time. For instance, in order to make keys spawn and everything, people had to play in cooperative mode, which confused a lot of people. Most of them would load up the test level in DM mode, be like "WTF, it doesn't work. There's no keys," and never touch the thing again.
But it's evolved a lot since then, mostly due to the Doom source code being released. There are practically no limitations anymore. Before it was just like "grab the skull, open a locked door, and flip a switch." Now it's more like "grab the skull, run through the obstacle course, and tag the skull down on the pillar at the end." Now the name "Skulltag" actually has a meaning; you "tag" the skull down on a score pillar at the end of a scoring method. Before it was just some name that didn't have any meaning.
Anyway, to answer your question :), I remember how incredibly fun Deathtag was for all of us on the Battleground BBS. Unfortunately, Quake came out like right after it was invented, so it never really had much of a chance to get off the ground. Combined with how fun the idea is, and it being a time where multiplayer games like UT and Q3A are thriving, I think it's really gonna be loved by a lot of people.
dmDoom: What do you eventually hope to accomplish at the end of the project?
Carnevil: One of the biggest things I want to accomplish with this project, is to expand Doom itself. I think there's a big misconception out that there that ST will basically be ST only, and you won't even be able to do things like vanilla DM; but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Everything you could do with ZDoom you can still do just the same in ST. But adding on to Doom itself is something none of the source ports have really done up to this point. Sure, the engine is more powerful, but nothing's really been done as far as adding stuff to Doom itself. A lot of the stuff really belongs there anyway with Doom's new engine capabilities. So, I've added a bunch of new items, functions... pretty much everything. I've even added some stuff that I don't plan on using in any of the ST levels, since they're intended for single player use.
dmDoom: What's interesting is that you decided to use Doom as a base for the mod, rather than any of the other current engines to date (Quake 3, etc.) Any reason in particular why?
Carnevil: Well, the main reason I started off with Doom was pretty much because I had a p133 at the time, and my computer couldn't handle much else :) But I've stuck with Doom since, man, it just plain kicks ass! It's just amazing how good of a game Doom really is. It's no surprise that Doom's still so popular after 6 years. Everything in it kicks ass on its own, and works incredibly well with everything else in the game. You can put something in a game on its own that's really cool, but if it doesn't work well with everything else, then well, it sucks. I see a lot of mod authors make that mistake with things like textures. They draw something up, go "oh, this looks good" without seeing how it looks in the game, and stick it in. I really wish people would ask themselves "Does this work?" more before releasing something.
Anyway, to answer your question :), it's basically because I feel the Doom's the best overall FPS out there. Things like the release of the source code make it extremely powerful, and plus it has the best game design structure out there. Sure, there's other games out there with more powerful graphics engines, but in the long run that's not as important as good quality game design.
dmDoom: How is Skulltag different from any other mod out on the net right now?
Carnevil: Well, there's the obvious: the scoring methods, the team setup, the name :); but what really makes it different is that it really isn't a "mod"ification at all. It's more like an expansion pack that just happens to include this fun new game called "Skulltag" :) That's been my plan for quite some time now. So, even if the game Skulltag itself fails in the eyes of some people, there's still all the new stuff for them to enjoy. So, its success is practically foolproof. I mean, if you hate all the new stuff all together, you're probably either very closed-minded or just have bad taste, in which case I don't really care if you don't like it :)
dmDoom: Can you let us in on some of the cooler features that will be in the release version of Skulltag?
Carnevil: Man, there's a ton of them. A lot of them are really obvious, like all the new power-ups and weapons, the runes, the brand new set of dmflags, the new "teamgame" mode, client/server, the ST bots, etc. But there's also a ton of cool little things that I've done that I don't think people will notice off-hand, like a "Perfect!" that displays whenever you complete a level with 100% or more of kills, items, and secrets, multiple random obituary strings for deaths, extremely rare obituary strings (most of which are pretty damn hilarious), more movement control in the air... just a lot of subtle little things that make the game a lot better. I'd also like to make it completely 16-bit. I know that'd attract a lot more artists to the game. It could probably be done in ZDoomGL easily. DarkFang was going to do 16-bit in software mode, but well, he's decided to leave the community after SmashDM, and since I don't know how to do it, I don't know that it will ever be done, which sucks.
dmDoom: How exactly does scoring work into the whole scheme of things? Is it really just like it was in Deathtag, or is there some sort of variation?
Carnevil: No, there is some variation. For one, you can have multiple scoring methods on each level, all worth different amounts of points. You know, it's kind of football or something. There are field goals that are worth 3 points, touchdowns that are worth 6 points, etc. It's the same thing here. The way the scoring's handled internally is also very different. All the scoring is pretty much internally handled by a "Team_Score" function, which can be executed by ACS or whatever. It really keeps things simple, as well as powerful. Since I kept things so general, I'm sure you'd even be able to do things like Domination. CTF is definitely doable; I even threw together a sample level showing how CTF can be done in the new "teamgame" mode, which I might include with the release version of ST. The teamgame isn't limited to just ST. It's just a new mode where teams and points are used.
dmDoom: You mentioned on the ST page a while back that you were planning to add Threewave-style CTF runes into the mod - how is progress on that particular aspect? Do you expect these powerups to play a big role within the game?
Carnevil: It's going really well. They're all implemented and seem to work great. There's about 8 of them now, but that could still change. I'm really happy I ended up putting that in because yes, I do expect them to play a big role within the game. They've really made the world of scoring methods a lot more interesting, which is half of what Skulltag is in the first place. I've already started designing some of the scoring methods worth more points around requiring the player to have a certain rune, which makes things more interesting. They're also just a ton of fun. My favorite one is probably the high jumping one. Each one you have makes you jump twice as high (team leaders can carry two runes), and man, you feel like Mario or something jumping around because you can go so high :)
dmDoom: Could you fill us in on the kinds of things that the latest build of the Skulltag engine currently supports?
Carnevil: Man... nearly everything I ever wanted to have in it. Without giving too much away, the whole "teamgame" mode works, all the new dmflags, the new "deathmatch2" mode, all the new weapons, all the new power-ups, the runes, nearly all the new ACS functions (including dynamic music. Ooo... ), all the new ACS function types (instead of there just being the "OPEN" type, now there's "RESPAWN," "ENTER," etc.), pushing/pulling items, being able to activate item's specials just like you can with lines (walking up to them and pressing space), man... and there's a whole lot more, too. I can't even remember a lot of it there's so much.
dmDoom: I know I'm jumping the gun, but...any plans on incorporating Kokak's ZDoomGL source for some hardware-accelerated ST sweetness?
Carnevil: Oh definitely. It shouldn't be that hard to do, anyway. Just a bunch of copying and pasting :) Plus, it might also keep the game from chunking when it draws the railgun trail :) John Faulkenbury also plans to make a lot of changes to the ZDoom structure to speed things up a bit. Oh yeah, he'll be doing the client/server portion of the engine, too :)
dmDoom: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Carnevil: A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
[Razorback's note: DAMN! He wasn't supposed to get that one...]
dmDoom: Er, if you were going to die tomorrow, what would you have in your last meal?
Carnevil: A burger, and lots of hot naked women :) Of course, I wouldn't eat the women, just the burger... actually, if there were a lot of hot naked women around, I probably wouldn't care much about the burger either :)
dmDoom: Heh, last question, I promise =) If you could have designed any game that has been released in the past, that game would have been...(Doom doesn't count, sorry)
Carnevil: Quake III Arena. It's definitely the type of thing I would have designed had I been working for id at the time. I'm a big advocate of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), which Q3A definitely goes by. There's plenty of things I would have done differently which probably would have made it better, but at the same time there's a lot of great, clever, simple things id did which make it such a great game. If you ask me, next to Doom and Doom II, Q3A is the best game id has ever made.
Anyway, huge thanks goes out to Brad for taking the time out to give us some really well thought-out answers. Again, make sure to check out the official Skulltag website, take a look around, and let them know what you think! Questions or comments about this interview? Send Razorback your thoughts.
