|
|
| How did you and the other members of id come
up with the enemy ideas? What sort of ideas were rejected and why? |
|
Okay, i've been a game programmer/game designer
for the past 19 years. I was one of the four founders of id Software and
one of the four founders of Ion Storm. I've shipped over 60 games in my
career thus far, including the Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM,
DOOM II, Heretic, Hexen and Quake (the most popular ones). |
|
|
Why didn't you put a secret level in keen 2?
It's something that I know drove a lot of people crazy, including me :
) |
|
It drove me crazy too! I think there was one,
but it sorta didn't make sense (it was outside the ship on the blueprint),
and we only had two and half months to finish all of Keen 1-3, so I think
someone said just to do 16 levels instead of 17. |
|
|
| Is there anything in the games that people haven't
found yet? |
|
I think they are pretty thoroughly explores. It's hard to hide stuff
from a hundred thousand people. |
|
|
| Why only one weapon? Why only four keys? These
are deeply philosophical questions to us keeners! |
|
Um, we made the Keen 3 in like two weeks! And four keys--simplicity
of interface is good. |
|
|
| What made you choose the name Commander Keen?
Billy Blaze? |
|
I just wrote that all off the top of my head in fifteen minutes. That's
what came to mind. I pictured a whiny Walter-Winchell radio-serial voice
saying the words, and it just came out. The "Bean-with-Bacon" thing is
a reference to a George Carlin routine. |
|
|
| Was there any thought of doing a Keen Dreams
II? (I've heard there might have been a "Keen meets the meat". If so, would
Softdisk have distributed? |
|
Nope. I actually disagreed with doing a Keen for Softdisk, knowing
that they would keep the rights. I didn't want to leave Keen behind. |
|
|
| The inevitable question, anything new in relation
to Keen 7? |
|
Nope. id still owns Keen. If they ever want to sell me the rights,
I'll be on it that second. :) |
|
|
| If you did a keen 7, how would you introduce
a new generation to the world of keen? |
|
I had a Keen 7 idea planned out a long time ago. But we were in the
middle of stuff, and people weren't really interested. Then Super Mario
64 came out. That was basically it, but I wanted you to switch control
modes for different situations, sort of like mid-level mini-games. Some
of that is coming out in Anachronox, actually. :) I'd love to do another
Keen, though. |
|
|
| If you did a keen 7, would you maintain the same
look and feel of the old keens, or would you enrich the keen universe with
more complex characters and stories? |
|
I would expand the universe a bit, but keep the same favorites. Keen
is really a light adventure, though, so I wouldn't burden it TOO much with
story--just enough to make what you are doing always new, interesting,
and purposeful |
|
|
| Why didn't you make Standard Galactic Numbers?
If there were Standard Galactic Numbers, what base would they be in? To
clarify for those who will read this and don't know what bases are, we
use base ten, our numbers go from 0-9 and then reset. Binary is base 2,
it goes from 0-1 and then resets, so in binary 3 would be 11, in base five
3 would be 3, but 6 would be 11... |
|
Again, made the game in 2.5 months, so the SGA was just
a quick fun thing--I made an EXIT sign for the level, and realized that
it would be in alien letters, so I made symbols that looked sorta like
exit, but not. Then I got the idea to make signs throughout the game that
were clues...then came the Rosetta stone in the secret level. :) |
|
|
| I've read that much of the original Doom design
was never realized, why is that and what would it have been like otherwise? |
|
We were really splitting apart philosophically--I wanted to have just
enough story to give what you were doing each level a purpose. I also wanted
some environment hazards in certain places, like a simple sparkball shooting
down a hallway. I forget what level it was, but you walk behind something
and there are little hallways sunk down a few inches with big blue circles
repeating down the length of them--those were meant for those sparkballs.
:) It's somewhere in Episode 2. |
|
|
| What was it like working at Apogee/3D Realms?
What games did you have a hand in and what role did you play in their development? |
|
It was fun starting up development there. The people there were really
nice. But I sort of still had the vision of what I wanted to do, and it
really wasn't a super-bloody game, though those can be fun. And I wanted
to bring RPG elements to the sci-fi shooter genre, but that kind of got
watered down. You usually don't get unique new things when there are many
cooks. But I had a really good time there, and worked with some really
great developers. I worked on Duke Nukem II, did the story for Duke Nukem
3D (after the game was almost done!) and helped come up with TripMines,
did Rise of the Triad and Extreme Rise of the Triad, co-produced Terminal
Velocity, and did early Prey design work. |
|
|
| What made you leave Apogee/3D Realms to go found
Ion Storm? |
|
I had the opportunity to do my own thing--whatever I wanted. I had
to go for it. |
|
|
| Do you have any suggestions for anyone out there
who wants to make a keen game? |
|
A fan game? I'd always make sure you get to see new and interesting
things as you go, and you get to do new and interesting things, too. We
always had new monsters, new puzzles, new environment dangers, and so on,
so the next level wasn't totally like the last. |
|
|
| If Ion Storm did get the rights to keen, would
you form a children's division? |
|
Not specifically, but I'd dang well make some Keen games! :) |
|
|
| What's your impression on the direction of the
video game industry? Since you started at Softdisk it's change a lot, do
you think in five years a company like id could form from a bunch of friends
and still make it? |
|
Yes, but not on the PlayStation 2. :) Need a lot of people to pop a
game on there. But I think bold new innovations usually do come from the
small groups, because the larger you get, the more people's necks are on
the line, so you have to play a safer game. If four guys are working out
of an apartment, you don't have as much to lose, so you have great freedom.
If you've got some talent and some time, I'd recommend it to anybody. :) |