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Map makers rejoice! It is now time to meet the man behind the myth.
There are many users of BSP out there, and I am sure you have visited bsphq.com for BSP help, to checkup on the news, or to download BSP and start making maps of your own. Here is an interview with the designer of that site, DeadMeat, including some things about him you might not have known. Enjoy!
- Cracker

Cracker:   How long have you been a user of BSP?

DeadMeat:   Since September, 1996, about a month after Quake came out. I think the first version I used was about .35 or so. A lot has changed since then ;-)
I settled on BSP after trying out all the ones that were out back then:
Thred, Worldcraft, QuakeEd and some others.
BSP just had the most features at that time.

Cracker:   What made you start a webpage for BSP, were you asked, or just did one on your own?

DeadMeat:   Well, at the time I first downloaded BSP, there were a few tutorials by someone named Diragor. They were really helpful in getting me familiar with BSP, but there weren't that many of them. Unfortunately, Diragor had to go into the military or something and was unable to continue doing the tutorials. So, I wrote to Yahn Bernier (BSP's creator) and asked if he minded if I made up my own tutorial site. On November 29, 1996, "DeadMeat's BSP Tutorials" was born on GeoCities. It later grew into the BSP Headquarters.

Cracker:   You do the tutorials on bsphq, do you also answer questions from users?

DeadMeat:   Oh yeah. I get email from all over the world with questions. I've met a lot of people that I correspond with frequently that way. I don't mind helping out new users, as long as they are willing to read through my tutorials first (I don't particularly like answering questions that are already covered in there). But if they are having trouble understanding something I explained or just can't get it, even though they've tried, I don't mind at all. The only thing I don't do is find leaks in maps for people. I did that for a while, and I just got too many maps sent in ;-)

Cracker:   Heretic2 has many new enhancements that mappers will be playing around with. Which ones do you like most?

DeadMeat:   Well, I haven't played with it much yet; been trying to get through the game first ;-) From what I've seen, the scripting looks really good. The main thing that appeals to me is the 3rd person perspective, with all the additional animations that Corvus can do (like climbing, polevaulting,etc). That allows people to design maps that have a more 3D feel to them. I've seen a few really good deathmatch maps that are starting to take advantage of this.
Can't wait to see some of the single player maps that start showing up soon.

Cracker:   You are working on a TC for Heretic2, what is is all about, and who is working on it with you?

DeadMeat:   The project is called Shattered Illusions. The storyline (in a nutshell):
The player is Liragor, who was forced to flee into exile after being accused of killing his father. He was innocent, and has spent the past 10 years gaining enough proof to clear his name. However, when he returns to his homeland, he finds his brother (the real killer) has become a powerful sorceror and is using demons to corrupt the land. There's more to the story; it will be revealed throughout the game using cutscenes.

The others working on this project with me are Ancient1, DeadStar, Browndog, Briggsy, Zedek, Egg, and Derelict. Some of those names will be familiar to HereticII.com visitors; others are probably less well known. We've got a fairly good team, but we really need a full-time texture artist and a full-time modeler (shameless plug ;-)

Cracker:   There was a post about it on Hereticii.com, for those that may have missed it, what is the webpage?

DeadMeat:   http://www.bsphq.com/illusion/ - there's not much there right now. We just recently made the switch from the Quake2 engine to the Heretic2 engine, so we don't have anything to show off yet.
Hopefully, we'll get some screenshots up soon, though.

Cracker:   How far are you in the project? What can we expect from it? Meaning, Weapons, Models, maps, and monsters.

DeadMeat:   We're just getting started after the engine switch. We've got all our design docs done. We have a few textures that we were able to salvage from our Quake2 project, but most of the ones we had didn't convert very well. Our mappers are getting familiar with Heretic2 mapping and I've got the DLL code set up ready to work on.
Our goal is to have around 13 single player maps, plus a few deathmatch maps.
We're planning 10-12 new weapons and a whole bunch of new monsters.
When we get done, there shouldn't be anything of Heretic2 left in the game - that's the plan anyway.

Cracker:   What other projects have you worked on?

DeadMeat:   I'm also a coder on the Doom3D project (http://www.planetquake.com/doom3d).
At one time, I was working on a Heretic TC for Quake2, but that got scrapped when Heretic2 was announced last spring. Shattered Illusions grew out of that project, but it's completely different than it was back then.

Cracker:   What game do you like to make maps for most?

DeadMeat:   Well, I've only released one map publicly - it was for Quake1 and was a re-creation of Doom2 Map07. I just did that to experiment with triggers and to learn BSP, but it turned out pretty well.
That was fun to play with the reaper bots.
I really liked making maps for Hexen2, because of the fantasy setting, but it never really took off. It's a shame it came out so close to Quake2; it got lost in the shuffle I think.
The environment that showed the most promise was Unreal, but that editor has too many problems to run well on my system, so I never really got into that. Hopefully, Heretic2 mapping will take off.

Cracker:   What would you like to see in games in the future?

DeadMeat:   You may regret asking that ;-)
I hate the fact that so many games are being released lately that are filled with bugs or had features removed just so they could meet a shipping deadline.
In fact, I wrote a rant on my page a few weeks ago about this - right after Sin came out ;-)
The main thing I'd like to see in future games is more of an emphasis on single player gameplay. Games like Half-Life and Heretic2 have done a wonderful job of immersing the player into a story and revealing that story as it goes along.
I'd like to see more of this in future games, without as much of an emphasis on eye-candy special effects. Those are nice, but they should be part of an overall gaming experience, not the whole game in themselves.

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