| HELLCORE INTERVIEW |
| 1) Hi Rob, how long have you been working on Hellcore? Far, far too long. Nearly 8 years and counting. Hellcore began way back in 1995, when I got the idea of creating a 32 level megawad for Doom2. I had no idea of how big a project I was to embark upon at the time. 2) What does your job as project leader mainly entail? What work have you done on Hellcore? Being a project leader...a lot. Besides keeping the member's site up to date (forums, mailing list, irc channel and organizing what jobs go to who), I have the great task of keeping people interested and productive, which fortunately, I've had a lot of experience in. As for the work I've done on Hellcore, I've done at least something in every department. I've worked on levels, music, graphics, dehacked, programming. Pretty much everything possible, I've done it (or attempted it). 3) Have you got a game theme/story-line worked out that satisfys you? The theme is what were working on real hard right now. We're trying to make the transition of Base to Hell a lot smoother in most of the levels, and much more realistic and fitting to the story-line. 4) How are things progressing? Can we expect a release date soon? Well, we had something like 28 levels completed over a year ago, but now we're going over every level with a fine tooth comb. Basically breathing new life into extremely old levels. The thing is, most of the levels had a good base, so it hasn't been too difficult to restore maps to incredible quality levels. As for a release date, I only wish I could accurately predict. It all depends on how things turn out in the next few months. Things are going great now, and if it continues, I could see it being released as soon as the end of the summer... we will just have to wait and see I guess. =) 5) What is your team like? Have they managed their goals? I can tell you right off the bat; everyone on the team is hard-working, loyal and damn right talented. Everone puts in a good effort, and I respect them a lot for that. Our team is growing larger and larger, and I know that the quality of the overall megawad is increasing ten-fold every day. 6) Reviewing your current maps, how does the game flow in terms of continuity, story, atmosphere, difficulty and complexity? The story is being written by DarkKnight/Tachyon and is being incorporated in many of the levels (especially map 01). I expect when Hellcore is finally released, everything that you mentioned will be continuous especially the difficulty. On the hardest setting, Hellcore should give even true Doom Gods a serious challenge. 7) Any special multiplayer features? Dedicated server perhaps? There have been no plans to add new multiplayer functions, other than the standard pwad features. For example: map01 is very intergrated for deathmatch play. Areas will close off, new areas will open up, weapons will appear, etc, basically morphing a single player level into a deathmatch level. I'm still unsure if we will be releasing the dm Pack for Hellcore that Darkfyre and I made many years ago...right now thats about 18 deathmatch levels..(check out saydm1.wad, the only released wad from that pack found in the Hellcore downloads section). 8) What projects have you worked on/been invloved with in the past? I'm probrably one of the oldest members still in the Doom community, but few know who I am. I've been in the background ever since Doom was released, I was constantly voicing my opinions, playing levels, mailing people; but to the general community, I was always unknown. I had thoughts of joining Team TNT back in 97 which probrably would have sprung me into the spotlight, but I decided that I'd make Hellcore my main priority rather than being a big name in the community. So to answer your question staright: The only real Doom project I've worked on is Hellcore, other than Nightfrags project, Thrust (I joined thrust project several years ago, but that project died and I never had the chance to contribute anything). 9) Slightly irrelevant, but what are your thoughts about ID's upcoming DOOM3? Big plans for Doom3 (top of the line system)...possibly Hellcore2? =) 10) Anything to state that I haven't covered? Expect another big update shortly... Thanks Rob "Fusion" |