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Dekard Interview

Author: Roger LaMarca Published: 2001-10-16	(Post a Comment)

This is a interview with Dekard from the ThreeWaveCTF mod team.

PlanetQuake3: What is your job on the ThreeWaveCTF team?
Dekard: My official title is artist although Sludge and Kilderean did some of the art as well in Threewave. I also am pretty much help with technical support since the release. I am all over the place currently, trying to help people with any issues they are currently experiencing.

PlanetQuake3: What does a artist do?
Dekard: From Desktop promotional stuff to webdesign stuff to texturing as well. I first started out doing textures for Classic CTF back prior to the DreamCast Textures being able to be used in maps. A few of the guys wanted to use Team Arena textures so I tried remaking similiar textures for a couple of our maps. I really do have a new found respect for texture artists, especially the calibur of textures in the Team Arena pack.

PlanetQuake3: What was your involvement on the ClassicCTF mod team?
Dekard: I actually joined up with Classic CTF guys back prior to 1.0 when I borrowed their runes for my ArenaCTF mod. I ended up doing some art for them for their menu system. As I couldn't get my mod off the ground very easily, I stuck it out with the CCTF folks and ended up doing more and more art for them. Then after releasing 1.12 we ended up being merged into Threewave.

PlanetQuake3: Where you a big fan of Quake2 CTF?
Dekard: I played Q2CTF fairly regularly back in the day, I hate to say it but I usually played RA2 and LithiumII more simply because I was the administrator of the Tampa RoadRunner servers and those were the two mods we served up there. When we felt like playing elsewhere that is when we played Q2CTF.

PlanetQuake3: Who came up with the portal idea?
Dekard: I believe the portal is Casey's brainchild. The whole "Threewave Unification Project" was originally defined as the portal where clients could join a server and pick any of 64 maps thus unifying the maps and the servers so mappers could finally get the credit they deserve. As we all know how many servers don't run custom maps because it empties servers so it's always been a catch 22. Casey's idea works well. It wasn't until Classic CTF got to talking with Threewave and ended up merging together was when the definition twisted and everyone assumed the unification meant the merging of Threewave and CCTF. It was always about the unification of maps and the server voting. As far as I know.

PlanetQuake3: Just if anyone was wondering, tell us how Zoid helped out. He told me, "I was just a supporter this round."
Dekard: Yeah, I'm not too sure he was definitely behind the scenes, I know Casey talked to him several time throughout the whole process. I mean Zoid was the inspiration for this, it was a tough job making sure we live up to the Threewave name. I
mean Zoid helped define Quake CTF. You wouldn't want to tarnish his name or the Threewave name. So, we had to make sure we were proud of our work or we'd never release it.

PlanetQuake3: Did you enjoy working on a mod as big as Threewave?
Dekard: Yes, for me this was one of the largest things I've worked on, I've been fairly visible in the Quake scene because of Antibotics (Q2 antibot site) that became Gameadmins.com, so I've had a lot of discussions with several id personnel and knew a lot of people in the mod world. I used to frequent forums with Rhea from OSP, and worked on several things with the old Matchmod group. In fact, Kilderean was helping me with ArenaCTF and I asked him to replace our Classic CTF coder when we needed someone to help code Classic CTF from scratch for Threewave, he had made PureCTF mod, a mod very similar to Classic CTF. It was definitely an experience. Working with individuals in several different time zones, waiting hours/days for a simple yes or no question was sometimes aggravating but for the most part with the little arguments we had I wouldn't change it for the world. The whole Threewave team is a great group of guys who believe in what they are doing and want to do it right. It's nice to be part of a group with a clear site of a goal like they have.

PlanetQuake3: What did you like least about working on a mod like Threewave.
Dekard: Well, that question is two fold. With a name like Threewave you pretty much have to have a kickass mod out of the gate or you might as well just shut down and move away so people can't find you and beat you because you ruined the Threewave experience for them. So to say there was a little pressure was an underestimate. At least for me, I'm used to doing art for leisure. Web graphics, etc.. on my own. Not on a schedule or at the drop of a hat. So yeah that was a big one. Also the time zone thing I think hampered us a little bit, we'd have testing in Pacific Time Zone around 7 PM and I'm an East coaster so it ended up being a pretty late night for me if I wanted to help test with everyone. I think after all was said and done though it wasn't as big of deal as I made it out to be, and it all turned out for the best. I really enjoy working with the guys, not much to dislike.

PlanetQuake3: What are the future plans for Threewave?
Dekard: heh.. Where's my money? We have some plans in progress to put out a intermediate patch to bring up some better match functionality and any bug fixes that have popped up since the release. Luckily, I haven't seen 'many' issues arise we haven't been able to fix with a little careful reading and planning with clients having issues. We learned a little with this release and overall the project was released with little issues, what we did learn on this release will help make the next update smoother and with more information for the clients who may have troubles. I really can't say much else on our plans as they are talk right now and I wouldn't want to say something that ends up being changed between now and then.

PlanetQuake3: Anything you'd like to say?
Dekard: Download Threewave and tell 5 of your friends to download and play it too!! If you don't something bad will happen to you!

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