.. continued
What was your education of art/design (from the start :) )
I was always a classroom sketch artist. Most of my tests in school would get turned in with cartoons and drawings all over them. Plus, I was a Lego-maniac for most of my childhood. I've always been trying my hand at just about every kind of art I can get my hands on, everything from line drawing animations to 3d modeling. Level Design was a mixture of both world for me. I got the chance with most of my Doom projects to do both art and levels, therefore I had the chance to not only design the look of the level but the geometry that made it up.
Do you feel level design is more artistic or engineering?
%20 art %80 engineering. A level can look great but not have the elements that actually make up good gameplay, so the artistic look is important, but can't overrun the gameplay.
What do you need to become a professional level designer?
A level editor. Some graph paper. And a burning desire to make Stairs :] (that was my first thought when I started editing DooM levels. "I MUST MAKE STAIRS!")
Favorite Level you have designed? Why?
My favorite level I designed was called Aqueduct for Memento Mori. It was one of the first levels that I had put a lot of pre-thought into. Most of the design and flow was laid out isometrically on graph paper and translated it into Doom2 within a few days. It turned out being one of my most challenging and biggest Doom2 levels I had ever done.
What is your signature in your levels? Something that is in everything you create?
That's a very good question. I'm not sure that there is a particular thing that I have always intentionally put in each of my levels. Most of the work I've done I try to do something unique with it each time. Its possible that I have some kind of subconscious signature in most of the levels I design, some people said 8 sided pillars in a row were a signature of mine for a while, another was semi-circle staircases, but I have yet to identify a common signature that exists in all of my levels. I'll have to get on top of that :]
Now that Sin is over? What now?
Playing around with things I didn't get to do in Sin, like Sin-Pac (A pac-man game created with sin-script only) and possibly a few other mini-games created with sin-script. Mostly right now I am working on super-secret new stuff for our next game and taking some time off from the hella crunch mode we were in during the end of the project :]
Well, that's all folks! Many thanks to ParadoX for taking the time to answer my questions even with his injured foot (ouch)
