Adam Foster of Minerva (Part 1)

[Munro]

The first part of Samon's interview of Minerva creator Adam Foster. [br]
Halflife2.net: How did you get started on mapping?

Adam Foster: A long time ago as a small child, I'd draw maps
and plans for stories I was writing. I guess I had that mapper bug from a very
early age - I've got careful, highly detailed plans for islands, buildings and
machines stashed away somewhere, and moving it to a computer was the only sensible
step.

I think I should scan in some of the stuff I wrote - for instance, somewhere there's
a disturbingly accurate version of Harry Potter I created, a decade or more before
the first Harry Potter book was written. There's also a stack of more conventionally
unconventional short fiction as well, some of which is already in digital form.
Except stored on dramatically obsolete hardware!

But anyway. In 1998 or so, I picked up a copy of Doom 2, for the purpose of building
maps. About a year later, I released 'Fractured', a five-map mini-episode thing
with no real ending. I'm quite proud of it - it's got the less-linear design that's
persisted in my later maps, for other games.

I moved on to Quake after that, and was learning how to use Worldcraft when some
interesting game called 'Half-Life' was released. I eventually got round to playing
it in the early summer of 1999, and was so transfixed that I built my first Half-Life
map that very day. I was somewhat intrigued by all the 'xeno_' textures, and was
very careful to avoid any spoilers...

The rest of my mapping career has been a stop-start affair, starting overly ambitious
projects which rapidly grew out of control. MINERVA's an attempt to return to
the heady days of Someplace Else, and it seems to be working!

Halflife2.net: What do you count as your greatest achievment to
date?

Adam Foster: From a mapping point of view, I'm still incredibly
happy with Someplace Else. I played through it again recently while preparing
the Steam-compatible release, and had forgotten how much I had enjoyed building
it.

It was my first officially released map for any modern game engine, and I'm still
proud to put my name on it.

Halflife2.net: Do you have a specific approach to mapping? Any
special tricks?

Adam Foster: Direction. Always give the player something to fight
for.

Too many mappers produce some long, arbitrary list of otherwise unconnected rooms
and corridors - if you give the map an overall theme and direction, then things
are more likely to fit together properly. Witness the first MINERVA map - as early
as possible, you'll see a strange plasma beam arcing down into the centre of the
island. So what's that for? If you fight onwards, you'll stand a chance of finding
out.

Special tricks? Not really. I plan things out in my head while building things
(no sketches unless the situation gets really desperate) - and spend months making
sure the map is properly connected, scripted and with suitable gameplay. Polish
the map, it's important!

Halflife2.net:? Co-operative play - holy grail or pain in the arse
to develop?

Adam Foster: Proper co-operative gaming is perhaps the only multiplayer
gaming I really *like* - deathmatch and its derivatives really aren't my idea
of fun. I'd much rather work with friends against some particular, enjoyable threat
than waste time being shot in the head by pimpled teenagers with squeaky voices
and attitude problems.

Years ago, I spent a short amount of time making sure some Doom 2 maps I'd developed
would be compatible with co-operative mode, but that's about all I've done since
then. Beyond playing through Quake over a null-modem connection with a friend,
that's about the only thing I've done along that line; I've never even got round
to downloading Sven Co-Op for Half-Life.

Still, I've been making the source .VMFs for MINERVA available for anyone wishing
to convert them to any nascent co-op mod for Half-Life 2. I really hope someone
does convert them - the main reason I haven't is more because of the programming
necessary for the basic mod, rather than the entity work and other changes.

Halflife2.net: What aspect of Source do you think could be improved?

Adam Foster: One irritation, shared with other game engines,
is that the alpha- sorting is a bit unreliable. Put a partially transparent object
somewhere near another one, and there's a chance that they'll be drawn in the
wrong order - with the more distant object being drawn in front of the nearer.
I understand it's a technology limitation based on the lack of Z-buffer testing
on partially transparent textures, but it's still annoying. No idea as to a fix,
beyond completely redesigned graphics hardware!

Another irritation is the entity limit. I've been informed it's for big, serious
networking reasons, but it's still a bit frustrating to almost complete a map,
then have to start deleting details from the beginning again, just to fit everything
in. Downhill Struggle ended where it did precisely because of that...

Halflife2.net:? Is there a specific feature that you wish Valve
had added?

Adam Foster: Less of an engine limitation and more of a game
design decision is the relatively small number of enemies available in Half-Life
2. There's a good selection, but it would be all too easy to use them all in a
single map - which I've been consciously trying to avoid in MINERVA. So yes, it's
been a bit of a never-ending Combine soldier onslaught, but it means that I can
still do something entirely different in future.

But yes, more enemies to choose from would be nice.

Halflife2.net: How long, on average, does it take you to complete
a Minerva map?

Adam Foster: I started MINERVA in February last year, which did
involve learning Half-Life 2 mapping - so with September 2005 and March 2006 release
dates so far, I'll let you draw your own conclusions!

Development is very stop-and-start, in that I might do very little for a month
before working solidly for a week or more. It's partially dependent on when I
have the time, and when I'm in the right frame of mind - but hopefully I'll be
able to find more time to work on MINERVA in the near future.

Halflife2.net:? You've shown interest in the past about developing
a chapter based on a City complete with snow and a Citadel - what is your reasoning
behind?

Adam Foster: MINERVA's mostly about having fun, so I've been
working through a list of things I'd decided would be fun to build. First of all
was an island - some years back I saw the intro for the Silent Cartographer map
in Halo, and was utterly spellbound by the idea of a full, 3D island in a computer
game, rather than just arbitrary corridors and boxy warehouses seen from within.
So, the first map I built for Half- Life 2 had to be an island - any similarity
to Silent Cartographer is purely intentional. It was originally called Flatulent
Geographer - the 'Carcinogenesis' name was a fairly late alteration.

Something else I've always wanted to build is a city. Half-Life 2 has been the
best approximation I've seen of such so far, and I'm interested as to how far
the idea can be pushed. There was some early E3 video of Half-Life 2 which gave
an amazing impression of a large, open European city being consumed by the Citadel
- I'm partially being inspired by that.

Why the snow? Well, it needed a contrast, and I've always been a fan of crunching
through snow in computer games...

Halflife2.net: What's your favourite HL2 prop?

Adam Foster: Not a prop as such, but the Combine helicopter.
It's gorgeous - it's a human design subverted in a vile manner, and manufactured
in some horrific, mechanical factory based in a gigantic alien-constructed Citadel,
imposing itself on an Earthly city...

Oh. You want a prop, not a dynamic, AI-driven machine? Hmm.

How about one of the trees, the leaning, curved tree as featured in the Carcinogenesis
screenshot? Yes, you may note that it's sat right next to a certain helicopter.
I'm that predictable!