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| New Doom Interviews |
| Interview With Thierry 'Hurdler' Van Elsuwe |
By Jason 'FACE.UK' Sloan |
Page 1 of 1
05/04/03 - We have here an interview with Thierry Van Elsuwe; a lot of you will know him better as Hurdler. He is the gentlemen mainly responsable for Legacy. We put some questions to him that he kindly anwswered. Read on.
Name / Age / Location?
Thierry 'Hurdler' Van Elsuwe
Age: 25, oops now 26
In front of my PC, Brussels, Belgium
First time you played / saw DOOM?
I saw the DOOM shareware version for the first time at a computer expo. I think
it was just a few weeks after the release. I played it a bit after, I really can't
remember how long it took me to get the disks.
Have you ever made and released any levels yourself?
Well, not really, except the demo level I did for showing new Legacy features,
which is include with Doom Legacy since 1.32 betas and which is named RainBowStar
(name given by Jean-Yves 'Jive' Delpech when I asked him if he wanted to help
me on the map).
How long do you think you will continue to work on Legacy?
After the new release I'll stop" that's what I have said a bit after 1.30.
But I'm still there. It really depends on the motivation of the moment. I wasn't
sure, again, I would continue after 1.40. Then, we got help from new developers
and users and that's a good motivation to continue further. Now, I think I won't
stop until what I've promised to our users will be done.
Do you think people will continue to work on / play DOOM and DOOM
II when DOOM III comes out?
Yes, sure, maybe more than now. I'm very pleased when we get messages from
Q3 users who never played DOOM before and says: "wow, this is cool !". I suppose
(hope?) we will get that kind of messages from people who has only played DOOM3
and will wonder why there is "3" in the name.
What is it that keeps you working on Legacy?
As I said just above, the fact there are still lots of interest from users
and developers to continue the adventure. I think we are in a recursive motivation
loop: map authors (by showing what they can do and what they'd like to do with
the engine) motivates developers and developers (by providing the new features)
motivate map authors.
If you had to get rid of all the new Legacy features except one, which
one would you keep?
The one users and map authors like the most. But I want to keep dynamic/static
lighting as well because that's the first new features I added to Legacy (with
coronas), a few weeks after I joined the team. I had no idea on how to do that
when I started coding it, but it went well quite quickly (probably thanks to my
math teachers ;)).
Which Legacy feature has been the most difficult to code for?
I don't know, I suppose MD2 since it's not finished yet. Not that it's that
hard, but I'm not very motivated for that feature (maybe because when I started
coding that, our users hadn't seen the feature as something important for Doom
Legacy, it seems this has changed now that we have more and more Q3 fans in our
users).
 How
long before the next release and what new features can we expect to see?
It shouldn't be too long before the next release. In fact, there will be three
new releases. One will be a stabilization of the previous release (1.40). I'd
like to release it in May. Nothing new to expect from that one except bug fixes
and some new FraggleScript functions.
Another one will includes bots and some improvement here and there. I'm not sure
of what will be available. It will be a beta version since it includes lots of
experimental code (I mean not well tested). It should also be released in May.
Finally there will be a new alpha version based on the new C++ branch of Doom
Legacy. That version will include much more new features (like MD3, Hexen, better
Internet code, Hi-res textures, new eye candy effects,...) but is not ready yet
because all the feature of Legacy 1.40 are not yet fully implemented or still
have some major bugs. That version will probably not be an official release at
a first time.
We will provide it to those who'd like to test it. Once we'll get enough feedback,
an official beta will follow. It might take some time before the beta official
release (this summer?), but think we will be able to provide the non-official
alpha release next month.
Have you taken inspiration from any of the other DOOM ports and if so
which ones?
Legacy has some inspiration from other DOOM source port (FS, Boom support,...),
but I personally haven't looked too much at other ports to see what they can do
Legacy can't do. The only thing I've worked on after seeing it on another port
is the support of MD2 models (that might be another reason why I'm not that motivated
to get that feature finished). But that might change in a near future because we
receive more and more requests for supporting some things like JDoom or ZDoom.
It seems people are happy with the originality of Legacy but would like to get
the best features from other source ports as well (which is quite understandable
as long as Doom Legacy remains Doom Legacy).
How much time do you get to spend on Legacy in an average week or do
you just code when the mood takes you?
Now, I code on Legacy when the mood takes me. I code a lot less than before.
During the week I spend lots of time on answering on the forum or by e-mail, but
I think that is also important. I generally work a lot when I plan a new release
and I generally plan a new release when other developers have worked on Legacy
or when users seems to be impatient ;)
Have any of the original DOOM / DOOM II team emailed you about
Legacy and if so what did they say?
Not to me personally but I know Boris and faB got an e-mail from John Romero
to tell them he liked what they did. I was also pleased when he told on his site
he used the Legacy engine to play DOOM maps.
jDoom now has hi resolution textures are there any plans for this in
Legacy?
Yes, see above ;) But I think we will manage it more like ZDoom.
I am not a coder and would not know where to start but I have always wondered
why no one has made it possible for DOOM to have more than 256 colors?
I suppose you mean 256 colors textures (since with the OpenGL version you
can already have 32bits co lour depth). Well, that's mainly due to performance
issue and memory usage. Now that we have 3D cards and lots of RAM in our computers,
that's not a problem anymore. That's why Legacy will support 32bits textures soon.
I see that Rellik is now updating and helping out with Legacy and with
the website, how did this all come about?
Well, first, Rellik is a Legacy user and map author for ages now. He is very
active and helpful on our forum. He has a very good Legacy dedicated editing
site with nice tutorials. He proposed to help us to maintain the site. Since it's
hard for me to work on both the site and Legacy itself (especially since English
is not my mother tongue and doing web pages is not my cup of tea), that help proposal
was very welcome. I was a bit sceptic when we talked the first time about that
on our forum because lots of people proposed to help us but it seems they didn't
find the time to really help us once we said OK. But here, Rellik showed us directly
he was really motivated. In fact, he updated the site even before I said OK :)
Links
Legacy Homepage
Legacy Editing Resource
Hexen Legacy
Doom Legacy Wads
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