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Warren Marshall, Epic Games - QAPete - 8-7-00
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Warren Marshall, formerly of Legend Entertainment, is a god. I told him I'd make sure you all knew that, so I have. Whether it be designing levels for Unreal Tournament or Rocket Arena UT, programming the new UnrealEd 2.0 level editor, or being one of the top posting dogs over at PlanetCrap, Warren does nothing unless it's done right. This is what gods do, apparently.
With the recent popularity of RA:UT, we decided to send Warren a few questions related to it, mods in general, and his acclimation to the Epic team:
[PlanetUnreal]: Hi, Warren! Rumor has it, as part of the sweetheart deal that brought you to Epic, Cliff Bleszinski has been ordered to not wear the colors 'peuce' and 'cyan', and must shower daily? Truth?
Warren Marshall: Cliff has to shower daily? Someone should probably tell him. :(
[PU]: You are, of course, the creator of the Rocket Arena UT map, RA-Warren. How is designing levels for RA:UT different than, say, putting together a 'normal' UT DM map, like your own DM-RideTheDragon?
WM: Well, they tend to be smaller for one thing. 1-on-1 or 2-on-2 (like RA-Warren) affairs. The actual construction isn't that much different from a DM map in reality. However, one major difference is the lack of pickups. You have to rely on the level layout to pull players around since they won't be going after powerups - just hunting each other.
[PU]: You're one of the best when it comes to lighting effects in your maps. Can you give us any tips on how to improve our lighting?
WM: Well, lighting is one of those things that if you don't get it right, it really stands out. The first tip I would pass along is never, ever use ambient zone lighting. I used it a few times at Legend, and the guys there convinced me of its evils. Everything gets this "washed out" look to it that just looks bad.
Just as important is to make sure that you have enough light for people to see what the hell they're doing. I've played many user maps where you're basically running around in darkness. They label this as "atmosphere" ... I label it as "annoying".
Colored lighting is another area where I see lots of mappers making serious
mistakes. A light doesn't have to be pure red or blue ... try a lighter hue. A saturation of 160-180 can give the hint of a color without getting in your face about it. I generally use a lot of white-ish (or very light yellow) lighting with colored highlights where I think they work well ... This sounds a little artsy, but I think if you use subtle colors you can
bring out the life in the textures more than with neon lighting. Choose appropriate colors to compliment the textures you're using ...
The final thing I would say is to try and have "hot spots" in your lighting.
If a level is uniformly lit, it tends to look sort of bland. Having darker
areas accentuated by brighter areas looks more appealing to the eye and draws people around the level. This is something Cliff has beaten into my head since I got here. :)
[PU]: For those people who haven't played RA:UT yet, what do you think is special about this mod that everyone should know about?
WM: Well, it's more of a duel than a regular DM game is. It's a show of skill - the player that knows his iron (weapons) will prevail. It's no excuses combat!
[PU]: What kind of reaction have you gotten to UnrealEd 2.0, now that it's been public for awhile and has been used by the community level designers?
WM: Overall, the reaction has been very good. I get some heated emails from people because I removed their favorite feature in the first release ... most of which have been replaced in the 425 patch. Although I still don't really understand the appeal of some of them ... like "Extrude to Point" in the 2D shaper. ;)
On the whole, people seem to like the new editor much better than the old one.
[PU]: Are there any updates to UED2 forthcoming?
WM: Oh yeah. Definitely. I'll be releasing periodic updates to the editor for the forseeable future. I'm primarily working on Epic's next project, but if I add something cool to the in-house editor that I think would benefit the UT editing community, I'll port it back to the UT codebase and do some editor specific patches. Don't really have a defined timeframe for these releases, but it will be whenever I think enough has been added to warrant a release. :)
[PU]: Are you a Deathmatch / RA:UT god, in the rarified air of a CliffyB or Myscha? (PU slips in an invitation to Warren to stop by a FragPU event sometime to meet the community in-game).
WM: Oh god no ... I'm pretty damn bad at DM actually. During my interview, Cliff decided that he wanted to play a little 1-on-1 ... let's just say it's a good thing that wasn't part of the hiring criteria. :)
[PU]: We get a lot of mail at PlanetUnreal along the lines of 'there aren't any good, finished mods for UT, like there are for Half Life and Quake3. How do you respond to those people?
WM: Honestly, I'm not THAT into the mod scene anymore. I was when I was just making maps on my own, but since I started working in games it's tough to find the time to download mods and try them out. But I have watched Cliff play several mods that looked pretty cool ... Chaos UT looks neat, as does Tactical Ops (CounterStrike-like gameplay in UT) ... U4E has some neat weapon ideas ... Unloaded looks particularly cool. I did play some old versions of this mod, and it's damn cool! 3D Gauntlet baby! :)
[PU]: What do you feel makes a good mod?
WM: I think you just have to grab people ... an interesting idea is a good start, but the mod has to look interesting enough that people will try it. CounterStrike has a very unique look/feel to it ... the idea itself isn't all that amazing, but the gameplay is what makes it stand out from the crowd. When I play CS, I actually see people moving in squads, using smoke grenades to hide their movement, etc ... it's great to see that kind of stuff!
I think it's also important to come up with something that really hasn't been done before ... you don't have to go wild of course, but just something a little different from the crowd. I see a lot of mods being ported up from older engines, and I don't see the appeal of that. It's like porting old maps into newer engines ... People have already played that. Let it go ...
[PU]: How was the transition for you, moving from Legend Entertainment to Epic Games? You didn't get stuck rooming with Cliff and Alan, did you? ;-)
WM: The transition has been very smooth. Everyone at Epic has been very cool to me, and I think I'm finding my stride now.
As for Cliff and Alan's room, no ... with Shane in there already, it would be quite a crowd if I moved in too. :P I was originally rooming with Brandon Reinhart and James Green ... now that Brandon has left, we have Andrew Scheidecker in there.
[PU]: Are you all now working on 'The Next Big Project', or is it still PS2 and UT debug/addon/enhancement activities that dominate your time these days?
WM: It's sort of a split ... some people are hammering away on UT PS2 and the rest of us are designing/working on the 'Next Thing' (but helping out on PS2 when we can).
Personally, my time is taken up by working on the editor and doing the occasional map for whatever reason ...
[PU]: Thank you very much for your time, Warren, and we hope to see you online sometime!
WM: Sure
You can download Warren Marshall's DM-RideTheDragon here, and you can check out his RA-Warren as part of Rocket Arena UT.
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