whois

I’m a 40 year old artist and game developer from Northern Germany. I’m currently working on Scout’s Journey. I have been hacking, modding and making levels for various games since 2004 or thereabouts, including:

• Nethack (C programming)
• Other roguelikes
• Starcraft (level design)
• Caesar 3 (levels)
• Quake 2 (C programming, bot AI, level design)
• Quake (QC and C programming, level and game design, art, sounds)
• Doom 3 (level design)
• Crysis (level design, Lua, C++)
• Stalker (Lua)
• Warsow (level design, art)

My longest time on a mod team was five years (Remake Quake.) It shipped several feature demos including a lot of very large levels, new gameplay and even a multiplayer component. Like many remakes, it was not met with enthusiasm because it contained too many changes for people’s taste. My time on the team was still immensely valuable because my game development skills improved thousandfold.

Today I’m working on my own game, doing concept art, 3D art, music, sounds, writing, programming, game design and level design. Despite that list having a lot of shooters, I have become fed up with them. I was always more interested in the idea of first-person perspective and exploration of fantastical worlds in 3D. Unfortunately, most first-person games tend to be shooters with notable exceptions such as Mirror’s Edge. The Stalker series and things like Bioshock allow for some exploration as well. So those games are influences on Scout’s Journey along with Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Deus Ex HR, Metal Gear Solid and some other games and novels with interesting protagonists, for example Neuromancer.

Lastly, Scout’s Journey is influenced by political and spiritual themes, such as our relationship with Nature and the conflict of grassroots traditions with organized religion.

My twitter is @tribal_spiker.