Mappers Interviews: Exoduss

[Pi_Halo]

This time I interviewed an official mapper and a contest winner. Exoduss has been mapping for awhile now and has two official maps, ac_cavern and ac_swamp as well as a contest win for ac_palenque. Lets jump right in.

*Note, the set up of questions is slightly different this week because this interview was conducted via forum PM's instead of IRC like my other 2.

1. Alright, lets jump right in. I will start off with a simple question. Just who are you in this community and how are you doing today?

I am ExodusS, the justice fighter, I am participating at each struggles that aim for a better and more enjoyable AssaultCube. On a more serious way, I am an old competitive player who dropped matches to focus on the public scene, I used to create maps and today, two of them are officials.
I am fine even if I just wake up (9am) from yesterday's first party of the holidays.

2. Do you feel there is an obvious difference between competitive and pub style maps? Why?

There is obviously a huge difference in overall between competitive and pub style maps because first of all, the number of player is different, a public map should handle 10+ players (mostly 12-14) and enough pickups, space, paths to offer a good and fast gameplay in contrary to the competitive map that must have a layout that offers to the teams enough possible elaborated strategies for an intense game. However, there are a few maps that offer both, ac_shine is a perfect example, it is probably one of the most played map in competition and in public games because of it's interesting gameplay.

3. How do you feel about arena like maps, such as ac_douze?

I like those maps even if I think most of them could have some graphic refreshes such as adding more details or more visible elements that are not affecting the gameplay at all or just make the theme fitting with AssaultCube general environment. (for maps like ac_douze, ac_metl3, ...) Plus, most of the time, those maps are played in the wrong way, by this I mean ac_douze has it's place in the official package, but players should not be able to vote it in a 10+ slot server.

4. What got you into mapping?

When I was playing on Hanze servers, I saw some Hanze members speaking about a future map idea, from this, I knew it was possible for me to create my own map and to share it, I first started by modifying Ezjemvill and adding new stairs, then I learned how to change the texturing, too late I was addicted.

5. Where do you draw ideas from?

It's hard to know where my ideas are from, I remember when I was translating Mr.Floppy's map design guide, a lot of it's points were based on where we find new themes, ideas for maps and what is influencing the mapper, from the movies we are watching, from the other video games, from our town architectures or from towns we are traveling. I'd say my ideas are an average of all this, but most of them are from other video games I am playing, all the time when I find something nice or geniously made, I try to reproduce it in my head, to make it fit with the limited cube engine, and when there is a way to reproduce something good, well it's time to complete a map or to create something new, something the community never saw yet.

6. To date, what do you feel has been your greatest mapping milestone? Why?

The day I won the mapping contest is for me the moment I reached my maximum level of mapping, ac_palenque was the result of a long work (over 180 hours of mapping, testing and inspecting each cubes) and winning the contest meant a lot for me, it was such an accomplishment.

7. How do you feel about custom media maps?

There are two type of custom media maps, on a side there are very good maps with custom contents that could have been official because they are similar to AC's style (new trees, doors, windows and most of recent Cleaner's stuff), those maps are mostly interesting to watch and play and the game looks more recent, you see a real difference between older maps from Cube or AssaultCube starts. And on the other side, we sometimes cross servers with custom media full of cars and helicopters and many mapmodels that makes you remember the engine is really old and how bad a map can be if we don't use mapmodels correctly.
Custom medias are good accordingly to how we use it.

8. Who are your favorite mappers, and why them?

Jiba, because his mapping style is unique, it's based on a eye-flooding strategy, if you check all of his maps, there are so many details, windows (levels of windows), plus everything he made is kinda nice to see and original. It was my favourite mapper when I started to create more elaborated maps with DaylixX and Spako, and a few sharped eyes noticed that, near the CLA base of ac_sylang, there is something quiet similar to ac_venganza's RVSF base, it is almost a copy/paste, but it only helped us to get the desert theme well, it was supposed to be removed, but we decided to keep it even if it doesn't fit very well with ac_sylang's layout.
Mr.Floppy, because of the map design guide and all of the underrated masterpieces he created such as ac_bunker. The work he did by testing, rating and describing his opinions on all akimbo new maps is also incredible.
Z3R0, because he improved so much his mapping skills and faster than anyone else, maps like ac_pompeii deserve a lot more than being not played and not winning a mapping contest.
Sniper, because of all his maps and all the fresh ideas he brought to the mapping scene, the use of Nieb texture is perfect in all of his most recent maps.
Undead because without his work, ac_swamp and ac_cavern would not be official at all, his vision of the future map's gameplay is really strong and he is able to imagine a good layout to offer the best AssaultCube experience for the competitive and the public scene. Even if those maps don't seem to be played that much, I am sure they are enjoyed by a lot of people considering the poll's result. Plus, Undead made some high-quality maps in the past too.
Teammate_Haze for ac_magic-school...
There are a lot of mappers I did not mention here, and sorry for that.

9. What about your favorite official maps? Why those?

ac_avenue is an incredible map, it's full of details and the layout is very interesting, the middle is open so it's perfect for long range weapons, on side of this, there are galleries that offers a lot of close range fights for shotguns and smg's. The realization is a piece of art, all along there are stages that are crossing with other stages (the bridge is good example), because this is not affecting the design, this map is unique.
ac_shine is one of my favourite because as I said earlier, it fits with the competitive and the public scene, I don't know if the mapper was aware of how many times his map was going to be played and if he was aware of the "perfect" gameplay he was creating, but this map offers something special.

10. You have been apart of a few coop made maps, do you feel like these have helped you out in any way? Why?

Most of my huge finished projects were coop maps, I started with DaylixX and Spako, we were finding new tricks and sharing it to each others so it helped us a lot and made us improving our mapping skills faster. Latter, I made two maps with Undead and he helped me with the layout of the maps, it obviously helped me a lot.

11. Do you feel like creative maps have gotten better or worse over time?

I think actually it's worse than before, I am not directly accusing the mapping restrictions as responsive of this but if I take myself as example, I know I'd stop mapping if I can't share my maps, and my first maps would not fit in the restrictions even if they are like 10 times less important. Of course, it's not everyone's case, but restrictions make it harder for new mappers especially.
There is also a problem with the auto-packager trough the new AC version, because the engine was limited, it was forcing mappers to always find new tricks and to be as creative as possible because adding unofficial contents was forcing players to go on Akimbo to download it, it also meant your map was not going to be popular or played a lot. Mappers needed to compensate the lack of contents and engine limits with their creativity, now they just have to find a 4x8 platform on akimbo instead of placing a classic one and putting half of it in a wall.

12. What has been your favorite mapping moment to date? Why?

When I was mapping with DaylixX and Spako and especially while we were creating ac_sylang and ac_arab-money, we were constantly learning and discovering small new stuff (like how to change the skymap or to add an official mapmodel by editing the .cfg) and it was very exiting.

13. If you could pick one more of your maps to add to the official package, what would it be, and why?

I'd pick ac_palenque because I think it would bring another style of map to the official package, more oriented on the design than on the gameplay to impress the player on what the engine can handle. I also think it would lead to a new mapping category like in Sauerbraten.

14. Last few questions, you planning on any releases soon? If so, care to drop some hints as to what?

I was planning to create ac_tiebreak, I also created a thread on AC forums especially for this map project, but because of a huge lack of time and because I almost dropped AssaultCube, I decided to drop it.
I also had even more old unfinished map projects, I don't remember exactly why I stopped it, but some of them are quiet good starts.
Spoiler (Click to View)

15. In closing, is that anything else you would like to add? How was this interview for you?

This interview was kinda complete, thanks a lot for choosing me and I was happy to answer to all of these questions but more especially to the #5 because this is probably my mapping "secret" and I never had the opportunity to speak about it until today. Sorry for my English, I did what I can, feel free to fix it. ;)

Thanks go to Exoduss for another solid interview. As I have been doing, I will allow feedback and do encourage to do so. I will also post a small part of the next interview to allow guesses. This man is also an official mapper. He and I have worked together in the past as well. This is a portion of his interview, "Mapping for AssaultCube is frustrating. You start off thinking you're doing something awesome that will be enjoyed by many then you're disappointed when reality strikes after the release. I started my mapping "career" making crappy maps like most other players. After making my first few poor quality maps I started wondering how I can improve. I started dissecting other quality maps to see how things are really done. I teamed up with other players who also wanted to become better mappers and I believe we achieved that." Post below your guesses and I hope you guys and ladies enjoyed another interview.