Come Get Some!

Age : 29 (2013)
Location : Oregon
Occupation : Solar panel industry.

CGS : When did you first get in touch with Build/Mapster?
Bob Averill : I was about fifteen, and attended a VR camp at OMSI, a major local science museum. Their Summer program allowed kids to make content in a 3D engine for an eventual public exhibition that visitors would explore in what were, for the time, state of the art VR headsets. Nothing like the Oculus Rift, these were Forte VFX-1 units, 320*240, 60 degree fov and 256 colors. My class arrived right at the transition from using BUILD to the Quake 1 engine, with the Q.E.D. editor. I became proficient with Q.E.D. but liked what I saw of BUILD better due to the interactivity, more rapid rate you could create level geometry, realtime 3D view and higher potential visible detail per area. So after the class I picked up a copy of Q.E.D. for my own use but also a copy of Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition.

CGS : What was your first map, released or unreleased?
Bob Averill : My first map was Roadwar. It was an attempt at a vehicular themed post apocalyptic map with loads of scripted car crashes and exploding walls. It was absolute garbage. Other early maps include ones I submitted to the Starship Troopers TC that ultimately weren't used. I don't blame them. I want to say Bobsp1 was my first proper release but I think the map based on a Halflife 1 Deathmatch map came before that.

CGS : What is your favourite among your own maps?
Bob Averill : Either SPX, or SP4 which I am putting the finishing touches on now. I started it after SP3 but then gave up on it due to the scale and ambition of building an entire natural ocean environment. SPX is what I settled on, inspired by Doom3 and intended to recreate that style of lighting. Bioshock would later inspire me to take up the ocean map again and start thinking of strategies to make that project more manageable. My last map according to Mikko was too linear but praised for "conceptual grandness" in that huge final corridor where you escape that swarm of newbeasts. That, along with the criticisms from other reviewers that my maps have a lot of unreachable background areas they wished they could explore, compelled me to make a nonlinear, conceptually grand level where the huge surrounding natural landscape was fully explorable, if you felt like it.

CGS : How many maps have you done?
Bob Averill : I think about 9. The next map, BobSP4, will make it 10.

CGS : Where do you get inspiration from?
Bob Averill : Whatever new game has impressed me. SP2 and DM1 were inspired by Quake 3. SP3 was inspired by Far Cry. SPX was inspired by Doom 3, SP4 is Bioshock inspired. Morpheus is a straight up (attempted) copy of an Unreal Tournament 99 map. DM2 was more of a tech demo for transparent water.

CGS : Do you listen to music whilst mapping? If so, what did you listen to?
Bob Averill : Lately? Mitch Murder, Electric Six and MPM/Multipac. Back when I did the maps I am best known for, mainly Rammstein and Sabaton.

CGS : Do you see mapping as competitive?
Bob Averill : No.

CGS : Do you still touch Build/Mapster?
Bob Averill : Not until I found SP4 on an old hard drive and resolved to complete it.

CGS : Are you playing any DN3D maps these days?
Bob Averill : The Thing caught my attention. There was also a map by Gambini that I poked at.

CGS : What's your favourite map of all time?
Bob Averill : Ruin, by Stranger. Absolute design masterpiece from which I learned how different an atmosphere it was possible to create using stock textures. Jungle Tour 3 is a runner up, for the ambiance and touching/depressive hidden message I still sometimes think about.

CGS : What are your opinion about the HRP and Polymer projects?
Bob Averill : I´d like to see some standalone games using all new parallax mapped textures and polymer lights. I think if you made a clean break from the old content and used only Polymer tier assets it could look very much like a modern game.

CGS : What other games do you fancy?
Bob Averill : There's an old game called Sub Culture I recently completed. It's sort of an exploration and resource trading game, very hard to find an English iso with all the video/audio intact but highly worth it. Discovered it a while ago while on a submarine game kick (which coincided with the conception of SP4) if you can find an uncut English iso and are willing to do a bit of internet research to figure out how to get it running with 3D acceleration on modern Windows, it's an extremely charming, immersive and cozy game.

CGS : Finally, is it something you'd like to say to the DN3D community?
Bob Averill : The only thing I contributed was to be the first to try and exceed by far the detail and effects of the original 3DRealms maps. That is not in itself particularly innovative. I simply saw newer games, made the connection that BUILD could replicate those environments and tried for new effects that exploited combinations of existing ones, where most others were focused on trying to exactly replicate the look and feel of the original maps.

I am much too slow a mapper, the moment I released SP1 and people caught on to the idea of pushing the engine to its limits mappers much more talented and faster working than I am like Alejandro Glavic and Quakis rapidly met and then exceeded the quality of my maps, and now there are mappers like Gambini (all the best mappers seem to be Argentinian for some mysterious reason) producing stuff frankly well beyond my ability. I'm glad!

That's exactly what I hoped to cause with the SP series.
There was really no reason to continue after 2. SPX represents the peak of what I can do in terms of detail and lighting.

My hope with SP4, the last piece of content I intend to release for this game, is to inspire something different; Maps with unorthodox environments and gameplay styles.
A map with underwater bases you can freely enter/exit, a huge explorable ocean surrounding it and 3 dimensional combat plus the constant need to replenish air is, I believe, fairly novel for this game.

I would like to see more underwater maps along the same lines, especially for multiplayer, but also maps set on Mars bases which permit you to leave and explore the terrain for miles in all directions, maps that replicate US and other nations' bases on Antarctica, maps set on artificial floating "seastead" islands or sky cities like in Bioshock infinite (where you are highly reliant on your jetpack and must 'refuel' it at special fuel depots) perhaps levels set in the center of the Earth where to traverse the red hot environment outside of the temperature controlled lab modules you must continually collect replacement boots; basically, we've seen the engine pushed to its limits in terms of detail.

Now let's see it pushed to its limits in terms of the variety of exotic environments and gameplay gimmicks they offer.
eDuke has a pilotable ship, why not aerial dogfight maps over huge expansive replicas of the US with patterns of farmland and cities seen below? Or space dogfights, or underwater dogfights.
Why not maps set in deep cave exploration bases with walkways hanging from the cavern roof by chains (where you rely on scarce night vision goggles spot other players hiding in the shadows)?
Or maps set entirely on the Reptoid homeworld with computer monitors that tell their side of the story?
Let's see what kind of creativity there is left in what remains of the BUILD mapping community.
Just like with the other SP maps I imagine the novelty aspect of SP4 will soon be outdone by the much more talented modern mappers, and as with the ultra detailed maps that SP1-3 inspired, I very much look forward to playing whatever SP4 inspires others to create.