It was spontaneous. I really just wanted to learn webmastering and start up a website, so the gaming scene seemed like a good place to do it. Half-Life wasn't out at the time (summer '98), but it looked like it was going to be the next big thing. After making an initial design, I got the site hosted at Contaminated.net, and then made the real design and really got to working on it.

I ended up taking a full time job with the company that hosted my websites, GameSpy. It got to the point that I just couldn't stand doing 12 hours of web work at the office, and then doing another few hours of web work on the map site after I got home. In the interest of getting some sleep, I closed the site down. I just couldn't justify continuing it at the time.

I get a few offers every week from people wanting to take the sites over, but I think it's probably best that I decline such offers. I haven't met anyone capable and willing to put the effort in required to maintain the quality I was after.

That's a long story. To summarize, PlanetHalf-Life and PlanetFortress are owned by GameSpy. After working for GameSpy full-time for 13 months, the company changed drastically, and I decided it was time to move on. My parting with them was not exactly pleasant. That's actually a whole 'nother story!! Anyway, GameSpy locked my access to both of my websites, among other things. All of my content and code was on their servers, and I couldnt update or remove it. Since the site is my intellectual property, I didnt really like the idea of not having access to it, so I tried to contact GameSpy and have it taken down. I actually had to send requests every day for about two weeks until someone would finally remove my sites!

Otherwise, I had intended to leave the site up indefinitely for reference.

Not especially. There were lots of good ones that I liked for different reasons, but I wouldn't say I had a favorite.

The extra week of work. Too many people release maps before they are really ready.

That's a hard question. It's been a while, so I can't recall all of the map names. Its also difficult since a lot of the most innovative maps were conversions of Quake TF levels.

CTF is the fundamental mode of play, so it never surprises me to see another. Making a map with alternate rules is a risk, because you have to design it so its very easy to grasp or it simply wont catch on at all.

The very worst maps never made it onto the site. After the site got popular, I was getting so many maps that I had to set aside the ones that were obviously made in fifteen minutes. I tried to review the bad maps that were honest efforts, since that seemed the best way to help people that actually had the ambition to improve.

Watch the r_speeds, read up, test, test, test, examine existing successful maps and identify why they are successful. Don't expect your first couple of dozen maps to be fantastic. Learn and move onto the next one until you know enough to build something coherent. Don't release a level prematurely.

In my opinion, these changes utterly destroyed TFC and my interest in the game along with it. I played TFC since the mod was released, and got used to the feel of it. I LIKED the way it played. Then they change everything... I abandoned it after that. I just didnt have the desire to start over. I really feel like Valve used us all as guinea pigs for their TF2 ideas. Since it was a free mod, all I can do is shutup and step aside, but I dont have to like it or play it :-).

Yes. Certainly. Good maps are designed with the game physics and characteristics in mind. When you change that, you change the feeling of the map. Even Well and 2Fort play differently pre- and post-patch. I much preferred the former, because I felt it was truer to the original Quake TF.

I didnt like Dustbowl at all, really. Openfire was OK. The other maps have apparently been released after my detachment from TFC so I've never played them. Or even heard of them. Did I mention I think Valve RUINED TFC? :-)

I can't comment on post-radium custom levels, but I think the quality definitely increased since its release. I received a lot more 'average' maps near the end, as opposed to a bunch of terrible ones like in the beginning.

Wow, I could write a book on this one. Custom add-ons are as popular as you are capable of making them. Valve's certainly set the precedent for creating demand for add-ons, even though they need a lot of work on their method of delivery.

I learnt a tremendous deal about web sites and what visitors want and expect. I could easily build the ultimate gaming file site if given the resources. The blue prints are locked away deep inside my tiny mind, in fact!! But anyway, the cruel reality is that the resources to power such a site are not affordable, and that's where mega download sites suffer. It's ridiculous to try and justify the cost of bandwidth required to serve the amount of files you would need to dish out to make this feasible. It barely works mainstream, much less for a niche like gaming. Dig around CNet's download.com and see just how much of their downloads they actually host. Not a whole lot, because its extremely costly. Sites that claim to be "online hard drives" such as myspace.com and idrive.com are suffering from similar problems.

The internet is at a strange state here. Cable and DSL connections are common, and it's easy for your site's download capacity to quickly be tapped by fast users. You never have enough capacity. At the same time, bandwidth remains rather expensive for businesses.

People want files to be easy to find, and accompanied by descriptive information and fast download speeds. Most gaming download sites now are trying to serve files for all games rather than focus on a few games, and they get overwhelmed easily.

I think the gaming community was far better off back in the Quake days, when there were well defined communities made up of gamers, rather than dot-coms smearing dozens of games into a blob of quantity-over-quality thinking they can make a buck by doing it all. Quality is easier to attain through refinement than through volume. Dot-coms are really risky business, just look at fuckedcompany.com and all the horrible investment decisions that have been made the past few years in the internet space. At least e-commerce sites are SELLING something, but others just rely on subscriptions or advertising. Unfortunately gaming sites typically fall into the latter, and it's tough to afford big download capacity.

The result of all this is a capacity problem that isn't going away any time soon. Gamers pretty much accept that downloading is often painful, and for many people this fact causes them not to get as involved with add-ons as they would otherwise. I think that is definitely the main road block here.

I'm rambling.

Publicity for the maps. You have to do something to let people know your map is out there and it's a viable alternative to the standards. That's not easy to do, of course. For the most part, custom maps remained a niche.

Hard to say, since we don't yet know what the requirements will be. For example, if the entity set is very complex, it may be hard for a lot of people to attain 'pro' status, and might even become too much work for many people to bother with. It will also depend on the editing software available, and how intuitive it is to use.

Yes, they could do a hell of a lot more. There are some great levels out there, but most don't get played except on a few servers. This is a complex issue. A big obstacle is that most server admins out there like their servers to be full as often as possible, and putting custom maps in the rotation will often 'cause people to drop rather than download the map, and so admins dont run custom maps often enough.

I think Valve could have at least released user-created map packs, to make them more widespread and official. Many of Valve's 'official' TFC levels are horrible, but get far more play than great user-made levels. But look at how successful TFC was compared to other mods. It was official, most other mods didnt get that same spotlight, and once PlanetHalf-Life turned into a sloppy mess devoid of quality, there just wasn't a comprehensive place that promoted community works. I actually would have loved to work with Valve to try and further promote maps, but Valve was always too busy for ole' radium, or just not interested. Probably the latter... radium who? Dario Casali was the only guy there that gave me the time of day. Once.

As a company, it's probably just not very important to Valve to promote custom maps. They're more interested in mods, since there's money involved. Counter-strike... etc. I don't think that was ever very fair to the mapping community. These guys work hard, and only a few people ever see any return from it.

Unless ICQ counts, none. :-)

I'll probably return to the gaming scene at some point, but for now I'm just enjoying a much needed break from the gaming industry in general. I do miss the people and my radium forum crowd! Maybe some day...

Thanks for the interview, it was fun to reminisce.