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Icarusweb: Obvious questions first... what inspired you to start Batman Doom? Were you big Batman fans?
Edmundo: At first it wasn't going to be a 32 level TC. I started by drawing the Tally Man sprite for what would be a one level wad, it was going to be a battle of Batman vs. Tally Man, like in the comic "Prodigal part 10" of the DC series. Then I made more enemies and thought "these are too many to be placed in just one level, maybe there should be more levels". Then Andrew and Carlos joined the project and it just became bigger and bigger. We are Batman fans, but only of the comics and the two first movies. I hate the next two!
IW:Me too. How do you feel about the end product?
Andrew: We're extremely proud of Batman Doom. We believe that when we released it, it was the most polished project that was available. It probably still continues to be the project with more work involved in it. The de-hacked Edmundo made is huge compared to any other dehs. Basically everything that could be replaced was replaced. It hardly looks or feels like DOOM. Of course it lacks some of the newest features from source ports like scripting, but that is because we were very near finishing when source ports started to take shape. But what makes us prouder is the fact that we didn't need to use source ports to make all the cool special effects that we put in it. We made sure that every level had at least something original in it so that when someone played the game he'd never stop being impressed with all the details.
IW:Well, it impressed me for one. How about DC? Do they know about it?
Carlos: We never told DC Comics about the project because we feared that they could have stopped us from finishing the project due to copyright problems. Anyway, I guess we gave them a lot of free publicity.
IW:How do you organize the team? Do you work well together?
Andrew: Edmundo, Carlos and I made most of the work in Batman Doom and it was easy to organize between us because whenever any of us wanted to check someone else's progress we just had to turn on the computer. I imagine that most of the Doom projects have members that can't get to see each other and they have to communicate by mail, icq or something else. That complicates the construction of a project because all the stuff has to be made in separate pieces and it's a little like working blind. We only faced that problem with the music and the PC conversion.
IW: How did you get such amazing effects with just De-hacked?
Edmundo: De-hacked (well Doominator really, the Mac version) was the only tool that allowed me to really change things. In the Mac I didn't have any type of source port, so I had to choose Doominator. I had to learn the long way, testing and testing different patches. The way of doing new things in De-hacked is testing every possibility and seeing if it doesn't crash, it just takes a lot of time.
IW: Why did you choose Macs over PCs to design the project on?
Andrew: We didn't choose Macs over PCs to make Batman Doom. At the time we started editing we only had a Mac computer. We soon realized that making the project with a Mac would cause us a lot of problems. We were not sure if we would be able to convert it to PC (thanks to Anthony Soto there is a PC version). At least the good part of making it with Mac was that both systems got to have Batman Doom. If we would have started with a PC there probably never would have been a Mac version.
IW:Who is your strongest influence when designing levels?
Andrew: We really didn't influence our level designs with any other existing work. We just wanted to keep the levels fun to play and close to the comics. We only played very few conversions when we started working, like Osiris for example. We owned a Mac then and it was a lot harder to find quality wads because the Mac Doom community was very small.
IW: When did you get into Doom editing? Do you remember the first level you designed?
Carlos: We started our Doom editing in 1997, a few time after we had just finished a Macintosh Marathon TC that never went public. Our first experiences were with Mac Doom editors. We have never done a Doom map with anything but "Hellmaker". Our first attempt was a 6 level wad, which we named "Hades". It appeared at a Mac Doom site and got a decent review, though most of you would find it pretty lame by now. We still have it and even play it on our PC some times.
IW: Why do you think so many people start TCs, then run off and hide after a while?
Carlos: Well, probably because of the time it takes making TCs. If Batman Doom didn't exist, nobody knew us and we posted today that we would be starting a 32 level TC with all new everything, we would probably get all type of comments telling us to join other projects, and how we wouldn't be able to finish. Think a lot before starting a new project, and if you really think you can have it done then don't go public until you have a great deal of work in it.
IW: A couple of questions just to Edmundo now... how is Zan Zan TC coming along?
Edmundo: I already have a lot of work done, all of the monsters are ready. That means all the De-hacked work is almost done and all the md2 monsters are finished too. The only thing that will be hard to do now is the map. This is the first time I have to make a map in a PC, and I definitely chose Wadauthor to begin, but the hard part will be to learn scripting.
IW: It's a truly out there idea, and I've seen the cattle monster - where did you get inspiration from on this one?
Edmundo: I really like drawing, and I got a folder full of creatures I have designed at school. I try to make things unusual or strange, and sometimes I just scribble some random shapes and then try to turn it into a monster; that's what happened with the cattle monster. My Inspirations would be Giger, Doom, and Ninja Gaiden.
IW: Why did you choose to do it only as a one level TC? Is it going to be one of the biggest levels we've seen?
Edmundo: It sure won't be the biggest because I have played huge and endless levels. But of course it will be big because I have to fit 5 new monsters and 4 new weapons in it. I want to make only one level because mapmaking is the thing that takes more time to be done, and I want to add a great amount of details to it (its like a quantity vs. quality thing).
IW: And finally, to the whole group... what projects can we expect to see from you in the future?
Carlos: Edmundo is working on his Zan Zan TC. About Andrew and me: We have been pretty busy with a non-Doom project of our own. We will be making a Quake 3 TC. Before everybody starts flaming us, know that we do this not because of the game, but because of the limitless potential of doing a Q3 conversion. We still like Doom more than Quake. All I can say is that it should be a single player TC, and that we hope on achieving as much and more as we did with Batman Doom. So, as you can see, Edmundo isn't the only one doing models here. We already have a bunch of unfinished md3s of our own. But as I said before, don't go public until you have a lot of work, so that's all for now.
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