Interview with Magnus "ShockMan" Blikstad

Here is an interview with Magnus "ShockMan" Blikstad, head of the Chemical Existence TC Project
All questions by Gamesurge are in bold print.

Gamesurge: Could you give us a small introduction on yourself

ShockMan: Well, my name is Magnus "ShockMan" Blikstad, I live in sweden and im... project leader (?) for Chemical Existence. Besides that I do a bunch of models, skins, textures, programming and well... lets just say there's really no parts of CE that I haven't touched somehow =).

Gamesurge: Why did you decide to start making this Mod?

ShockMan: Well, I was working with a couple of projects for quake1 back when that was popular (most of them kinda failed at the end). Quake2 was released and I needed a new start, so this is what I came up with over two years ago now. Its all changed pretty much since then, (we're now using half-life's engine, the story have gone through a couple of huge changes, the whole thing have been scraped and started over one or two times too =) but the basic concepts is still there.

If you wanted to know why I decided to create games, well. I don't really know. It simply happened that way, and at the moment there doesn't really seem to be any turning back.

Gamesurge: How far in the development of it are you in; When do u plan on releasing it?

ShockMan: Some parts of the game is very far into development, some are lagging behind abit. The current plans are to have it all done sometime quarter 1, 2000.

Gamesurge: How many people are working on it?

ShockMan: About 10 or so.

Gamesurge: How many missions will there be for single player?

ShockMan: Missions is a little odd word, there will be 11 (i think) levels. Levels isn't quite the correct word eighter. It will all be put together like half-life, but there will be about 11 different areas.

Gamesurge: What are the graphics like? Are they different from the original in any way, and if so how?

ShockMan: All enemies, weapons, levels etc. are ofcourse new. But the big change from Half-life is that our levels uses only totally new textures giving them a very different look from HL. Its abit darker and more atmospheric, a rather nice change from all the lab areas in HL. =)

Gamesurge: Are there any new guns or inventory going to be created besides the ones already shown?

ShockMan: Inventory items are still pretty much up in the air, I really don't know what we'll come up with right now. I think most weapons have been showed in screenshots and such. But not all of them are described on our website though.

Gamesurge: How will this mod be different or unique from the others?

ShockMan: Its completely new. We got a totally new setting, a totally new story line, a slew of totally new characters to interact with. Other than that, the fact that its single player seems pretty unique at the moment. Not even "real" game developers wants to do this anymore =)

Gamesurge: Any new features that haven't been seen done through the Half-life engine?

ShockMan: I don't really know what to say. I guess most of it have been done one way or another, but that's not really the point, when its all put together you all of a sudden get something never seen before.

There are of course things that stands out abit, right now the scope on our sniper rifle is pretty impressive. It actually make the enemies alot more visible in dark spots.

Further we're using trains in some levels in ways i don't quite think they were meant to be used. =). One of the levels for example required the player to travel through an area with a jeep, we thought long and hard how to do this and trains turned out to be a really nice way of doing it. The player wont really control the jeep (he will instead meet a "helper" character that will do the driving), what the player will do is to sit in the back and control one huge gun fighting of a bunch of enemies coming from behind, its really pretty impressive.

Gamesurge: Do you have anything else planned for the future; any other comments you'd like to make?

ShockMan: Nope, no plans, it takes my (and my teams) minds of our current goals. Any comments? well... I donno, no. Not really. Go check out our website and well. Get the game once its out =).

You can view the site here