introduction
This interview was intended for Mark Rein, but when he found out it was
about ZZT he decided Tim would be the best one to answer all the questions
posed by the ZZT community.
The questions were asked by Wouter who is a member and representative of the
ZZT community.
interview
May 25 1999
Wouter: How did E3 go for Epic? Were you able to make contact with any new
licensees for the Unreal or UT engines? And how did James Schmaltz's
presentation go?
Tim: E3 went well. The response to Unreal Tournament was very positive, and
many of our licensees had successful showings of their Unreal engine games.
We're talking to a potential new licensee, but I can't say who. I was too
busy with the show to see James' presentation, though.
Wouter: You have made some very impressive products in the last few years.
Almost automatically internet communities have formed around Unreal and
Unreal Tournament, as well as for other Epic products. While it may well be
argued that the actual game is the most important contribution Epic could
make to the community, do you also want to take part in it? In other words,
how exactly does Epic Megagames look upon internet communities formed around
their products?
Tim: The community is a vital aspect of our games. If there hadn't been an
Unreal community early on, I'm not so sure that Unreal would even exist now,
because the community interest significantly helped us nail a publishing
deal for the game. We participate as much as we can, but ultimately the
community is driven by enthusiasts. If they didn't like the game, there's
nothing we could do on our own to build a community. It's interesting
comparing Unreal and ZZT, because ZZT was one of the first games that was
really driven by users creating maps and sharing them online. It was a very
simple game, but the map-editing aspect of it was a proof of concept. If
ZZT hadn't existed, I don't think Unreal would have been such an exciting
game to develop. ZZT proved the value of a good level editing tool and open
architecture. Without that, Unreal would just be another 3D game like Turok
or whatever -- a good game, but nobody is DOING anything with it.
Wouter: Not many companies can boast about having (almost) 10 year old
communities for one of their products. Epic can. Does ZZT and it's community
have any kind of special place in the hearts of the Epic team? And why do
you think the community has lasted so long?
Tim: Just my heart, I'm the only one who was around "back in the day". :) I
think ZZT has lasted so long because, at its core, it's a fun game to play
and build maps for. Even back when ZZT was released, its graphics were
outdated. Actually, I've always been a bit disappointed with UnrealEd
compared to ZZT's editor, because ZZT levels were much easier to build and
far more predictable to designers in terms of their gameplay, and there was
always a feeling in ZZT that there was more to the game than you could see
on the screen, the possibility of new regions in maps you just haven't seen
yet. I've always felt I lost something important with UnrealEd, and I'm
going to be thinking a lot about how to regain that ease of use and
predictability, and also the feeling of exploration and expansiveness, with
our next 3D engine.
Wouter: ZZT was created by Tim Sweeney who successfully published it through
a shareware-company called Potomac Computer Systems, giving the financial
room to develop what is now a leading entertainment company. Starting with
"Jill Of The Jungle", all of Epic's creations have been games utilizing ever
more of the PC's graphical capabilities. Now, Unreal pushes the hardware's
limits hard enough to have dropped a bomb on the graphics card market. It is
understandable that a game like ZZT no longer fits in Epic's fantastic line
of products. In fact, in most publications "Jill Of The Jungle" is mentioned
as Epic's first product. Do you think Tim Sweeney (or Epic for that matter)
still feels any pride in having made ZZT? Or would Epic rather view it as a
closed chapter and move on?
Tim: I feel pride in it, but there aren't many people nowadays who know or
care what ZZT was.
Wouter: Why was the ZZT project stopped?
Tim: The episodes of ZZT, Super ZZT, and Best of ZZT were enough! At the
point when those were complete, there were lots of enthusiasts out there
creating levels that met and exceeded my own, that it was time to move on.
Jill of the Jungle was my next project. It was a step forward in many ways,
an improvement in graphics, but also worse in terms of editability and high
quality code. I got overconfident in my programming ability on that
project, and ended up making a big mess of the code. Users didn't see that
aspect of Jill, but it was a huge drag on the programming -- the game would
have been much better had I stuck with my guiding principles on ZZT. Unreal
was a step back in the right direction, with more focus on editing tools and
clean code, and also a scripting language.
Wouter: It is obvious that money plays an important role in any business, as
it probably does in Epic's case as well. It has always been hard for me to
believe that anyone can work so hard on anything if money was the only
object. There appear to be other aspects at work here, since Epic's products
display an impressive line of features. What is Epic's major compelling
force?
Tim: I'm driven by making cool engines that let us and the community build
fun games. But I don't underrate money: it's a critical part of game
development, and lots of game developers didn't manage the financial side of
their business, and they went bankrupt or lost their creative freedom to big
publishers as a result. On the other hand, developers whose primary
motivation is money have made terrible product decisions, shipping
unfinished games, or making other boneheaded moves as a result of misguided
financial incentives from the publishers. So it's really a balancing act,
you can't have freedom to develop the games you want if you're not
profitable.
Wouter: Money is no longer an issue when it comes to the ZZT community. And
not because there's enough of it. On the contrary, everything that has to do
with ZZT and it's community has to be virtually free of charge. I say
virtually because the community's leading enthousiasts actually do spend
money in order to be able to offer the community impressive and professional
looking web sites and other products. One of the community's leading ideas
has always been to publish a collection of current works, which includes
litterally hundreds of very impressive ZZT games, ZZT game creation tools
and utilities, a number of ZZT clones, help files, tutorials, hint lists and
much more. Creating a real product with a CD in a box and a booklet would
soon out-cost it's probable revenue and require some sort of organisation.
Do you think ZZT would generate any money if it was published through low
cost distribution channels? And if so, would Epic be interested in taking
part in publishing it together with the community?
Tim: We've already freely released all the ZZT games which we once sold. I
don't expect to make any more from it, and even if there were an opportunity
we really don't have the time to deal with it. In total. I made about
$30,000 from ZZT, and that seed money enabled us to develop Jill of the
Jungle, which funded Epic Pinball, which funded Unreal (I'm simplifying
things a bit).
Wouter: Epic contributes to the ZZT community in the same way it does for
every other Epic product, namely a web site and a message board. The only
thing that lacks for ZZT is product development. This makes the ZZT official
web site all the more important. The official ZZT web site has long been the
object of the community's critisism, partly because it is no longer updated.
All the community's attention has shifted to the more compelling web site
called the Zarchive at http://zzt.org. Just like the official Epic megaboard
web site it offers a message board by Ultimate Bulletin Boards which is used
very frequently. Would Epic consider helping out the Zarchive? A suggestion
would be to make it the official web site or even to have the site hosted by
Epic's servers.
Tim: That would be cool, but we don't have time to deal with it...always
working hard on the next project.
Wouter: Most of the community's efforts concentrate on creating games. The
art of making ZZT games has come a very long way. Another contribution is
the creation of Game Creation Systems (GCS's) inspired by ZZT. In that line
of products there are (and have been) ZIG, ZZ3, Corndog, Megazeux and
others. All products offer extentions and enhancements to the latest
official ZZT release. One community product called ZZT++ however aims to
exactly replicate ZZT, since it's source code was lost. ZZT++ is an open
source product which is still under construction and being published under
GNU license. Would Epic legally object to this kind of product being
published for free? And what if money were charged?
Tim: We totally encourage free projects. I'd need to hear more about plans
for selling the thing, if it contains work that we created, we'd expect a
cut.
Wouter: Do you ever play/use ZZT or do you ever catch Tim with those
tell-tale PC speaker squeeks errupting from his computer?
Tim: I haven't played for about a year. No time.
Wouter: The Unreal technology is far more than a mere game. It is actually a
GCS (only ZZT'ers know where Epic got their idea for it!) which offers the
licensee of the engine an easy-to-use platform for making impressive games
without having to invest in low level technology development. It allows the
game maker to do what they do best and that is to make games instead of
OpenGL drivers for instance. This makes for a product more powerful than any
other on the market today. The only way to improve on it would be to make
different game modes, different weapons, sounds and graphics. Since these
alterations can all be seen as parameterizing the core engine, what do you
think the market is going to come up with in beating the Unreal engine? And
who do you think is capable of doing that?
Tim: My two top fears are of John Carmack, and of the (hypothetical) unknown
programmer who might come out of nowhere with an engine based on new
assumptions that is far better than ours. More the later rather than the
former, because we have a pretty good feel for id Software's strengths,
weaknesses, and development directions. But every few months I take a break
and think, "What if I were going to develop a new engine to destroy Unreal?
What's the best approach?" and lately I've been coming up with some pretty
scary answers, in terms of finding a new paradigm that blows away the
current one.
There are lots of other companies developing engines now. Some are
competent, some aren't. Keeping competitive with them is part of the focus
here, but in terms of bang for your buck, stability, and track record,
Unreal and the Quake 3 engine are way ahead of the pack. So there are some
cool efforts underway now, like Genessis 3D being free and open-source, but
it appeals to a different group of developers than Unreal.
Wouter: With the coming of Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena we see a
trend in the direction of multiplayer oriented games. Increasing high
bandwidth internet access is opening doors for developments like this.
Assuming that the concept of the Unreal technology will not be improved upon
in the near future, in what way will the market develop further?
Tim: I'd like to take the engine more in the direction of persistent
multiplayer games, with a much larger world controlled by distributed
servers. Sort of the best of Unreal Tournament and Ultima Online, combined
together in a community-driven way.
-Tim
Thank you Tim.
Wouter "WeP" Bovelander
http://welcome.to/wep
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