To the Extreme

An interview by Russell "RadPipe" Lauzon.

 

Why don’t we start with, one at a time, your name and function, and we’ll go from there.

Dave Ewing:  Okay.  My name is Dave Ewing and I’m –

Ewing?

Ewing: Yeah.  E-W-I-N-G.

Like the Dallas Ewings?

Ewing:   Like the Dallas Ewings, right, which we watched religiously when I was a kid.

Some spiffy new Dark Sector concept art. (135k).

Yeah I did too.  Not that I meant to, but we only got two channels where I grew up.

Ewing: Yep, that was the same with us too.

Pancho Eekels: And Dynasty!

And Knots Landing!   

Ewing: Good old CBC.

Anyway –

Ewing:  Anyway, my name is Dave Ewing and I’m a Level Designer.  Actually I also did sounds and a little bit of textures for UT, but for Dark Sector I’ll pretty much exclusively just be doing levels.  I’ll have to do a lot more than I did for UT.

Eekels:   My name is Pancho Eekels and I’m Lead Level Designer now at Digital Extremes.  That’s what I do, just level design.  Some textures here and there, yeah for Dark Sector there will be a lot more levels.

You’re Lead Level Designer now?  You weren’t before?

Eekels: No.  I wasn’t with Unreal and Unreal Tournament.  Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski is Lead Level Designer there. 

Ewing: Even though we were two teams we were basically doing the same project and we broke it down so we were one team for those two projects.

Yeah I’ve been interested in that whole process because there was two geographically separate teams working on the project.  How did you manage coordinating all your efforts?

Eekels: Well it didn’t go to well and what happened was that for the last part of Unreal it was pretty obvious that we all needed to be together and that’s what we did so Epic came to Canada and we finished Unreal.

How many people came up?

Eekels: <mumble> …Tim… <mumble>

Ewing: <mumble> … Eric…<mumble>

A boatload.

Ewing: So yeah like 6 or 7. 

Eekels: And then there was a few guys popping in and out.  And it was a very small office.

Ewing: <laughs>  Yeah it was a small space.  Hot.  On the weekends, of course, there was no air conditioning.

Eekels: So we had a string of fans around the office.  It was terrible.

That was back when you were in Waterloo then.

Eekels: Yep.  And for UT, Digital Extremes went to Raleigh.  That’s where we finished UT. 

It was your whole company that went?

Eekels:   All the people that were needed.

Ewing: Like the level designers, texture artists.

Ok.  What was Digital Extremes role in Unreal and Unreal Tournament?  Did you split up the level design and that artwork and the engine?

Eekels: We covered everything.  We did a little of coding, Epic did most of the coding, and we did half of the levels.  And basically a little bit of everything.  It wasn’t a defined role where we said, “You guys are doing this, and we were doing that.” 

Ewing: We acted as one team.

Eekels:   Yeah we split everything up.