Interview by Moxx for Late night encounters #7

Moxx: Okay so Hello Soulfather, being involved for KZ for quite a while, most people know who you are. But could you introduce yourself for the new players?

SoUlFaThEr: Hi, my name is Tim "SoUlFaThEr" Lippert, and I am an American living in Germany for the last 22 years of my life. I've been playing games for a good 32 years avidly and for the last 13 years have been designing levels or modules for various games including a good 70+ maps for CS and about 5 or 6 for KZ on CS1.6. Recently, however, I am the Executive Produce and Lead Level Designer of Kreedz Climbing (KZmod) for the Source engine.


Moxx: So how did you get involved in KZ and the whole world around it?

SoUlFaThEr: I was designing maps for CS and got invoved with various clans playing. One of those clans I was designing a map for, FAW, always wanting me to play with them too and one day one of their members showed me a kz map. As a level designer, that struck me like gold so I immediately began work on what turned out being kz_man_madness. At the time when I made that map there were only about 30 or 40 maps and most of them made by Kreedz himself so he was quite impressed and got the map under his best sponsor MAN clan.


Moxx: kz_man_madness, damn brings back some memories, how did you come up with the idea for this map? And was Kreedz himself still around at this time?

SoUlFaThEr: I typically design as I go, but with a starting concept but not in that case particularly. I just wanted something abstract looking because it seemed this kz concept allowed a design of anything. Kreedz was still around at this time yes. I was always trying to get him to learn more about r_speeds reductions, but it didnt seem to matter much to him until a bit later I was trading tips with him. I had actually made over 50 maps for regular CS by the time I met him.


Moxx: You mean regular cs 1.6 maps rather than KZ though?

SoUlFaThEr: right


Moxx: As time passed you got more and more involved with the different communites that were and is out there (kreedz.com, kzmaps.co.uk, xtreme-jumps) how did that start? And work?

SoUlFaThEr: I think I got pulled in for a few reasons. One being that I had a lot of mapping experience and loved teaching. Another reason was, of course, my rather mature age over most of the others so admin status seemed a given. When Kreedz left I was the first person he gave control of his site to, I didnt do much for kzmaps.co.uk other than complain that the Sk8tr and his wierd buddy were running the site like fools, and I was an admin at Xtreme-jumps for quite a while, mainly doing map checking and teaching people mapping, and was also part of the large discussion group to merge kzmaps,kreedz.com and Xtreme-jumps into one main place for everyone to go to. It made the most sense to me. Many have written about this time period but most never mentioned my interaction there. I personally feel I was the main drive in the whole thing because it made the most sense. I just didnt get involved with everyone on the subject, only to a few certain ones who were actually pulling the strings.


Moxx: Spending allot of time like that in a community, how was that like?

SoUlFaThEr: Honestly it was a lot of stress. I mainly kept to the mapping stuff and from the side monitored arguements and helped solve them. I was always trying to get them to stop the admin team map judging because I saw it creating what I call "rougue mapping groups" that seperated themselves from the main contingent, which I thought was rather stupid. For me, map judging by an admin team kills the creative rush of people who could possibly become GREAT mappers. A perfect example of this is Millet who later joined me on KZmod. His first map I had to judge had no concept at all, looked like nothing and had frame rate problems. I gave him a concept, fixed his frames issues and it turned into one of the most popular maps: kz_cellblock. Radon was another candidate I helped out a lot in the beginning and look what he did to the map list! The maps Millet later created for KZmod are still some of the very best looking maps. If I hadn't stuck with them and helped helped them rather than just denying their maps..they would have quit altogether. For this reason I simply didnt enjoy my job as "map checker" and left it after a few months to start KZmod anyway. I never went back after that.


Moxx: So the somewhat "transfer" from KZ(1.6) and KZmod, how did you manage all of that? And are you happy with the "resignment" , moving over from KZ to KZmod?

SoUlFaThEr: I am Abso-F***ing-lutely happy with it. Valve released HL2 and word was that they offered the Source Code for free to modders and a bell went off in my head. I had a talk with Kreedz about my idea and asked him direct permission to take the KZ concept to a new level of a game on its own. When he said yes, I began asking around for programmers and everything else and just began making maps and learning the Source engine. After a while I knew that this was my calling so I never went back to CS1.6 mapping again because it basically lacked so much against Source, I wasn't in the mood to make LESS again. I think anyone who really gets used to the possibilities Source has to offer against the HL1 engine, would also never go back. You can make the ideas in your head become a reality so much more intense with Source, and looking and sounding a lot better as well. So, leaving was the only option. I had a goal in life to create a PC game and the door opened for me. So I walked through it and here I am 5 years later about to release a final game: Kreedz Climbing 1.0. We are leaving the Beta phase finally.


Moxx: So what it KZmod exactly?

SoUlFaThEr: KZmod, as of our latest 4.2 release, is a full conversion HL2 (Deathmatch or MP) modification. This means that we have the source code of HL2 Deathmatch and stripped everything out of it, and began creating a game from the engine code up. Many people who know about us get exactly this point very confused. The game orignally was meant to play exactly like the KZ concept in Counter-Strike, but rather, be its own game. So instead of opening CS1.6 to play some KZ, you simply open KZmod. Up to our 4.2 release we have added to this basic concept of jumping against time and other players to being much more than just jumping. We basically have what I call 15 different disciplines that can be used in one course in a map, or in different courses in a map. Due to us being our own game, we can have up to 2048 courses in a single map, each with its own timer. The most so far is 16 however for practical purposes. In short, Kreedz Climbing is KZ of CS 1.6 but inside its own game with the possibility to develop, rather than being a game inside another game where it cannot develop. BTW, up to 4.2 we never managed to get CS movement right, it was sort of close, but was never correct. You do the same stuff but it wasnt the same feeling as a gamer.


Moxx: How do these timers work? Several timers in one map?

SoUlFaThEr: As far as I know and can remember, in 1.6 the timers are made with a buttload of complicated entities, which is very restrictive. I remember Kreedz was actually selling his entity timer system for real money. In KZmod they are hard coded and allow for multiple timers in a single map. Each course has its own name and this makes the seperation, so to integrate one timer you add a func_starttimer, a func_stoptimer and a func_setcoursenames. The setcoursenames entity holds 20 slots for course names and the start and stop have their own names you can give. As long as the timer entities have different, but corresponding names like "start1,stop1" and another timer set with start2,stop2 you could add 20 "timer sets" to the setcoursenames entity. When I said 2048 courses, that is what is allowed in the coming release because we have rewritten the timer system completely. In 1.0, the setcoursenames entity is obsolete because the "point_climbtimer" (only one entity per timer set!) holds all the options. We even have the ability to use multiplayer timers where up to 4 players are involved in one single timer set for like 2-4man timers! OH YEAAAAH. If you check out our website I recently uploaded a youtube video showing the multiplayer timer set in action with 3 players plus some other neat features like teleports that wait for the whole team to be inside the entity before teleporting all at once.


Moxx: Sounds really interesting, what about the movement in KZmod? I personally remember playing a long time ago, but I couldnt relate to the movement at all. It felt different. How is it now?

SoUlFaThEr: Yeah the movement has been a long running issue and seemingly a pipe dream. Yahn Bernier, the Senior Engineer at Valve, once told me that it is surely possible if you know how to code it properly. Well with the help of a few math geniouses like Numb and especially eDark, we have achieved this feat to about 99.9%. There have been many attempts by many mod makers and even Valve themselves are trying it now with their CS:GO project but they are far off the mark. I have proof that we have done it and the only majorly slight difference is in the airacceleration. According to some legendary CS players, the movement of Kreedz Climbing 1.0 is even better than 1.6 because it is smoother. This slight difference in the air acceleration seems to be a good thing rather than a bad one. We also added something I always said I would never add to the game: Edgefriction. This alone made me change EVERY single map course in the game and even ruined a few that are out of my reach. If I didn't change a course, it simply got harder. Many CS players complained that our courses were too easy and there was a reason for that: to attract Source engine players. We basically have everything CS1.6 has now including edgebugs and wierd jumps and CJ and DCJ. The only REAL difference is the fact that you can never die. You notice that your edgebug worked properly because you don't get the "OOF" or hard landing sound from your chosen player character (each of our player models has their own voice sets). When we release, there should basically be no reason to complain about the movement being different anymore. Players like FragGyver, Kangaroo, Faker, Zocker007, Akkord, figgy, Daza and jyue will all attest to this fact. Mainly their first comments after playing for a bit was: "This is CS with Source graphics, good job!!"


Moxx: Interesting, but I'm curious how you can say "According to some legendary CS players, the movement of Kreedz Climbing 1.0 is even better than 1.6", how can it be better than the "original"?

SoUlFaThEr: Because it is simply a smoother feeling. You would have to play it to feel it. It is also not my comment, its theirs!


Moxx: Okay, what about the fact that KZmod is less popular than regular KZ, why do you think that is?

SoUlFaThEr: There is a damn good reason or even a few reasons why it is less popular. Where should I start? In beta 1!! The movement was total CRAP. There is your first loss of trust. Beta2 had slightly better movement towards CS but was still buggy but the big trust killer there was the WallBug which haunts the entire platform of games on source until the day I mentioned it to Yahn Bernier, who then reduced its frequency for us and for the entire modding community. The next reason was Beta3 still wasnt even close. We added more features to the game and more fun, but we still had no clue about the movement. I was getting to the point where I wasnt even chasing it anymore. With Beta4 we made a small attempt and sort of got ducked bunnyhopping and a start on groundstrafing but still, it didnt feel right. so people tried and uninstalled imediately. I saw many cases online shortly after the release of 4.2, which considering all things, still went quite well for a long time, where a player would get online after installing, play for 2 minutes and say in the chat: "Not the same, uninstall, bye". So there you have it. But now I am telling you all, please read my words carefully: We now have 1.6 movement down to your liking after nearly 2 years of testing and hard work!!!


Moxx: Sounds promesing, so you would encourage people to make another try with the mod?

SoUlFaThEr: Most definately. We have done so much, other than achieveing that incredibly difficult goal of matching 1.6 movement, there is no reason not to test it. The new maps are totally epic and show so many new things it is going to blow your mind. Examples are the multi player timers, being able to or being forced to use special power-ups like in Turok to finish courses (boots of speed, boots of height, anti-gravity, etc), or the big new hit: the new powerjump feature with its own type of courses that will bind you to your seat as you wall-jump your way through a course. Aside from that, we have the most amazing and fun, REAL multiplayer mode in the game now called Tag Arena (like 1.6 HnS). If HnS in 1.6 was a Ford Escort and not your type of game, Tag Arena is a Ferarri and is REALLY fun. We had HnS haters play it and they all left 4 hours after I did. FragGyver is soon releasing a tutorial or guide to show what Tag Arena is all about and it's done really well. There is more too, guys. I could sit here and explain the upper half of the change log and it would be more text than this interview on improvements to the game. You had "sticky feet" before in previous versions? Gone. One word: Edgfriction!


Moxx: What about the fact that some people in Russia, Bulgaria and so on don't have amazing computers, what can they do? And do you have any FPS-restrictions for recording demos?

SoUlFaThEr: Just download and play. You can play the game in a multiplayer atmoshpere with up to 600 ping quite comfortably. Tag Arean, due to its multiplayer facet will have some lag of course due to the fact you must swing at other players to tag them, but overall the single player experience as it always was is laggless. As for not having a great computer for the graphics, we dont make maps that wont be playable on a machine thats over 6 years old. At the same time, the maps look really good but we have a very fine control over how many frames a player gets in any of the maps and its nicely barable. I never go below 60 frames in any map. Most of the time, at least in my maps, I dont go under 130 frames a second. And as for those 4.2 problems with many players being online at the same time and the map seems to lag, we have found that problem too. Something in the model code was created a head on every player that joined so if 18 players were on the server, each player had 18 heads and this caused the lag. We are now smooth as silk.


Moxx: What about the FPS-difference low-high. In KZ there's a limit on how low your FPS can be, to record. Is there any limitations like that in KZmod?

SoUlFaThEr: Up until now we have not set any limitations on frame rates, but since we have the absolute FINAL movement for the game, a limitation will be tested and set for the 1.0 release if necessary. Those limitations might be because in the HL1 engine the movement was sensitive to changes in FPS, in the Source engine everything is designed to be framerate independent. While we are on topic of demo recording, the entire World Records list on kzmod.com and toplist server records are going to be erased for 1.0 and we will begin freshly so the competition will be high. We also have an new, extremely powerful plugin for collecting statistics on servers that are going using it. It is very extensive, offering a ton more information as well as being more intuative and will include everything you can think of that may be worth a statistic for the single player aspects of the game, as well as for Tag Arena.



Moxx: Sounds good! How about a few shorties to end this interview off?

SoUlFaThEr: Sure Moxx shorties rock


Moxx: Beer or Cider?

SoUlFaThEr: Jack Daniels


Moxx: KZ (1.6) or KZmod?

SoUlFaThEr: KZmod all the way, no reason to play 1.6 after this release for me.


Moxx: How about favourite food?

SoUlFaThEr: Roasted Duck with Red Curry and Coconut Milk.


Moxx: What program could'nt you live without on your computer?

SoUlFaThEr: Photoshop


Moxx: Well thank you for agrreeing to talk to me for a while. You got any last words?

SoUlFaThEr: You guys better try out Kreedz Climbing this time for real. Even the ESL believes in us enough that after hearing and playing it themselves, would like to offer us a slot in their league as a Mod starting out with a simple ladder and if it goes well, we will get our own cups which allows us to create true legends of Trick Jump gaming. We will be the only game in the entire ESL that allows Trick jumping so...Yeah. Shout-outs go to: Faker, Supa (miss you man), Oddy, KZmod Devs and Betatesters, and all those at XJ for reading this whole thing and to Moxx for doing such a good and patient job with the interview