Audio Interview with Erik Ramark

28th February 2011

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

I was lucky enough to sit down and chat with Erik, the joint maker of The Sprucescape Mappack. We chat about its inception and possible sequel.

This interview was conducted within the Citadel.

I mention a previous poll question about Father Grigori and you can view it here: Would you like to play as Father Grigori?

Listen to the interview

Loading…



14 Comments

  1. Erik

    If there’s any questions about Sprucecape Map Pack or my possible future projects, I’d be glad to answer them!

  2. Frohman Zelinsky

    The one thing that I personaly wanted to ask is that the second part of the mappack where you are at the gas station kinda reminds me of Alan wake , was it supposed to be like that or is it a side effect of your supermapping ?

    PS : I really liked Alan Wake

    1. Erik

      Alan Wake was a big inspiration for Sprucecape Map Pack and it can be seen in its environments. I actually haven’t even played it through. Alan Wake is from Finland too so there can be similarities between these two games. But yeah it wasn’t done on purpose, it just turned out to be similar to Alan Wake by it’s inspiration.

  3. NoFace

    I have a question Erik. I am a mapper myself, yet I can never really get into a project to finish it because I get bored or keep finding problems in one area, some would say im a perfectionist. Do you have any tips on how to build a map from start to finish? do you use steps or what? and how do you stay motivated? xD Thanks for taking the time to answer this/these random questions!

    1. Erik

      Yes, that has been a huge problem to me too, at least at my early maps. You see, I am a little bit perfectionist too and that’s why some of my maps have took a very long time to get finished. First of all, you have to choose an interesting subject for your map/project. If you find the subject boring, it wont work. I try to build the map’s basic construction (ground, buildings etc.) first, and do the propping after that. It is important to plan everything ahead and have clean layouts in front of you, before the mapping begins. The motivation stays up when you take little moments to see your own work. Run the map every once in a while to have a look what awesome things you have created.

    2. Miigga

      I’m not Erik but as a mapper I guess I can put my two cents in.

      I pretty much force myself to work on the map every day for at least a while even if I don’t really want to. Works fairly well for me.

    3. Kyouryuu

      There’s honestly nothing wrong with taking a break from your map either. I had about a month of downtime when working on Sebastian, and when I came back to it, I was bursting with ideas about what to do with it. 🙂

      1. Erik

        Yeah you’re right. I just played Sebastian and it was awesome! Some great mapping there.

  4. Hec

    I loved the story of The Sprucecape, was romantic, not in a way of honey love, I mean romantic in a way of the feelings, I mean I could feel the frustration of this man in the mod, yeah his sadness, the continuous chase after his closeness but unreachable loved wife whose ran away from him, I mean is like the author said kind of finish depressing movie, but really clever, I loved this mod and I really would like to see a 2nd part of it because I’ll surely play it.

    1. Hec

      By the way, yeah, I’d also love to see a good HL universe combat mod from this developer, that would be excellent great fresh and new!

  5. Hec

    OH MY GOD!!, please Give me that mod where I can play as Gregory Priest!!!!!!!, I want it, yeah that will sure be a major hit ….

    1. Erik

      Thank you for those kind words. If I can work out a great story, good layouts and stuff, I’ll definitely begin to make the mod.

  6. Awesome interview.

    And:

    I was lucky enough to sit down and chat with Erik, the joint maker of The Sprucescape Mappack. We chat about its inception–

    brooooooooooow broooooooow

    That’s the theme song by the way. Which reminds me, this Mappack sorta reminded me of Inception, but I dunno why.

  7. David Lundvall

    Another great audio interview Phillip! I really like them. Interesting questions, discussions and puts the author’s work in the spotlight.

Leave a Response

Comment Formatting Guide

Well formatted comments are much easier to read. Please copy and paste the HTML Tags to use in your comment

  • HEADER: <div class="fix"></div><div class="sbe3">TEXT HERE</div>
  • BOLD: <strong>TEXT HERE</strong>
  • ITALIC: <em>TEXT HERE</em>
  • SPOILER: <span class="spoiler">TEXT HERE</span>