To start off, I was just wondering if you could give some background on yourself, and how you got into making maps.
The nickname Nipper came from my two older brothers. It started when I was very very young so I don't even remember why they started calling me that.
There was a little clan called $tL or something. I was asked to join that clan when I had first started mapping. That clan disappeared pretty quickly except for me and one other member. The two of us then jokingly formed the Cherryclan, named after the candy (the candy is
now called Cherryheads). I played a few league matches with a clan called Malicious Intent. We did really bad and that never went anywhere.
The Cherryclan was originally just a small group of my first "fans" who would regularly join my listen server to play my maps with me and bots.
My first ever map was a horrible attempt at a D-Day map for Day of Defeat beta 1.1. I didn't have much luck with DoD mapping so I figured I would try CS.
The first CS map I made was cspaintball, a simple arena deathmatch map. It seems pretty lame now but back then there were no fy_ or aim_ maps.
To many players, the original crazytank map is legendary, what is the story of the crazytank? Where is it coming from and where is it going, and what were your inspirations, goals, and thoughts, going into making that map?
crazytank started as a thread in forums.joe.to where I asked people what I should put in my next map. Most of the suggestions were ignored but a few of them weren't. There's a billboard easter-egg in the bottom of the chasm that references the people who contributed. I knew I wanted one team to have to pile into a big transport vehicle. And I knew I wanted the Ts to try and set up an ambush for the big vehicle. It was the same concept as crazycar which was one of my first maps.
I have no idea how it became so popular. It was one of my many experimental maps that I didn't think anyone would play besides me and my buddies.
It seems as if throughout your map-making career, you've gone through a few distinct styles of maps. There are lots of the vehicle concept maps, such as crazytank, airfight, and supercrazycar, then you have the series of crazy maps, such as nippers_opus (which I love by the way), and finally you have a lot of maps that are inspired by movies or other media, such as xcom, black hawk down, etc. Just wondering if you can give some background on the process of deciding how to make maps. Do you sit down and say, alright, today I'm going to make a map just combining every creative idea I can make work in the engine? Do you try to build for playability or overall look? What's your goal been with your different maps throughout the years?
I've always tried to do a variety of maps.
The main reason for so many car maps was a small 4-person lan party I went to right after I had started mapping. We got around to playing crazycar and it was ridiculous. Everybody there loved it. There was talk of having another lan party so I started making a lot of car maps just for us to play. Crazycar_v2 was made, car_fight, supercrazycar and a bunch of others.
Sometimes with my gimmicky maps they will start by taking an aspect of one of my existing maps and then focusing on that. Like ow_cc_even_owyer is a simplified version of ow_cc.
Or something funny will happen while playing a normal map and I'll make a map that revolves around that. Like when I noticed smashing breakable windows with grenades was a lot of fun I went and made he_glass.
I have done plenty of "normal" maps too but nobody plays them, at least not in 1.6.
Almost all my maps are inspired by some movie or tv show or commercial or a building I saw in real life. It doesn't matter if it's not an action movie or even if I hated it. Like de_cliffcabin was inspired by some horrible Sandra Bullock movie.
The whaaa / huhhh / blahhh / nippers_opus maps have always been the most fun to make. I just love the idea of abstract level-design. They are a lot more structured than people think though. I probably spend more time planning those maps than I do any other. Blahhh has a right-brain vs. left-brain theme for example.
"whaaa" was the first map of that kind and it was my excuse to make an odd map. The first version had a button that spawned gibs and when the button was pressed multiple times in a row it would crash the server. I wanted to fix it but I couldn't find the .rmf for it so I made "huhhh" to replace it. When "huhhh" became so well received by my server regulars I knew I had to make more maps like that.
(editor's note: Nipper's series of abstract maps are actually incredibly creative uses of the game engine, while playing nippers_opus I found myself genuinely surprised from room to room, delivering an experience more akin to what I would expect from a single player map)
The first time I found a server running a lot of your maps, it was pretty surprising, it was almost like your maps were this big secret I discovered. From the beginning, how have you gotten maps out there? Besides the FPS Banana site, how have you gotten your maps to players and on servers? Is there any center of the custom map community?
Originally I was making maps for me to play with bots. I would create a listen server and just play by myself. Occasionally someone would download the map from me while connecting to my server. I kept making more and more maps and I started to notice the same people would be back every time I was playing a new map.
My maps didn't get out much until I found a custom map server that let people upload their own maps directly to the server. They had a website with an upload map area so I uploaded the first version of playground and a few of my other first maps. The server was pretty popular so a lot of people ended up playing my maps from there.
Then joe from www.joe.to tracked me down and offered me my own forum. Then after the forum he offered me my own 24/7 nipper maps only server.
Moving from the original CS engine to Source, is there a lot more freedom and capability you have making maps? Do you prefer one over the other for what you can do or any other reasons?
Overall I like Source more. For one thing I can do a lot more weird entity-related stuff. The displacements and props make it a lot easier to do outdoor areas that don't look horrible.
The one downside to Source is that it relies so heavily on props and since I can't make custom models I am limited with what I can detail my maps with.
Do you plan to or have you already done any map work for any engines besides Half Life and Source?
Well I had mapped for BUILD engine games like Duke Nukem 3d, NAM, and WWII GI before HL1. As far as new games go I don't plan on mapping for anything else.
Do you have goals to make it into the videogame industry, and maybe design maps or mods professionally?
No. But if anyone wants to offer me a job in the industry feel free. :p
Do you get a lot of fan feedback or other forms of recognition about your work?
I used to get emails from people all the time, mostly asking for my .rmf files. Not so much anymore. Not that I mind.
I'm always amazed when I am playing BF2 as Cc_NIPPER and someone will ask me if I'm the map-making guy.
On the state of vehicle work in Source, I saw your crazytank_hq map, where the tank doesn't move. At the moment, Source vehicles don't work so well, but if you look at some of the work going on with Garry's Mod, http://www.garry.tv/?p=159 you can see progress is being made. Is there any chance of seeing a brand new version of crazytank, or some new vehicle map ideas, coming from you for Source?
Unless valve actually goes and adds the func_vehicle entity to CS:S it's not going to happen. The garrys mod thing is using HL2 models as the vehicle and I don't think I'll ever learn how to make custom models. I just can't do crazytank with the airboat.
I've seen stuff using physboxes and thrusters but it's just not the same.
What are your favorite maps and weapons in CS? Any server configs you prefer?
The m3 is my favorite weapon. Default server configs are my preference. I hate annoying plugins. I always liked cs_siege back when it had the APC.
If you want to, could you talk about one moment you had playing CS or Source that really stands out for you? Anything fun or interesting would be cool.
The nickname Nipper came from my two older brothers. It started when I was very very young so I don't even remember why they started calling me that.
There was a little clan called $tL or something. I was asked to join that clan when I had first started mapping. That clan disappeared pretty quickly except for me and one other member. The two of us then jokingly formed the Cherryclan, named after the candy (the candy is
now called Cherryheads). I played a few league matches with a clan called Malicious Intent. We did really bad and that never went anywhere.
The Cherryclan was originally just a small group of my first "fans" who would regularly join my listen server to play my maps with me and bots.
My first ever map was a horrible attempt at a D-Day map for Day of Defeat beta 1.1. I didn't have much luck with DoD mapping so I figured I would try CS.
The first CS map I made was cspaintball, a simple arena deathmatch map. It seems pretty lame now but back then there were no fy_ or aim_ maps.
To many players, the original crazytank map is legendary, what is the story of the crazytank? Where is it coming from and where is it going, and what were your inspirations, goals, and thoughts, going into making that map?
crazytank started as a thread in forums.joe.to where I asked people what I should put in my next map. Most of the suggestions were ignored but a few of them weren't. There's a billboard easter-egg in the bottom of the chasm that references the people who contributed. I knew I wanted one team to have to pile into a big transport vehicle. And I knew I wanted the Ts to try and set up an ambush for the big vehicle. It was the same concept as crazycar which was one of my first maps.I have no idea how it became so popular. It was one of my many experimental maps that I didn't think anyone would play besides me and my buddies.
It seems as if throughout your map-making career, you've gone through a few distinct styles of maps. There are lots of the vehicle concept maps, such as crazytank, airfight, and supercrazycar, then you have the series of crazy maps, such as nippers_opus (which I love by the way), and finally you have a lot of maps that are inspired by movies or other media, such as xcom, black hawk down, etc. Just wondering if you can give some background on the process of deciding how to make maps. Do you sit down and say, alright, today I'm going to make a map just combining every creative idea I can make work in the engine? Do you try to build for playability or overall look? What's your goal been with your different maps throughout the years?
I've always tried to do a variety of maps.The main reason for so many car maps was a small 4-person lan party I went to right after I had started mapping. We got around to playing crazycar and it was ridiculous. Everybody there loved it. There was talk of having another lan party so I started making a lot of car maps just for us to play. Crazycar_v2 was made, car_fight, supercrazycar and a bunch of others.
Sometimes with my gimmicky maps they will start by taking an aspect of one of my existing maps and then focusing on that. Like ow_cc_even_owyer is a simplified version of ow_cc.
Or something funny will happen while playing a normal map and I'll make a map that revolves around that. Like when I noticed smashing breakable windows with grenades was a lot of fun I went and made he_glass.
I have done plenty of "normal" maps too but nobody plays them, at least not in 1.6.
Almost all my maps are inspired by some movie or tv show or commercial or a building I saw in real life. It doesn't matter if it's not an action movie or even if I hated it. Like de_cliffcabin was inspired by some horrible Sandra Bullock movie.
The whaaa / huhhh / blahhh / nippers_opus maps have always been the most fun to make. I just love the idea of abstract level-design. They are a lot more structured than people think though. I probably spend more time planning those maps than I do any other. Blahhh has a right-brain vs. left-brain theme for example.
"whaaa" was the first map of that kind and it was my excuse to make an odd map. The first version had a button that spawned gibs and when the button was pressed multiple times in a row it would crash the server. I wanted to fix it but I couldn't find the .rmf for it so I made "huhhh" to replace it. When "huhhh" became so well received by my server regulars I knew I had to make more maps like that.
(editor's note: Nipper's series of abstract maps are actually incredibly creative uses of the game engine, while playing nippers_opus I found myself genuinely surprised from room to room, delivering an experience more akin to what I would expect from a single player map)
The first time I found a server running a lot of your maps, it was pretty surprising, it was almost like your maps were this big secret I discovered. From the beginning, how have you gotten maps out there? Besides the FPS Banana site, how have you gotten your maps to players and on servers? Is there any center of the custom map community?
Originally I was making maps for me to play with bots. I would create a listen server and just play by myself. Occasionally someone would download the map from me while connecting to my server. I kept making more and more maps and I started to notice the same people would be back every time I was playing a new map.My maps didn't get out much until I found a custom map server that let people upload their own maps directly to the server. They had a website with an upload map area so I uploaded the first version of playground and a few of my other first maps. The server was pretty popular so a lot of people ended up playing my maps from there.
Then joe from www.joe.to tracked me down and offered me my own forum. Then after the forum he offered me my own 24/7 nipper maps only server.
Moving from the original CS engine to Source, is there a lot more freedom and capability you have making maps? Do you prefer one over the other for what you can do or any other reasons?
Overall I like Source more. For one thing I can do a lot more weird entity-related stuff. The displacements and props make it a lot easier to do outdoor areas that don't look horrible.
The one downside to Source is that it relies so heavily on props and since I can't make custom models I am limited with what I can detail my maps with.
Do you plan to or have you already done any map work for any engines besides Half Life and Source?
Well I had mapped for BUILD engine games like Duke Nukem 3d, NAM, and WWII GI before HL1. As far as new games go I don't plan on mapping for anything else.
Do you have goals to make it into the videogame industry, and maybe design maps or mods professionally?
No. But if anyone wants to offer me a job in the industry feel free. :p
Do you get a lot of fan feedback or other forms of recognition about your work?
I used to get emails from people all the time, mostly asking for my .rmf files. Not so much anymore. Not that I mind.
I'm always amazed when I am playing BF2 as Cc_NIPPER and someone will ask me if I'm the map-making guy.
On the state of vehicle work in Source, I saw your crazytank_hq map, where the tank doesn't move. At the moment, Source vehicles don't work so well, but if you look at some of the work going on with Garry's Mod, http://www.garry.tv/?p=159 you can see progress is being made. Is there any chance of seeing a brand new version of crazytank, or some new vehicle map ideas, coming from you for Source?Unless valve actually goes and adds the func_vehicle entity to CS:S it's not going to happen. The garrys mod thing is using HL2 models as the vehicle and I don't think I'll ever learn how to make custom models. I just can't do crazytank with the airboat.
I've seen stuff using physboxes and thrusters but it's just not the same.
What are your favorite maps and weapons in CS? Any server configs you prefer?
The m3 is my favorite weapon. Default server configs are my preference. I hate annoying plugins. I always liked cs_siege back when it had the APC.
If you want to, could you talk about one moment you had playing CS or Source that really stands out for you? Anything fun or interesting would be cool.
cs_spooks beta test, it was the first round. I was on CT, I tell everyone I have a plan. "Get ready to rush the front room" I say. Everyone stacks up and is ready to rush in. "Go go go!" and the whole CT team rushes in the front door and falls to their death.
Do you have any advice for other map makers trying to get started?
Don't decompile.
Any shoutouts or final words?
Shout out to my j2 buddies! Hooah!
Hope that gives everybody a little insight into Nipper's work. I cannot thank him enough for the opportunity to conduct this interview! If you're looking to download his map packs, and see what Nipper is currently up to you could go here or check into the forum where he has his own subsection, here. Feel free to post a comment if you've had any interesting experiences playing Nipper maps!
Do you have any advice for other map makers trying to get started?
Don't decompile.
Any shoutouts or final words?
Shout out to my j2 buddies! Hooah!
Hope that gives everybody a little insight into Nipper's work. I cannot thank him enough for the opportunity to conduct this interview! If you're looking to download his map packs, and see what Nipper is currently up to you could go here or check into the forum where he has his own subsection, here. Feel free to post a comment if you've had any interesting experiences playing Nipper maps!
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