He’s not the most well known member or coder around, but this script-o-maniac brought us one of my favorite FF1 original mods known as Metal Storm. And although he may not be all that active on the boards, FRP decided to shine the light on a fellow coder who may or may not be working up another storm to premiere for us fellow FF players.

FREEDOM FORCE

So, you’ve been part of FR since 2003, correct? What got you interested in Freedom Force and its community?

I actually used to hang out at the Irrational ‘official’ boards when they were around too. I can’t for the life of me remember what my first exposure to FF was. I may have seen it in a store or caught wind of it on the net… . I liked the idea of being able to build your own characters as a starting point, and I really loved the game itself once I started playing. I had (unfortunately) shelled out some $ for Hero X (does anyone else remember that crappy game?) and FF was FAR superior!

I know of you as a fellow coder/modder. How hard was it for you to learn python and why did you start making mods?

Python was more frustrating than difficult for me. I knew a little about programming from a C class i took a million years ago, and I had modded Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights a bit. Fortunately for me, a script wizard was available for NWN (a fan made one, BTW), so I didn’t have to be a great scripter or anything, but I could read a script and figure out what was going on. Python was a bit more work because it seemed (to me at least) to be a bit pickier about format. I really got into modding – in all forms – because I like to tell stories through a game. NWN and FF both gave me that chance.

You’re known as the creator of the Metal Storm mod, which is one of my personal favorites from the FF1 timeframe. How did you come up with the story, concept, and characters?

When I was a kid of about 10 or so, someone gave me the Marvel Superheroes RPG and I taught myself and a few friends [how] to play it. I had never played a RPG before, but I really liked the concept. It took about a week for me to get sick of being Iron Man or Daredevil, and I started dreaming up new characters and scenarios. I wanted to do something like the X-Men but without all of the angst. My friends contributed some of the characters as well, but I was the one who really ran away with creating new storylines and such. Long after we stopped playing the RPG, I still tinkered with storylines and characters in my head. When FF came along, it gave me an outlet for all those comic book ideas that I otherwise never would have been able to translate. The characters usually wound up being the results of just asking myself, “What If…?” Take Barrage for instance. Making a speedster that looked exactly like Quicksilver or Flash would have been fine, but giving her the ability to control kinetics was more of a twist. I tried to do something different for everyone — even if it was a small thing. Arson is a pretty standard fire-type, but unlike the Human Torch or El Diablo, she can’t fly. Somethings got left out because FF isn’t perfect. A few characters got cut out completely, others got combined into one — Shrapnel, for instance, is a combination of an Iron Man type guy named Gladiator (no relation to the Shiar guy) and a cyborg called Steele. Replicating powers for the two of them in FF made them almost carbon copies of each other, so it was pointless to have them both. Ronin is also a combination of two characters. Guys like Phantasm just got approximated as best as FF could do, and I had to accept that he would never be perfect. As far as the story of the mod, I think I was looking to do something that explained why Reich Four could run around blowing things up without the military going after them — hence the semi-post apocalyptic bit. I also wanted to have a tiny pinch of Kingdom Come in that the ‘heroes’ – if that’s what Metal Storm could be called – are not necessarily guys in shining white armor just sitting around waiting to right wrongs. A lot of them are just guys who gave up and don’t care anymore.

Is there anything related to modding that you wanted to do but couldn’t pull off?

I remember in my earliest attempts at modding — I was working on a Daredevil mod — I wanted to set up a bunch of thugs to walk waypoints and ‘patrol’. For the life of me, I couldn’t make it work. Sometimes the thugs walked their waypoints, sometimes not. It was infuriating. More recently, I was trying like mad to devise a way to break down the FFVTTR energy management system further (FF1 style); I had no success, but others (far more gifted than I!) have posted on FR about working on the same thing. Mostly, I get frustrated with not having certain art resources for the game — perfect meshes or objects to place on the map or whatever.

At one point, Metal Storm was being ported over to FFVTTR. You posted a message in Feb. 09 about its status, correct? What is the current status of the port?

Well, it’s not moving along all that quickly to be honest. I have almost finished a mini-mod in the MS universe called The Night that should be out soon. It would be out three weeks ago if Dana would stop making maps that I feel the need to use and end up remaking missions. The MS mod proper probably won’t get a straight port. The FFVTTR version will be done in the same spirit, but there will be some changes. FFX has progressed so much that I can now do things I never could before from character design to AI enhancements that should make a world of difference. Back when I made MS 1, there wasn’t even an invulnerability attribute. Gorgon — for instance — had to settle for stone material and a passive defense. Now, I can make him [into] the brick he always should have been. That’s a pretty minor example, but it illustrates the gap between what we could do 4 or so years ago vs. today. Besides, while MS was not hugely popular the way JLA or Strangers was, I doubt those people who HAVE played it would want to simply replay the same mission FFVTTR style. So I think a new mod is better than a translation of the old. Whether it will be a reboot or a sequel (or prequel for that matter) is still a little up in the air.

The mod currently has nine missions, correct? Which mission would you say was the hardest to create?

Actually I made 14 missions. 9 got released. The other 5 were lost when my old laptop died. I had very rough versions of missions 10 and 11 backed up (and still have them in unfinished form), but 12,13 and 14 vanished into the ether. The hardest one to make from a coding stand-point was Mission 2. It isn’t anything special really, but I was so green at the time that everything seemed insanely hard. Perhaps not coincidentally, Mission 2 was also the mission people most complained about being too hard to beat. I also struggled for a bit with mission 5 (or 6, I can’t remember which number it is), the one where I blow up the whole city in the cut scene. I wanted to have a nuked city and I was playing with all of these object commands trying to set the cars and buildings and stuff to damaged states. I spent forever doing that until I finally stepped back from it and said, ‘why not just blow it all up in a cut scene?’ Usually, the missions aren’t hard to make as far as code — I’ve no secret that I am no script genius and don’t want to be — the toughest part is making the mission play the right way and making sure the story and dialogue elements are right. I have a real desire to tell a good story as it goes, but you have to balance that with the fact that people don’t want to read for an hour while they play the mission. You have to find a happy medium.

You once posted in the idea pot thread some simple Freedom Force outlines. Did you ever pursue these plans in any form?

The Night, as i mentioned is almost done — it deals with Darksol being the only human being on earth left functional after creatures from the Void, the dimension that gives him his powers, flood earth with their strange radiation and try to suck the life force out of everyone to feed themselves. I also finished the one about the Birds of Prey for my niece. I have the others in various states of completion ranging from a few notes scribbled on a legal pad to a few missions done.

Although you’re not as active as you may have been in the past, do you have any goodies coming up for the FF community?

The mods I [have] mentioned and I have been thinking of whipping up a few tutorials. I might finish off my old Daredevil mod (it’s almost done anyway) and put it out there just in case anyone wants to laugh their way through a VERY weak first effort! I hope to be more active again — I never really burned out per se, I just had a thousand things pop up all at once. Within 6 months time, I had a baby (well my wife HAD him), I changed jobs, went back to school at night and some other stuff. I just really lost a lot of my free time.

In the same vein, does anything currently being produced by the creative circuit interest you in any form?

I’m constantly amazed at what skopers, meshers and skinners are producing. I have absolutely zero artistic talent, so that always floors me when I see that stuff. Some of the little projects like the aforementioned energy management tweaks are exciting as well. I can’t get enough of Dana’s maps and I’ll play any mod regardless of what characters it’s about! Benton might stop teasing us all one day and give us some DC stuff to play with :) . I miss some of the fan fiction people used to write… . I actually wrote one myself, but it was rated R for profanity and graphic violence, so I never posted it on FR… .

When it comes to modding, Alex and Dr. Mike are looked at as the big dawgs! Does anyone on the forums motivate or inspire you at all? Where would you place yourself on the coding totem pole?

Dr. Mike was very supportive when I was working on the original MS mod. He really encouraged me to do an original because he felt (and rightly so) that there were enough folks at the time doing mainstream stuff. He warned me that an original would be less popular and such, but I think he was right in pushing me in that direction. I figured if i could make a mod 1/100th as good as Strangers, I’d be happy. Alex’s JLA mod was very helpful to me as well. It is a very entertaining mod; yet, it’s very simply done. His scripts were easy to follow and I used to deconstruct them when I started out to teach myself how to do things. I was really motivated by the Alkemyst’s Bitch Brigade mod too. It proved that you didn’t have to be family friendly to make a good mod. He and I actually helped each other out a lot with snippets of code, ideas and just giving each other someone to vent to when our cutscenes crashed our mods for 99th time. It would be criminal for me not to mention Carravaggio as well. He may not be a modder, but the skins he was gracious enough to make never ceased to amaze me. Whenever I was getting burned out, he always had a new skin in my inbox that made me say ‘DAMN! That HAS to make it into the mod!’ I can’t tell you what he was able to accomplish with the pitiful character sketches I gave him to work off. He took some liberties at times, but I can tell you with 100% honesty that all he ever did was improve – often drastically – on my concepts. As far as where I rank as a coder? Right below pond scum!! :)

Outside of modding, is there any other area related to content creation you have wanted to attempt?

I made a skin once. Oh man, was it awful. I don’t have it anymore or i would release it just so people could pee themselves laughing. I am useless in the meshing department as well. I wouldn’t have a clue. Modding is certainly my thing. I actually coded a whole 8 mission mod for someone a few years ago and that person promptly vanished. The mod never hit the community and I never heard from him again. I was angry at first – now I just hope he didn’t die or something… .

Skills picked up in Freedom Force have the unintended side of effect of being useful in real life from time to time. Has anything you’ve learned from FF helped you in any form?

While the temptation is to say ‘thank God I have the Solid Skeleton now!’ just to be a wiseguy, modding FF actually taught me to be patient. Coding is so touchy that you have to learn to set aside frustration and walk your way through what you’ve done. I don’t think I have ever written a code that just had no hope of ever working. It’s always something stupid like a missing paren. or an extra comma in the code. You have to fight the urge to punch a hole in your monitor and just get back to it.

Considering all the mods out for FF1 and FFvTTR, most of them have been Mainstream. What made you go the Original route?

Aside from Dr Mike’s guidance, I really thought the MS characters and story were good enough to carry a mod. Now I’m sure that sounds self-serving, but it’s honest! I think it can be hard to make a spider-man or JLA mod actually. You have so much competition. After the DC mod, Alex’s JLA, Dark Intentions and the various Batman mods etc, what could a new JLA mod add that won’t look overdone? Some people can pull it off, but i was never able to come up with anything that felt original enough to add anything to the great work that already existed for those characters. I mean, you are also competing with X-Box games and stuff when you make Wolverine or Batman or whatever.

Are there any mods out there that you would recommend to others? What would you consider some of your own personal favorites?

I was afraid this question was coming! I am always afraid I’ll name some and forget some others that are important! The Suicide Squad is a fav. Lots of mods are hard enough to make me want to kill the designer. Suicide Squad is the only one that made me want to kill MYSELF. JLA, Bitch Brigade, Strangers, Dark Intentions, Guardians, The Matrix mods. Custom Force is great for seeing how bad the Avengers can stomp the FF campaign! I’ll quit before I forget anyone else ;)

Finally, what was it that got you interested in providing content to the masses? Was it the [non-existent] bling-bling?

The girls of course. Lots and lots of girls. I am a writer as a hobby and I like sharing stories with folks. When I got going on MS and Carravaggio starting sending those skins, I knew it wouldn’t be fair to keep it all to myself.

MISC.

Murs asked this question and if you understand it, then I question your sanity. Wickerman… how loose is your goose?

Umm…

Now for the real deal. Who would you consider your favorite comic book character and why?

I was a huge “Savage Sword of Conan” freak when I was a kid and I love R.E. Howard’s Conan stories, so I’ll have to go with the blood-soaked barbarian for the win.  I raided my uncle’s stash of Conan paperbacks when I was a tween and really fell in love with the character.  At first it was the chicks in the chain mail bikinis of course, but as I got older and discovered the original Conan stories by R. E. Howard, I really got to appreciate the stories and the character.  The best of the SSoC comics caught that spirit — the struggle of a barbarian against civilization.  Conan — to me — is the fight of a free, self-made man against the unnatural progression of the world around him toward civilized life and how constricting that feels to his sense of freedom and self-determination.  Now, some of the SSoC stuff just wound up being hack and slash blood fests, but every now and again, you would catch a glimmer of what Conan was about underneath it all.   I had other favs too – Bats, Hawkeye (I actually collected every issue of Solo Avengers just for him) Iron Man, Green Lantern… . I stopped collecting years ago though… .

Your avatar on FR is pretty… freaky. What’s the story there?

The av is actually Eddie, the mascot for the metal band Iron Maiden.  In particular, it is Eddie from the Wildest Dreams video from a few years ago.  I’m a huge fan, so the avvy seemed like a good fit.  I wish I could remember where I got it… .

In a world dominated by reality shows, one can always turn to books for mental stimulation. What are some books or authors you enjoy reading?

I’ll read just about anything.  As I mentioned I love Howards old stuff – Conan, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane.  I also like Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books and I own the full Edgar Allan Poe collection.  Most of the Fiction I read is old school fantasy – Fritz Lieber, Moorcock, Saberhagen.  I was never a huge Lord of the Rings fan.  I also like James Patterson.  Non-fiction stuff I read is usually memoir stuff from people I am interested in or history related stuff.  I’m a military buff, so I’ll sit and read about f-14 Tomcats for hours on end… .

Outside of coding and reading, what are some other hobbies you pass the time with or enjoy?

I’m a paintball freak — though I seemed to be on injured reserve a lot as I get older! I also write in my spare time.  I’ve written short stories, novellas and even full length novels.  I still have my day job, so that should tell you — or maybe more importantly tell ME — something.  I don’t watch TV much.  I usually catch Mythbusters when I can because those guys are nuts.  I watch Burn Notice too, but I’d watch Bruce Campbell stare silently at a camera for an hour… .

Music can certainly help one pass the time when doing something mundane. What are some music choices you find yourself listening to?

Maiden, Disturbed, Queensryche, and I love Bruce Dickinson’s solo stuff.  In fact, some of the Metal Storm missions — “Abduction”, “The Mercenary”, and “Inside the Machine” — are song titles from bands I like.

If you had the chance to pitch a story or comic idea to a publisher, what is an idea you think you might try to propose?

“Metal Storm” of course!  I think a team book that didn’t change members every 3 issues would actually interest some folks.  Of course, it would never happen because I would refuse to let anyone else write it but me.  If not, some guy would come along and make them ten times more powerful than they were last issue or have them all married/divorced/killed/reborn/pregnant/terminally ill/etc. just because he ran out of real stories to tell. They’d also have to exist in their own universe.  I think cross pollination has hurt a lot of books more than it helps.  It’s hard to swallow that Gotham is overrun with thugs while Batman has the JLA on speed dial.  It would literally take the Flash a matter of seconds to whip every Bat-villain in the rogues gallery.  I know it’s a comic and you have to accept some things, but I get nuts about stuff like that!

Some big movies are finding their way into theaters this year. Do any of them interest you and if so, why?

I have little kids so tend to see movie when they hit pay per view unless they are cartoons!  I AM super pumped about Solomon Kane (assuming it really does come out in 09!).  I got to see Monsters vs. Aliens and while I dreaded going, I actually kind of liked it!  Transformers and GI Joe might be worth a matinee or drive-in admission, but I am nervous enough not to risk full price and waste a babysitter on them.  i thought the 1st Transformers was OK, but the end scene was so poorly shot, I couldn’t tell what the heck was happening.  Knowing my kids, the only thing I’ll get to see in the theater is Ice Age 3.

What one thinks of him or herself can tell one a lot about that person’s personality. What are two words you’d use to describe yourself, and can you tell us why you’d choose those words?

“Way [and] Behind.”  Because I am on everything — the mod, house work… you name it!

Final question. If the world were destroyed and you could only save one object, what would it be?

Assuming my family is OK, I’d have to have Batman’s utility belt.  After all, there’s probably a back-up world crammed in there… .

So what have we learned about Wickerman? He ranks himself lower than he should on the coding totem, he has a bunch of rad ideas that may one day come forth and entertain us loyal FF players, and he has a love of Conan stories, which makes like him even more. If you’re interested in playing Wickerman’s Metal Storm mod, then you’d best be clicking this link.