A Little Chat: Matthew "Revae" Little

REKKR: Sunken Land Screenshot. Taken from Steam.

There's a lot going in our lives right now and, often it directly impacts what we can and can't do. While it's not getting easier for me overall (far from it), I've managed to at least dedicate some of my time to this blog. It's during moments like this I was able to reach out to one and only Matthew "Revae" Little, the creator of REKKR, to have "a little chat" about the upcoming expanded version of his total conversion with the subtitle "Sunken Land" that's coming out today, as well as his new hobby and other things in general.

Before getting started, I would like to thank Revae again for giving me this opportunity: it was an honor, and now I must make sure that I actually play REKKR in the near future. If you're on the same boat as me, you can try out the original free version of the game that's still freely available here in case you want to try it out before venturing into the Sunken Land. Also, make sure you read his Nods to Mods interview at the Slayers Club as this "article" will serve as unofficial follow up to that.

REKKR: Sunken Land.

Alright, let's start from the beginning. What was your inspiration for Sunken Land's new episode and was it always planned as a commercial release?

Revae: "I don't remember if I planned on a commercial release at the start or not. I think it was more of a 'probably' thing, but I hadn't really looked into the logistics of that until much later. If it had turned out to be a huge hurdle then Sunken Land probably would've been free."

Have you worked on the new content alone or at least some members of the original team came back "for one last time", sort of speak?

Revae: "Alone, except for three new music tracks by Hexenmapper (Tom Jensen)."

What was the hardest part of working on Sunken Land in comparison to the original? Did prior experience make it easier or new challenges come up along the way?

Revae: "Just cramming anything new into DOOM via DeHackEd. I lost the DeHackEd wind-blown leaves for instance because I needed the 'thing' for the final boss's attack. They're still in there when you're playing through GZDoom, and subsequently in the Steam release, because I could redefine the thing in ZScript and DECORATE. I'm pretty much out of states for DeHackEd though. I don't think I could conviniently add anything in for vanilla if I wanted to.

Prior experience made some of it easier, but, since so much of that is a hack, it's not always obvious what is going to break next."

Is there anything that didn't make it to the full release?

Revae: "I kinda wanted to have ambient noises, such as waterfall sounds, wind and cave drips. It ended up being more trouble in the long run, and I'm not much of a sound guy."

REKKR Screenshot. Taken from MockingBird Softworks.

Players still can use other source ports for Sunken Land, right? Were there other options you could've chosen besides GZDoom to put it out there and, if so, why you decided against them?

Revae: "Should still run fine under just about any source port. I haven't done anything that should exceed vanilla limitations, but I also haven't tested it on hacked executable yet.

I didn't look far past GZDoom since it did just about everything I needed and its validaty as a standalone engine was already tested by other projects."

Can you tell a bit more about all the optional stuff that comes with GZDoom client? How long all of that took you to set up and what are your favorites?

Revae: "Brightmaps. It's a shame they don't work in Software mode because they add a lot. Dynamic lights are cool too. I don't remember how long any of that took to set up. GZDoom also let me simplify the menu a fair bit. Since REKKR is its own thing I could lock out certain gameplay things like compatibility options (jumping, etc.) without the player having access to them thanks to GZDoom's MENUDEF lump. You can still access things like that through console commands, of course.

Independent of GZDoom (almost), I made a little multiplayer frontend to help people less inclined to type in command line arguments. So that's something. Hopefully someone finds it useful."

Since the original version of REKKR will remain free, are you going to add it to Steam as an option in the future?

Revae: "Probably not. I have to add the small gameplay changes and minor level fixes to the free version and release an update though."

Any plans to bring REKKR: Sunken Land to GOG or maybe even the epic Microsoft Store?

Revae: "Maybe GOG? I haven't looked into it at all, so I don't know what all of that entails."

How shameful and odd it is that I'm asking all of these questions without even playing the original version? Honestly, it does feel a bit odd...

Revae: "How DARE you? That's fine. The newer version is improved anyway... except for the loss of those leaves in vanilla, which the free version will still have."

CLOVR.

Why have you decided to open up CLOVR and where did that name come from?

Revae: "I always wanted a site where you could see older games being hosted and join them from a web-based frontend with little chat lobbies and such, maybe... This is my poor man's hobby imitation of that. There are a lot of older games out there that are less-hosted and a few that have no publicized servers and relegated to just being shared among friends. Always wanted a place where you could see some more oddball games or forgotten gems being hosted.

CLOVR was chosen because I wanted 'VR' in the title for 'Retro Games' board on 4Chan. So I ran through a few words that ended in 'ver' and CLOVR was the best. Which was good because it was also the cheapest."

What software and hardware did you use for this hosting project? Any recommendations for those who would like to do something similar?

Revae: "Right now it's running on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M72e Tiny Business Computer. They draw very little power, old games don't need much in a way of processors, and it's small and quiet. Software is just Windows 10. I use the Task Manager to auto-switch which games are being hosted via batch files and to update the website. It's super bare-bones. Most of my time was spent on setting up the games.

If anyone wants to do something similar, it shouldn't be terribly hard except for figuring out the idiosyncrasies of batch files and what works with the task schedule. And you don't need a massive server rack and such, though if I won the lottery I'd set up a whole cooled server and hire a high schooler to spend sixteen hours a week setting up games, develop a proper community portal and all..."

Any games in particular that were especially hard or simply hideous to run? You know, something more serious than just one broken map for Hexen 2's Siege mod.

Revae: "Some games won't run at all, and it's probably due to my router setup. I have the server on a cascaded router to keep it separated from home network and games based on original Quake's multiplayer code will not work with that: simply refuses. And I spent many hours trying to work around it. I had to settle on QuakeWorld and DarkPlaces, which means I haven't even attempted Rune yet (Quake mod, not a game). I also couldn't get Star Trek Voyager: Elite Forces to host at all, and I couldn't figure out why."

CLOVR's current schedule.

I know that not a lot of people are jumping into CLOVR, but have there been any particular sessions you can recall?

Revae: "I 1v1'd a German guy in Unreal's Deathmatch for a while, but my server is located on the West Coast in the United States, so we were both skipping around like jumping beans. Despite that, it was a lot of fun to connect with someone across the planet over a twenty years old game. Which is kinda the whole reason I wanted to do this, so that's a great success."

Can we expect to see REKKR getting his own spot on CLOVR?

Revae: "That's a good idea. It'd have to be through Zandronum since GZDoom's netcode is client-to-client, and it doesn't allow for dedicated servers. Yeah, I'll probably set up a server for the release (next) week at least."

Do you still plan to add in new titles to the schedule? Like, I remember you talking about Giants: Citizen Kabuto for example.

Revae: "Some of these may not have a good solution for server/client set up as I haven't looked into all of them: Descent, No One Lives Forever 2 Co-op Missions, Marathon, RPG's like Neverwinter Nights/Baldur's Gate/Nox, Mech Warrior series, Delta Force, Soldier of Fortune, Dark Forces 2, Red Faction, Gunman (if I can get it to work; already failed at that once), Tribes 2, Aliens Versus Predator 2, Tron 2.0 and F.E.A.R. has a busting community with free multiplayer release. Also, Giants if it's possible. Open for suggestions."

Remaining Questions.

There's nothing specific you can or want to tell when it comes to your future plans, right? You'll just take your time and spend it with your family while thinking about the future?

Revae: "Well, I will definitely work on another game. It'll be just concepting for a while first. And yeah, we just had another kid here and time is going to be tight for a while, so it'll be a lot of planning and the doing will come later. I have a good idea for a game, but it's no really ready for sharing."

I probably shouldn't mention how Mockingbird Softworks mentions "Making Games for Fun and Profit", yeah?... I'm sorry.

Revae: "That will still happen, the 'making games' part. We'll see about the profit."

Anyway, what's your opinion on the current state of Retro FPS trend? Do you think it's near its end or that train has already crashed a long time ago?

Revae: "There are probably some unexplored areas of Retro FPS games that are yet to be exploited. Most of them are doing the high-action route, but that'll wear thin soon. However, there're some titles coming out that are leaning more into the immersive sim realm, and I'm all about that. 

At the very least I hope the trend of eschewing realistic graphics in favor of gameplay continues, even if it doesn't have the memey 'boomer shooter' veneer."

Your modding experience isn't limited to just DOOM, right? What are the other games you tried to work with and how far did that go?

Revae: "I used to make maps for original Unreal and Unreal Tournament 99... I don't think any of them are archived anywhere, and I don' even remember what handle I made them under. Mostly Domination and Deathmatch maps. I also played with other editors, but didn't really take them anywhere. Like Quake, Left 4 Dead 2 and such. I've done textures or sprites for random projects too. A lot of those died before release. For gameplay mods in other games: very little, really. At least from those that were released or interesting.

I've started making games in Unreal Engine 4, Unity and Adventure Game Studio, but they ended up being unfinished and fun to work on. Working on REKKR teached me what works best for me to see things through: have a plan, stick to it and get at least a bit done every day or nearly every day. Don't stop until it's finished."

How was it for you overall in the last couple of years with everything that's been going on around the world? I hope it wasn't as bad as it could've been.

Revae: "Lost my day job due to it, not the end of the world. Other than that, I've been trying to ignore it as much as possible, really."

Lastly, do you have anything else to say before we wrap this up?

Revae: "Nothing I can think of offhandedly. Hope you and everyone else will like the game!"

Thank you again so much for taking your time answering all these questions and congratulations with your new kid.

Revae: "No problem! Thank you!"