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7/10/01 - jDoom, created by Jaakko
'Skyjake' Keränen, a native of Finland, quickly became one of the most
popular source ports for classic Doom out there. Just as the ball really got rolling
with jDoom, however, Jaakko was conscribed into Finland's Army for a year. But
as many of you may know, jDoom didn't flounder into obscurity during that time.
Jaakko managed to continue his work on it whenever he had a free moment. Now that
Jaakko's military days are finally behind him, what better time than now to re-introduce
the man behind one of our favorite mods. jDoom was also our very
first hosted site here at NewDoom.com. You can also check out jHexen
and jHeretic (his source ports for Hexen and Heretic respectively),
hosted by Raven-Games.com. Hope you enjoy the interview, as well
as the exclusive new screenshots Jaakko was also kind enough to send along!
What things are you working on right now?
I have my arms elbow-deep in the Doomsday engine, figuratively speaking of
course. I'm making it so that the game DLL won't contain any hardcoded data arrays
at all, it'll all be read dynamically from an ASCII text file. This has naturally
many advantages, the least of which is probably the fact that mobj/thing parameters
can be freely modified. Right now it's looking pretty good, I've got the thing
compiling all right, but my last attempt to actually run it ended up in a nasty
lockup. That could be just Windows for you, but it's more likely that there's
a bug (read: a horde of bugs) in there. Anyway, I should have an interesting debug
session waiting for me.
How was your term of service in the Finnish Army?
On the whole it was quite pleasant. Sure there were the ups and downs, or downs
and sheer cliffs as it seemed from time to time, heh. During the year I made several
new friends and many times we had a really terrific time. It's a good thing Finland
isn't at war with anyone at the moment (and hopefully the situation will remain
like that).
What was your life like there?
Well, it is the Army. Discipline and good manners were naturally quite important.
But I have to tell you, compared to the stories my father and uncle have been
telling me about what life was like when they were in the Army, I got off easy.
No spur of the moment jogs around the building with your bed, for instance. Seems
to me the military is starting to treat the recruits like real human beings. :-)
One thing, obvious for a coder type like myself, was the lack of computers. The
first two months were so busy, though, that I didn't really even miss one, but
after that things slowed down a bit. I got myself a nice laptop, with which I
managed to do the December patch of Doomsday.
What are some memorable moments during your stay?
Perhaps the most memorable one was the arrival to the garrison for the first
time. I had no idea what was ahead of me. It was a hot, sunny summer day (a lot
like right now here in Finland, today the temperature was nearing 30 degrees Celsius
even in the shade, which is quite hot around here). I found myself living in the
same room with 13 other guys. Needed some adjusting to, that. I guess the next
362 days were all memorable in their own way: the first combat exercises, shooting
with real weapons, the many longs hours spent standing or crouching in guard of
various things, marching long distances in full combat gear... Then there was
of course the last day, or the whole last week. Very special time. Civilian life
seemed a bit unreal afterwards, but I'm rapidly being cured of that... :-)
What do you have in mind to work on in the future?
With the Doomsday project the goal is to make it more compatible and accessible,
easier to use. Improving the client/server code is a pretty high priority, too,
getting it to work smoothly. It's a lot of work, though, considering the engine
and all the game ports: Doom, Heretic and Hexen. Sometimes I've entertained the
idea that I'd let somebody else take over the development of jDoom and the other
ports while I'd work solely on the engine, but I don't think I'll do this in the
very near future.
For quite some time now (a couple of years) I've been thinking about writing a
'real' fantasy world simulation some day, with exciting adventures, dark dungeons
with horrifying monsters and kingdoms ruled by plotting monarchs. But that's an
awful amount of work, I'm afraid. Still, it's a nice dream.
Please tell us some more about yourself. How old are you? Do you feel younger
or older than you are, and why?
At the moment I'm 20 years old, but I will be 21 next Saturday (July 14). I
guess I've always felt a bit older than my age, now that I think about it. I don't
know why, that's just the way I am.
Where do you live? What do you like and/or dislike about where you live?
I live in southern Finland, some 20 kilometers from the third largest city
of the country in a small town called Lempäälä. A stupid name even on Finnish
standards, if you ask me. :-) It's quite nice here, a quiet and peaceful sort
of place. I've grown up in here. But, rather annoyingly, the government has decided
that it's a jolly good idea to build a railroad that goes about 50 meters from
our house. Lately large trucks and other noisy construction vehicles have been
doing some heavy rearranging of the landscape just outside the livingroom window.
Well, I'm planning on moving closer to the big city this fall, near the place
where I'm studying, so it doesn't bother me too much. But it's still a bugger
to see a large portion of your childhood playgrounds and other fond places being
destroyed.
What is your education? Do you feel that your formal education has been beneficial
to what you're doing now?
After high school I studied a year in the Tampere University of Technology,
or TUT for short. After that, a year ago, it was the Army for me. Now I'm on a
summer vacation of sorts, taking it easy until the second year of my studies in
TUT begins in September. What I'm doing now consists pretty much of doing some
crazy stuff with my computer, like the Doomsday Project. I've never really had
formal education in that, programming. Perhaps the most useful stuff of what I've
learned in school or TUT (college, you'd call it?) is mathematics, and on some
occasions, astronomy.
Are you married? Kids? If so, please tell us about them. If not, would you
like to have a family at some point in the near future?
Not married, no kids. I don't know about having a family in the NEAR future,
but certainly some time in the future. I haven't thought about it much, really.
Better to just live life day by day and see what each one brings along. It's more
exciting and less stressful that way, I think.
Take me to Page 2 of the interview! »
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