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When it comes to level design, Dan Silverman is amazing. Let's find out more about him.

Q: What other tools / engines have you used before using Acknex?
A: I've been using the Acknex engine since the days of version 3.9, which was an advanced raycasting engine similar to the original Doom. Along the way I tested a few other engines such as Genesis3D, Jet3D, 3DRad (a very early version), and a few others. The first engine I played with was a prototype portal engine called Vex which was created by some university students. These guys went on to starting their own company and have since produced another engine and a few games for Sunstorm Interactive.

Q: How many portals should we have for a normal level?
A: I really don't know :). Portals are not the thing that should really concern a level designer as far as I see it. What should concern a level designer is what is visible by the camera at any given time. If I remember things correctly (and I rarely do :D ) then the portal count does not really affect how well a level runs.

Q: What should we do in order to keep a decent frame rate all over the level?
A: Wow. There are a ton of things:
- Keep track of what is in view by the camera. Large, open areas that allow the camera to see many things can bring the FPS of your game level down to a crawl.
- Go through your level and determine what details just have to be there and which ones do not. By getting rid of some unnecessary details you can reduce what is seen on screen and pump up the frame rate. I am not talking about making levels look boring and bland, but just thinking through your level to determine if anyone is even going to notice that certain detail or if the level would be missing something if it were gone.
- Many details can be represented by textures and sprites instead of level geometry.
- Use LOD.
- Use the Detail flag from time to time.
- Set unseen sides of level geometry (like the bottom side of a floor) to NONE for the texture flag.
- Use textures wisely. 512x512 and larger texture may be cool, but why put one on your ceiling? How many players will be staring at the ceiling anyway? Unless there is a reason in the game for a player to closely
examine the ceiling (or any other portion of the level) then don't waste texture memory on it. As with your level geometry, look though your level and ask yourself if you could use a smaller texture without sacrificing the overall quality of the game.
I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones that come to mind right now.

Q: What tools are you using for your models and textures?
A: For modeling I use two programs: 3D Studio MAX and Realsoft3D. I do all my texturing in Photoshop. I live and die by Photoshop :).

Q: A5 is being improved as we speak but the first results can be seen already; are you happy with what we've got so far?
A: As some here may remember, I was getting a little unhappy with some of the graphical display issues of 3D GameStudio and began to voice some of these concerns on the forum. I have been with 3D GameStudio for a long time and I felt very uncomfortable pointing out these shortcomings. In any case, Conitec listened to my complaints and the complaints of others. As a result, the 16-bit rendering engine of A5 is being updated to a 24-bit renderer. This feature is currently in BETA and I am very, very pleased with the results. Conitec has gone a long way toward improving the errors many users were getting in shadow and light maps
and have even implemented hi-res lights, which really make shadows and lighting shine. Conitec is also in the process of upgrading the engine to take advantage of DirectX 8 and dumping some of the support for old,
16-bit video cards. With DirectX8 and full support for 32-bit video cards, the A5 engine should really fly. I'm really looking forward to the next publicly available update.

Q: What new engine features would you like to see implemented in the near future?
A: - Real time dynamic shadows like the kind you see in Neverwinter Nights. It is so awesome to see a player model casting 3 or 4 real time shadows based on light sources. Despite the extremely low polygonal count of the levels in NWN, the lighting added a lot of realism.
- Mirrors that are different from the ones that A5 is currently using. I remember using mirrors in the old Genesis3D and Jet3D engine. You could make ANYTHING a mirror very easily and have about as many of them as you wanted. In A5 you are limited to how many you can use and it is not as simple as selecting a flag to get them up and running properly.
- Entities casting shadows: I would like to be able to check a properties setting on an entity and have WED calculate shadow maps on normal level geometry. In other words, I would like entities to be able to affect lighting as other "normal" level geometry does. I would like to control this via a check box because I can think of a few instances where I might not want an entity to cast a shadow.

Q: I'm a horrible artist; what should I do in order to improve my skills?
A: If you are a horrible artist, George, then you have no skill to improve :D ! Just kidding. You need to do what anyone should do: Practice, practice, practice. You could start by trying to draw real objects. I would start with something simple and move on from there. Also, search the net. There are literally hundreds of tutorials for everything from digital to fine art. I'm a self-trained artist and I still have a lot to learn. When I find a good tutorial on the web, I print it out and put it in a 3-ring binder for reference. Also, don't be afraid to ask questions. I have gone to some professional artists' sites and just sent them an Email asking them about a certain technique or piece of art. Most of the time I get an answer and have even made a few friends this way.

Q: Can you tell us a few words about your future projects?
A: One of my "future" projects is really an old project that is just waiting for the right time. It is not a game, but a recreation of an ancient archaeological site that was destroyed almost 2,000 years ago. The idea is to rebuild it in the height of its glory, allow people to walk through the structure and to click on areas or items and gather pertinent information.

I have a few other ideas in the works as well, but I have to finish my commissioned with working on the Unknown first.

Q: Please give us a few tips for the beginners!
A: Start small and work your way up. Start by trying to recreate the basics of something real like your house. Once you can grasp the way things look in reality, then you can really start to bend them and make the
unreal look real. Look at other people's work. Study it. I will often play a game like QuakeIII Arena on multi-player mode all by myself with all the bots set to zero. This way I can casually walk through the levels and study them without any interruptions ;). You might want to take screen shots of a particular room in a level and, from the screen shots, try to recreate it in WED as best you can. This way you learn by doing and you test yourself to see if you can recreate what they had created.

Thank you a lot, Dan.