All Spotlights

Real Name: Jani Saarijärvi
Forum Identity: Spitter
Location: Finland

What first attracted you to Thief, and when was that?
Not a very original story. Thief: The Dark Project was released about the same time as Half-Life, and since I was young and naive, I opted for the latter. About six months later I curiously tried Thief's demo and liked it instantly.

Why did you start designing missions, and when was that?
Soon after acquiring my copy of T1. I had been interested in level editing for a long time, but had never released anything before. I had tried many level editors for as many games before, and quite frankly didn't believe I would end up actually finishing anything playable. Anyway, I started my venture with Dromed, wanting to see what I could come up with.

Give us a brief summary of all your currently released missions. Tell us the idea behind them, what you are proud of, and what you regret about them.
Geller's Pride


Hightowne Museum


Breaking and Entering


 Geller's Pride (T1). My newbie mission, a typical rob-a-mansion. Started as a (relatively) small-to-be test mission, which I would do before starting to work on a multi-level mega campaign. Finished it year and a half later, pretty much frustrated with the mission by then. I think the architecture is pretty good for a newbie level (although there have been far superior entry missions before and since) and I like the layout of the manor. The city surrounding the building ranges from good to awful - I don't think city architecture is one of my strongest points, even if I've gotten better with it with time. Screaming "beginner" the most in the level are odd basic layout mistakes - rooms are made of unstandard sizes, resulting in bad texturing, walls are too thin (you can douse torches by shooting a water arrow at the other side of the wall) and the yard facing the front door is long and boring. Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg, but overall, I'm happy with the level.

Hightowne Museum (T2). My entry for Komag's second small FM contest. Won it. A basic lift-the-jewels heist, my most straightforward and simple mission, and apparently also my most famous and liked. Looks good, forgot to add EAX, too easy, full of embarassing typos I still haven't had the time to fix. Despite simple errors, I actually enjoyed making the level this time round. I'm especially happy with the night-time mood I managed to come up with. I originally came up with the idea after playing the museum level in Rogue Spear - I envisioned Garrett dodging behind tables, avoiding angry combatbots would do their best to miss him at every possible opportunity, instead laying waste among the priceless porcelain vases. I even went as far as to make every large vase in the level breakable, although I doubt anyone noticed it. Due to mission time constraints, they merely vanish into thin air, instead of shattering into several million pieces. Talking of time, the lightning bolt of inspiration struck me exactly two weeks before the final contest deadline - those were very hectic two weeks indeed! The level ends up in a climatic Mission Impossible style rope hanging sequence in the secure exhibition vault (also the first room built), where you have to steal the diamond without touching the pressure plated floor below. Unfortunately, this sometimes resulted in some frustrating gameplay, since the space above the vault was limited, making the rope arrow stunt all that much difficult. I did my best to increase the room for error. However, the whole pressure plate system is bugged - if you know or guess how, you can easily bypass it.

Breaking and Entering (T2). Miniscule Contest 3 mission with a seemingly clever idea of having the mission area in two dimensions. Too short (obviously, considering the mission size) and the key items are perhaps too easy to find. It's also pretty straight-forward (but I did like the design I ended up with). The story (yes, there was one) was told in pieces of paper littered around the level, much like in System Shock 2 (where the crewmembers left their personal logs all around the place). I began work on the level two days before the contest 3 deadline, which didn't leave me with very much tweaking time. However, since it's the latest of my finished and released mission, I personally thinks it's the most complete of my levels.

What inspiration outside of Thief 1/Gold, Thief 2, and Deadly Shadows influenced the content of your fan mission?
Movies and books. Dune and Discworld series come to mind. Hightowne Museum's vault climax was inspired by Mission Impossible (as was told before). Oh, and anything steampunk.

What do you feel is your strongest suit in mission design? Architecture? Story? Atmosphere? Scripting? Gameplay? Something else?
Architecture and atmosphere, although I'm master of neither. I strive to have a good story (or at least to have one in the first place), but often that's easier said than done. Although I often spend ages balancing torch light radius and brightness values, my missions tend to end up either too easy or too hard (as was the case with Geller's Pride beta version, although it was by no means up to the Elevator mission!).

Have you ever worked with other people on an FM project? If so, who were they, and what did they do?
Worked on a T2 mission project with my real-life friend Seeker. We've pretty much split everything (architecture and story being most important). The level is on hold till we get our hands on a T3 editor.

If you could rebuild any OM from Thief 1/Gold or 2 from scratch (as a T2 FM), which one would it be, and why?
Constantine's Sword. It's freaky, probably one of the most intense non-undead levels ever. I would like to recreate this tension with Thief 2's "advanced" engine features.

What's your favorite FM(s) from other authors?
The Enterprise and it's sequels have a great story, Just For Show is visually stunning, The Seventh Crystal has an intense atmosphere and The Saint of Redmound excels in several different areas and is just fun to play. The list could go on quite a while - although I'm pretty picky about fan missions, the number of excellent missions never ceases to amaze me.

Tell us about that first mission you made in dromed, back when you were first learning the editor, which never saw the light of day.
A yard for my multilevel megacampaign (oh, the naive days of a Dromed newbie). Had barrels, texture windows and an unworking sewer. Small and horrendous, luckily I soon begun work on Geller's Pride.

Tell us about the mission you currently have in production.
Saints and Thieves (T2). Hopefully coming some day. Has a warehouse and some city. Dromed has beaten me with pretty much every error message it can produce while making this mission, but I'm determined to finish it. I've made some clever (or at least uncommon) decisions in the mission, and I quite like some of the enviroments I've constructed - I wouldn't like to waste it. As for now, though, I shan't spoil more of the level.

Have you ever done any mods for other games?
I have done levels for Doom, Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games, Red Alert, Jedi Knight, Half-Life, et cetera. Never really finished anything worth uploading for everyone to see.

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