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Interview with Stefan Härtel
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Q) Thank you for granting us this interview, Stefan. Could you please tell
us a little bit about yourself?
You're welcome.
I'm Stefan Wolfgang Härtel. I was born on 9-26-84 in Dachau, near Munich, but
since my whole family comes from Berlin, I define Berlin as my home, too. I've
also lived in Karachi and London, Ontario, before moving to Hemhofen, a small
village about half an hour from Nuremberg, where I currently live.
I still go to school (grade 12), and I hope to work in serious journalism later
on. Apart from Civ2 and history, my main interest lies in listening to music and
collecting records -my favorite bands are Queen, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd,
among many, many others. My favourite song is "The Show Must Go On" by Queen, my
favourite movie is "Raiders Of The Lost Ark", my favourite book is "Animal Farm"
by George Orwell. My favourite dish is steak (medium) with baked potato and
caesar's salad, my favourite snack is nachos and salsa. Hmm... what else... my
favourite animal is the snow leopard (panthera unica), my favourite painters are
Paul Gauguin and William Turner... hair colour is brown and eye colour is blue.
Q) Was your crusade scenario Holy Wars the first one you made publicly
available? Do you remember your other early works?
No, I have made a couple of others which were (and propably still are) available
on a large German-speaking site. I do remember that my first published scenario
was one on Assyria, but that is so crappy, I hope nobody here knows it!
Q) Many of your scenarios deal with ancient Persia. What is it that
fascinates you about the subject?
I can't tell exactly how and when I got interested in ancient Persia. It's
propably because I got a lot of contact with the Middle Eastern culture from
early on, and I got fascinated about it. And I just read up more and more about
ancient Persia, and I was hooked. Maybe it's because the Persians were always
portrayed as evil outsiders by the westerners, and that got me interested,
because I never believed such things could be true.
Q) How do you usually come up with the ideas for your scenarios? Do they
spring out at you from historical texts or do you generally come up with a
subject while engaged in other things?
It's different from scenario to scenario. The idea for my latest scenario, "Lost
Paradise", for example, came on a rainy November evening about a year ago, and I
was surfing in the net. Somehow I came to think of the Ethnological Museum in
Berlin, and how the South Seas collection has always fascinated me. I got the
principal ideas for "Sons of Heracles" in school, when we were doing ancient
Sparta. Some other times I just browse some books, and sometimes it's just a very
remote idea after reading short texts or just seeing a picture somewhere, or when
browsing through a historical atlas.
Q) Your later scenarios come with much more custom artwork than your
earlier ones. When did you first start drawing your own art? In what
circumstances do you find it preferable to draw your own instead of
salvaging an image from the enormous library of work available on the
internet?
I started drawing my own artwork with the FW editor. At first it was just crappy
modifications of pre-existing units, then I did some more modification with what
I think was Ulead Photimpact (?). And then I just learned to become more
patient, time after time, and not to throw away something just because I didn't
like it at first.
I generally like drawing my own city graphics. I think there are many great city
graphics out there, but many fit only into the time period or geographical region
the scenario depicts. And city graphics are the most fun. I hardly ever draw city
improvement and WoW icons. I'm not at all good in that; most of my WoW icons are
scanned images, mostly of poor quality. But such icons leave very little liberty,
both because you're limited to a small space, and you're obliged to draw
something from existing images, whereas with city graphics, you're often free to
use your imagination. I also hate drawing units, but often, I just hardly ever
find suitable ones, despite the great mass of units out there. The problem with
units is, that I can't draw them from the scratch -I think I've drawn only two or
three from the scratch- and you often notice a modified unit. But I'm the only
one who really knows what the units should look like and all that, so I just have
to draw them myself. Well, sometimes it is indeed fun, I admit. But sometimes
it's just horrible :)
Q) How long does it take you to finish a scenario? Have you ever returned
to a work-in-progress and finished it? Did you ever work on more than one
scenario at the same time?
Well, I have finished some scenarios in a couple of weeks, but that was long ago.
It generally takes me several months to get one done, and send it out for
playtesting. Playtesting, however, sometimes lasts for several months as well.
I sometimes let scenarios rest and start work on something else. I generally work
on two or more scenarios simultaneously. Sometimes I abandon scenarios totally
when absolutely nothing is happening for it, or there's no real interest for me
to finish it. And priorities often shift. Sometimes I'm real into working a
scenario for several weeks, and then nothing happens for a couple of further
weeks.
Q) What are some of the other computer games that you've played? How do
they stack up to Civilization II? Have you designed anything for them?
Well, I like Age of Empires and Age of Empires II, Sammy Sosa's High Heat
Baseball, Sim City 2000 and 3000, Tropico, The Sims and a couple of others. I
sometimes design stuff for them just for fun and to experience my creativity.
I've done a couple of scenarios for AoE and AoK (and the add-ons), as well as
some graphics for Sim City 2000. I don't know if it's worth anything, and some of
the stuff doesn't exist anymore.
Civ2 has always been my favourite game, and Civ2 is always my top priority.
Sometimes however, I'm hooked to a certain game and play it continuously for
days, in some cases even weeks. But I always get back to Civ2.
Q) Could you imagine a perfect game? A perfect scenario design tool?
Hmmm... that would propably be a game in which you actually get to run a country.
You know, manage all the cities like in Sim City, do politics like in Civ2, with
all kinds of details like sports leagues and so on. And it would have
easy-to-edit graphics like Civ2 or Sim City 2000, and easy-to-edit game files
like in Civ2. I've never really liked editors because they always bear
limitations, and never make me feel like I'm actually doing something truly
original, even if I am.
Q) What's next for Stefan Haertel?
That's a tough question. I've got a couple of cool ideas, and I started designing
plans for all of them. All I can say is that my next scenario might only be
playable with MGE, and that it could be perfect for Multiplayer/PBEM.
~Leons Petrazickis
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Current Staff Members include
"Saint" Leons Petrazickis,
Editor Warvoid,
Magazine Editor Techumseh,
Magazine Editor Case,
and Magazine Editor Gothmog.
Former Staff Members include
Editor-in-Chief Blackclove,
Web Editor Cam Hills,
Tipmaster William Keenan,
Web Partisan Stefan Härtel,
Founder El Khan,
Editor Mark Laanen,
Editor Nick Clark,
and Editor Mike Jeszenka.
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