Interview with the creators of the game Undead Carnage: Redemption for Windows Phone
Present to your attention an interview with the creators of the game Undead Carnage: Redemption for Windows Phone — Artem Veselovsky. Talked sashaeve.
[Alexander] Hello, Artem. Tell us about yourself, your team, and how the idea of the game Undead Carnage.
[Artem] Hello! My name is Artem Veselovsky, I'm 25. Our team consists of three people: designer Sasha Sinawa, programmer and level designer, Orest Blahodyr, and I, are responsible for developing core game engine and 3D animation. Game development is in my free time. For some of us it is a dream since high school, someone started this dream later, but we first became gamers :) all of the team's preference in games is about the same – like action and football.
Since, as we gathered in a separate team, we wanted to make an active game for smartphones. Samples had a lot... Had a lot of ideas (and still do) a lot of started projects, a lot of things in the style of proof of concept.
The idea was born early last summer. Then I had my first working build of the game. We used a HTC HD2 for testing. I will say honestly, it was dull, ugly and boring. Especially boring... the Game was called "2D action zombie". Many times altered parts of the engine, balanced dynamics, but she always needed a design approach. We dreamed of 3D game and stopped developing...
Did 3D shooters and learned a lot programming 3D graphics, wrote his own 3D engine, I wrote a demo game on the subject of tank battles. Added artificial intelligence and rested on the performance of the phone.
Then saw the announcement of the competition to develop for Windows Phone from Microsoft and Nokia Ukraine, where one of the categories was the game. Decided to participate. There wasn't much time, from zero, nothing to do. And remembered that we have almost working game, the tools, and had an idea. Sat down, thought, outlined the layout of the story, divided responsibilities and went to work.
First I programmed all three, but the lack of design was very evident, and no wherename in the gameplay do not overlap. And then came on the scene Sanya. With Visual Studio, it switched completely to Photoshop. And after the first developments, the game has acquired the very best design and atmosphere. Look what we did, and now, our first game Undead Carnage: Redemption.
[Alexander] Why Redemption?
[Artem] Redemption redemption means. The game's story tells about a guy who has lost a loved one for a few years before the events in the game, but nothing says that it was during these few years. And written the story in such a way that the continuation suggests itself. The atonement for the sins of the past. Part of raskazyvat the game itself. The part about the "past", maybe later. In General, start :)
[Alexander] How many took the time and resources to create?
[Artem] Development is constantly led to 3 people. Time took a lot. Hurry to make the competition a working version. And so we created a demo version of the game. Showed up there the beginning of the story and not quite finished game design. In absolute terms, the time spent about 5 mesave on the game itself and about a month to develop the engine and tools.
[Alex] Tell us about the technical aspects of the game?
[Artem] From the beginning made a very strong emphasis on technology. Squeezed the maximum out of iron (if it was only the first generation of devices running Windows Phone 7). Did maximum beauty. Of the main aspects is, of course, a balanced mood and parallax scrolling. The idea is drawing multiple graphics layers with different zoom and scrolling speed. If this is the correct set up and do the right design, a simple 2D game creates the illusion of depth and perspective 3D game. Also in our game, realized the effect of Bloom, most likely, the only implementation at the moment Windows Phone 7. The idea of bloom is the creation of the effect of difraktsii light. If dark-colored character is standing on a light background, its contours are also displayed, and are blurred with the background. Later added the effects of the curvature of space and Slow Motion. In fact, it was quite a complex line drawing. Draw the whole scene in the picture, spread and zasvechivat it in the right places. Then use that image as texture for polygon mesh, we can bend, thereby creating a curvature, which gives, say, a glass ball. Later added the ability to ignite enemies. Fireball, which we showed in the demo, now deals a lot of damage due to the firing. Nice to see how burning and orogeny zombie goes in the direction of the main character :)
[Alexander] And the music who writes to you?
[Artem] Themselves... Recorded guitar parts (played by Maxim Sinava – the younger brother of Sasha and Andrey Lutsyuk was our employee and friend). Then this whole thing Sasha is processed on the computer. Some of the tracks were not recorded at all. That is, it is an electronic creation in its purest form.
[Alexander] what were the biggest technical challenges when creating a game?
[Artem] the First difficulty is the limitations of the SDK and the platform. On the phone is not supported programmable shaders. Much smaller size you could use buffers (reach vs. hi-def profiles for XNA). This greatly limits the ability of programmers. Strange move by Microsoft, but I know what the problem is. The problem is in incompatibility partnoy of the phone, and XNA 4.0. The XNA framework is just albertka around DirectX 9.0 interfaces. And Windows Phone device's built in GPU with Shader Model 4.0 (DirectX 10). Although the guys from Microsoft and saved a little the situation by writing a custom Shader in the course of the five built-in effects, this in most cases is not enough. For such things as Windows Phone SDK, you need to create from scratch. Then I make a low bow to Sony for the PS Suite SDK. Everything is done on the five plus. The C# language, high-level framework running on Mono, NVidia CG as a Shader language, the ability to use unsafe code. There's even a Sprite Batch no. All you need to write your own, everything hardcore, everything is beautiful.
The second difficulty, and along with the benefit is the inability to targetit code on specific hardware. That is, things that work well on the phones of the second generation, 90% of the time will be very slow on the ground. You have to cut off the beauty that is regrettable. And at the moment of the first-generation devices quite a lot, so to discount them is impossible.
Third, in Ukraine there is no marketplace for developers. And it's not even the publication of programs in the Windows Phone Marketplace on their own, and that to AppHub, there are things that are only available to registered developers. This complicates the learning process.
The fourth problem is nezainteresovanosti themselves Microsoft. Here I'm talking about Xbox Live. We wrote to Microsoft about Xbox Live for Undead Carnage. We just wanted the agreement to use the opportunities for social gaming: achievements, leaderboards on the MS servers. We were told that they will contact, if interested. Not contacted... Will have to think with Facebook (Alawar Nokia also did not give an affirmative answer — Alexander).
And most importantly is a constant pursuit of perfection. But to achieve it, the game still can not please absolutely everyone. Well, a constant balance between the necessary things and new cool ideas that don't quite fit the right things. Because of this, had several times to rewrite the core modules of the game engine. But it's an experience, anyway.
[Alexander], the Game Undead Carnage took part in three competitions of Microsoft, but could only win in one. And this at a time when she was the leader in the Russian and American Marketplace. Do you think what is the reason?
[Artem] We think this is due to several things. The main aspect of the game has its target audience and its age rating. As it turned out, not all evaluate a product by its qualities, regardless of the ratings and themes. That is, if the game is well done, it looks beautiful, it sounds and provides a hardcore gameplay, then why draw a line between the daisies and zombies? Maybe the game is too complex for mobile devices... still, well this is the mobile platform of Xbox, and hence the games should be a match for the platform.
[Alexander] Demo version downloaded a total of more than 120k times. Do you think this is a good result?
[Artem] I think (and the whole team will agree with me) that this is a great result for both the "pen test". Still, it's our first game brought to an end. For inexperienced teams, not funded by anyone, which developed the game in 99% of cases home at night, and sometimes stayed at the company the night and made the game on laptops, this is a great result.
[Alexander] is Now a lot of talk about the future of Windows Phone. What do you think, what are the prospects of Windows Phone 7 we have in the world?
[Artem] will Again speak on behalf of the entire team. We believe that the platform will flourish. The the main problem always lies in the people. They are afraid of something new. I'm afraid to try. New drop at the slightest cons and do not give a chance. Windows Phone not many people like at first sight. And I had the same acquaintance. Fortunately the device I didn't buy. I had a HTC HD2 with Windows Mobile, then I installed it on his Android, then WP7. Not understood, not acknowledged, he carried back to Android. But appreciated her fluidity and stability. After a couple of days blew Android and back to WP7. It was the winter of 2010-2011. And she's still there :) And the guys she liked.
Today the company, we have more than 10 devices with WP7 that I know of. Each new user simply falls in love with WP7. Nice to look at man yesterday with the phone on Android, well-it speaks about WP7. We believe that WP8 will be a new round of development and the continuation of the ideas implicit in WP7. I would also like to believe that Microsoft will begin to appreciate not only the large developers, and small. Examples of this are many. Even with games. Even on WP7. Games from big and renowned developers is not always better, and often worse than indie projects. If you give the opportunity to indie developers – will be a much better ecosystem, and the platform will evolve better.
In Ukraine this is a little more complicated. Again, this Marketplace, this is a normal mobile Internet and our greed. Many people do not understand how this software can be pay...
[Alexander] and the last question, what are your future plans?
[Artem] We are going to make games :) What? Only time will tell. I can only say that will try to set the bar for games on WP7.
I personally really want to finish and publish Demon Smasher, 3D game, which I Sasha wrote less than a day at the hackathon in Lviv (the hackathon was conducted by a team wp7rocks — Alexander). A lot of ideas, all interesting. A lot of developments, a lot of code written and waiting their turn to work on the phones of users.
The development of Undead Carnage has taught us a lot. Now we know where problems might emerge during development, and how to solve them or even avoid them in the. There was also a desire to port the Undead Carnage: Redemption for tablets with Windows 8. Time will tell!
Article based on information from habrahabr.ru
[Alexander] Hello, Artem. Tell us about yourself, your team, and how the idea of the game Undead Carnage.
[Artem] Hello! My name is Artem Veselovsky, I'm 25. Our team consists of three people: designer Sasha Sinawa, programmer and level designer, Orest Blahodyr, and I, are responsible for developing core game engine and 3D animation. Game development is in my free time. For some of us it is a dream since high school, someone started this dream later, but we first became gamers :) all of the team's preference in games is about the same – like action and football.
Since, as we gathered in a separate team, we wanted to make an active game for smartphones. Samples had a lot... Had a lot of ideas (and still do) a lot of started projects, a lot of things in the style of proof of concept.
The idea was born early last summer. Then I had my first working build of the game. We used a HTC HD2 for testing. I will say honestly, it was dull, ugly and boring. Especially boring... the Game was called "2D action zombie". Many times altered parts of the engine, balanced dynamics, but she always needed a design approach. We dreamed of 3D game and stopped developing...
Did 3D shooters and learned a lot programming 3D graphics, wrote his own 3D engine, I wrote a demo game on the subject of tank battles. Added artificial intelligence and rested on the performance of the phone.
Then saw the announcement of the competition to develop for Windows Phone from Microsoft and Nokia Ukraine, where one of the categories was the game. Decided to participate. There wasn't much time, from zero, nothing to do. And remembered that we have almost working game, the tools, and had an idea. Sat down, thought, outlined the layout of the story, divided responsibilities and went to work.
First I programmed all three, but the lack of design was very evident, and no wherename in the gameplay do not overlap. And then came on the scene Sanya. With Visual Studio, it switched completely to Photoshop. And after the first developments, the game has acquired the very best design and atmosphere. Look what we did, and now, our first game Undead Carnage: Redemption.
[Alexander] Why Redemption?
[Artem] Redemption redemption means. The game's story tells about a guy who has lost a loved one for a few years before the events in the game, but nothing says that it was during these few years. And written the story in such a way that the continuation suggests itself. The atonement for the sins of the past. Part of raskazyvat the game itself. The part about the "past", maybe later. In General, start :)
[Alexander] How many took the time and resources to create?
[Artem] Development is constantly led to 3 people. Time took a lot. Hurry to make the competition a working version. And so we created a demo version of the game. Showed up there the beginning of the story and not quite finished game design. In absolute terms, the time spent about 5 mesave on the game itself and about a month to develop the engine and tools.
[Alex] Tell us about the technical aspects of the game?
[Artem] From the beginning made a very strong emphasis on technology. Squeezed the maximum out of iron (if it was only the first generation of devices running Windows Phone 7). Did maximum beauty. Of the main aspects is, of course, a balanced mood and parallax scrolling. The idea is drawing multiple graphics layers with different zoom and scrolling speed. If this is the correct set up and do the right design, a simple 2D game creates the illusion of depth and perspective 3D game. Also in our game, realized the effect of Bloom, most likely, the only implementation at the moment Windows Phone 7. The idea of bloom is the creation of the effect of difraktsii light. If dark-colored character is standing on a light background, its contours are also displayed, and are blurred with the background. Later added the effects of the curvature of space and Slow Motion. In fact, it was quite a complex line drawing. Draw the whole scene in the picture, spread and zasvechivat it in the right places. Then use that image as texture for polygon mesh, we can bend, thereby creating a curvature, which gives, say, a glass ball. Later added the ability to ignite enemies. Fireball, which we showed in the demo, now deals a lot of damage due to the firing. Nice to see how burning and orogeny zombie goes in the direction of the main character :)
[Alexander] And the music who writes to you?
[Artem] Themselves... Recorded guitar parts (played by Maxim Sinava – the younger brother of Sasha and Andrey Lutsyuk was our employee and friend). Then this whole thing Sasha is processed on the computer. Some of the tracks were not recorded at all. That is, it is an electronic creation in its purest form.
[Alexander] what were the biggest technical challenges when creating a game?
[Artem] the First difficulty is the limitations of the SDK and the platform. On the phone is not supported programmable shaders. Much smaller size you could use buffers (reach vs. hi-def profiles for XNA). This greatly limits the ability of programmers. Strange move by Microsoft, but I know what the problem is. The problem is in incompatibility partnoy of the phone, and XNA 4.0. The XNA framework is just albertka around DirectX 9.0 interfaces. And Windows Phone device's built in GPU with Shader Model 4.0 (DirectX 10). Although the guys from Microsoft and saved a little the situation by writing a custom Shader in the course of the five built-in effects, this in most cases is not enough. For such things as Windows Phone SDK, you need to create from scratch. Then I make a low bow to Sony for the PS Suite SDK. Everything is done on the five plus. The C# language, high-level framework running on Mono, NVidia CG as a Shader language, the ability to use unsafe code. There's even a Sprite Batch no. All you need to write your own, everything hardcore, everything is beautiful.
The second difficulty, and along with the benefit is the inability to targetit code on specific hardware. That is, things that work well on the phones of the second generation, 90% of the time will be very slow on the ground. You have to cut off the beauty that is regrettable. And at the moment of the first-generation devices quite a lot, so to discount them is impossible.
Third, in Ukraine there is no marketplace for developers. And it's not even the publication of programs in the Windows Phone Marketplace on their own, and that to AppHub, there are things that are only available to registered developers. This complicates the learning process.
The fourth problem is nezainteresovanosti themselves Microsoft. Here I'm talking about Xbox Live. We wrote to Microsoft about Xbox Live for Undead Carnage. We just wanted the agreement to use the opportunities for social gaming: achievements, leaderboards on the MS servers. We were told that they will contact, if interested. Not contacted... Will have to think with Facebook (Alawar Nokia also did not give an affirmative answer — Alexander).
And most importantly is a constant pursuit of perfection. But to achieve it, the game still can not please absolutely everyone. Well, a constant balance between the necessary things and new cool ideas that don't quite fit the right things. Because of this, had several times to rewrite the core modules of the game engine. But it's an experience, anyway.
[Alexander], the Game Undead Carnage took part in three competitions of Microsoft, but could only win in one. And this at a time when she was the leader in the Russian and American Marketplace. Do you think what is the reason?
[Artem] We think this is due to several things. The main aspect of the game has its target audience and its age rating. As it turned out, not all evaluate a product by its qualities, regardless of the ratings and themes. That is, if the game is well done, it looks beautiful, it sounds and provides a hardcore gameplay, then why draw a line between the daisies and zombies? Maybe the game is too complex for mobile devices... still, well this is the mobile platform of Xbox, and hence the games should be a match for the platform.
[Alexander] Demo version downloaded a total of more than 120k times. Do you think this is a good result?
[Artem] I think (and the whole team will agree with me) that this is a great result for both the "pen test". Still, it's our first game brought to an end. For inexperienced teams, not funded by anyone, which developed the game in 99% of cases home at night, and sometimes stayed at the company the night and made the game on laptops, this is a great result.
[Alexander] is Now a lot of talk about the future of Windows Phone. What do you think, what are the prospects of Windows Phone 7 we have in the world?
[Artem] will Again speak on behalf of the entire team. We believe that the platform will flourish. The the main problem always lies in the people. They are afraid of something new. I'm afraid to try. New drop at the slightest cons and do not give a chance. Windows Phone not many people like at first sight. And I had the same acquaintance. Fortunately the device I didn't buy. I had a HTC HD2 with Windows Mobile, then I installed it on his Android, then WP7. Not understood, not acknowledged, he carried back to Android. But appreciated her fluidity and stability. After a couple of days blew Android and back to WP7. It was the winter of 2010-2011. And she's still there :) And the guys she liked.
Today the company, we have more than 10 devices with WP7 that I know of. Each new user simply falls in love with WP7. Nice to look at man yesterday with the phone on Android, well-it speaks about WP7. We believe that WP8 will be a new round of development and the continuation of the ideas implicit in WP7. I would also like to believe that Microsoft will begin to appreciate not only the large developers, and small. Examples of this are many. Even with games. Even on WP7. Games from big and renowned developers is not always better, and often worse than indie projects. If you give the opportunity to indie developers – will be a much better ecosystem, and the platform will evolve better.
In Ukraine this is a little more complicated. Again, this Marketplace, this is a normal mobile Internet and our greed. Many people do not understand how this software can be pay...
[Alexander] and the last question, what are your future plans?
[Artem] We are going to make games :) What? Only time will tell. I can only say that will try to set the bar for games on WP7.
I personally really want to finish and publish Demon Smasher, 3D game, which I Sasha wrote less than a day at the hackathon in Lviv (the hackathon was conducted by a team wp7rocks — Alexander). A lot of ideas, all interesting. A lot of developments, a lot of code written and waiting their turn to work on the phones of users.
The development of Undead Carnage has taught us a lot. Now we know where problems might emerge during development, and how to solve them or even avoid them in the. There was also a desire to port the Undead Carnage: Redemption for tablets with Windows 8. Time will tell!
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