Interviews

Ice Bytes is a proficient German game company; Andreas Zeitler kindly took the time to answer some questions for the Aum.

Q: How do you manage to get that many titles out so quickly?

A: On the one hand an important thing is coordination and planning. We always work on several projects (seven at the moment) and try to coordinate the work (mainly the work of Oliver, our level designer and Jan, our musician with the work of myself) in order to avoid gaps in the workflow. I design all games myself and try to build a solid basis (alpha version or prototype) before I give Oliver the instruction to build the necessary levels. During the time Oliver is designing the levels for a game, I work on another part of another project. This way we save much time, whereas other teams have to wait for certain parts before they can continue with the whole game.

On the other hand we always try to keep our games simple and the concepts realistic. We love details, but we know that too much of them could be dangerous for the release of the project. We try to achieve smaller, well-rounded games and make more of them instead of one larger project, which would take much more time.

Q: Can you give us a few details about Game.Hype?

A: Game.Hype is Ice Bytes' own electronic sales distribution platform. The startup is planned for the end of August this year. We will offer small games like Cheesey Hunting or INVASION for low prices. It is not our intention to sell expensive games, which will take the player hours and hours to play. Instead we concentrate on nice casual games, which can easily be played in shorter times, e.g. coffee-breaks.

Game.Hype goes online on August 31st 2005, but unfortunately the platform is limited to the German speaking regions of central Europe for the first few months. Later we plan the expansion to the English speaking market.

Q: What was the most difficult piece of code for Cheesey Hunting and how did you do it?

A: The hardest part was the artificial intelligence of the mice in combination with the collision system of the A6 engine. It seemed to be impossible to get both working together. I got strange flying and rotating and quaking mice all the time, although my code looked fine. I was not able to fix this bug until the last beta version. At the end I decided to leave any collision at all. Every object in the levels is passable and I developed a simple node system for the movement of the mice. It was more or less an emergency solution, but I had to find a quick solution in order to keep the development time as short as possible and to be in time for the production appointment.

Q: What is IceX?

A: IceX ED is a free rapid development tool for terrain and level editing based on the A6 engine itself. It provides an editor GUI and an own level format. The user can create, deform and paint terrains in real time. There are also settings for the environment e.g. for fog and for sun and it is possible to place objects in real time. IceX ED is simply an all-in-one solution for terrain based level design.

Oliver works on this tool by himself with much enthusiasm. We used IceX ED v1.0 for the most of our projects. At the moment Oliver is working on v2.0, which will support fixed function multi texturing for an upcoming project.

Q: How does your online high score system work?

A: Net-Score(R) is mainly based on a mySQL database system. We use the mySQL DLL, which was published in the Conitec forums a few weeks ago, for data access. Version 1.0, as it is used in the first generation of Game.Hype-Titles downloads the online high score lists to the player's pc and updates his own high score in the online database.

Q: Can you name a few low cost tools that you find to be extremely useful for game development?

A: Unfortunately we do not use any real low cost tools for the main sectors of game creation. We use Photoshop and Cinema 4D for all kinds of graphical work, but as the very good programs they are, they have their price too. I can recommend trying to get older versions of programs like these. Photoshop 6 is available for around 50 Euro in Germany. For other sectors and additional work I can recommend two very good and cheap programs: Z-Up Maker for the creation of installation packages and Ultimate Unwrap 3D for the skinning and conversion of models, both are under 50 Euro.

Q: What other services (beside game development) do you offer?

A: During the planning of Game.Hype we took first steps in publishing and distribution. We found partners with promising channels in the whole world and are now about making contracts with several game development teams from the US. If all goes well, their products will be released over Game.Hype this year. We also cooperate with Ello from the Conitec forums and we will publish some of his amazing shader games over Game.Hype, too.

Q: Please give us a few tips for the beginners.

A: Keep it small and simple. Do not start with one of the typically gigantic projects for which you only have a little enthusiasm. You have to collect the necessary knowledge of the whole game creation, before you are able to plan and develop such a project until it is ready for release. I would recommend that you start small. Make one, two, three small but nice games. It holds your motivation up, if you see that you finished something, even it is not so good.

Thank you a lot, Andreas.