UCM24
.tHE .sIRIUS .cYBERNETICS .cORPORATION
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INTERVIEW WITH THE RESERVOIR GODS
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This interview was done for Undercover and ST Computer magazine. Originally I
thought the german translation should be released in issue o3/o3 of ST Computer
but as I must see later, due to unknown reasons it didn't appeared there, at
least not in the issue I thought I have created it for... So I wont bound you
any longer onto the tormenting chair and will release the original version in
here as planned...
UCM - Hello together, today we wanna enlight a little the things around the
Reservoir Gods and as it isn't easy to speak about gods without knowing
anything about them, let's start with a short round up of your group, who
belongs to it and what are his jobs and last but not least what are you
doing apart from being goddesses on the fuji system?
MrPink - I work for Electronic Arts as a games coder, mainly working on
Playstation2, but have also done some stuff on Gamecube and PSX.
MSG - I do most of music for the group. I am a games designer in real life,
designing and releasing games on Gameboy Advance and I've also done a PC
title.
Stratagem - I've developed in the past modems and isdn cards for US Robotics,
currently I'm working for Belkin and doing all the networking stuff
for our german office.
UCM - As you're nine years active as Reservoir Gods now, it is some kind of
interesting to know if there was a life before it? I know some of you are
around on the Atari scene for a long time already. So please tell us in
short snippets about your Atari scene history.
MrPink - The core of the team knew each other long before RG was born, we were
in a small ST cracking group. Whilst we were never the most high
profile hackers on the scene, it was a great chance to build up our
skills and learn the hardware inside out.
MSG - I think I am the newest to Atari. I got my ST in '93 and got into doing
chip music back then, I met SH3 at university and we became good friends.
Later I met Mr.Pink and things really started rolling, we started meeting
regulary and there was a great jump in productivity, we released GodleNES
and GodBoy during this time.
Stratagem - Kids... I'm on the ST since october 1985...
UCM - It is quite seldom on the Atari scene, that such a constant team is in the
first time game oriented, esp. without making money and such high quality.
Why have you decided to go that way?
MrPink - Yeah, it is pretty unusual. It goes back to the reason the group was
formed. SH3 and I were early adopters of the Falcon, and it quickly
became clear that there was going to be a lack of decent games
software. We decided we wanted to remedy that situation by producing
games of our own.
I love demos, but I don't think I have the mindset to be a really good
demo coder. I can see an effect and work out how it was coded, but as
for thinking up new and original effects .. well thats a pretty
difficult skill. There are many others who can do this work far better
than me.
But there aren't too many people out there making really high quality
games for the Atari, not that they don't have the talent, just the time
and effort involved to produce a game is enough to put people off or
prevent game projects getting finished.
Writing games is really good fun, and we have been lucky in the fact
that a lot of our games are fun to play. When we are still playing
games after we have released them (after months of tiring work on them)
and are not yet sick of them, that's always a good sign :)
UCM - A few of your new members were stuck quite deep into demo development in
former times, will this point will get some higher priority in the future
of the Reservoir Gods someday? Or will you stay as game oriented
developers?
MrPink - I wouldn't discount demo activity from the team. Keep your eyes peeled
at EIL :) I think we will do some more demo stuff in the future,
personally I'm quite interested in playing around with things like CT60
and supervidel when they arrive, but games will be our main focus.
UCM - Interesting in my eyes is the fact, that the Reservoir Gods were Falcon
only oriented untill the big break 1999, and even if your games reached
professional quality, you didn't decided to publish them as commercial
games, even if there surely was a big market for such high quality games
back in those times. What were the reasons to make only freeware stuff?
MrPink - Well, it was the case that some of our early titles were shareware
(Tautology 2, Double Bobble 2000). I didn't want to get a part time
job - I wanted to dedicate all my spare time to Atari, so the
registrations were helpful at the time.
There was a big publishing deal lined up for Double Bobble, but Taito
wanted 250,000 UKP for the license, a ridiculous figure, we could never
hope to sell enough copies to justify this.
At the end of the day, we were doing stuff for the Atari because we
loved the machine and loved the scene. handling the registrations for
shareware stuff was quite time consuming, and that was time we felt was
better spent coding/painting and composing.
UCM - After your break you suddenly released st compatible games, that are using
the different possibilities as its best, except the falcon... what brought
you to this hard step?
MrPink - I have to be totally honest about this, it was due to Steem. I'd been
having quite a lot of problems with my Falcon, losing data, broken
monitor port and keyboard problems. This was causing me to be quite
demotivated. Plus I was getting to used to the development tools and
environment I used at work, trying to use devpac after this was a bit
limiting. So I got a laptop, installed the dev tools I use at work and
got hold of the Steem emulator.
I know that emulator use is still slightly controversial, but for me it
has been invaluable. I have been able to take my laptop into work and
do Atari stuff during quiet moments.
This doesn't discount us to do more Falcon stuff in the future - in
fact we are quite eager to do this. I just got a new Falcon last week,
so let's see what happens :)
MSG - Maybe my memories are somewhat selective but I am sure I was going on
about doing ST compatible stuff sometime before we got round to doing it.
The main reason was that my DSP had broken and I couldn't run any of our
previous productions. The jump to ST stuff was good news to me.
Stratagem - I have lotsa machines over here (about 20 different machines) for
testing (specially Pink's code, hehe)
UCM - Somehow you can say, that everything you're getting your hands on is going
to be gold, so who is the brain behind all those nice game conversions/
ideas? Who says: that thing is nice, that will be our next project? or are
you working out together what title could be the next thing?
MrPink - I don't think any one person can take the credit .. it's definitely a
group thing. To take some recent examples, Neo was heavily involved
with gettting "Chu Chu Rocket" right, whilst the idea for doing
"Godpey" came from SH3 (he first showed me this game on his Wonderswan
at EIL2 party). Havoc/FUN must get some credit for persuading us into
"Superfly". But it is one thing to decide on the idea for a game, it is
another to make it good. I have got some very strong ideas about how
games are designed, and this comes from my experience in the games
industry plus studying the works of people like Shigeru Miyamoto
(Nintendo), Yu Suzuki (Sega) and Yuji Naka (Sonic Team). These days I'm
very conscious about the idea of "metagames" as I think they can add a
great deal of value and replayability to a product.
The thing is, it is quite easy to get a basic game engine up and
running. To that into a complete, fully playable and entertaining game
is the hard bit, and that's what takes the time. There are many
examples of Atari teams creating impressive early demos of games that
never get finished. Whilst we generally get the basic game engine up
and running in a matter of weeks, polishing and testing take months.
Over the last year we have to be very thankful to Stratagem who has
worked tirelessly to ensure the quality and reliability of our
productions.
MSG - Although I do design in real life, I very rarely need to get involved as
we (RG) usually know what kind of game can be done. It's usually a sudden
"We can do this game, can't we?" and everyone will agree or disagree there
and then. It's usually very quick to sort out what we can do. I would like
to point out, it was my idea for the "wear it on your head" in Godpey, I
had seen something on a Japanese game which hasn't been released and we
just had to use it..
UCM - While watching your output it is easy to see that the majority of them are
puzzle/reaction games, belongs this to your private tastes or is it
because of the possibilities to realise them on the Atari hardware? Real
action titles are a bit rare in your big output/softography. So please
tell us.
MrPink - There are a couple of reasons for this. The obvious one being that
puzzle games are slightly easier to create. With puzzle games you have
a defined set of rules and it is easier to balance everything into an
addictive game. With action games, it is one thing to get an engine up
and running, but takes a long time to design each level, and it is a
lot harder to be sure that a level will be fun to play.
We are certainly not going to be restricting ourselves to puzzle games
only, we do have some ideas for more action style titles.
UCM - How does it run usually if you are going to create a title, are you
checking at first if it is visual possible or if the code is easy to
recreate? Are you working hand in hand or is one working on the code for
example and is going to ask the others for their contributions at a point
where the game engine is up and running? Who is the master and who is the
slave, harhar :)
MrPink - Yeah, at first we assess the technical requirements of the title. Then
we try to get a basic game engine up and running, at the first stage
there will probably be some programmer drawn art for testing. As soon
as the artists see this they will soon want to paint something new :)
We construct quite detailed lists of requirements for audio and art. As
new art assets arrive, stuff will be coded around them. The music is
usually done in parallel with the game development as there are no
dependencies between the game and the tunes, and it is usually the last
thing to go in.
MSG - No kidding! Usually I think there's loads of time to do music, so I take
my time then suddenly the game is finished and there's no music. This has
happened on both "Chu Chu Rocket" and "Godpey".
Stratagem - Most of the time we have to wait for MSGs music - because no-one of
the gods wanna sing different songs for a game :-)
UCM - Somehow you invented the online scores for the Atari system, what brought
you to this step, that is quite usual on other systems?
MrPink: Neo originally suggested this idea for "Chu Chu Rocket", but we never
got round to doing it. Stratagem again brought up the idea for "Godpey".
We did think it was a good way of creating a little community of Atari
games players, with everyone competiting against each other. It's been a
lot of fun to put these high score tables together, with many strong
competitors, especially Nemo at "Godpey" and Xerus 1 at "Superfly".
moondog wasn't so bad either ;)
UCM - Looking back onto your softography, what title is in your eyes the best
one and which release do you regret a bit today? On what title do you
wanted to do something more if it would be possible?
MrPink - Difficult one! It's funny, I like different titles for different
reasons. "Double Bobble 2000" is one of the titles I'm most proud of,
that really helped to place us on the scene. Ripley and SH3's graphics
were great, and it really showed for the first time we could create a
game that was as good (if not better) than the commercial version.
"Godpaint" was a key release, we used this for all our Falcon stuff,
the importance of this package to us can't really be underestimated.
I think for the timescale they were created in, "Bunion Canyon" and
"Bugger" are surprisingly entertaining. Although they weren't really
big hits, both "Skyfall" and "Static" are great fun to play, especially
in multiplayer mode. I'm really proud of the stuff we did with Maggie -
the issue #18 ressurection with Falcon shell and Tat's intro has a
special place in our hearts :)
As for stuff we could do better - well every time I look an old game I
think "if only we added this", but at the end of the day you can keep
adding features to a game forever, and at some point you have to make a
cut off point and get it released!
Obviously, the first "Tautology" was a bit of a shambles, but I think
we got it right the second time round. I'd love to do an update of
"Godpaint" at some point too.
MSG - I think "Double Bobble 2000" was a major point in my life, it had just got
reviewed in ST Format, getting 96% and I was "I have to do something with
these guys!". "Bunion Canyon" was probably the most played, since my
girlfriend at the time just couldn't stop playing that game. I think Leon
forgot the mention that we both loved "Megaman", so that's why there were
a few of those released!
UCM - Esp. for MrPink, as known you are working/worked on games industry lately,
have you made experiences there you can bring into your games development
on the Atari machines? Or was it more turnaround?
MrPink - For sure. I have learnt so much from being in the game industry,
especially at EA where the standard of talent is higher than any other
games company I've ever seen. I really have improved as a coder hugely.
Although a lot of this is in the area of 3d graphics, which isn't
really directly applicable to the ST, I think a more crucial area is
software architecture.
The real key to making a successful, realiable production and actually
finishing it is down to your software architecture. I've got a lot
better at architecturing the code, designing reusable components and
systems. This means I can take modules from game to game and don't have
to do everything from scratch each time. It also means that the code is
a lot more flexible (it is easier for me to add features or change
things around) and a lot more reliable - I get a lot fewer really nasty
bugs in my code these days. That's not to say there are no bugs
(Stratagem will affirm this) but once a problem has been discovered,
its easy to find it in the code and fix it.
MSG - It's certainly is an eye opener when you work in the games industry. A lot
of the experiences that are learned from Atari development are just as
useful in Gameboy development though, small teams, cross-over in job,
being able to deal with more that one aspect of everything, it's all
useful.
UCM - And, if we can ask you, what is in the pipeline? Are there some precious
projects coming along to feed the hype around the Reservoir Gods?
MrPink - Yes, there are quite a few projects in the pipeline. However, we do
prefer to hype up games after their release, not before it. Projects
always take slightly longer than you expect and we don't like to
frustrate people by anouncing productions that won't be ready for a
long time. However, "Faeryland Adventures" - this is a collaboration
with Dune & Sector One. It's a game based around "Puzzle Bobble", with
some quite beautiful graphics from Mic of Dune and some cool music from
DMA-SC. The main game engine is up and running, but we have to do a lot
of work on the level designs and front end.
UCM - Speaking of projects, I know of some ideas or maybe dreams the one or
other has, so please tell us, what game idea you dream of to convert it to
the Atari system? What thing do you really want to see on our system
sometimes?
MrPink - Heh, there are so many! Every time I play a cool game I think "damn,
I'd love to do an Atari version of this!".
Obviously some aren't really possible (e.g. "Shenmue"!) but anything
within the technical possibilities has a chance. I guess my dream game
(and probably SH3's) would be a japanese style RPG, something like the
original "Final Fantasy" games on the NES, but this would require a
huge amount of work in level design and scripting.
MSG - It's always hard to think what's next. The Atari is quite limited. I would
love to do a shoot'em up like "R-Type" or "Lethal Xcess", but the trouble
is with companies like Treasure it's hard to compete! :)
UCM - Have you ever thought about some kind of poll where the people can decide
what project will be realised next? :)
MrPink - Well, we already have many ideas for cool new projects that will
stretch to fill all our free time. But we are open to other ideas, and
if we think it's viable there is a chance of it happening.
UCM - Taking a look around, there aren't much game developpers left on the Atari
system. How do you feel staying a bit alone on the front? Does it makes
you working harder to entertain the surviving atarians as good as possible
or are you missing the competition?
MrPink - Good question. I think this could be a problem if we just lived in a
cocoon just looking at other Atari productions, but this isn't the
case. Myself, Griff and MSG all work in the games industry so are
exposed to all the latest games and technologies. Also, most of the
gods are big gamers.
Personally I own NES, SNES, Megadrive, Playstation, Saturn, N64,
Gameboy Colour, Dreamcast, Gameboy Advance, Wonderswan, Gamecube and
Wonderswan Colour consoles and a large range of games - so we do keep
up with whats current in the gaming field.
MSG - Leon is such a show off! SH3 has the best collection of hardware, Leon is
a close second. I am just a Nintendo kid.
UCM - At last one little question... apart from game development there isn't
much left of the works of the Res Gods atm, you were famous for the rework
of the Maggie and its new height in the late nineties. Why you decided to
leave out this works again? After you left, Maggie died and we lost the
longest running diskmag on the Atari system... Was it a clumb on your
feet?
MrPink - It is a real shame about Maggie. It was so much fun putting this
together. Sure we had big wars with UCM, but I think this was a good
thing - this competition pushed both magazines to strive their hardest
to beat the other and produce the best magazine possible. RG Maggie was
a different style to other diskzines, there was a lot of humour in the
articles, perhaps not all of it understood by everyone (there were many
in jokes) but I think the diversity was a good thing.
I do think that at this point, UCM is as good as it has ever been
(even, or maybe because, it is mainly just Eric wring), Chris and Seb
are doing a good job with Alive! And the latest issue of Chosneck had a
very nice interface. But I still think without Maggie, something is
missing - it had something unique that can't really be replaced.
UCM - Ok, thanx for your patience and please bring us some new food soon so that
we we can praise again to the Gods of the Reservoir :)
interview done by moondog - o3/2k3
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