BAFelton
Well-Known Member
BlackCurtain is the author of Arora Rift. He showed his skills with this sci-fi shoot'em up for the Caanoo. He will introduce Pontus, his teammate on Skylark.
BAF : First, could you introduce yourself and your team briefly ?
BlackCurtain : My team for Skylark consists of only two people: me and my friend Pontus.
I do all the programming, game designing, art work and story writing, etc. Pontus composes much of the music.
BAF : How did you two meet ? What made you decide to work together ?
BlackCurtain : We started chatting through IM about a year ago, after Pontus contacted me on a online community and started talking about our shared interest in game development and that he wanted to learn making his own games. Some time after I had started the work on Skylark, I asked Pontus if he could provide me with some good music as I lack the skills in the music and sound department, and I knew he was a tallented musician. He was happy to help out .
BAF : What was your background as developers before working on the Caanoo? Is this the first console on which you develop?
BlackCurtain : I have been developing games for PC for about 8 years, and Caanoo and Pandora are the first consoles I've developed for. I also do a lot of web development with PHP, ASP.NET and C#.
BAF : Can you tell us a little about your project for the Riot Tag-Team Coding Competition ? How came the idea ? What are your inspirations ?
BlackCurtain : I've wanted to make a platform RPG for many years, but such a project never took form until I came up with the idea of Skylark.
Castlevania "Symphony of the Night" has long been a big inspiration to me, and I wanted to make something equally dark and deep. Though I've never fancied to idea of Vampires which the whole Castlevania series revolves around, so I took a different approach in the story. Skylark, the protagonist, is a normal human being, but who possess certain powers still unknown to him. He doesn't know where he come from or who his real parents are.
The name "Skylark" means in Swedish "sånglärka", it's a type of bird. See this picture. The title became Skylark because he has this odd relation to birds that befriends him where ever he goes.
BAF : How do you divide your work ? What part of the game, at the technical level, gave you the biggest difficulty?
BlackCurtain : I started by designing the main character "Skylark", by drawing concept art.
I also studied some sprite animating techniques and how to best create smooth animations. I drew all the sprites for the main character pixel by pixel in Photoshop. This process took roughly 1-2 weeks until I was satisfied. Some might argue that there are many better and easier techniques to achieve the same result.
After the main character sprites were finished, I started coding the actual platform engine. Most of the coding was done before any serious work began on the art. The first level (with the snow) was done after I had finished the character sprites and implemented it with the collision detection and movement. The rest of the levels came long afterwards.
The second level was designed meanwhile I was working on the room switching. You might see the pattern, each new sprite and artwork was made in place and time they were needed. When most of the main coding was done on the engine, the rest of the work was put on the graphics. The platforming collisions were the one thing I had problems with at first to perfect, and there are some tweeking left to do. But all in all I'm satisfied with what I achieved in the demo.
BAF : In your opinion, how your game will make the difference over the other games in the competition ?
BlackCurtain : People might be easily intrigued by the 3d graphics which some other competitiors has brought to the competition, because it is something rarely seen on the Caanoo, but I still believe Skylark has the best and most stylish looking graphics.
I've put a lot of work into creating a dark and mysterious atmosphere and mood in the game by the graphics, and to create a gotish look. Skylark will also never be completed by the player, because there will always be something new to find in the game, because all of the items are dynamically and randomly generated.
So, you can play the game over and over again and always have something new to find. This is what makes Skylark stand out from the other games.
BAF : What do you think of Caanoo as a open source console ? And about the development of homebrew on it ?
BlackCurtain : Caanoo is a great and surprisingly powerful handheld. The specifications are not very impressive, but you can still manage to squeeze a lot of gaming out of it.
I use a lot of high-res textures and sprites in Skylark, while manage to keep a steady framerate. Only downside is that the load times can be very slow at times. But for anyone that want to start developing games for consoles, the Caanoo is a excellent first-choice to start with.
BAF : What advice would you give to those who wish to embark on the adventure of creation ?
BlackCurtain : I would advise any beginners to game development to start learning BennuGD. It's great for both beginners and advanced developers, and you can get your game ideas up and running in no time.
BAF : What are your future projects ?
BlackCurtain : Since before Skylark I've been planing a survival horror 3d game on Caanoo. It's still just in the form of text documents, but we'll see what the future holds. I will also continue working on my older PC game projects and perhaps port Skylark for Iphone and Android when it's finished.
BAF : A word to add ?
BlackCurtain : In closure, I might add that what keeps me motivated while working on big projects such as this one, is the thought of seeing the finished game and getting all the feedback from the players. I'm not satisfied with a game I'm developing until I feel that it is a game that I myself would pay money for to play. That's real commercial quality.
-Linus Jönsson, Black Curtain Studio
BAF : Thanks a lot BlackCurtain.
More interviews are coming, just wait while loading....
