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Aloha Bjorn, how are you? |
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Hi Eric, just prepared some coffee. |
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Ah yes, 2 am here is 9 am there. So good
morning! |
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Hehe, and good night to you! |
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So tell me, how old are you and where are
you from? |
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I'm 25 from Cologne,
Germany. |
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Who is working on the Team?
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At the moment there
is Vonster D Monster and me working on the game. I do most of the graphics,
logic scripts, animations, some music and the coordination. Vonster D Monster
is doing pictures and mainly logic scripts. A guy called Ed Griffin had
done a lot for the interior of the Embassy building, but we cant communicate
with him anymore for three months now. That
is a pity because he did a great job with graphics and logics.
You know, the usual internet-phenomenon: you don't talk to someone for three
months: his email-addy is not more existant. But if he's still alive, he
is always welcome again. |
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Do you know how old Vonster is or where
he lives? |
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No, no idea. But
he seems to be working for some kind of Terrestrian company, so can't be
neither too old nor too young, and that he
lives, I suppose it's a planet near a star that we call "Sirius". Hehe |
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Heh, yea that's
all he seems to confess when people ask. I take it this is the same Vonster
from Space Quest the lost chapter? |
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Yeah, the same Vonster. I
was really happy when he contacted me about V, I thought: "Well, here's
a guy that has FINISHED an AGI-game." That is quite unique nowadays.
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Do you find it hard to work in a team?
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True, contacts over
the internet often get lost. That's the way our cooperation with Ed went.
With Vonster, its really highly enjoyable. As we both have internet access
in our offices, we communicate a lot about ideas, plans, problems with the
game. Whats cool is that in my current job I work as a project manager for
a publishing company. So I'm already organizing communication the whole
day... But i dont think they will be pubishing V, just not targeting the
mass market... Hehehe |
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Why, of all the 80's T.V. shows, did you pick 'V'?
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Well, the time I discovered all that computer stuff,
i was 12 years or so. That was also the time when V aired here in germany...
But more importantly: I think V is highly underrated
today. I wanted to breathe some life into it again, especially after I
have seen that there is a strong internet-following for V. What could
be a better platform for bringing an 80's show back to life than another
relic from the 80s, the AGI engine? And V
was not only a scifi-show. The first movie from director Ken Johnson raised
some social and political questions..
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I remember the movie, just not the tv show
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Better that way, the the tv series was quite crappy
compared to the movies..
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Ah, so how long have you been working on
V? |
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I started the project
in late 2000. When I came up with the homepage in early 2001, there was
Ed to help me until May or so, we mainly lost contact because I was also
not working on the game and not updating the page. He must have thought
"ah, another dead project". Then, in August, I thought about the project
and decided that the game had to be finished, because I always hated to
discover that all the promising AGI games were not finished. Then, Vonster
contacted me in August, and since then, we're busily on it again... But
it is already the third attempt to make a game about V. The first two were
really to ugly to mention, so I started over and over again, until it became
better in late 2000. My first attempts were in 1999. |
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The first demo just came out, when do you
expect the full version to come out? |
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Good question. I
expect the game to be finished in early 2002, maybe March or something... |
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How long to you expect
play time to be? |
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Ah, OK, the number
of rooms will be around 50 or 60... The demo will be something about 25%
of the finished game, I guess... The sequence where you have to escape (the
demo) will be the opening of the game. After that, the story will get more
non-linear. That means, you can access different locations through a map
and you have different missions to solve. Although you solve the missions
one after the other, there are a lot of things that can be done when the
player wants to... The missions take place in Los Angeles, as the player
walks around solving them, he discovers that the alien Visitors have a very
mean plan. In the end, this will bring up onto the huge mothership where
the big Finale is taking place.. |
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Do you draw the backrounds
in Picedit, or use a PCX to AGI converter? |
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I drew them all by myself. I heard about the converter and tried it, but
it didnt work. I usually prepare the movie-stills or photos from regular
places in L.A. with photoshop to have a hand of some objects in the foreground,
then I paint over it in AGI-studio... True, it took me quite some time to
get into the whole priority-line-stuff, but once I figured it out I became
obsessed with creating AGI-graphics...[Check the tutorial he made for us
to see how he did it.] |
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I love the way those older graphics look, and your's
are quite wonderful
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Thanks a lot.
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Especially a few that I peeked in on in AGI studio,
I'm sorry, i had too!
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Hehe, no problem.
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The one with the ship and the tubes coming out
of it blew my mind.
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Thanks, that's also
the one i'm most proud of... I think for the pictures in 320x200 you really
had to use your imagination, a bit like reading a book. You couldnt see
all the details so you imagined the rest... |
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Why work in AGI?
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When I discovered AGI-studio, I simply couldnt
believe there was a tool for making a complete agi-game. I instantly knew
I wanted to make such a game. After I thought about it for a while, I
had the idea that V would be the perfect subject for a game. The AGI-system
gives us the freedom for combining a lot of arcade-elements with an adventure
game, I simply love it. I was also quite surprised and impressed to discover
that so many creative people were still playing around with AGI.
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Have you tried other adventure game engines?
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Yeah, i had a look
at AGS and it looked really great... The graphic abilities are really stunning,
and the editor is really easy to handle. But i had the impression that AGI
gives you more possibilities concerning sprite-animations and screen objects...
It would be nice to combine the look of AGS-games with the possibilities
of AGI.. |
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You seem to be the only people still working in AGI, how has that effected
the project?
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Really? LOL, are
we really the only ones left? Shit, I thought there were still at least
two or three others...
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Hehe, I can't find
any still going. There are some that say they are alive and well but haven't
updated since 1998. |
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True, I havent seen
many updates either. Anyway, after I had seen fanmade-games like Time Quest
or The Lost Chapter I knew that it was possible to make a goodlooking game
with nice puzzles... I have seen many things in fanmade agi-games that were
real innovations. |
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So, how does it feel
to be one of the last so far? |
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Hehe, definitely
great. I mean we know we make this game for a ,umm, "selected" group of
people who still enjoy these kinds of games... But I also have the impression
that we're doing somethings also good for ourselves. I personally have learned
a lot about the creation of games in general... And as many fanmade games
have had elements new to sierra-style adventures, I know that there are
still things waiting to be thought up... |
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What's your favourite amateur AGI game?
[you don't HAVE to say Space Quest: TLC just because Vonster
works with you]
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OK, hehe... Well
I think it's definitely Residence 44 Quest from these 2 Guys from the Netherlands,
shortly followed by Time Quest from Chad Goulding, I loved how they ported
student-mentality into a computer-game. And have you seen the guy drinking
beer and the dancing guy in the first screen? Just hilarious... How nicely
they animated that. |
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Yea, that's something
i noticed, all the fan AGI games I have seen have always had wonderful animations. |
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Yeah, true. Also
in Res44 Quest, there are these beatiful small innovations that i had not
seen in Sierra-AGI-games: for example the light you have to turn on in the
corridor. |
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Exactly, and in Time
Quest with the moving shadows and such, very well done. |
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There are a lot of
these small, nice innovations in most of the fanmade agi-games... Like the
shadow, yeah, exactly or the cool clipping of the staircase in Dave's Quest... |
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Any plans for games after 'V'?
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Simple question:
V - part 2... No, just kidding, I dont know yet. |
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Worry about finishing
the first V, right? |
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Yeah, that's it.
This game has to be finished. We plan to squeeze
everything out of AGI that we can. I have had the though that a new adventure
engine like MAD could be neat for another game, but i dont know... |
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What made you want to make adventure games?
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Well, simple: My first computer game ever was Space
Quest 3. My father came home with the pc and a the game one day. I thought
"cool, computer games" and what I saw was my father typing in strange
commands. I went "What? And who do I have to shoot? And how many lives
do I have? What??? Only ONE????" But then I figured it out.
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And then you figured out how precious that one
life is in Sierra games?
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Yeah, true, exactly. Hehe
And then, yes, right after SQ3 i discovered Leisure
Suit Larry which was also quite inspiring, but in another sense, hehe...
After that i checked out all the other sierra games and adventures in
general. When I discovered them I was about
12 years old. At that age, that was just perfect: You exercised some logical
thinking and at the same time some abstract thinking. Plus: it was perfect
for learning English, after all in school they dont teach you what it
takes to play Leisure Suit Larry.
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hehe, for a reason.
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So I think, adventure
games are highly underrated from their educational point of view. The way
to think in an adventure game can sometimes be of help in reality, because
you develop a "somewhere there must be something to solve the problem" mentality...
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Have you played any
AGS games? |
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I played some sci-fi
game, but I cant remember the game, and I tried Larry Vales... |
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Rob Blanc? |
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Yeah, could be Rob
Blanc. I like that cartoon-styls, but I think it would also great doing
a game based on a photo-realistic look. As AGS supports real high resolutions,
that should be no problem... My typing gets worse, think i need another
coffee. |
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Well then, let's finish it up here. I want
to thank you for taking the time to answer a few of my questions. |
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Oops, its already
4 o clock in New York... |
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That's alright, I'm in college now so sleep
and I aren't on speaking terms. |
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Well, thanks go out to Björn for the interview
and thank you to Helm for the sprite of my head.
-eric
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