Hurrican interview

Done by EP

Introduction

EP:

Please introduce your team to our readers: who are you, what are you doing for a living, where are you coming from, what are your interests in life, when did you start programming, what have you studied, where, please present the whole team (if you're alone, then the biggest congratulations ever).

Jörg Winterstein:

Hello, my name is Jörg Winterstein, I am 27 years old and work as a freelance game programmer/musician/designer in Germany. I have been addicted to computer and video games since my early childhood, but also like Movies, Fantasy and SciFi books and Heavy Metal. I started programming when I was about 12 years old on the C64, because I always wanted to create games myself. Basically, I am a trained IT-specialist, but three and a half years ago, I managed to get into the gaming industry and I hope I will never leave it.

The hurrican team constists basically of Turri, who first was a retailer and then got into 3D graphics and is now working in the gaming industry as well, and me. Later, we got support from Gerhard "Schlauchi" Weihrauch, who was a locomotive driver first, but is working in the gaming industry now as well. Some other ideas and additional leveldesign came from T.R.Schmidt.

The Game

EP:

When and how has Hurrican become your main programming project?

Jörg Winterstein:

I think it started in the middle of 2002. I finished a Katakis clone called "Takatis" first together with TheWanderer, one of the founding members of Poke53280. In fact, me and him were the only two founding members of the group :)

After that I thought that I would now have enough skills to do the project that I wanted to do since I first player Turrican on the C64 back in 1992... Create a Turrican like game.

EP:

Hurrican is THE BEST Turrican clone available for the PC / Windows platform, please tell us about all the technical aspects of the game, the technologies involved, the making of, how much time did it take you to make it (a demo was downloadable for years and while this time you were working in background, please explain).

Jörg Winterstein:

First of all, thank you very much for the appreciation. In general, Hurrican is a pretty simple game. The technical backbone of the game is really only some standard 2D DirectX powered tile engine with some particle effects and sound support. We did not want to do some ultra complex shader effects or whatever is regarded as a standard for today's games. We just wanted to concentrate on the gameplay and the details of the whole game. So Hurrican is done using Visual C++ 6.0, it uses DirectX 8.1 for rendering and keyboard/gamepad input and a library called FMOD for music and sound support. The whole game took us about 5 years to make. Now this sounds like a crazy amount of time... On the one hand, it really is... on the other hand one must consider that we did not spend 5 years, 8 hours a day to complete the game. There were times where we did only some minor stuff within two months. Yet in other times, we really worked some hours every evening. Sometimes you just don't have the time or motivation to come home from work and then sit down and start working again.

So one can say "the first line of code was written five years before the release". But this does not mean it took the whole five years to make it.

EP:

What were the 3 biggest difficulties you've got to get past to succesfully release it?

Jörg Winterstein:

I can only think of one difficulty here. Because it was not the technical aspect or something like that. As I said, the engine cannot be compared to a 2D version of the Unreal 3 engine. We just tried to stick to what we were able to do, and make the best of it. So if I was not able to code some shader effects, I simply did not do it.

So the main difficulty was in general: perfectionism. In short, a game is never ready, you just stop working on it. Like on a painting. So it was difficult to determine the point where you say: "OK, it looks good, we will release it now". You can ALWAYS polish something, add a new feature, do some more testing and so on. After having spent so much time on the game, we just HAD to release a good game. Otherwise, everyone would say "they worked five years on it, and it's still buggy! How can that be?". So there was this day on which we said: "We can go on and work on this project forever, or we can trust our beta testers when they say it is a good game that should be released".

EP:

How did you get it back when sometimes you had low motivation?

Jörg Winterstein:

One of the biggest motivations was our fans. They were so excited to see the game and they always motivated us just by saying something like: "This will be the best Turrican clone ever. Please keep on!" Another thing was that when you put so much effort into something and spend so much time with it, it would just be dumb to stop working on it, because then all of the work would have been in vain :)

And besided from that, I always wanted to do a Turrican clone as soon as I was able to. So for me, there was no such thing as giving up.

EP:

What is the minimum requirements to get it to run as you want it to: smooth and playable without slowdowns?

Jörg Winterstein:

You mean hardware requirements? Well, measured by todays standards, it should run on nearly every machine. I think some 1.5 GHz CPU and a decent graphics card with 256 MB RAM should be sufficient. Well, Windows XP and DirectX 8.1 is a must. It seems to run nice under Vista as well, but I haven't tested it myself by now.

EP:

How did you work to release this huge project?

Jörg Winterstein:

The only thing we did was to prepare a own website that is linked to our forum to be prepared for bug reports and suggestions. I also programmed a startup tool that pops up when you start the game, where you can choose to start the game or to look for updates. Because for me it was very important that the users get the possibility to check if there is a new version available. If they downloaded version 1.0 from some freeware website and never know that there is a 1.1 then there might be some bugs in the 1.0 that are fixed in 1.1 but they never will know.

EP:

What has been your main motivation to start the Hurrican project?

Jörg Winterstein:

Just one word: "Turrican". As I said, since I played it on the C64, I wanted to do a game like that, no matter when and no matter what it would take. Turri was (and is) a huge Turrican as well, so he wanted to join the project immediately, as soon as he heared from it. Same with the other two guys.

EP:

How did you come to release it for free and how can this be possible?

Jörg Winterstein:

We got some offers from publishers indeed, that wanted to make it commercial. But when you work on a project in your spare time for five years, there is no publisher in the world that can pay you for that. And apart from that, it was clear that we wanted to release it as freeware from the very beginning on. There might have been many people around who would have paid for it, but when making it free you can basically reach everyone who is interested. And that is what we wanted to do: Spread the game as much as possible. And since we don't depend on making money with it, we did not do it.

EP:

Who was responsible for the testing of the game?

Jörg Winterstein:

Many people I know, like friends or people from work, offered to work as beta testers. Even people I never heard of but showed themselves trustable over the time joined the beta test. No one got paid for it, they all did it for free, and they all got their name into the credits :)

EP:

What was the testing of the game like?

Jörg Winterstein:

I set up an online bug tracker where people could post and comment on bugs, they got emails as soon as a bug was fixed and stuff like that. So the basic idea was kind of professional. Of course it happened that some bugs were entered multiple times by different testers and that the description of the bugs was not always clear without ambiguity, but in general the testing went very smooth.

EP:

What future improvements do you see?

Jörg Winterstein:

One improvement would be the make the game even more "moddable". So that the user cannot only change the graphics, sounds and levels but also adjust values for enemies and weapons or even create own objects. I don't know when I will have the time to do something like that, but if I had it, I would do it :)

EP:

Have you thought about porting the game to Linux or to OS X?

Jörg Winterstein:

Of course we did. But after we noticed that the game runs very well on Windows emulators as well, we wanted to concentrate on porting the game to platforms like xbox, PSP or NDS, which would be way cooler :)

EP:

In what game development projects have you participated earlier?

Jörg Winterstein:

I was just involved in other hobby games before I started with Hurrican. Like I said, Katakis. I also did the IK+ remake "International 64k-rate", which fits into a 64k exe file. The rest were just some things I worked on on my own that never got released.

EP:

Are you looking for talented people to join your team?

Jörg Winterstein:

It is always good to have talented people in the team. The problem is always: The bigger the team gets, the more difficult gets the managing of the whole thing. Since everyone is working in his spare time, you can never tell when someone has time for something. If you try to meet with two or three people at the same time, it might get challenging :)

EP:

Have you been active in the demoscene?

Jörg Winterstein:

Hmm no, not at all. I like the demoscene very much. I always did (that is actually the reason for the "cracktro" that Hurrican starts with...). But I have never been active.

EP:

What is the most difficult task when designing a good level for Hurrican and how do you manage it?

Jörg Winterstein:

The main thing in my opinion is that you yourself know the level, since you designed it. When you play it again and again, then at some point you cannot tell anymore if someone who plays it the first time gets the way it is meant to be played. When you insert a secret or something, you never know if they find it, so you always have to give the player some hint on how to master different passages in the level or how to find the secrets. And that is what we did. To give you an example: When you place an extra life inside a wall where the player has to roll into as the wheel, but the secret is covered by the same stone tile that is used for the surrounding, then the player will only find the secret by coincidence. But if you make one of the stones a bit darker or with some other texture or something, then the players who keep close attention to the level may notice it. So the design has always to be "challenging, but fair". In general, the whole level should be able to be played withoout losing a single life.

EP:

What games are you playing now?

Jörg Winterstein:

I am currently playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii. And I am just amazed on how many ideas they put into that game. I cannot understand why only shooters get "game of the year"...

EP:

What do you think about the current gaming industry?

Jörg Winterstein:

I think it is a shame that marketing and license seems to be more important than the game itself. If a publisher releases a game that is crap, they just release a sequel, just because it is cheaper to create (since it is based on the first part) and because everybody knows the name of the game now. Of course there are a lot of good license games like the Lord of the Rings or the Star Wars games. But I would like to see more independent games.

EP:

What do you like the most in the original Turrican you wanted to reproduce in Hurrican?

Jörg Winterstein:

Nonstop action, huge levels to explore, massive use of different weapons and giant boss monsters. And last but not least the music and sound :)

EP:

Why did you decide to call the game Hurrican?

Jörg Winterstein:

Since the very first demo of Turrican for the C64 was called "Hurrican" at first, this was our idea from the very beginning on. I think everyone who knows the Turrican games will see that our main influence was Turrican 1 from the C64. So it was very obvious that this name would be a good match.

EP:

Do you have any advice for somebody wanting to write games?

Jörg Winterstein:

Well, the internet is full of tutorials and information on making games. But one thing to remember is that you should never set your goals beyond your limits. Don't start programming and try to do some World of Warcraft online game. It won't work, believe me. Start out with something easy like some Tetris or Snake stuff. And then move on with more advanced games, but take it step by step. I had to go a long way until I was able to do something like Hurrican, and it was not that easy either. So just be patient. Experience comes with practice.

EP:

How did you work to manage your time efficiently?

Jörg Winterstein:

This does not just go for Hurrican but for everything else as well: Take your time. Just make clear that e.g. you want to work for two hours, starting from 6 p.m. Then sit down and work. Don't do other stuff around. Concentrate on what you are doing. After these two hours, do whatever you want. And don't forget to take your time for things that are important to you as well.

The website, the German forum

EP:

The usefulness of a forum for a game developer is all about motivation and getting living feedback, please give us factual examples of benefits gotten from Hurrican's forum.

Jörg Winterstein:

Well I will just translate it to English, since most of the fans wrote in German:

- Hello Pokes, I want to express my gratitude as well for this excellent game! If there would be an official sequel to Turrican then this would be the way it should look.

- Unbelievable that this is an amateur game!

- Thank you for this game! Some real Amiga nostalgia in there. Absolutely brilliant, keep it up!

- This game really lives up to Turrican. Superb grahics, athmospheric sound, many secrets and even easter eggs!

EP:

What's the catch with a forum today?

Jörg Winterstein:

At the moment there is not that much going on in the forums. I think this has something to do with the editor, which is still kind of uncomfortable for everyone who did not program it or used it for a long tim. So actually everyone else than me and Gerhard. I hope this will improve soon (as soon as I find the time for it) so that there will be a bunch of new user created levels in the near future.

Links

The complete history of Turrican and its official sequels

http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/turrican/turrican.htm

Fan club

http://turrican.nemmelheim.de/

The original makers

http://www.nemmelheim.de/turrican/makers/

Hurrican youtube link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9ANWJdF8Uc

Links to download the various versions of Turrican

Spectrum:

http://www.tzxvault.org/index.htm