DAD: Please introduce yourself to our readers first. Who are you when you're not making games for Amiga? What are your other interests and hobbies?
JD: Cars, films and music. I also play other people's games on the Amiga and PSX.
DAD: Is developing for Amiga your full time job? If not, what do you do for living? How much daily time have you been devoting to Payback development?
JD: I've been working full-time on Payback since I left my job in March last year. Recently, I've been spending almost every waking moment working on some aspect of Payback's development, production or promotion. It's been hectic but hopefully all the effort was worth it in the end.
DAD: When was Apex Designs founded? How many people beside yourself constitute Apex Designs? Who are most important among them and what's their job?
JD: Apex Designs was only formally founded as a business a few months ago, but I've been publishing games under that name since 1994. Apex Designs currently consists of just me but other people have helped in the development of Payback (although they're not technically part of Apex Designs).
DAD: When did you get your first Amiga? When did you start developing for it? What was the first configuration you developed on (and released the product for)?
JD: My first Amiga was an A500 Batman pack which I got for Christmas (1990 I think). I'd owned a Spectrum before that so I started programming the Amiga almost as soon as I got it. I wrote a game called 'Boing' in AmigaBasic which was never released. Later, I moved onto AMOS and released '6-Tris', 'Frontal Assault' and 'Fire Power', all of which can be found on Aminet. Of course, AMOS isn't really suitable for a commercial title, so I switched to C and assembler at the beginning of 1998 when I began development of Payback.
DAD: How did you come to the idea of writing a Grand Theft Auto clone for Amiga? What are major differences between your game and both parts of Grand Theft Auto?
JD: A friend of mine was writing a map editor for Grand Theft Auto on the PC, which made me wonder why a similar game wasn't available for the Amiga. There were also lots of things that I wanted to improve so I set about making a similar Amiga game. One of the main differences between Payback and GTA is that Payback's environment is fully 3D - not just the buildings, but the vehicles, trees, telephones and even the people. The physics in Payback are also a lot more advanced - vehicles are thrown around by explosions and can be rammed all over the place by heavier vehicles, for example. Payback also has a greater variety of vehicles than GTA - you can fly a helicopter or pilot a boat if you want. Also, GTA's framerate was limited to 12 fps (you could disable the frame limiter but it became unplayable) - Payback works fine at up to 30 fps (and I'll increase this for the PPC version).
DAD: The Payback game engine seems quite advanced. Which parts of it are you most proud of? How did you manage to keep the hardware requirements so low in relation to the engine complexity? How does the engine take advantage of better hardware (better graphics card, 3D acceleration, PowerPC processor)?
JD: The thing I'm most proud of (apart from the gameplay) is the fact that everything in the game is texturemapped - remember, there was a time when realtime texturemapping was thought impossible on the Amiga. I'm also pleased with the speed of the alpha-channelling since this has allowed me to use it all over the place (explosions, shockwaves, shadows, lens flares and even on the text) without slowing the game down noticeably. The main way I kept the speed up was to use assembler for key pieces of code such as the texturemapping and alpha-channelling routines. I was also able to further optimise some routines because the viewpoint doesn't rotate. The engine currently does not support 3D acceleration or PowerPC processors. However, if the game sells well enough, I intend to support both of them as soon as my PPC board is fixed.
DAD: Towards the end of the development you decided to include multiplayer deathmatch support and a level editor. These are obviously two common features of first person shooter genre on PC which are very popular lately. Gaming crowds enjoy deathmatches and levels often keep a game popular even several years after the release. Do you expect similar interest in these two features of your game?
JD: Yes, hopefully. The level editor currently only allows you to make multiplayer maps, but I may add support for making your own single player levels if there's demand for it (and it looks like there is).
DAD: Which part of the game development did you do yourself? Who were people that helped you most and what were their obligations?
JD: I did all of the design and coding as well as most of the graphics and sound effects. I also did the box design and adverts. Niko Moreira and George Davis did a lot of the new textures, and Niko also did the intro. The CD music was written and performed by Anomos, Chuckie Dogg Fresh, Cynic Guru, Dispatch, eH Factor, Gigas, JED, mellow26, Seeds of Labor, The Oldominion and Venom Records. The game was translated by the ATO and playtested by a team of about a dozen people. My brother modelled for the front cover and my Dad was the photographer. :)
DAD: Was the game entirely developed on Amigas or did you use any other computer platforms in the process as well ? Which were your most valuable tools during development?
JD: The game was entirely developed on the Amiga. The photograph used on the front cover did have to be scanned in on a PC but all the post-processing and DTP was done on the Amiga. StormC was the most valuable development tool. :)
DAD: How did you test the game for compatibility? How many Amigas do you own? What are their configurations?
JD: The game was tested for compatibility by running it on the playtesters machines. A lot of the problems that have been reported with the demo are due to the server being overloaded (resulting in incomplete archives) and a bug in the OS 3.9 unarc utility which changes some of the filenames. Any unrelated bugs which are reported will be fixed as soon as possible. I only own one Amiga which is a 32 MB AGA 040/25. However, I also borrowed a 16 MB 040/40 with Picasso SD64 to allow me to add graphics card support. I have also bought a second-hand PPC card (I gave up waiting for a new one after a year) which unfortunately didn't work when I got it home (even though I'd seen it working before I bought it). I've sent it back to DCE for repair, but it's been 4 months and it's still not been fixed. :(
DAD: Why did you decide to write a game for Amiga despite its current status? What kind of sales do you expect from the game? How many copies do you need to sell to at least cover the costs? Do you expect you'll reach that number?
JD: I decided to write the game for the Amiga because I understand the platform and it's much cheaper to launch a title into a smaller market. In order to cover the development costs (including lost earnings), I need to sell about 1000 copies. I'm cautiously optimistic that I will reach that number.
DAD: What are your future plans? Which will be your next product? Will there be a sequel to or any updates of Payback?
JD: I have plans for a totally new game as well as a sequel to Payback. However, I don't want to discuss them at least until development has begun.
DAD: Did you think about developing for other platforms: Linux, Mac, maybe even Windows?
JD: Payback will definitely be ported to the Mac and will probably appear on Linux and Windows eventually.
DAD: What is your opinion of AmigaDE? Do you expect it to be successful? Do you have any plans developing for it in the future?
JD: I like the concept but I'm a little concerned that Amiga don't yet seem to have added anything of value to Tao's kernel. I'll wait and see what they announce at St. Louis before deciding whether to develop for it in the future.
DAD: Is there anything you'd like to say to our readers at the end?
JD: Please download the Payback demo from http://www.apex- designs.net/payback_demo.html. If you like it then please buy the full game. It's available from http://www.apex- designs.net/shop/. You can also buy the game from Blittersoft or KDH Datentechnik.
DAD: Thank you very much for your interesting answers and good luck with Payback sales.
