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.