EveryDay Shooter creator Jonathan Mak
Now that you have some idea of what EveryDay Shooter is about (click here
if you missed our exclusive hands-on preview of the PS3 version), its
time for you to meet its maker, our fellow Canadian Jonathan Mak.
Before making his way to Los Angeles for the E3 Media & Business
Summit, he took the time to answer our questions via email. Here's what
he had to say.
How did you connect with Sony to publish EveryDay Shooter?
One
day, Warren Currell, who represents me in the business side of things,
called me up saying, "pack your bags, we're going to LA to meet Sony."
I hate doing pitch meetings, talking business, basically doing anything
other than making games, so it was a bit of a chore to fly down. When
we arrived at the Sony studios, I remember walking into the conference
room thinking "oh geez...this is going to suck!" Let me put
this into perspective: one of the publishers we met trashed Everyday
Shooter because it had no sound effects (Huh!?? Did they even play
it?). So I had a lot of bad experience with publisher meetings.
But
Sony was different. Surprisingly, and refreshingly different. They were
one of the few who understood the game on a personal level, and this is
the main reason why I decided to connect with Sony.
You're the
quintessential one-man garage band game creator, while Playstation 3 is
supposed to be incredibly hard to program for. Were you nervous about
moving development of EveryDay Shooter from PC/Mac/Linux to Playstation
3? How long did it take you to get the game up and running on the PS3,
and what kind of help did Sony provide?
It's only incredibly hard if you're trying to emulate life. This bugs me a lot. The technology in EveryDay Shooter is old.
The collision systems are based on algorithms from the 90s, and the
graphics/sound technology is based on techniques from years ago. But
those technologies/techniques are still incredibly powerful/expressive!
I can't understand why people don't use it more often. It's like
they're substituting technology for creativity.
To specifically
answer your question, yes I was nervous, but after a few days without
sleep I had EveryDay Shooter running on the PS3. Of course there were
problems, and there are probably still more problems to fix--you should
ask me again when it's all said and done because who knows what QA will
find.
However, I'd say that the most frustrating part of building
ES for PS3 was converting the gameplay to fit a widescreen [16:9]
format. Originally, I spent a good deal of time tweaking the game so
that it played perfectly on a 4:3 screen, and so I wanted to maintain
the same game balance that I worked so hard to achieve. I mean, if I'm
going to do this, the conversion has to be perfect. Anything else is
unacceptable. Fortunately, after an unbelievable amount of worrying and
work, I think I've finally implemented the last major tweak to make the
game play perfectly.
As for Sony's involvement, they were helpful
in hooking me up with useful resources like documents, sample code, and
answering whatever questions I had.
How has the game evolved since you began working on the PS3? Is the album metaphor that you've been working with still in place?
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