Podcast interview with the Jetpac team (by Major Nelson)
Podcast. That thing that everybody wants to have on their sites to be sure their voices get to each corner in the world. And easier, and we bet less elaborated, way to interview people as well. But not that great if you haven't past your English TOEFL exam yet or if you just want to skip the rest of digressions about other things that you don't bother at all. So, here it is, the whole interview that Major Nelson did to the Jetpac Refuelled team (if we can call them "a team") in text form for your reading pleasure. Don't even think of listening to the mp3 audio format before it!
Major Nelson: Alright, so we’re going to talk to those guys right now, so here’s Nick and Andy from Rare talking about Jetpac.
Nick Burton & Andrew Wilson: Hi, how’re you doing? Hi, Larry.
MN: I’m doing great, so Nick and Andy... Nick, we’re going to start with you. Nick, what are you working on... I mean, obviously, I’m having you on the line here because Jetpac Refuelled is the big Xbox Live Arcade title next week, and you guys worked on that... Nick, what did you do with that title?
Nick: Um…I was Lead Software, and did a lot of the design on it as well, um... so... we had a fairly small team, obviously, so you’ve got to sort of double up roles on that, really. Um, most of the software was me, really.
MN: Got it. So when people are playing, you know, Jetpac Refuelled which is being released next week on the Xbox Live Arcade for 400 points, they’re going to be playing with your code. Is that a good thing to say?
Nick: Yeah, that’s a good thing to say, and one of our other programmers did a hell of a lot of Live work as well. A guy called Jens Restemeier, who should be credited as well. Thanks Jens, if you're listening.
MN: So one of the things I’d like to go through is... this is the big title for the Arcade next week, or you know, the coming week... what can people expect in Jetpac Refuelled and how does it... how did you modernize...? I mean, this is really from the 1983 classic version, so what did you guys do to kind of bring it up to speed? Then I want to hand it off to Andy because he obviously worked on the title as well.
Nick: Well, it’s a sort of a bit of a funny story actually, ‘cause the original Jetpac on the Sinclair Spectrum... which I don’t know if you guys even had in the States... but it was one of the first games I ever played, and I remember it being like a real Arcade experience... you know, it sort of... back in the day, it was like the Defender of Home Computers... wanting to recapture that now. I mean, if you go back and play it now, it’s quite slow and pedestrian ‘cause obviously everything’s moved on, become a lot more glitzy, a lot more... sort of adrenaline-fueled...
MN: Sure.
Nick: We wanted to try and get that over again. The... you know... when someone coming into it new was playing it, they’d sort of feel how I felt when I first played it like 20-odd years ago.
MN: Now you’ve actually worked on... tell me about some of the other titles that you’ve worked on.
Nick: Um... I did a lot of the graphics programming on Kameo: Elements of Power as well, and before that, Star Fox Adventures.
MN: Wow, so you’ve been around. See, you made a comment there about the 1983 version being a little bit slower. Have you noticed that as somebody who plays games, but also somebody who’s designed them as well... that the games are getting faster and faster for whatever reason... that the audience wants faster games?
Nick: Yeah... I mean, they’re getting faster, but you can only do that up to a point, obviously. I mean, if you look back to the early 80’s and see things like Defender and Robotron, you couldn’t really go much faster than those. You kind of... you want that intense experience, but you also need to modernize it as well...
MN: Sure.
Nick: Which we were very conscious of keeping the core Jetpac elements from the original of building the rockets and taking off to the next level... but getting... sort of much more complex gameplay within just that bare mechanics so we have to do it with lots of different aliens and the way the aliens interact. For instance, a way to defeat... or a weakpoint for every single alien in the game, but they don’t always become apparent, and then when you get mixes of aliens, that... like Geometry Wars. There’s always a way to get out of trouble and, you know, beat and get to the next level. It just... gets quite tricky when you get into the 30’s, 40’s, and upwards, all the way to Level 128.
MN: You know, you were talking about some of the games you developed... what was it like developing an Xbox Live Arcade Title? ‘Cause, you know, there’s space limitations around it. It’s a little bit different than making a game that you’re going to press onto a DVD. What was that process like, having to code it?
Nick: Um... it’s an interesting one. You’ve obviously got... everything you do has a very tight space requirement, so you’ve got to be thinking that all the time because of the download limit.
MN: Right.
Nick: There’s a benefit there as well... because you’ve now not got so much code really to worry about. It’s liberating in that way.
MN: Right.
Nick: And if you’re thinking of smaller parts of the experience as well, you’re probably not pushing the hardware as much in other areas. So yeah, while you have download memory limitations... as far as the actual physical memory of the console is concerned, and the speed the console’s running at... it’s not such a problem, you know. If you look back on something like Kameo, I’d be going to the Lead Engineer and saying “Can I have like 100,000 grass polygons or whatever for a level?” and he’d be “Ah, that’s going to require some serious optimization.”
MN: Right.
Nick: But with Jetpac, it’s like “Yeah well, we have 250,000 particles here, so that’s fine.”
*Both share a laugh*
Nick: Because when you have 4,000,000 , it doesn’t really matter.
MN: Yeah. Is it also a little bit more challenging because you have to... you’re working off of a classic? You know, you’ve got existing Intellectual Property (IP) which you’re dealing with, as opposed to Kameo, which was kind of new. Was it difficult to bring the feel of Jetpac to Jetpac Refuelled?
Nick: Not as difficult as you expect as far as sort of the way it controls. Um, yes, it’s more finessed. But to be perfectly sort of honest as far as that kind of thing is concerned, there’s not much challenge with that; the challenge is getting the balance there, providing that you’re going to go through a lot of iterations and a lot of people playing it and also knowing you’re not your own audience, ‘cause if you’ve been playing this game for sort of 6 months, you know, or 12 months, off and on, you get pretty good at it. And then you give it to someone else who’s never played it before, and then you realize you’ve made it way too hard.
MN: Yeah.
Nick: That was one of the biggest challenges as far as the playability was concerned.
MN: I want to talk to Andy about what it was like producing this game. Andy, what was your role in this game and how... what does a producer do with an Arcade title?
Andy: It’s probably slightly different to what a producer would be normally over here at Rare for a full 360 title in a sense, we had a smaller team... so it was sort of a call team of 3 people and then we had like 6 or 7 other people sort of dipping in and out and sort of producing content for the actual title, so it was different in that sense, as in we weren’t always altogether. So you’ve got to make sure the team is focused, falling in the right direction, even though they’re not always there. It’s also a case of what Nick was saying... he was sort of dipping into the design... the design was pushed by myself, him, Jens as well, and a few other people outside of the team so... it’s sort of all that in at the same time. So it was slightly different, but good at the same time.
MN: Andy, what are some of the titles that you’ve worked on in the past that maybe some of the listeners would know?
Andy: I helped out in a production role on Conker, for the Xbox. I also helped out on the other titles while they were down for the release of the 360, Kameo, a bit more in sort of an off-team position... I suppose the role I’ve had has been more sort of a global company, one sort of dipping in and helping as and when I’m required.
MN: Sure.
Andy: So it’s not specifically one team; it’s sort of helping out as and when.
MN: Some of the... I talked about this with Nick a moment ago that Jetpac Refuelled is kind of a modernized version of the 1983 version. What are some of the features in the new version that when people get onto Xbox Live Arcade this week to download it... what are they going to see? What are some of the new features?
Andy: Of course, the main thing that we have done is that we have Live on there. It’s something we couldn’t have done on the Spectrum, back in those days, or in any of the other versions of Jetpac. It was hard to do; it was hard to get in.
MN: Sure.
Andy: ‘Cause as Live is, as everybody knows, it’s a hard thing to get going.
MN: Right.
Andy: We think it works quite well. It seems to be quite a tight game for everyone to be playing, you’ve got a lot of... you’ve got a lot of this twitch game playing, people doing it. You’ve got the Live aspect of it. You’ve got the whole Achievements...
MN: Yeah, tell me. What are some of the Achievements that people can expect? Give me one or two of the cool ones.
Andy: We’ve got a nice Viral one...
MN: Oh?
Andy: Which people would be able to see once you’ve actually stopped playing it... I don’t want to give away too many details...
MN: Okay.
Andy: But, no, we thought it was pretty good. They should enjoy getting that, and hopefully it’s worthy because they can’t specifically go out and try and get it , because if you’re not playing it, then maybe you will get it along the way.
MN: So Jetpac Refuelled is kind of based on the classic... do we also get the classic as well as this... in this download?
Andy: Yeah, yeah, we’ve included that... just for sort of all of the retro fans out there who still wanted to play it. It’s there in all its glory. We tweaked it a little bit, so it’s running at as faster speed than it would’ve basically in the old days...
MN: Yeah.
Andy: So it plays quite nice.
MN: Yeah, processors are a little bit faster nowadays, aren’t they?
Andy: *laughs* That’s it.
MN: What... working on this title... I talked to Nick a little bit about this... what are some of the things... some of the other titles... but what are some of the concerns you have? You know, you’ve got the space limitation. You know, it’s a different type of game than some of the other games you’ve worked on. Was that refreshing? Did you have to relearn some new things as a producer?
Andy: It was okay. It wasn’t too bad. The main things we had to watch out for, I suppose, were content. We have sort of a lot of talented, creative guys over here who just want to get as much high quality content in there as possible, so of course, you’re limited with it in a sense in the amount of backgrounds, the amount of bodies, how many frames Jetman can use...
MN: Right.
Andy: The amount of audio you can use... in that side of it. So trying to sort of reign that in so people will be happy with the content still there and still at a good, high level.
MN: I mean, I know a lot of people are excited for Jetpac, because, like I say, it’s one of the classics. We’ll have it on Xbox Live Arcade this Wednesday. It’s going to be 400 points. Nick and Andy, I appreciate you guys taking the time to chat with me today.
Nick & Andy: No worries, thanks very much!
