★ GAMES ★ EDITEURS ★ DENTON DESIGN: THE MERSEY BYTE|Popular Computing Weekly) ★ |
| Denton Design: The Mersey byte | Games Editeurs |
John Cook visits England's second city to meed the brains behind Beyond's Shadowfire - Denton Designs I've always had a healthy respect for anything vaguely Liverpudlian. . . Brookside, the Spinners and Emlyn Hughes notwithstanding that is. . .on the basis that any city with a spare cathedral, a spare football team and its own dialect of the English language definitely knows what it is doing. And perhaps it's not surprising that the same north-western hotbed of creativity that took the music biz to its heart all those years ago has produced a fair crop of ‘software stars'. Denton Designs, formed out of the chaos of the Imagine collapse just under a year ago, is working on a new approach to games creation. “The Dutch talk about total football - at Denton we talk about total programming.” So says Denton's Steve Cain. Denton is about the nearest thing to an anarcho-syndicalist programming commune that I have yet come across - the credits on their latest opus ran to twelve persons - but it's an approach that definitely works, as does the mix of programmers and artists within the company. It may not be run of the mill, but then, something radical was called for when six of the Bandersnatch ‘megagame' team suddenly found themselves out of work in a big way. Now, installed in its HQ in the shadow of cathedral number two near the famous Lime Street station, with one minor hit already ((Gift from the Gods for Ocean) together with some solid conversion work, and now the revolutionary adventure game, Shadowfire, things are a bit different. If anything, it is the Shadowfire project - the idea which started the company off in the first place - that incorporates all of the elements that have made Denton successful so quickly. Originality, great graphics, technical excellence and teamwork. Shadowfire is an icon-driven adventure (absolutely no text input) in which you control a ‘super-team' of five characters whose mission impossible type task is to rescue a hostage from the clutches of the evil General Zoff. I spoke to Dave Colclough (Commodore programmer) and Steve Cain (artist) who were largely responsible for the finished product - although Steve was quick to mention that everyone in the company had contributed to some extent. “We're not isolated teams,” he explained. “We're like a big family here, including the arguments!” So who had the idea for using icons in an adventure? Steve again. “There were always a lot of crazy ideas knocking around at Imagine. Ian Weatherburn had the idea for some sort of adventure with icons. When Imagine crashed we took it to Beyond, and they told us to go ahead.” However, Shadowfire has gone through several incarnations since then; originally the game had some text input - and only four team members. “The brief changed as it developed. We felt the overall team need more balance, so we created Sevrina - a female thief. We hope it gives the game a wider appeal.” The game scenario is set in a futuristic hi-tech world with cyborgs, time machined, and transporter beams . . . not unlike the equipment used to create it! I asked Dave to describe the various large black boxes in front of him. “We use Sage micros as development machines,” he told me. “This one's a Sage IV. It has a 68000 chip running at eight MegaHertz - effectively about eight times faster than a home micro.” Other statistics include one MegaByte of Ram, together with twelve Megs worth of memory on hard disc. “It's not just that it's faster,” Dave explained. “If you're writing for more than one machine, you can use a cross-assembler to assemble the source code - one that has the same syntax for both machines - and then download into the target.” Dave, like the rest of the Denton programmers, had no formal computing experience before picking up on home computers - initially he studied naval architecture, while John Heap (Spectrum Shadowfire programmer) taught himself Z80 code while on the dole. The arts side of Denton on the other had, are all ex-Liverpool School of Art. I asked Steve how, technically, they made the transition from other forms of art to computer graphics? “You tend to learn very quickly or you don't learn at all. The same principles of design apply, you've just got different limitations - size, shape, colour and resolution.” So how do they start designing on screen images? “The girls (Ally Noble an ex-graphic designer and Karen Davis previously specialising in textile design) prefer to design on graph paper before putting it on-screen. I use a graphics tablet connected to the Sage - and then download the date to the target machine,” said Steve. The results, as seen on Shadowfire are unusually good - and there is yet another unusual aspect of the game yet to be released - A ‘tuner' program that will allow the player to alter the strengths of the team and the opposition, which started life as in-house utility. An invaluable aid for those who like to dissect their games byte by byte. But what does the future hold for Denton Designs after Shadowfire? Their next ‘biggie' is Frankie Goes to Hollywood for Ocean, now in its final stages, and then some more conversion work. “Conversions are a waste of ability and creativity really,” said Steve, “but they do pay the wages!” Shadowfire II is in preliminary design stages with great promises of character animation. Three of the original team will survive to fight the next mission . . . but which three? (My money is firmly on Sevrina.) The project after that will be a joint Denton/Beyond venture, which Steve promises to be “a cross between Rollerball and Squash.” I can't wait. What comes across most when chatting to the Denton team, is their enthusiasm for writing and designing their games. They enjoy what they're doing . . . and they do it very well, Combined with their firm ideas on how a business should be run - without fast cars - expect to hear a lot more of Denton Designs.
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