| ★ GAMES ★ GAMES - MAKINGOF - WILD WEST SEYMOUR (BIG RED SOFTWARE) ★ |
Read about seymour (1/5) (Amstrad Action) | Graphics detail (2/5) (Amstrad Action) | Taking shape (3/5) (Amstrad Action) | Code & chips (4/5) (Amstrad Action) | Finishing touches (5/5) (Amstrad Action) |
It's the third month of our How A Game is Made series. Photos are racing in from Morecambe, graphics are arriving from Macclesfield, and ADAM PETERS is sitting at his desk in Bath, pulling everything together... Large things are afoot in the world of Big Red Software. Jon Cartwright, the bloke who will be programming Seymour's Wild West, has been taken on full-time, and the whole gang are getting set to pack their bags and leave Macclesfield. They've booked a space in the latest new building to appear at CodeMasters' Leamington Spa HQ. As this issue was going to press, we got a call from Big Red dude Pete Ranson. He has now completed all the other projects he was working on, and is turning his attentions full-time to Seymour's Wild West. A lot more graphics, particularly backgrounds (see below), have been designed, and the game is starting to really take shape. Jon originally got into programming by writing games on the Dragon 32 (you could get a pint of lager and a packet of chips for sixpence in those days, kids). He can program in many different languages and has written various types of program, including serious applications such as databases etc. He likes playing computer games, rock climbing, and playing pool. He doesn't like getting up in the morning. And his favourite band are, er, The Police. Pete has started collecting all the puzzles together and is deciding which ones to use in the game. Depending on which puzzles are chosen, he will then 'knit' together some sort of story, and eventually, a complete game spec. Wild West has now reached the stage where a new face is to be added to the throng; that of Jon Cartwright, the programmer. Having just completed a university degree course, Jon is racing down from Morecambe to team up with the Reddies at their new Leamington pad. By the time the programming of the code actually commences, the project will be into its fourth month of development and most of the map (graphics) will have been completed. There are going to be a lot of in-jokes in the game if some of the ideas we've heard so far make it to the final cut. One idea is to have codes hidden throughout the game which, when found, should be Then there's the bus. Big Red Software is clearly a name based on the phrase 'big red bus'. The bus is something of a totem for Big Red, and they'd like to get it in a load of their games. But they haven't got it in any yet. They actually planned to hire a big red bus last year and drive it around for publicity! Designing sprites is a highly skilled technique. Here we see Big Red artist Pete Ranson working on the sprites for the 'death sequence', adding a hat to the Hollywood sprites. >> Members of the CodeMasters team will appear in the game and there is also talk of a possible cameo role for Dizzy. There will be phones littered around the place - pick one up and Seymour will ring the 0898 helpline number. Occasionally it'll give you a clue, sometimes it won't. After all, if they give it all away, you won't need to waste all your (parents') money ringing the real helpline. As for the Amstrad graphics, these aren't done till a lot later. Big Red don't do straight Spectrum ports, they like to spend time shading and colouring the characters. They tend to do everything in four-colour mode, partly because it's easier to convert from Spectrum in that way (otherwise it would take too long) but also because the Reddies think four-colour graphics look really ace on the Amstrad. Doing it in 16 colours would require double-width pixels, which could also look like nice but just wouldn't be possible when using the Spectrum graphics as a base. Next month things are going to start getting really manic as Jon launches into the programming, Pete picks out what puzzles are going to be used, and the game starts coming together in a big way. Watch this space... ADAM PETERS , AA |
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