Interview with Erik Hogan

[Daff]

The magazine Obligement publish today an interview with Erik Hogan, one of the few game developers on Amiga who has already published some goodies like his Special Editions of old commercial games and is about to release a new action game called AlarCity.

Interview in english:
http://obligement.free.fr/articles_t...twhogan_en.php

Interview in french:
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/itwhogan.php

[kamelito]

Nice interview, if not too late it will be interesting to know what tools has been used for coding, music, GFX, why AGA only, possible port to OCS/ECS, how far is he pushing the Amiga, lmitations he encountered How do they work together, IRL, via Internet, how do they keep being motivated...

[Predseda]

I think earok will answer all those questions here soon

[earok]

Originally Posted by Predseda

I think earok will answer all those questions here soon

You know me too well haha.

Originally Posted by kamelito

Nice interview, if not too late it will be interesting to know what tools has been used for coding, music, GFX, why AGA only, possible port to OCS/ECS, how far is he pushing the Amiga, lmitations he encountered How do they work together, IRL, via Internet, how do they keep being motivated...

• Coding: I use Blitz Basic more or less exclusively, with little bits of ASM here and there for speed.
• Music: I don't do anything in this arena, my collaborators use ProTracker I believe
• GFX: I only do little bits and pieces graphically, again that's mostly the realm of my collaborators. When I need to do graphic manipulation, I normally do it in Paint Shop Pro on PC, and then use ADPro to manipulate the image to get the palette, number of bitplanes and special features (HAM, EHB) I want.
• Why AGA only: At the moment AlarCity is the only AGA exclusive project from either myself or PixelGlass. AlarCity uses two AGA only features - 8 bitplanes (2x 4 bitplane dual playfields) and 32 pixel wide sprites. An OCS port is possible but would likely need some cutbacks in either performance or graphical fidelity, probably both. RTG is also another possibility for a future update.
• How far am I pushing the Amiga: That's quite a hard one to answer, I'm no where near as capable at squeezing the Amiga as a demoscener but I'd like to think there's some interesting qualities in the projects I work on nonetheless.
• Limitations he encountered: The primary one would be ChipRAM I guess, getting all of the graphics and audio assets that you want in a game can be difficult because of that limitation (and thus requires creative solutions). The performance limitations of the blitter and the 68000/68020 processors can be frustrating too.
• How do they work together: Internet only, I'm based in New Zealand but the rest of the people I work with are based in places like Greece, Australia, the US, Poland, the UK and a few others, so I haven't met any of my collaborators face to face.
• How do they keep motivated: I think the number one thing is the Amiga community really appreciates what we do (and in turn we really appreciate the massive support we've seen).

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by earok

• How do they work together: Internet only, I'm based in New Zealand but the rest of the people I work with are based in places like Greece, Australia, the US, Poland, the UK and a few others, so I haven't met any of my collaborators face to face.

Nooly (musician) is a friend of mine, lives in Czech Republic (Central Europe).

[Gzegzolka]

Great article

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Predseda

[/LIST]Nooly (musician) is a friend of mine, lives in Czech Republic (Central Europe).

Yup, did for us the title music for Alarcity

[kriz]

Great interview, + for extra answers Earok !!

[Lord Aga]

Somehow I read 'Hulk Hogan' and now my disappointment is immeasurable

[DamienD]

Hahahahaha

[kamelito]

Thanks for answering

One more thing, how did you met all the guys in the team? How does the project started?

[saimon69]

Well about music i use Milkytracker on Windows since have no real Amiga here in US but i guess Tsak uses protracker

[earok]

Originally Posted by kamelito

Thanks for answering

One more thing, how did you met all the guys in the team? How does the project started?

"Through EAB" is the short answer, the longer answer is that there's a story specifically for how I got working with Tsak. He reached out to me with a private message after I started working on Giana SE and offered his help, and ultimately because of his assistance (he ultimately did the bulk of the work), Giana SE ended up looking fantastic