Here is our interview with Duranik, huge thanks to Roland. Enjoy
The LairdI loved the demo cartridge you did for the Lynx it had some amazing
looking stuff on it, have you ever considered turning any of those demos
into full games.
Roland / DuranikNot really. We enjoyed working on the Lynx, it was a lot of fun. But if
you work now with it, the screen is just a pain to work, for the
eyes unfortunately. So unless someone creates a Lynx remake with a
modern LCD, i donīt think we will work on another Lynx project.
The LairdAlpine Games is widely regarded as being the best looking game on the
Lynx, are you proud of just how great that game actually is?
Roland / DuranikWe were pleased with the end result, but of course you could always
improve things, for example looking back, I think the bobsleigh event
is pretty boring and should have been replaced with something else, a
simple ice hockey for example
The LairdPretty much every Jaguar CD owner has the Native demo and is amazed
by it, did you ever work on any more levels for the game or anything
else for the Jaguar.
Roland / DuranikWe had some more stuff as I recall, but its been a long time ago, so its
hard to tell what exactly.
Looking back we should have at least added some Sound FX to the game,
which would have been easy enough.
AmigaJayHow long has the Sturmwind taken from start to finish, obviously the game
was started on the Atari Jaguar, also how many people have contributed
in making the game?
Roland / DuranikSturmwind took probably around 5-6 years. It should have been possible
to finish it much faster but we did lots of levels and other stuff that
didnīt make it into the finished game. If we would have started with a
more focused approach we would have been able to do it in probably 3
years. That's all part time as we have full regular jobs.
AmigaJayDo you feel like you have pushed the Dreamcast to the limits hardware
wise with this game?
Roland / DuranikWell there is lots of different areas a hardware can be pushed, for
example how many pixel do you draw, or how many polygons are you drawing
and calculating, if you push one part of the hardware it doesn't
necessary mean you push the other parts as well. In our case we use a
lot of the Power VR and are drawing a lot of alpha blended pixels, so we
pushing this part of the hardware really hard, but we do not need that
many polygons per screen.
AmigaJayDo you worry piracy will take away from your profits and would you
consider making more games on the result of poor sales?
Roland / DuranikThe community decides if they want to see more projects, it's simple. Of
course nobody will start any new complex project if there
is no possibility to sell more than a hand full of pieces.
DreamcastRIPWhat's your favourite shmup?
Roland / DuranikI am an old school guy, so I like the old ST/Amiga stuff like Blood
Money, Wings of Death, RType etc. For the newer stuff I
would go with Ikaruga and Under Defeat.
DreamcastRIPWhat were the main challenges in making Sturmwind?
Roland / DuranikProbably trying to justify and defend ourselves from our family and
friends why the hell we are spending so much time on an
10 year old machine.
DreamcastRIPWill Sturmwind ever make it to PSN or XBLA?
Roland / DuranikVery unlikely. Perhaps we would try to get it to the Vita if there would
be a possibility but thats also highly unlikely.
zapiyNot being a huge scene user, can you tell us a bit about how Duranik
came about?
Roland / DuranikWe are just 2 brothers who enjoyed making games on the old Atari
Systems. We started with the ST, later moved to the
Falcon. We were also always interested in the video game consoles like
Mega Drive and SNES and of course the Lynx and
the Jaguar.
Jag_SalveWhat software did you use to create the animations in Native?
Roland / DuranikWe are using Newtek Lightwave, this was used for Native and also for
Sturmwind, of course Native used a many years older version, but it's
still basically the same program. We also used stuff like Photoshop and
lots of others programs.
