Interview with Anders Hejdenberg, Developer of Dark Nebula

[PurSuiT]

This has got to be one of the best and most polished games for the ipod Touch and iphone. Can not wait for EP2

 

 

Interview with Anders Hejdenberg, Developer of Dark Nebula

 

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/01/apptalk...of-dark-nebula/

 

When starting out, we only had a rough idea of what we wanted to accomplish – but the main thing initially was to get the controls right. Without good controls, you have nothing. We started out using touch controls, but it just didn’t feel right. We tried out various different methods, but having your fingers all over the screen just felt too intrusive. We were used to making games that were controlled with analog sticks and buttons, and touch control was just not good enough for this type of game.

 

The reason we were so hesitant to implement accelerometer-based controls at first was because the games we had played that had used this method did not feel very good. We thought it was the accelerometer’s fault, but it turned out that the controls were just not implemented very well. With a great deal of tweaking and tuning by our programmer, we managed to get a result that felt great.

Once we had the controls in place we actually built the game around that. If it was fun to move in a certain way, we would create obstacles and traps that required that type of movement. The result was a game where everything you encounter is built around what you can do, and what is fun to do control-wise.

 

 

We realized that the difference in ability between one person and another can be quite extreme, which made it very difficult for us to design the levels. One person would get bored because the game was too easy, while another would find the same level almost too hard. Since the right difficulty is crucial to how much you will enjoy a game, we decided to have the game adapt to how you played. If you play well, the game gradually gets harder – and if you struggle to complete a certain section the game will adapt to your skill.