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The Write Stuff: what it takes to create your own SF game company

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to throw in your day job, and leave it all behind to spend years creating a science fiction computer game?

We interview Andrew Ewanchyna from ApeZone - the creator of the brilliant Starships Unlimited computer game - to discover if he is brave, foolhardy, wise, or a gibbering madman!

What's the history of Apezone games and your own personal history, as we are presuming ApeZone is a 'lone wolf' company.

Yes, I'm a lone wolf developer.

I left a successful 11-year career at a flight simulations company to write Starships Unlimited and start ApeZone.

It took me 3 years of development before I released it. I had written some games for the Coleco Adam while in university and had always planned on going back to writing games.

How did you get into game programming?

My father bought the family a TI-99 back in the golden age of personal computers (early 80s). There were alot of magazines in those days that included game source code in BASIC.

Each month I'd type in the games so I could play them. Eventually, I found it more interesting to see how the games were written than in actually playing them. This lead me to writing my own. I started off by modifying the games included in the magazine, then eventually progressed to writing an arcade game in assembly code. I only had 4Kb of memory to work with in those days.

What gave you the idea to do Starships Unlimited?

Boredom at work and a desire to get back into writing games. I'd always loved naval history and sci-fi. Shows like Star Trek glamorized naval combat with a sci-fi twist.

The two seem perfect together. Having never found a computer game that captured the feeling of starship combat correctly, I figured my first project would be to write one. It gradually grew from a starships combat game to a space conquest game.

What games have influenced your own work?

The old Apple 2 game called The Warp Factor, Civilization, Star Control II, Heroes of Might and Magic II and CyberStorm I.

Each had some aspect that I wanted to capture in Starships Unlimited. Another strong influence was wargame miniatures. Unfortunately, I never grew up playing them, but found out about them on the web.

I use to build a lot of models when I was a kid, so miniatures have a strong fascination for me.

What programming tools do you favour?

Ones that keep on working. I started Starships Unlimited with Symantec C++ on a Windows 3.11 system. When it came time to upgrade to my Windows 98 machine, the compiler wouldn't run.

Eventually I switched to an old version of Visual C++. I use Moray (a 3D modeler) and Povray (a ray tracer) to generate the graphics.

Working on anything else, or is Starships Unlimited going to continue to be the focus of your attention?

I've thought through a few ideas for my next project. I've got a couple of ideas for sci-fi games, one an action/adventure and the other an episodic strategy game. But I'll probably pursue a *simple* strategy game involving naval ships, nothing as involved as Starships Unlimited.

I'll continue improving Starships Unlimited, though. I'm currently working on version 3.0, which should be out in a couple of months.

What's your favourite SF movie and book?

Hmm, that's tough as there's so many. Off the top of my head, for movies: the X-Men, the original Planet of the Apes, Aliens, and the first Star Wars.

For books, another hard one. For books that I've read more than once or would read again: Heinlein's "Starship Troopers", Attanasio's "The last legends of Earth", Vinge's "A Fire upon the Deep", and Hogan's Giants novels (Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and Giants' Star).

Is it difficult being a Lone Wolf developer, when you're up against the combined might of department-sized development teams at the big players? And what do you think are the advantages of being a small outfit?

It's difficult being a lone wolf developer, regardless of external factors. I think you need to have a strong passion for what you're doing. I personally see writing games as a kind of art (or at least a craft).

It requires the right environment for it to work, something not all people are willing to sacrifice for. I think that designing games by committee leads to blandness, just like in the movie biz. Big players are businesses first and foremost.

They sacrifice ingenuity in products for ingenuity in marketing. There's nothing wrong with this, as it makes good business sense, but they are not usually the source for the next big thing.

The graphics in Starships Unlimited seem very good - are they really all your own work? It must be quite rare to find someone with artistic ability and coding skills?

Yes, they're really my own work. I use Moray and Povray to generate the graphics. I did a lot of model building, including ships-in-a-bottles, when I was young so constructing ships was old hat for me.

Using a 3D modeler allows me to build up an object just like the plastic models of my youth. I think the graphics are good but could be better, something I'm working on improving for the next version.

I wanted to get across a kind of board game-like clarity to the graphics. Creating the alien faces was the most challenging part for me as it was the most organic.

The next version will allow users to add their own graphics so they can customize things to their liking. I think the rendering tools available now allow for art to be made more easily than in the past. I can't draw for beans.

Did you approach any of the big publishers about getting your game out there, or are you happy to plough your own path, so speak, and handle the distribution yourself?

I never planned on approaching any publishers, as I wanted to try the internet biz first hand. Part of doing all this was to learn how to create my own business. I find it fascinating how I can sell electrons instead of atoms.

I enjoy the non-programming aspects of the job. After spending 3 years working alone on a project, it's kind of nice to talk to people about what you've done. And marketing is all about talking to people.

Are you going to be getting jiggy with the new .net stuff that Microsoft is pushing?

With all that 'internet is the new world view' built into the core of .net, it could be a great platform for online gaming.

Do you think online gaming is going to grow from strength to strength?

A lot of the development efforts by the likes of Ultima Online and co. seem to be being scaled back now the internet gold rush has died a death.

I'm not really an online gamer, so I don't follow these things too closely. I thing that a new medium like the internet requires a number of false starts before someone finally gets it right, whether it be in online gaming or selling games online.

I think it's a question of finding the right fit to attract your target audience.

Luckily, it's still a growth industry.

If you want a trial version of Starships Unlimited, surf on over to ApeZone.com

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