This is the first in a series of interviews with creators of Shareware RPGs.
Artisans in their own right, these authors are able to do more with less. Some of these fellows may someday grace the next box of your favorite multimillion-dollar hit game title. Still unconvinced? Take a look back and see what Id Software was doing when they started - Commander Keen anyone?
The first author is a person who's been around shareware longer than most. With several titles under his belt, he continues to pump out CRPG after CRPG, all in the name of fun.
This first interview is with: "Rob, AKA: Doctor Dungeon" of Ultizurk fame.
LD: Doc, please describe yourself and your business, to give the readers a bit of information on your shareware gaming background.
Doctor Dungeon: My business is a one-man operation dedicated to making shareware role-playing games. The shop itself is located in the cellar, or dungeon of my house. Two computers are there, one an old 50 mhz, and the other a Hewlett Packard 166, where most of the work is done. Both of these are mounted on a huge glass-top conference table. Desks and tables surround this, with stacks of paper, notebooks, and a zillion marker pens scattered about. Through friends and family, I also have access to several other computers, useful for testing. I call this place the lab. Always interested in writing and electronics, it seemed creating games was ideal, as it tends to merge these two.
LD: When not making shareware, what do you do professionally? Or is shareware your profession?
Doctor Dungeon: Hopefully, shareware may ultimately be my profession, or perhaps some capacity in the commercial industry. I do various jobs at my brother's auto dealership, but in my heart I'm mostly a movie producer. Nice combo to make role-playing games.
LD: What language did you select for programming your games? Was it because of prior familiarity with the language, performance reasons, or did other factors come into play?
Doctor Dungeon: At first, quite a number of years ago when DOS was king, I used VBDOS Pro, but the result in those days was never as technically elegant as a project done in assembly or C. With the advent of windows 32 bit platforms and top end packages like VB5, it became possible to do the sort of things that were previously the realm of C++. Since a role-playing game is unlikely to need the ultra speeds of say, a flight sim or other speed-hungry project, VB5 and 6 with Win95 or 98 becomes a viable platform to create a quality product. I am certain Ultizurk IV: Lord of the Cyclops, will prove that.
LD: Do you have a favorite series of commercial games? Do any of them influence your game design?
Doctor Dungeon: Probably the Ultima games. They seem most immersive to me, and combine elements that we like to see in a good role-play, the party, the stats, etc., with a moving story. This leads to a memorable experience. The real-life simulation in the latter Ultimas added dramatically to this effect, and real-world physics is a feature I consider priority in my own latter games like MadMan, and especially in Ultizurk IV. I've already gone quite overboard in the sheer amount of things you can "use", like exploding cigars that will wipe out a whole pack of monsters, and turn itself into a portrait of Ol' Killer, the enigmatic character that graces most of my games. I'm really shooting for a "if you can touch it you can use it" feature, in addition to innumerable other factors that will honestly allow me to declare this game EPIC.
LD: It's a fight to the death between celebrity icons Uncle Sam and Orville Redenbacher. Who wins?
Doctor Dungeon: I don't know who Orville Orville Redenbacher is, but I'd lay my odds on Uncle Sam, if it's the real McCoy in the red, white and blue. :) You know...the one who wants YOU.
LD: I notice that you don't have an official home page. Are you going to create one, or do you feel that your game's distribution is good enough as-is?
Doctor Dungeon: Shortly after UZ4's release, I plan to finally look into an actual web page, probably called "The Castle of The Mach Gryphon". You'll meet them - mach gryphons - in UZ4 - creatures that came from a nightmare I had, pets of the eerie cyclops... If you like Ultima, if you like Led Zeppelin, if you like H.P. Lovecraft, if you like the "Terminator", you'll probably like UZ4.
LD: You call yourself "Doctor Dungeon". Where did that nickname come from?
Doctor Dungeon: I don't know. I have no idea where I dreamed up this name, but I think it was sometime during making "The Great Ultizurkian Underland". I do remember it in conjunction with a fellow online friend when we used to help out a lot of kids getting started in programming on an online service's programming section.
LD: The word "Ultizurk" is certainly unique. Does it have any significance, or did it just sound like a good name for a computer RPG?
Doctor Dungeon: My all time favorite of all games will always be ZORK, and in those long-gone days of early adventures, when I was starting to program, my goal was to make my own "ZORK", which I called "ZURK", to make the name new, yet to sound as a tribute to that grandaddy of computer games. These were all-text games. I made nine of them. Later, when I gave up the old Zilog Z80-based machine (now practically an antique!), and moved to the first 286's, I made two more games called "Heritage of Zurk" Anyone who played UZ1 will hear references to the Heritage games, and the entire library in Underland talks of stories which actually exist among the nine early text games. Shortly thereafter I fell in love with Ultima, thanks to "Martian Dreams" - another favorite. This led to my first graphic attempt at an Ultima-like game, thus, "Ultima-Zork"; Ultizurk. Original, yet a tribute to my two favorite series.
LD: Modern commercial RPGs have (fairly recently) started to focus on graphical quality that is extremely hard to match at home. What can shareware games offer that commercial games overlook? As a shareware author, what is the most limiting factor you must grapple with?
Doctor Dungeon: Shareware offers a depth of playability which, with a few recent exceptions, fell short in many commercial products that emphasized the "eye candy" aspect. The idea was to appeal to a larger audience. However, watching the progress of these, it became clear that the best approach was to cater to a niche audience what they most want. This is likely why, for example, the Exile games became so popular. They are not eye-candy, but are very rich in detail and role-playing, which is what the players of such games really want. The biggest limiting factor in shareware is twofold: One is graphics. Since the industry has become so specialized, its almost impossible to make competitive graphics, and we are also limited in that we must make files distributed via the internet, etc., of a reasonable size. The other factor is the sheer complexity of a role-playing game. After 18 months of work on UZ4, the code alone is ten times larger UZ3, Underland and MadMan combined. It requires a little madness, thus the title of my last DOS game. :)
Go to: Page two of the interview