We recently caught up with the developer and creator of Space Marmoreus. He talked to us about his app and the development process he went through. It is a good and very informative interview, so make sure to read it below!
We also have a review of Space Marmoreus!
Tell me a bit about yourself, and how you started developing android apps
Ah, the “tell me about yourself” question, the most dreadful question there is. I never knew how to answer that one, guess that’s one of the reasons I always sucked at job interviews. Well, my name is Adrian, I’m 28 years old, [and] live in Romania. I’ve been interested in computers ever since I was about 6 years old or so. Around that time I became a gamer when I made a new friend, went to his house (he had one of those old compaq systems, running dos) and he let me play Prehistoric.
[On] the first day of computer science in school (I think it was second grade), when I first touched Pascal Basic I knew I didn’t wanna just play games, I wanted to develop them too. Sadly I was never able to learn a programming language, hard as I tried I always failed. I guess my brain just wasn’t wired that way.
Only in recent years it became possible for me to create games too thanks to game creation software that doesn’t require coding. So I tried a bunch of em out Game Maker, Stencyl, RPG Maker, etc. In the end I settled on Construct 2. C2 seemed to work for me, for whatever reason I understood it and found my way around in it far better/easier then in the others.
I started playing around with it, and the rest is history. I am currently working on my third game.
What made you decide to make Space Marmoreus? Where did the idea come from?
I was actually watching a youtube tutorial on the basic use of physics in C2. There wasn’t really much gameplay in it, but the little there was made me think “Hey this might be fun if expanded.” And since I wanted to learn physics too I figured “Why don’t I just turn this tutorial into an entire game?”
So I ran with that and started making Space Marmoreus. It wasn’t easy at first, and it ended up requiring much more then just physics, but it was fun making it and I learned a lot from it.
Can you give me a quick overview of the game and what the objective is?
Well the universe, for whatever reason, has been invaded by legions of marmoreus’s (marmoreus means marble in latin for those who are wondering) and just like in any “quality” B movie guess what?! They are all heading towards earth, and you are the only one that can save the day! So you set out to fight them, and of course your ship gets damaged along the way.
You end up with a ship that can only be rotated, and has limited ammo. From there on the objective is simple, destroy as many marmoreus as you can (very seldom and on very few levels can you actually destroy them all, no matter how good you are) with the limited ammo you have available. The more of them you destroy the more score you get. And each level brings new challenges and some introduce new mechanics.
[The objective] is to get the highest score possible and submit it to the leaderboards to show off to your friends.
What did you do besides create the game in C2, did you create the art assets and the other assets for the game?
Nope. Sadly I suck at making music, though I did dabble a bit with the basic music/tone maker on my phone, but nothing extraordinary came out of it. And as far as drawing goes, I can barely draw a straight line. In grade school I was the kid who, when playing airplanes/sink the boat, had to have his airplane drawn by his classmates. As you can imagine that didn’t make me the most popular guy around.
So for Space Marmoreus I got the sound and graphic assets of the internet, a marble here, a background there, etc. That’s why the credits are so huge.
What has been the most challenging part of making this game?
The problem with my way of thinking is that after I solved a challenge it stops seeming so hard. So then when I look back at things I wonder “Was that actually hard to accomplish or am I just imagining things?”
Anyway, there where several things that seemed challenging at the time, I’m not sure I could pick just one. Setting up a proper save/load game system that didn’t mess things up every time I updated the game was hard, the behavior of certain marmoreus’s was also a challenge, the music and sound volume sliders where a real headache. There are probably other things that don’t come to mind right now.
But hey, in the end I got it done. And I’m mighty proud of it, even if the game doesn’t attract much attention or praise. I got it done, I had fun doing it, and I learned quite a bit.
That’s not such a bad deal for your second project, is it?
All that matters to me now is that the few people that do get to play it have fun with it, and that I take what I’ve learned and improve myself for the next game (which is in the works as we speak and should be coming out soon).
Sep 2 2015
Interview with Space Marmoreus Creator
We recently caught up with the developer and creator of Space Marmoreus. He talked to us about his app and the development process he went through. It is a good and very informative interview, so make sure to read it below!
We also have a review of Space Marmoreus!
Tell me a bit about yourself, and how you started developing android apps
Ah, the “tell me about yourself” question, the most dreadful question there is. I never knew how to answer that one, guess that’s one of the reasons I always sucked at job interviews. Well, my name is Adrian, I’m 28 years old, [and] live in Romania. I’ve been interested in computers ever since I was about 6 years old or so. Around that time I became a gamer when I made a new friend, went to his house (he had one of those old compaq systems, running dos) and he let me play Prehistoric.
[On] the first day of computer science in school (I think it was second grade), when I first touched Pascal Basic I knew I didn’t wanna just play games, I wanted to develop them too. Sadly I was never able to learn a programming language, hard as I tried I always failed. I guess my brain just wasn’t wired that way.
Only in recent years it became possible for me to create games too thanks to game creation software that doesn’t require coding. So I tried a bunch of em out Game Maker, Stencyl, RPG Maker, etc. In the end I settled on Construct 2. C2 seemed to work for me, for whatever reason I understood it and found my way around in it far better/easier then in the others.
I started playing around with it, and the rest is history. I am currently working on my third game.
What made you decide to make Space Marmoreus? Where did the idea come from?
I was actually watching a youtube tutorial on the basic use of physics in C2. There wasn’t really much gameplay in it, but the little there was made me think “Hey this might be fun if expanded.” And since I wanted to learn physics too I figured “Why don’t I just turn this tutorial into an entire game?”
So I ran with that and started making Space Marmoreus. It wasn’t easy at first, and it ended up requiring much more then just physics, but it was fun making it and I learned a lot from it.
Can you give me a quick overview of the game and what the objective is?
Well the universe, for whatever reason, has been invaded by legions of marmoreus’s (marmoreus means marble in latin for those who are wondering) and just like in any “quality” B movie guess what?! They are all heading towards earth, and you are the only one that can save the day! So you set out to fight them, and of course your ship gets damaged along the way.
You end up with a ship that can only be rotated, and has limited ammo. From there on the objective is simple, destroy as many marmoreus as you can (very seldom and on very few levels can you actually destroy them all, no matter how good you are) with the limited ammo you have available. The more of them you destroy the more score you get. And each level brings new challenges and some introduce new mechanics.
[The objective] is to get the highest score possible and submit it to the leaderboards to show off to your friends.
What did you do besides create the game in C2, did you create the art assets and the other assets for the game?
Nope. Sadly I suck at making music, though I did dabble a bit with the basic music/tone maker on my phone, but nothing extraordinary came out of it. And as far as drawing goes, I can barely draw a straight line. In grade school I was the kid who, when playing airplanes/sink the boat, had to have his airplane drawn by his classmates. As you can imagine that didn’t make me the most popular guy around.
So for Space Marmoreus I got the sound and graphic assets of the internet, a marble here, a background there, etc. That’s why the credits are so huge.
What has been the most challenging part of making this game?
The problem with my way of thinking is that after I solved a challenge it stops seeming so hard. So then when I look back at things I wonder “Was that actually hard to accomplish or am I just imagining things?”
Anyway, there where several things that seemed challenging at the time, I’m not sure I could pick just one. Setting up a proper save/load game system that didn’t mess things up every time I updated the game was hard, the behavior of certain marmoreus’s was also a challenge, the music and sound volume sliders where a real headache. There are probably other things that don’t come to mind right now.
But hey, in the end I got it done. And I’m mighty proud of it, even if the game doesn’t attract much attention or praise. I got it done, I had fun doing it, and I learned quite a bit.
That’s not such a bad deal for your second project, is it?
All that matters to me now is that the few people that do get to play it have fun with it, and that I take what I’ve learned and improve myself for the next game (which is in the works as we speak and should be coming out soon).
Related Posts:
By runner • Android, Interviews, Mobile Games • • Tags: puzzle, VIKINGS PRODUCTIONS