redspot announces sturmwind limited edition

[DCUltrapro]

I thought I'd update this with the latest info I found.. the reason I'm posting it is because of the wording of the post on my facebook feed:

http://3ds.gameplay.be/nieuws/33911/1/I ... -Sturmwind

"If you visit the gamescom in cologne take a look if you can find
someone from Redspotgames and play the final Sturmwind Version"

the page is in French but it will translate to English nicely via google chrome

hopefully this means we are nearing the end of the saga... I just hope they remember that I ordered the special edition with the model craft!!

ok EDIT!!

a friend of mine at RVG translated this and tidied it up, enjoy! The game is imminent by all appearances finally

====================================

Interview with Roland from Duranik

(Originally appeared on the French site Gameplay and translated for RVG)

Hello! Thank you for having agreed to answer our questions.

1. Sturmwind is an all new independent shoot-em up released exclusively on Dreamcast, a machine considered dead for years. What motivated this decision? Why this machine in particular?

The fact is, it is really fun to program on these machines. We have always loved consoles, and have spent many hours on the Mega Drive, the Snes, the Lynx and the Jaguar. At some point, we thought about a new project, and in reality contemplated developing for the Sega system. But that seemed to be too complicated to release something in the form of a cartridge.

2. A demo version of Sturmwind was unveiled a few weeks ago. It seems clear that Sturmwind shared many characteristics with the game Axelay (including weapons and some enemies). What is your favourite game type? Where did you draw the inspiration to design your title?


As you can see, one of the weapons of our game is directly inspired by Axelay. But we we are also inspired by other games such as Blood Money, Wings of Death and R-Type: i.e. games that could be regarded as "European shooters". We are clearly not fans of manic shooters, we are perhaps too old for it;)


3. The official name of your team is Duranik. How many people make up teh team? What is your roles in particular (music, design etc.)?

Duranik is composed of two people. One deals with the programming, graphics and level design. With regards to the music, we have worked with two artists; one did in-game music and the other intro and menu music.

4. The creation of video games is usually a full time job, do you also work alongside? Has Sturmwind been done during your free time?

We have both have full-time jobs and Sturmwind was created exclusively during our free time. This also explains why it took so long.

5. Precisely, how long did take to develop Sturmwind? The game has been delayed several times, are you able to say when it will be released?

I can't give you exact date, but most of the production problems were resolved and should therefore mean no more delay. I would probably say in a few weeks. It took about 6 years to develop this game during our free time. Full-time, it would probably take between one and two years.

6. When and how did you learn to create games? Were how old you when you first became interested in the creation of video games?

I would say around the year 1986, when our parents had purchased us an Atari ST for Christmas. That was the good old days! We were about 14-15 years old at the time. It's really great because these machines were easy to take in hand and it was possible to learn to program very quickly. Then, we were more interested in consoles. The best way to learn in this area is a look at other source code and books. Today, it is of course easier: you find all over the internet in a few seconds.

7. Is Sturmwind your first game?

No we have been creating games as a hobby for years. Most were released on the Atari platforms, for example a demo for the Jaguar called "Native", or even the game "Alpine Games" for Lynx and "Impulse" for the Falcon. If you are a fan of the Jaguar, please take a look at the version of Impulse by Matthias Domin: http://www.mdgames.de/impulsex_eng.html

8. Creating Sturmwind no doubt required much work. Where do you find the inspiration and are you scrambling after the fact at this point? With regard to an independent game, money was probably not your main motivation. Is that a challenge? Or did you just do it for your personal pleasure and for the pleasure of creating a game?

Probably for these reasons at the same time. Originally, the game was not expected to become important, but we played with it over so much time... to such point that was difficult to set a purpose. At some point, we were forced to set a limit or it would never have been possible to finish the game.

9. Do you expect to sell many copies of the game? Most of the time, independent games are not a great success, and this is particularly relevent given that Sturmwind was released on a dead console.

In fact, we have an idea of what we could be regarded as a success. It is difficult to guess at the moment what is the extent of the Dreamcast market and our goal is realistic.

10. In to the design of the game, was it impossible to use Katana, the official Sega SDK, for rights reasons? Of so then how did you do it?

There are no reasons to use Katana today, and it is really not worth trying to find it. This could bring benefits for debugging, but also disadvantages in other areas. Sturmwind was developed with KOS (a development environment free of rights) and we have modified many things to operate according to our needs for the project. There is no problem with KOS, it is perfect to develop with.

11. From a graphical point of view, Sturmwind is much more impressive than the other shoot'em up for Dreamcast. How is this possible without official development tools?

As I said, an official development kit is not necessary, as long as you know how to use the PowerVR chip and how to draw polygons, nothing more. The rest comes from your imagination, and no SDK creates itself as if by magic.

12. What advice would you give to a novice developer? Where should they start?

It is rather easy now, there is plenty of free tutorials around for all aspects of the creation of a game, graphics to programming tools. The best advice would be to start with some thing simple and an easy to learn programming language. It is not really the idea of the century to begin with attacking the Jaguar or the Saturn if you have never programmed in your life!

13. Are you already working on a new title? Dreamcast perhaps?

We have no plans for the future for the moment, everything will depend on our motivation and Sturmwind reception.

====================================

[Omnibot2000]

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Here's a new preview in german. Some footage of the newest version is shown and compared to the first release candidate.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jd7m9cqOD0[/youtube]

[dark]

Another preview, in French this time. A lot of footage of levels we've already seen, but still some SPOILERS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXmKawUn ... ature=plcp

[DCUltrapro]

still no word on a release date? I thought they had sorted the production problems out recently

[BrianC]

Duranik has been silent for a long time (RSG as well but no one should be surprised by that). Some guy on Facebook asked if they will be filing legal action against RSG soon and I'm trying to figure out if he has any credible information to back up a claim like that or if it is merely speculation (more likely of the two).

[cabou]

very recently on a french forum, a guy that claimed a refund from RSG, has been told (by Max Scharl) that the game should be released within 9 weeks...

[dark]

Well, Max has said in recent months it will definitely be released in 2012. And there's only maybe 10 weeks left before 2013

[BrianC]

Wasn't aware of any of that, thanks guys!

[everynewday84]

only a few days left before it comes out. I must say I'm really exited to get my hands on this. I hope it delivers...

Nice!

[DCUltrapro]

whats this about a claim/lawsuit? more rumours? I firmly believe it will release I have had emails from Max recently (a month or two ago) and I still think it will come, they had problems with the production of the packaging and media etc... hopefully Winter 2013