Continuing from part 1 of my journey into the world of ZX Spectrum Next video game development for our debut title, UrbX Warriors (with my partner in crime Tony Warriner) I suppose the next bit I should write about is how the look of the game came about. But… before I get to that which will be in part 3, I feel I should talk about how a chance meet turned into a collaboration that lead to the birth of this game we’re working on, UrbX Warriors. You see it all started at a retro gaming event…or did it?
Zzap! Live 2023
I first met Tony (in person) at Zzap! Live 2023, we immediately clicked from the off. Both of us were invited by Chris Wilkins to appear on the Legends Panel for a talk during the event. Tony also had a table in the traders hall selling signed copies of his rather excellent book, “REVOLUTION: The Quest for Game Development Greatness“. Before the show opened I helped him carry some boxes of his books in from the car and we kinda got talking from there. We were not quite strangers however as previously we had both been virtual guests on the Pixel Refresh podcast hosted by that lovely chap, James Woodcock – check his site out as it’s a real treasure trove of content all superbly presented.
So where was I, oh yes, Zzap! Live; We were chatting on Tony’s table and he asked if I would be interested in working with him on his game as he needed some graphics, this would be in a work for hire capacity. I can’t quite recall the exact words but of course I was open to the idea. A few months later, it may of been weeks I can’t quite recall, Tony emailed me and we got chatting. The game in question was “Wormhole Dungeon” and having since played the demo, it’s really going to be rather good.
I don’t generally do a lot of video game stuff these days as I tend to do more illustration work or don my management head and do that creative consultancy thing (give me a shout if you need some creative direction!); so when I do work on something it has to interest me.
We agreed terms and I began working on some level graphics for, Wormhole Dungeon, This was a purely work for hire gig so once I’d done my bit that was it. Off we parted… for a while…
Usually when I create tileset graphics I take on the level editing role too, this is so I can tweak, adjust and push the look as I go. From the earliest days of my career whenever I do tiles I like to make sure the join isn’t that obvious and if space permits reduce the appearance of obvious tile patterns. On this one Tony had done all the level maps and had put together the existing tilesets, so I was literally supplying graphics for him to use that overwrote the existing ones.
Working together was easy and we found we shared a lot in common with respect to game development and how things should be done. Maybe I should work on more games I thought…
Nothing to prove
“So come on then Stoo, why do you not work on more games then?” Well..let me say, making games is a lot of hard work, it’s intensive work and to do it with the goal of making something commercial requires a huge amount of commitment. Personally, I don’t have anything to prove to anyone anymore, so…unless it’s something I’m going to enjoy and the commitment is manageable with my day to day life then I tend not to be interested. Work for hire is one thing, you can pull on your experience and professionalism and work to the max…it’s what you’re paid to do – it pays the bills; like any job I guess. But personally committing to something with someone is a serious business when you’re self funding. When I do commit to a project it has to interest me and of course I have to be certain of whom I’m working with.
Artist Credit: Unknown (I would like to know who created this!)
A new game
Taking onboard what I’ve just written, let’s fast forward in time a few months when a project was presented to me, a project for the Spectrum Next. I was humbled when I heard Tony had insisted I be involved, the game? A remake of a classic Spectrum title you may of heard of featuring big ants. I won’t name names as the images below will probably give you an idea. The Spectrum Next was a machine I had very little technical knowledge of other than it was an awesome looking bit of kit and a real bone fide generational update to the classic Spectrum. Hardware wise I had no idea what it was capable of, in my mind it was a speccy with more colours…Of course I was wrong, it’s got a few more tricks up it’s sleeve, I was to later discover.
We started and…. then what happened next (no pun intended) didn’t quite go the way we thought and a large spanner was thrown into the works which lead to the development of the game coming to an abrupt halt. Both of us had put a lot of work into our respective roles on the project and it felt like we had wasted our time. But what to do? We discussed turning what we had into something, at least, but what? The early game engine Tony had written was working, we had isometric movement, Z clipping and my brain had adjusted to working in diamond tiles! I’d done a lot of design and graphics work so it felt the right thing to do. But, what? We do this for a living so it’s not a hobby, any projects we undertake have to be taken with the view of covering our time. So the question remained, what do we do?
To ISO or not to ISO?
The game we had been working on was rooted in the isometric viewpoint, so all the assets, design ideas and game code had been developed with that in mind. Given the time we had spent on it and our brains were firmly in “project recovery mode”, it made sense to stick with what we had and turn it into something we could publish…but again I ask what? Something quick, something easy to pick up and play and something presenting familiarity. We opted to go with something like the arcade game Gauntlet but in isometric. Well…Maybe? It wasn’t long before that idea snubbed itself out; we both felt it just didn’t sit right. Not as it stands. We were both known in the industry for original projects so turning out a clone wasn’t really what we were about; plus the isometric view, though nice an idea, just wasn’t right. It was then we discussed taking the core roots of what made Gauntlet cool, but leaving the original game behind and turning our attention to something similar… but different; something that we could make and call our own.
Urbx Warriors was born
Little did I know at the time, both of us had an interest in Urban Exploring, well from my position watching others do it on YouTube but the interest was there and so when I suggested “what about urban exploring?” as a theme, and… setting it in a location which could take us on a more paranormal journey, Tony was in! I took the earlier girl sprite I had been working on for “that project” and after we had discussed the technical aspects of the Next I reworked the design. The Next hardware sprites are 16×16 pixels in size and can be linked together too… which lead the main sprite to be 16×24 sitting nicely within a 16×32 sprite block; ample space for animation. Cool!
“One thing I didn’t even realise until after the new sprites were drawn; they’re not far off the size of the Cannon Fodder sprites!” – It’s like being at Sensible all over again!
Location, location, location…
I should add at this point, (outside of game dev/work) one of my interests has been for many years ancient history, leaning heavily towards forgotten or as some would suggest purposely erased ancient history, The work of Graham Hancock beautifully illustrates plausible explanations and poses questions on many ancient historical sites that challenge what mainstream historians rigidly stick to as fact.
One such area that has continued to peak my interest are the ancient sites found all over South America, more notably the sites in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. For this project it felt right to set the game in a fictitious location based upon these geographical reference points. Drawing inspiration from those areas whilst retaining the freedom to do what we like! I also felt drawn to create the characters as Hispanic explorers as it made sense to have two characters who were from that neck of the woods. (Rather than an English toff in a pith helmet.) I had no idea what we would call them, so initially they were referred to simply as Girl and Boy!
Sprite Design
Design for the girl character came first and was initially thought up during the project that never happened so a lot of the look was already in my head. As we were making an arcade game I wanted to go with bright vivid colours with each character having their own colour scheme and style. Plus even though we were working on the Spectrum Next I approached the game visually as if it was a real arcade game; something you could imaging seeing on the Neo Geo. I just needed to mould that style into someone which fitted in with the UrbX game design. Names came later I should add! It wasn’t long before we had a set of player sprites in the game and attention was diverted to character 2, the boy! At this stage it wasn’t really a game as we only had basic elements working, the usual stuff like the sprite moving under joystick control and the scrolling of a simple level with enter and exit points placed for testing. It was basic but we got a good feeling from it…And it felt good!
One thing that is really cool about using sprites on the Next is the ability to flip them in the X and Y axis. So for example a run animation in eight directions would only need the graphics for five as three of those can be flipped in the X to create a full eight!
2 Player or not 2 player that is the question…
With all this talk of two players, we briefly looked at including 2 player simultaneous play to the Next version but given the technical ramifications for this we opted to make this game single payer only. Later iterations of this game will likely support this, but that’s way off as we have to get this one finished first. For now we have two cool looking sprites and even though they are really tiny it gave me a buzz animating them at such a small size. In some way it’s bit like being back at Sensible, working on small sprites and trying to cram as much as we can into memory.
As I sipped my tea, I pondered on where this journey could take us, and I smiled. Only one way to find out I guess. Right, let’s go…
Next time, a logo is needed, and some level backgrounds, a cover illustration and I think the characters should have names! I guess we should also come up for a “company name” too… Tony & Stoo sounds too much like a hair salon!
UrbX Warriors is an arcade style video game in development by Tony Warriner and Stoo Cambridge collectively known as Brazen Gameplay. The game will be released for the ZX Spectrum Next, PC (Windows/Linux) and Mac.
To help fund the development of the game and secure a release we are launching a Kickstarter Campaign.
If you would like to support our work please check out our campaign page and be notified when it goes live.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tonywarriner/urbx-warriors-an-original-game-for-the-spectrum-next
