9. Januar 2005, 20:41, Autor: Ingmar

Today's interview partner is Ivan Milles, co-creator of El Ballo, a new game for the renowned Shareware-company Ambrosia Software. In former years, Ambrosia has released well-known games such as Deimos Rising, EV Nova and Pop-Pop and utilities - for instance, Snapz Pro X.
There are several new games currently under development at Ambrosia - among those is The Adventures of El Ballo. We spoke with one of the creators, Ivan.




Ingmar: Hello Ivan. Let's start off with the team. Who is creating El Ballo?
Ivan: The team is basically two persons, me and Casey Gatti. On top of that are two additional persons, Armand and John, who makes the sounds and music, respectively. Primarily, it's a two-man-band though.

I'm Swedish, twenty-one, studying for my Master in Engineering, and I work nightshifts as a subway ticket booth attendant.
Casey is the producer, designer, artist and everything else not related to code or audio. He's American, so it's an overseas project. We've never met or spoken, which is actually a rather cool feeling - having worked tightly together for two years without ever meeting.

This is my second game that is reaching completion. My first completed game was Galder, a Mac OS 9-only puzzle game that, quite frankly, sucked. In addition to that, I've had a finger in quite a number of other games, and I have a bunch of other projects going on (that are on hold until El Ballo gets finished).

In fact, I even do speak German. I learnt it because I listen to quite a number of German bands (Wumpscut, Lacrimosa, Das Ich, Funker Vogt, Rammstein, Megaherz, Crematory, DAF, Eisregen, Neubauten) and a lot of other bands with German lyrics, so I guess that's where it starts. Therefore, I can understand German pretty well, but not speak or write without a dictionary…


Ingmar: On to the game. What is El Ballo all about?
Ivan: El Ballo is a 2D platformer game in the same vein as the old classics Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden. It features hand-drawn and hand-animated cartoon graphics and crazy music. The player is dropped into a level, and has to navigate through the level, fighting enemies and finding buttons and levers to activate elevators. That's the basic stuff.

What sets it apart from other games is a very laid-back feeling along with frantic gameplay, slight puzzle elements and simple cartoonish physics. We have a couple of cool things which create emergent gameplay - for instance, there's a flying enemy that you can shoot, and if you time it right, it'll crash onto other enemies and damage them. The levels aren't tile-based, so they are very organic and varied. There are also lots and lots of graphic effects. Inbetween certain levels, we put in "cut-scenes" - simple animations that tell the story. The game features over twenty levels, over 25 different enemies and five weapons. There will also be a demo that acts as a sort of "prologue" - it will feature four levels that aren't in the "real" game as well as two simple "guns" that are unique to the demo.


Ingmar: Is there a background story to El Ballo?
Ivan: Oh, yes! I'll recount it: In a nearby solar system, Circular Assmosphere, is the planet of Testicular. It is full of creatures of all genders and flavors. Enter the race of Testiculites: peaceful, playful, and naked. Today is their yearly "Swip-Swop" day. This day is dedicated to sharing your treasures with a loved one. However, one lone fellow, El Ballo, has nothing to share with his girlfriend Butts. He plans to venture out into the forest with high hopes of finding the perfect present. Thus begins the story of the demo. In the actual game, the evil Doctor Cough of planet Physician is attempting to subject the planet of Testicular to a world-wide physical. El Ballo, the most unsanitary of them all, is sent on a quest to foul up the Doctor's sinister plans. With his faithful friends Butts and Boobs, El Ballo's party is the last hope.


Ingmar: Are there more characters next to El Ballo?
Ivan: In addition to him, (these are persons that appear in the story of the game) we have the evil Dr. Cough and his accomplices. On El Ballo's side, we have his girlfriend Butts and her sister Boobs, their dog, Liverspots, and The Professor.
However, you can only control El Ballo. We had originally planned to let the player control El Ballo's girlfriend on a level, but we dropped that becuase it didn't add anything to the gameplay.


Ingmar: On the Ambrosia website, it says that El Ballo is intended for mature audiences only. Why is that?
Ivan: There's actually no sexual content, just plain, healthy cartoon nudity. So, actually, there's nothing shocking about the game, except for in the cutscenes, where an odd alien breast or space hero penis might be found dangling. Think HR Giger, but with less scare and more color. But, the game isn't all a pseudo-nude façade with no content, no siree. It is a solid, old-school platformer with really cool graphics, great music, crazy sound and a brain. It is innovative and possesses a bucket of charm. If you like platformers, you'll love it.


Ingmar: How did you get the idea for El Ballo?
Ivan: Back in 1999 Casey created the characters and story. Over time he scripted the story and character direction to what we had when we began full production in February 2003. One fine day, Casey put out an ad on a web forum, looking for a coder for a "retro 2D platform game". Thinking it would be a nice, quick job that actually came with a paycheck, I jumped on the project, estimating the completion time to be roughly six months. That was almost two years ago. A 400% schedule time slip is considered a disaster in the industry (unless you're Ion Storm), but for this project, it has been the best thing ever. Back when we broke the first deadline, we actually had a running game, but it wasn't great. Now, 18 months later, we have a game that stands on its own two hind legs, whinnying.


Ingmar: So, was that the point when Ambrosia picked you up?
Ivan: No. Originally, we intended for El Ballo to be released as regular shareware, self-published. But, as we drew closer to completion, Casey sent out an e-mail to four Mac game publishers, requiring their feedback within a set time, and Ambrosia was interested. So, We knew the game was cool and waited for the right publisher to chime in.


Ingmar: What kind of system requirements can we expect for El Ballo? Will it run on my old beige G3?
Ivan: As always, system requirements are hard to set. However, El Ballo supports Mac OS 9.2 and up. Your old beige G3 probably won't hold up, but we've played it on a blue/white 350 MHz G3 Mac with graphics turned down a bit, and it ran just fine. To run it on max graphics, we are currently looking at a recent G4 iMac. El Ballo is primarily developed on my 800 MHz G3 iBook, so that's roughly the specs we're looking at. Plug in a gamepad while you're at it - it's a blast!


Ingmar: Judging by the screenshots available until now, the creation of levels for El Ballo is very simple. Can you tell us something about that?
Ivan: Very simple, I don't know about that, heh. Casey makes them in the El Ballo level editor, and ships them off to me to be put into the game. If the level has any "special" requirements, such as triggers controlling elevators, special graphics effects or any customization exposed through the editor, I need to go in there with full C force and customize it.


Ingmar: So you have a level editor up and running. Will it be available to the public in order that everyone is able to build custom levels?
Ivan: Well, at this point we are not too sure about public release of the editor. Time-intensive modifications need to happen in order for it to be functional enough to not require me to hardcode stage functions/events. After the initial game release, we will have a better answer for you. Personally, I'd love to, but it will take lots of time, so I guess time will tell.


Ingmar: Considering the amount of Ambrosia games that has been ported to Windows, will El Ballo be ported as well?
Ivan: Actually, we don't know yet. Right now, we're focusing on getting it onto the Mac, and we'll take it from there. Porting it would be quite easy, we believe. Still, it's a lot of work, and I guess it depends on how well it sells and if Ambrosia is interested, the weather and phase of the moon and such things. So, we're saying the same thing as we said about releasing the level editor: we might, we might not, it's not impossible.


Ingmar: When will the public be able to see El Ballo in action?
Ivan: El Ballo will be showcased at MacWorld this year. Ambrosia is going to showcase El Ballo along with their other lined-up games, such as Darwinia, Redline and Gooball, and it's really cool to be in there with those games. Unfortunately, neither me or Casey will be there - I had trouble going from Sweden to San Francisco on such short notice. If anyone of your readers are going, we'd love to hear what they thought of the Ambrosia booth! :)


Ingmar: And the last question: When is El Ballo going to be released?
Ivan: Umm... when it's done? :) Seriously, though, the estimated date to turn in the "Release Candidate" version of the game to Ambrosia is in February. Depending on what Ambrosia thinks of that version, we might release it perhaps a month or two later. So, spring of 2005 doesn't sound too bad.


Ingmar: Ivan, thank you for your time.