Interview with Cinematix

Many thanks to Rex Dickson, designer of Revenant, Keelan Stuart (programmer) and Marvin Donald (animator), for taking time out to answer our questions on this sweet looking game.

Firingsquad: What are some of the main challenges you faced during development?

(Keelan) One of the greatest challenges we've faced during our development is fitting everything we want into the game in the amount of time we have alotted to us. Other than that, I would have to say that compatibility testing video cards has been the biggest issue. Each graphics board has its own quirks and limitations, and figuring out how to use or get around those things has been interesting, to say the least.

One word: wow!

Two words: Double wow!

Firingsquad: Tell me more about the graphics engine. Will you be implementing any of the new texture technologies like Bump Mapping or S3TC?

(Keelan) Revenant, unlike the majority of other modern-day games, uses a tile based system made from 3D rendered art. Our characters however, are fully polygonal, but small enough so that the technological advances in texturing would most likely not make a big impact visually, so we chose not to include those features in our engine. This is good news for people with older 3D-accelerators. Most of the readers might think that this is a bad thing, but just wait until they see the level of detail in our 16-bit, hand-painted tiles; they blow away anything that fully 3D games can offer with the current level of technology.

Sparkle from a spell effect

Is that a bullseye?

Firingsquad: How close are you to completion? What are the remaining hurdles?

(Rex) We are looking good for an August/September release date. The single player game is in Beta form and we are in the balancing, testing, and debugging phase now. The multiplayer game is following close behind and we expect it to go beta sometime in June. I think our biggest challenge now is to balance the game out, adjust what needs adjusting, and test the hell out of it. We are commited to making Revenant as bug free as possible and this is a major priority for us during these last couple of months.

Taking a stroll in the forest

Nice tree stump house