Q: Can you introduce team kazoowee and talk a bit about your earlier works ?

tomsamson: Team Kazoowee is right now made up of Anthony "blinkok" Blinco, Chris “daydream” Hildenbrand me, Ugur “tomsamson” Ister and our newest member George “jeb” Baldeon.
We work in a bigger alliance of development teams which is called Stimunation.
It unites the teams squarecircleco, cator, shoah/1coin1play, nGFX and kazoowee, just as several single coders like Marmotte, Mbenney and Strille. We exchange coders, sound artists and graphic artists and work together in groups based on the needs of the current game.
Some games of our team members are heli attack2,bug on a wire,the jbj sisters and twiddlestix.

Q: We could see a preview of the level editor for the next HeliAttack 3 game. Can you talk about it and describe its features ?

tomsamson: The ed allows to create tilebased maps in any size, you can load and save maps and you have several tools for editing which you might know from applications like fireworks or photoshop. For example you are not forced to draw one tile at a time, instead you have tools for drawing circles, rectangles and lines of tiles. The editor will also be available in the final heli 3 game in a way so that players can create and share their own levels.

Q: You used a third party software to expand Flash capabilities and enable it to save to local files. How important are these tools for game development in general ?

tomsamson: I remember the time when third party tools converting swfs to exe files were only used to allow smooth playback in fullscreen mode by changing the resolution.
Much more was also not needed as flash was much more limited and creating full applications with it was only imagined by few.
Since the release of flash 6 and more powerful wrappers like swfstudio,screenweaver and flash studio pro,you can do much more though.
Flash, just like java for example runs in a sandbox scheme, meaning the developer has very limited access to the user´s machine. This is good in terms of security but turns it almost impossible to create full feature applications. Not being able to load several filetypes and even more not being able to save (without using some sort of backend solution) means you can´t create most types of applications.
Wrapper applications enable the flash developer to create most types of applications,so they will get more and more important.
For game developers I can imagine features like loading,saving,changing the resolution,using joysticks and making use of 3d hardware as things which are already possible or are worked on right now.
Squize,team leader of shoah / 1coin1play, Coder and Sound engineer: Just to add to Tom's point a little bit, Olli from nGFX is currently developing a wrapper / player for the stimunation off-lines games. It will allow us as developers to provide a richer experience for gamers, and allow a greater level of interaction between the gamers and ourselves. Sounds very cryptic I know, I guess the best way to describe it is a cross between Windows Media Player and Steam. But a good version of Steam ;)
Kdsh7, co-founder 1coin1play: Using flash with third party wrapper applications is also great in the way it allows us flash developers to effectively create content across a wide variety of platforms. It's nice to be able to create the basic flash file, and then say, compile executables with fancy features for the Mac and PC with minimal effort.

Q: Can you anticipate some features of the new Heli3 game ?

tomsamson: Chris "iopred" Rhodes is the coder of heli3 and Chris "daydream" Hildenbrand the graphic artist, so i´ll pass all related questions to them =)
iopred: Heli Attack 3 is on track to be quite a good game, I dont like to over hype things, but at the present time, it has the workings to be a very fun game. Its built on a very fast scroller, so we've thrown in a lot of eyecandy (which is toggleable), and are abusing things like alpha channels to have a very pretty looking game. I'm a fan of over-the-top gameplay, so I've spent the last week or so including a lot of weapons, we currently have over 20 weapons, which is a lot more than Heli Attack 2's 13 weapons, and I'm still including more. Additional to Heli Attack 2's 'Time Distort' (similar to 'The Matrix's' Bullet Time), there will be more 'time powers' for the player to use, one of them being (as far as I know) a first in any game, ever.
Our final plan is to have at least 5-6 levels, and 2-3 boss levels. Unlike Heli Attack 2, the goal is to create a full platform game experience, with multiple large levels, and lots of enemies to defeat. There are additional plans to make Heli Attack 3 unique for Flash platform games, but I wont go too far into that. Of course, I dont want to alienate the fans of Heli Attack 2, so Heli Attack 3 will include an 'arcade mode', which is fundamentally the exact same gaming experience as Heli Attack 2, but with all the new features and weapons.
DayDream: The graphics have been improved quite a bit. The first design for HeliAttack2 was done by iopred and I had the pleasure to reskin them in a day or two. It was a straight reskin back then with no added features. Replacing the old images with new ones with same dimensions.
HA3 is developed jointly. There is a constant input of new ideas for the gameplay, the enemies and the weapons. The whole atmosphere will be a little more realistic - with some guns looking more like the real weapons, while others are still over the top.
The player sprite has undergone major changes and looks a lot smoother now. This is mainly due to more sophisticated animation.
The Ngage version of HA2 already features four different locations - so will the GBA version currently under construction. HA3 will even have a few more scenarios to create a better gaming experience.
All this should make it a fun game that continues where HA2 leaves off.

Q: Did you switch from AS to AS 2.0 for this new chapter of the game ?

iopred: Yes and No, For Heli Attack 3 I have switched to AS2's typechecking, however, I do not use AS2's classes, I've found that using classes, and proper getter/setter methods, still runs too slowly for realtime games. However I will surely use classes for turnbased games such as Battle Plans. I'm sure Tom agrees with me on this point.

Q: It seems that a good portion of game developers were pretty reluctant to switch to the new AS 2.0
What do you think about this ?

Tomsamson: Using the more oop approach of flash7 is good for having clean,sorted and easily managable and extendable code but in situations where performance is most important (like in fast paced action games and complex applications) the flash player still isn´t up for it.
Besides that i think its important for people to see something really rewarding at the end of the horizon when they start learning something new instead of doing what they are used to.
Flash is evolving into a direction in which it turns into a fully oop programming language and environment.
A big part of the flash developer base are designers or coders who are not familiar with other oop programming languages.
I think macromedia has to watch out not to loose this group by deminishing the “easy to get into” bonus flash has while trying to make it a full flavour language coders coming from other languages accept and use.
iopred: I think a lot of people are actually more scared of it, because they dont really understand, or haven't taken the time to look into it. Also I think alot of newer programmers who got into Flash because of its simplicity, dont understand classes and OOP.
Squize: I think another aspect of the whole AS2 debate is actual player penetration. For off-line games this is of course no big deal, but is essential for web based games. It's a skill set all of us as Flash developers have to add, but the main issue is that a lot of clients want and expect as many people to be able to play their games with their current technology, no matter how small the Flash player is to download.
I think a lot of developers are loathe to learn AS2, and build up a nice library of routines, only to have to make their next game Flash 5 compatable to suit their clients. Big chicken and egg thing right now, and may well be until the next version of Flash.
Tomsamson: Yep, Squize is right there, I´m also creating sites and webbased applications (nowadays known as RIAs) and clients often want the player which has the best penetration, so even telling him to use flash6 gets difficult (not to think of 7) sometimes.
Kdsh7: As long as backwards compatibility is kept with future iterations of the flash player, developers will continue to be reluctant to make the switch. The change will come at some point - Macromedia will make sure of that - but as long as the choice is there and the tangible rewards are slight, developers will favour the increased compatibility and the familiarity of AS1.
nGFX: AS 2.0, as good as it is, has some major problems. one of them is the flash ide. i'm used to write oop apps in c# and vb.net and a one can write good oop in a fraction of time with the right tools (like visual studio). in vs the intellisens feature spell AND typechecks your code as you write it, allowing to concentrate on REAL bugs, not on typo errors. but the flash code window is a real pain (although it's getting better). i also think that they should have based as 2.0 on c++ or c# which is a lot easier to understand then java (but this is my personal point). in the end i think that as 2.0 could be a benifit for game-developers, but sometimes a goold olf function call is just enough ...

Q: When do you think we'll be able to play the game ?

iopred: Heli Attack 3 doesnt have a specified release date, however, a large portion of the game has been coded, it should be released in 2004.
DayDream: At the moment we are still coming up with new ideas. As soon as these are put into shape and implemented we get close giving a realistic release date.

Q: Meanwhile you've been selected for an important mobile game contest.
Tell us a little bit more about it.

iopred: Back to Tomsamson for this one, though I hope to be helping him with this in the future =D
tomsamson: yep,you´ll probably have to ;)
It’s the first worldwide contest on creating 3d games for mobiles and is sponsored by the big players in the mobile market and also 3d sotware developers .
Basically it is split into two big blocks: The first was about creating a game concept and several images of the game.
We feel honoured that our entry “titans inc” was chosen as one of the 14 finalists of over 100 submissions to that. The second round of the contest is about creating a game prototype of the entered game within 2 months. The finalists of the first round were split into several categories based on the filesize (and therefore the target mobile type(s)) for their game. We are in the 16 meg category,which is the one for the high end mobiles.
You can read more about this and also see some of the screenshots of the finalist games here: http://www.3dmobilegamingcontest.com

Q: We had a chance to see some of the "Titans inc." rendered characters and we think they're really great. What software was used for those ?

jeb,3D artist of titans inc: For characters and vehicles im using 3dsmax and i think it could be used
for detailed backgrounds (depends on the deadline), textures are hand painted in photoshop so every element in the game has a unique treatment. I'm still looking for the final look of the rendered image for the sprites. Characters are fully rigged so they can be animated in any way we want. Discreet´s
software offers tools that are so quick to work with and this helped me develop several characters and vehicles in a fairly short time.

Q: Can you unveil a little bit more about the game (story, gameplay, techniques) ?

tomsamson: Sadly I can´t unveil that much right now, basically titans inc is a team of elite specialists, each member has own special abilities to fight against evil.
The gameplay will be similar to games like metal slug and contra/probotector as it is a jump´n´shoot game featuring constant action without compromise but it will also have a teamplay element.
We will use the x-forge 3d engine from fathammer for the development and 3D Studio Max is used for the models.

Q: What are the main challenges you will face during the development ?

tomsamson: I´d say number one is the short deadline, followed by developing for a different platform with it's own strengths and weaknesses, we´ll see the rest later.
jeb: I think reaching the animation level of great games like metal slug. It is very inspirational for me since the first time i played it, so i imagine this game as a tribute.

Q: It's a pity that we don't have yet a good flash player for mobile devices, capable of delivering games.
What do you think about the future of mobile gaming and Flash ?

iopred: Mobiclip have just released their first version of a mobile flash player, its very restricted, with only about half of the functions from Flash 5 availaible, however, it's a start, and a lot of games are possible with the restricted function set.
Squize: I've actually spent some time developing for Mobiclip, and unfortunatly I had to walk away from it. The core engine is excellent and runs very quickly, but at the moment it's still far too limited. Once Mobiclip iron out some of the issues with it, it will be a very exciting platform to develop for, and one we are all keeping an eye on.
Kdsh7: I've been working on porting one of our existing games over to the Mobiclip technology recently and it does indeed have a lot of potential in bringing a wider variety of developers to the mobile market. Unfortunately limitations in the player have stalled this particular project for the time being. As my colleagues have said, the core engine does run very well, and it does support a lot of the Flash5 command set but there is the insurmountable problem of available memory. This makes it very difficult to port existing games, or to even create games with large environments and complex graphics. I have no doubt very high quality games could be made using this technology when designed from the ground up with Mobiclip in mind, and I am sure Flash will play an even bigger role in the use of the next (and more powerful) generation of mobile devices.
Tomsamson: yep,many interesting technologies and possibilites approaching there,none evolved ideally yet, but its getting there =).

Q: Let's talk a bit about sound production. How do you approach it ? Do you make your own soundtracks/sound fx ?

iopred: I usually get others to create my soundtrack, or in the worst case, find free loops. As for sound effects, i've always created my sound effects myself. Little bit of trivia, all the sounds in Heli Attack 2 are made with my voice, and alot of sound filters.
Squize: I seem to have slipped into the music guy's role in stimunation ( And of course 1coin1play ). As to sfx, I normally just go hunting around for public domain sounds and mix them up as needed, such as adding a metalic clang to an explosion for a shoot'em up etc.
Just to slip into a little rant here, I really think good sfx are under used in Flash. So many games you can just tell the sound was added at the last minute with very little thought, almost as if it's a chore having them in there. I always try and get as many sounds into a game as soon as possible, you have to live with them for a while to see if they fit and work within the overal mix. No one would leave a dodgy looking sprite in a game, it shouldn't be any different for a sound. Phew, feel better for that.
Kdsh7: I tend to play the events in my mind, and then try and imagine the best possible music and sound fx for the sequences. Like many things in game design, things can can happen nicely by accident, but just pointlessly scouring endless libraries for fx that "could sound right" usually just wastes time and more often than not you end up with something you just settled for because time ran out. Most flash developers tack the sound on last minute, and I can see why they do it. While the majority of flash developers have no problems getting code to work, or designing original art (since the whole foundation of flash content creation is based upon visual construction), coming up with an original sound is that much harder. Not that that's any excuse of course. For music, I'm always thinking about cutting down the filesize and so I usually stick to two and four bar repeating loop sets.

Q: What software would you reccomend for sound production ?

Joel,developing sound for titans inc: I'm creating tunes and some fx:s for the nGage game (titans inc). I'm also a big fan of Goldwave though I also use Wavelab. For tunes, I recommend Cubase, Orion Platinum and Cakewalk. Cakewalk was my first MIDI program, and I still use it to make the first "schetches" of my songs. It's really easy to use and fast to edit in. Orion Platinum is one of the best studio packages there is, with many cool features and a great sampler.
Squize: Soundforge for me, with anything at all for the music ( Acid, EJay, mod tracker )
iopred: Any wave editor will do, Goldwave is free and very powerful, and offers the same functionaility as some of the more expensive packages like SoundForge and Adobe Audition (Formely CoolEdit). I prefer to use Adobe Audition, its a great package.
Kdsh7:I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but Pocket Music on the Game Boy Advance has a lot of features for the price and it has given me the freedom to write and sequence tunes from the comfort of my bed, the kitchen and even lengthy bowel emptying sessions. Ahem. Acid is great for creating sequences that loop perfectly in flash.

Q: Is it better to keep music and fx in separate files or do you incorporate everything in the main SWF ?

iopred: I like incorporating things into the main SWF, there are an abundance of issues with loading and attaching audio from another file, most of them are fixeable, but in the end, everything needs to be loaded, so I place them inside the main SWF.
Squize: Same here for the most part. Sound can be reduced in size so much using the mp3 settings that it's more than possible to have really rich and varied sound in a game. Off the top of my head I think for example The JBJ Sisters Snow Adventure had 31 sfx and 4 tunes, all within a 140k.
Kdsh7: I don't think there's such thing as better, rather you have to use whatever is best for the project at hand. Usually I like to keep everything in the main swf, it keeps everything predictable and it's easier to handle. If I had a project that involved a long piece of low compression music playing in the background, then I'd probably load that externally so those on slower connections would have the option of cancelling the loading.
nGFX: i like to load the sound from an external swf. i noticed that this speeds up dev-time a lot. i have written a sound-framework (currently used only in nGFX games) to handle external sounds. so in my case i normaly use something like "mySound.playSFX("Soundname")" or "mySound.crossFade("Sound1", "Sound2")", so i don't have to think about that anymore. also it shortens the time the compiler needs to process the swf. for one of our latest games ("Fish'n'Fun") the sound was made by someone else, so during dev-time, i only used some dummy sounds and afterwards just replaced the sound.sfw. another really nice feature is that you can have different sound files for different mediums like on/offline without having to recompile the game itself (or worst having different flas for different sound versions)

Q: We know you're also working on a multiplayer war game. Can you unveil something about it ?

iopred: Battle Plans is a similar game to Advance Wars on Game Boy Advance. Set in World War 2, but with a difference.
DayDream: With iopred and me working on both HA3 and Battle Plans we had to make a choice and HA3 won. The huge response the game has been getting and still is getting made a sequel necessary. Which resulted in Battle Plans being put on hold for a little while. Though once released.it should be a great addition to online gaming.

Q: What are the difficulties in developing multiuser interaction for games ?

tomsamson: A big one is of course network latency and how to get around it enough to achieve smooth gameplay on all clients. Its mainly about reducing the information which has to be sent and received to the minimum possible .
Another issue is that Flash performance mainly depends on the cpu of the user,so that scripts aren´t executed equally fast on all clients. Therefore the clients should have to execute as few scripts as possible, mainly work as view of the game (and parts of the controller) and most game code should be executed on the server.

Q: Another problem many professional developers are facing is game protection. It's very common to find your own games hosted on other websites that didn't ask permission. How do you face these problems ? Any advices ?

iopred: The easiest way is to lock it to a specific URL, there are ways around this, so its also important to set up your webserver to ban external linking, using both of these techniques, stealing SWF's should be close to impossible.
Squize: This is a sore point for me, as anyone looking at either the shoah or 1c1p sites will know. It's a double edged sword. Game sites leeching your games brings in an insane amount of traffic which leads to clients approaching you, but on the other hand it makes selling currently written games a lot more difficult when they are sitting on dozens of shovelware games sites ( Not to mention the bandwidth costs ).
With the forth coming stimunation site we figured it wouldn't be too much of an issue to just close the sites down for a short while rather than dive in and attempt protection schemes.

Q: Did you develop some sort of framework to help you port the code or do you start from scratch ?

DayDream - At the moment we work on a framework to enable faster conversion but that's mainly limited to basic level design routines and ways to handle the game data. Most of the ActionScript routines can not yet be converted in a satisfactory way.

Q: What channels do you use to sell the different game versions ?

DayDream - HeliAttack2 is the first game that we successfully ported to Ngage / mobile phones and it will be available through major online portals dealing exclusively with mobile games. It will take couple of games to get the distribution running smoothly as the ways of distribution vary a lot.

Q: What differences are there in the market for flash / gba and ngage games ?

DayDream - The fact that online flash games have to be limited in filesize to enable a good delivery even on slower connections and the easy access to the markets are still the major advantage of the flash games.
The game concept still is more important than extremly elaborate visual effects. Commercial games for consoles or the PC require huge teams and piles of money that are beyond the limits of smaller, independant developers.
Money and market access is a major issue with the GameBoy Advanced games - even though the homebrew market is growing rapidly. Reaching the customer is the problem with the Ngage and mobile phone games. The portals / phone service providers control the delievery of the games to the customers phone and take a huge slice out of the sales for their services. It will take some time before the market opens up and allows easier access.

Q: And now for the inevitable question: what would you expect from the next Flash version ?
Any wishlist ?

iopred: And now for the inevitable answer, faster display performance, hardware acceleration. Flash MX2004 has gone a long way to speed up the actionscript, it could always do with a bit more of a boost, however, the display really is the bottleneck.
Squize: Yeah display speed is the number one wish from me too. I know 3D is flavour of the month, but at best it's only going to lead to games looking on par with the original Quake. I'd rather Flash could do one thing really well ( Such as being able to throw a lot of data around the screen quickly ) than try and be all things to all people, with a limited 3D capability and average display rates.
With faster display speeds Flash games could be easily of the quality of SNES / Amiga games, and I'd much rather play an excellent version of Alien Breed or Speedball II on-line, than a limited Quake clone.
Also some sort of mod ( Music format ) playback. I really can't believe that a platform such as Flash, which is all about high impact / low bandwidth content doesn't have such a feature.
Kdsh7: Anything and everything that these guys mention is guaranteed to better flash. And better protection. You can never have too much protection.
Tomsamson:yep,pretty much the same list here =)
(besides that,some may remember the april 1st hoax pictures of the new flash version which I made,those showd all of my dream features for the next flash version =) )
nGFX: SECURITY, SECURITY, SECURITY! and speed. it may be useful that the swf format is open, but for us as developers it's just pure pain. everyone could just decompile the gamefile (not that i really think that someone could reuse the code). so preventing the swf to be opened would be a nice feature (i also think that this would allow flash to be used in some more "security" related apps, as you could finally built business-logic into the flash ap (like data processing)). A bit more gfx speed would be nice, or the abiltiy to control the gfx output (like setting parts of the movie to low quality or setting up your own buffers)- How do you work on the different game versions ? (Flash / gba / ngage / off-line)
DayDream : In the past we have developed with the online games market as the primary focus. We are now starting to port the successfull titles from Flash to other platforms. Once the gameplay has been tested and refined in flash we start by adjusting the graphics ( scale and contrast enhancement for portable displays ) and begin coding on the other platforms.
Squize: As to off-line versions of our games we soon realised that simply adding joystick support and full screen display isn't enough.
As soon as a game is for the off-line market it's competing agaisnt everything! It's not enough that a game may rock as a web based Flash game, it's got to rock as a game full stop. The near constant mantra of "It's really cool ( For Flash )" isn't acceptable with full blown off-line games. With that in mind we're adding a lot more value to the off-line content.
It goes without saying that music is remixed, and all the bitrates pushed right up, but when developing away from the browser you can claw back a lot of cpu time which can be used to not only enhance the visuals ( Being able to use 24bit pngs is bliss :) ) but the gameplay.
Personally speaking, I think all our games are built on strong gameplay ( I think it's cause we're all retro kids at heart, and remember when gameplay was more important than polygon counts ) so we could probably get away with just wrapping the current games up with only the most basic and obvious alterations, but as a team we see that as a lazy option.
We want to give our customers the definitive versions of the games in off-line form, the directors cut for want of a better term. That means additional options, features, game modes, levels and a tight interaction with our sN Player.

Q: We have already named some of your future project you're working on. Is there something else coming up soon ?

iopred: Sadly no, only a few small games for clients.
Daydream - HA3 and Battle Plans are both games that take up a lot of time to develope leaving little time for any more. One project I am doing "on the side" is remake of the classic "Bomb Jack" with heaps of graphics and eyecandy coded by Squize. Most of the time goes into GBA and DS as well as mobile phone developement with a couple of titles to the released soon. One of the most interesting ones will be a game for a tongue controlled GameBoy Advanced.
Kdsh7: I'm working on a few things. "Twiddlestix2", a sort of Winnie The Pooh "pooh sticks" simulator but without Winnie The Pooh. "Beach Challenge", a variation on a popular sport - and Dark02, which I don't want to say too much about right now!
Squize: We're also working on an off-line version of our Space Invaders game, "MJ-12", which features an offensive amount of particle effects :).
As daydream has said, a Bomb Jack homage ( Not clone :) ) with the working title "UXB Kid". Only early days yet but I'm really pleased with how it's going, and it should hopefully be the definitive version of that genre in Flash. And the only one with homing missles :)
Also in the final testing stages of a JBJ re-skin for a play-4-cash site ( Read: Security nightmare ) with the graphics done by marmotte called "Chimbo's Quest" which I'm really proud of. Speaking of the JBJ Sisters, that will be making it's way to mobile platforms just in time for Christmas.
And daydream, Tom and myself are working on a bit of a secret project under the banner "Team sN" which should be showing some results really soon. Let's just say plungers and flippers and leave it at that...
nGFX: we are currently working on two games, a western-styled shooter (Westbank), targeted for offline use with rendered graphics and it's own unique style. the other one (DynaMiner) will be a game based around dynamite with lot's of explosions. we hope that both could be send to a public beta-test during the next two month, hoping that DynaMiner will be ready in 3 weeks or less.