Habrainterview with the creators of the game "Space Rangers" Alexei Dubov and representatives of the SNK

I bring to your attention an interview with the developer of the legendary Russian game " Space Rangers " Alexey Dubov, as well as with the representative of the " Union of Independent Quest Writers " Yakov Uvarov.

The game "Space Rangers" entered the top ten games of all time according to the version of Habrahabr 2013 . And among the Russian games took first place, overtaking "Tetris" and the Ukrainian development of "Cossacks" with a decent margin. I admit, I did not know anything at all about this game and wondered what kind of a miracle it was. After watching the video on YouTube, I realized that this is really an outstanding game, because fans speak of it as “the best game in the world.”

I contacted Dmitry Gusarov , Alexey Dubov and the guys from SNK who were preparing the Revolution add-on. Dmitry refused to be interviewed, Alexey agreed to reply by mail. In another post, I invited everyone to ask their questions. Based on these questions, this interview appeared.
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Alexey Dubovoy

The history of the game "Space Rangers"

You were only 18 years old (right?) When you started writing a large-scale project. How did you decide on this? Was there any experience of writing games before the CD?

As a child I started with the Spectrum and Search computers. The first game I saw was Nether Earth . Then she turned my mind. And from that time I started to get involved in computers, games and programming. I realized that I would be a programmer very early, it was very interesting for me to study engines, create my own, everything else ceased to interest me.

As time went on, I gained experience, and in the middle of the year 99, I accidentally came across the site of Dmitry Gusarov on the Internet. At that time, he was finishing doing the “ General ” and was looking for work in game design. We met, talked and decided to make a new game on the space theme, because we understood that the graphics needed to be done significantly less than for other genres, and the space theme itself is interesting to us. If Dmitry was interested in Elite, Master of Orion games, I was a fan of Star Wars: X-Wing series and Star Control 2.

At that time I was 21 years old, and I started working on the game, not really thinking about the prospects and financing, I was young and full of desire just to do what I loved.

Is it true that they wrote 3 years without any external financing?

Yes it is. But you need to understand that I grew up in a different atmosphere, not in the current material and monetary. I spent my early years in the culture of the late USSR with its magnificent children's films “Guest from the Future”, “Electronic”. Of course, my growing up had to collapse, but the spirit remained for a long time, and I was too young to understand what was happening. And then there is new computer technology made available to the general public. That is, the money at all for that period did not interest me.

Moreover, before meeting with Dmitry, I worked for 2 years in one state institution and developed a database and a program in which people worked there successfully, while receiving a stable and good salary for those times. But as soon as I realized that Dmitry and I are planning a very serious project, I did not hesitate to quit my job and shone my attention to creating the game. And actually spent 3 years on the neck of their parents.

How much development time exceeded the initial calculations? How much did the result differ from the original idea? The question applies to the CR1 and CR2.

In general, I didn’t even really read the design document that Dmitry prepared; it wasn’t interesting for me. In my imagination, an ideal was spinning, to which I strove with all my might. It was only later - after completion, I fully realized that the initial idea was a rather primitive game a little more difficult than the general, and therefore the initial estimated time was a maximum of half a year. But our business went well, everything that was intended was done quickly and with sufficient quality, but the publisher wasn’t, so we had to think and then implement additional features in the game.

With KR2 it was all different, the publisher bought KP1 for us cheaply and successfully sold without any advertising and made a big profit - he agreed to continue. On the allocated budget, we were able to rent an office, hire cool people. And in two years we released the KR2, redrawing the entire schedule, and also making robots.

The game managed to combine different genres: the arcade, quests, and turn-based strategy. But balanced and organically. All this develops about a whole world called "Space Rangers". How did you achieve such a wonderful balance? Who tested the games?

We did not know what full testing was then. Of course, we let friends and family play, but they understood little of it, and therefore we just qualitatively realized our inner world in the game, which was brought up in other games, films, books.

At what point did you feel that the game had already “grown”? What do you already tired of her, and already live their lives, develops itself by other people?

I love to learn everything new, but after studying this topic for me is not interesting. Therefore, as soon as I implemented some new feature in the game, it immediately became not interesting for me. And since almost all features went through me, I fully completed my own game only once in 6 years of development!

If you were making a game now, what would you do in it?

Not enough time to write more advanced intelligence for robots. Since there was a lot of work in different areas, and there was little time, then those 3 months that were spent on this were clearly not enough to write more reasonable behavior of robots. In addition, this was affected by the fact that we already had a serious argument with Dmitry.

Interaction Issues with Other Developers

A lot of warm feedback about the texts in the game. About texts in the help, about texts in quests, in the history of the world of the Kyrgyz Republic. Who was the "chief editor" of the texts of the game? How did you build relationships with third-party writers? A separate question about the relationship with SNK - a union of independent quest writers. They wrote about half of the quests for KP2. How did you meet and how did you work together?

Dmitry was in charge of all the texts. And almost all the planetary quests were written by outsiders working through the Internet. We had a good community in which talented people took part. For this we had a mail, a website and a forum in which we were friendly with everyone. I think many were bribed by the fact that we were open and tried to make the highest quality product. And they almost did not think about money, and accordingly, quest-writers earned crumbs, although they did a titanic job.

Many IT professionals still listen to the sound track KR2. How did the relationship with KD Music, Korzhavina and Semenova? Have you made any demands on the music? How many tracks rejected?

Undoubtedly, high-quality music greatly affects the atmosphere of the game. We took all the tracks that we liked. They were offered quite a lot, since they are almost not tied to the game itself, and therefore, one talented musician can do quite a lot of them. Dmitry accepted the content, so it’s better to ask him about relationships with people. It is a pity that he refused to answer.

Funny questions

Is it true that “KR” was made in Vladivostok?

Yes it is. Dmitriy and I lived in Vladivostok. Then we were joined by Alexander Yaznin, who drew the main graphics for the CD, he is also from Vladivostok. It is very difficult to work through the Internet when work consists in close interaction. And especially when there is no funding. If the right people were not in the city at the right time, then there would be no such game, there would be something else.

Probably a very stupid question, but it has been tormenting me for a long time: how to put emphasis on the names of races? “Maloki” or “maloki”, “pelengi” or “pelengi?

The more options: funny and with undertones, the better - it makes people think.

Tips for young game writers

Your communication with Dmitry Gusarov ended painfully, so I intend to bypass these issues. But for future game writers, give advice from the height of your experience: how to build relationships with companions?

Respect the opinions of other people and, if possible, make compromises. Another option is possible: ignore everyone and bend your line. In the end, if your ideas are correct and you know how to work a lot, then you will succeed, and if not, more intelligent and successful people will come instead of you. So say natural selection, do not need to consider yourself the center of the universe.

If you now set about writing the same scale project, on which platform would you begin to create?

Flash is a promising technology for games, if it develops qualitatively. Now it has 3D support, and therefore you can already do fast graphics, a lot of engines have appeared. And the most valuable thing is that the product written on it can be run on different platforms: Windows, Linux, different browsers and even on tablets and phones.

Since the beginning of work on the CD, more than 10 years have passed. How has the gaming industry changed? Will the games remain on one computer, or will everything go to browsers and mobile platforms, everything will become multiplayer, how do you think? Where to go young?

Blue-headed games will not die, because competing with other people is a hard business and not everyone can do it. Now people have learned how to make money without publishers in pseudo-single social and mobile games. In general, I am not a prophet, and I am not interested in the majority opinion. I believe that it is necessary to educate people, and not poke their base instincts. And this is somewhat contrary to the success in today's understanding.

But in general, I am waiting for artificial intelligence to be understood and done, and this will be a completely new page in history. The universe tends to complicate, and man is only an intermediate stage of creating a true mind that is aware of it and will change;)

Although this interview is about the CD, what are you working on now? What are the plans and ideas, if this is not a secret?

I have been doing the multiplayer strategic game "Empire" in the Ranger Universe for several years. Now the first strategic part of the game is more or less completed. The second part of the game has yet to be done, in which it will be possible to travel and fight in spaceships. The game is already being played, even though I do not advertise it. It is better to wait until all items are completed.

Yakov Uvarov, SNK Project Manager, Head of Technical Department

When did you first learn about the CD? What was the impression about the game?

I found out in 2003, after reading a note from the KR1 in the Russian edition of Mir PC. Only in 2004 I was able to buy and play, because until the winter of 2003, I didn’t have a machine that would have pulled the game at least with a tolerable speed of work - for three years I lived on a Pentium MMX 166 MHz and 48 MB of memory.

From the game I was stunned, not believing that it happens. The first passage, considering that I was thirteen at that time, took me almost two months. The first batch is something that I probably will not be able to forget, as well as experiencing these sensations again.

How did you get into SNK? What did you do in the framework of SNK, except for the KR?

I got to SNK at the end of 2006, when I more or less put on the Elemental Games forum, where I registered in March of the same year, and helped to maintain the clan forum and website, when such a need arose again. Actually, now I continue to do this, in addition to managing the project: I personally administer all the resources, and two colleagues, Vladimir Zhuchkin and Sergey Berezhnoy, help develop a forum, a table of records, and other joys of life.

What did he do in the framework of the "Space Rangers"?

I agreed to implement the project first with Gusarov, then with comrades from 1C (at that time it was Sergey Gerasyov, now our main contacts are Yuri Miroshnikov and Andrey Dineev), broke through the budget, reworked the contract, created a project plan and distributed tasks, part of them helped to implement, was fully engaged in the creation and support of the entire working infrastructure (version control systems, trackers, build servers, etc.)

How was the relationship with the developers of the Kyrgyz Republic built? Remember some interesting moments.

Some of the guys know Gusarov and Dubov personally, since they were in 2004–2005. visited "Igromir" and "KRI", but since I came to the team already after they had a tight quarrel, I personally could not communicate with them. I contacted Dmitry through e-mail during the project preparation, for the most part I communicated with Alex only when the forum was still working.

Writing texts and quests is closer to fiction. Who was the "chief editor", or the main writer, who asked the main direction of the line, the main style?

Most of the texts for the new project were written by Alexander Smirnov and Ivan Ilyichev, one of the oldest members of the team. The entire subplot with pirates, as well as a fair amount of dialogue and about a quarter of new quests - their hands of creation.

What tools do you use for writing quests? Do you program, or just write with words? Or are there any special tools?

For writing quests, there is a wonderful vundervaflya TGE, Text Game Editor - a visual editor with support for regular expressions and script formulas, released during the time of KP1 by the guys from EG. For KR2, it was already redone, and did not support 24 parameters in the quest, but 48, which allowed to do more complex and deep quests (the most striking example is “Master Ikee-Baana”, quite a full-fledged RPG).

For our project, this was not enough (even at the time of CR2, it was necessary to “pack” several parameters into one with the help of formulas), but we did not have the TGE source code at that time. Fortunately, in the depths of the WaybackMachine, we dug up a sorts old version that worked in the format of KP1, and brought it to standard.

Do you continue to play other games, or does it take longer to create your own games?

Absolutely no time. Since we have a project in our free time (mainly due to the fact that our budget never allowed us to translate all this into full-time mode), we all have main jobs, and there is hardly enough time to do everything. case and sleep a couple of hours.

What is planned with the development of the CD? So will addons just appear? Or expected KP3? Will there be browser versions, versions for mobile platforms, multiplayer games?

This question would be more correct to ask someone in 1C. Personally, we have not received any proposals, and our initiatives and ideas come up against the lack of funding.

There are problems with porting: the entire project is historically written in Delphi, in particular, in the dialect of the sixth and seventh versions. Due to the heap of unobvious solutions and the mass of Alexey’s architectural flaws (which, however, is understandable, because he taught the language in the process of writing the project) the game is built correctly in CodeGear 2007, although in this case there are some problems caused by the partial transition in this version Wednesday to Unicode.

Kylix has long died, the project is not really going to XE2 \ XE4 (according to preliminary estimates, you need to rewrite about a third of the entire passcode), so the port, at least, full-fledged, is not planned.

What would you advise to young guys who would really like to plunge into participation in the development?

First of all, think carefully whether there is enough strength and patience. Alone or with a couple of friends to raise the project - rather, a very rare exception than a real chance.

We need money (no one will work for free), time is needed (to combine development with the main work is hell, believe us), patience is needed, and knowledge is needed.

When about the same answer Gusarov I did not believe. After going through it personally, I made sure that he was right.

A separate question: there are different development proposals, for example, add management of the economy of the planet. What needs to be done to bring this proposal to life?

The CD, first of all, is a tactical game, not an economic simulator. Too much bias in the economy does not make sense, in fact.

The game is definitely a cult. Until now, there are fans who are experiencing a new all the coolness of the universe, called "Space Rangers." And all people are divided into those who are already profanatel, and those who are not yet profanatel. How many years will you give her life?

Maybe another two or three years until she finally falls into the category of “favorite-games-which-I-more-never-never-start”, in which I already have MoO2, the second part of Heroes and many others titles

Post script

Jacob Uvarov is present at Habré under the nickname ksenobayt .

I thank those who came up with questions for the interviews: neMAGnit , batollo , g0dlike , Sterhel , InteractiveTechnology , Aisu_Kuge , Funcraft , RussianNeuroMancer , Ramaloke , Suvitruf , Cim , Kirpa , Dreddik , thunderspb , b3nd3r , ANtlord , Am ko race ko ko ko pet pet pet pet pet Am Am ​​ov ov r r r ov r r r ov ij r ij ij ij r ij ij ij ij ij ij ij ij ij ij ij ij

Organized and conducted an interview Vadim Galkin.