Duranik: Interviewed

by Matthew Bacon

Matthew: Thank you again for taking time out to let us interview you, you must be pretty busy with Christmas and your forthcoming release Alpine Games for the Lynx. But more about that later!

For our readers who may not be familiar with your work, can you tell us a little about yourself?

Roland: Hi, my name is Roland Graf. I'm 33 years old and work as network administrator. I live in Germany, roughly between Stuttgart and Munich.

The other member of Duranik is my brother Johannes. He is 31 years old. He works at a video games company as graphics artist. Currently he lives in Vienna.

If you want to see some of his other work, buy Iron Soldier 3 on the Nuon or PlayStation or the new Ultimate Winter Games from Telegames for the Game Boy Advance where he also did the graphics.

Matthew: If Roland is your real name, who is Duranik? And what made you choose this name?

Roland: The name Duranik was created back in 1989. It was a combination of the two names Dürrsoft + Meranik we put together :) 

In fact there are a few products made under the Duranik "label" reaching as far back as the Atari ST, most of them were never released to the public. I think it is a similar story to lots of computer freaks who start doing little programs/games and are getting better every day, so the old stuff gets "shelved".

I included some older graphics that where made for games we planed a few years ago. First are some pictures for a updated and improved Native II.

Second are for a Jaguar horror adventure we discussed a long time ago.

The last are for a Lynx Knights style game.

Matthew: From your web site (http://www.duranik.com) I see that you've been programming on various Atari platforms for several years. When and why did you start programming?

Roland: I started around 1987 on the ST with the famous GFA BASIC and STOS BASIC. Later I moved to assembler and since this time I do all game coding in assembler.

At this time it was normal to program your computer, and so I started also toying around with programming languages.

Matthew: Do you have a favourite programming platform?

Roland: I like everything with the Atari logo. The main coding for all current Duranik products were done on an Atari Falcon030 with Devpac as editor. The best devkit I have used so far, is the BLL kit for the Lynx, which is really excellent.

Matthew: Why?

Roland: Well, I don't know. These are great machines. Most of them were some kind of underdog system (ST versus Amiga at least in the later years of the ST, Lynx versus Gameboy and Gamegea...). Perhaps that's what I like about them.

Matthew: From your site, I understand that you about to release a new game for the Atari Lynx, can you tell us any more about this and any other games you've written for the Atari platforms?

Roland: Yes, Alpine Games is finished and will start shipping at the end of January. We worked for quite a long time on this game. We started in January 1999. The first public beta version was released to the Lynx Developer List in the summer of 2003. It is a 512 KB game (or 4 MBit which sounds even better!) with an EEPROM to save high scores. The game is more or less a classic Epyx "Games" style game like the classics World/Winter Games.

Most stuff was ready around 2001. But as always the hardest part is to finish a game.

Other games we worked on: Impulse for the Atari Falcon which is a Breakout clone, and the Native demo for the Atari Jaguar. There are some others on the ST which even I didn't remember correctly, most of them were never finished. There are also a lot of tools we have written to support us developing the games. The biggest one, is a sprite editor on the Atari Falcon that was used for Impulse and Native.

Matthew: I loved the original Breakout and will definitely check out your version. How do you get your inspiration for writing your games? For example, Native is along the lines of the classic R-Type, after having the initial idea, what do you do next?

Roland: As we are both fans of 2D shooters and the Jaguar lacks them badly, we thought it would be cool to do a little bit of coding for this machine.

At the time we started Native we didn't have the official Atari documentation or a devkit. We bought a Jag-Server from a nice Swedish guy and after some tests we were convinced the Jag was more or less built for 2D shooters. It could really throw around tons of sprites.

As for the steps, it was mostly always the same, my brother did some initial graphics designs and I started coding. All games we have done so far were re-makes of classics, which makes it easy, as you have a good source to look at.

The story behind Alpine Games was that we got a Lynx BLL Kit from Bastian Schick and considered what game we could do for it. We decided to make a game that wouldn't take long. So I convinced my brother that I can make a Winter Games style game in about half a year!

Later we saw that the time frame was a bit tight, as we only had time to work on it in our spare time.

Matthew: Both Native and Impulse were released as freeware, is that your intention for Alpine Games?

Roland: No, Alpine Games is not a free release, as it comes as a module with package and full color instruction booklet. It will cost 35 Euro (plus shipping).

Lars Baumstark will produce and ship the cards. He has lots of experience in producing Lynx cards, as he also does the SIMIS and T-Tris cards.

Matthew: After the release of Alpine Games, what is your next project?

Roland: Nothing discussed yet. As we haven't made more than one game for the same system in the past it is unlikely that we will do another one for the Lynx. Perhaps we move back in time and grab the VCS.

Matthew: Thanks again, we wish you the very best for 2004 and hope the release of Alpine Games goes smoothly.

Roland: Thank you, and don't forget to post your Alpine Games high scores for the on-line high score table.

matt@myatari.net

MyAtari magazine - Feature #5, February 2004