What's your favorite video game?

Super Mario Bros 3. When SMB3 was released, I and almost everyone I knew played that game alot and knew most of the secrets and tricks inside and out. It was just such a huge leap forward from the other Mario games and platforming games in general.

What's the most memorable game you ever played?

Final Fantasy 6. It was the first FF game I got into and that probably influenced my memory of it a great deal, but I remember it very well as the first game I played where I cared about the story. Also, Kekfa's laugh.

When you started making this game where did you start?

I started by creating a player character, Cutman was the first one, and placing it in a stage with two almost empty rooms. I spent most of the beginning couple weeks just running and jumping around to make sure the game played very similar to the 8-bit Megaman games.

What was the hardest part of making this game?

The toughest part of making this game was definitely getting the game's view to work. By that I mean making sure the screen follows the player character, stays within the boundaries of the current room that character is in, correctly transitions to the next room when moving between rooms, etc. It took a surprisingly long time to get all bugs worked out, since it seemed like every attempt to fix one aspect of the viewpoint caused another problem to crop up.

What inspired you to make Megaman DL?

The idea came while I was working on the Jungle Facility level for Mushroom Kingdom Fusion. At the time, I was browing the Mega Man wiki to find the correct names for all the enemies for the stage when I noticed a blurb on the story of MM7. It mentioned that the original Robot Masters of MM1 has served as a first line of defense when things began to go wrong, or at least until Megaman himself got involved. Right after seeing that I thought "Hey, there's an idea" and about a week later decided how I wanted this game to work and began working on it.

What would you consider to be the most important aspect of game design?

Fun. That seems like such an obvious answer, but it is easy to overlook sometimes. Primarily, I think it is important to actually play the game one is creating, as well as others like it, and see what works well and what does not. Several ideas that sounded really good ended up not being very enjoyable in action. Occasionally, it is for the best to simply not include something new in the game if it does not turn out to be fun.

About how long did it take you to put this game together?

A little over 3 months. I spent just about all of my free time on it at first. About two-thirds of the way through, my enthusiasm waned and progress slowed down considerably, but overall I'd say I completed this game in a decent timeframe.

Did the MKF community support and/or help you with this project?

Yes. D-Turbokiller and Del gave me some invaluable feedback when I first started programming the game. Del also very nicely agreed to provide custom sprites for elements of gameplay that were not included in the original Megaman games. Such as the character sprites for taking damage and running, the portraits in the stage menu, some of the enemies, and some other features. Upon releasing the first beta of the game on the fangame forum for MKF, I received feedback from the community there as well. The words of support everyone gave helped me to continue on to complete the game after my initial excitement wore off, and I had to settle in and get everything done. Great folks all around, really.

What are you working on now?

I'm currently helping to create levels for Mushroom Kingdom Fusion. When the sister project, Super Mario Fusion, gets underway I will be assisting with the creation of some levels there as well.

What advice would you give to those starting their own fan/indie games?

The only advice I can really give is to start small. Many fangames, and indie games in general, die off before they reach completion because, when the inital fascination wears off, they're left with a long list of features to be added, bugs to be squashed, and content to be created. This can be extremely overwhelming, and often kill all desire to continue working on the game. I set out to make this game small on purpose, and I still found myself wondering if I should finish it on occasion. In summation, trying to do everything often results in nothing getting done.