Tell us a little about who you are
outside MKF.
I freelance in Film/TV Editing. I chose that career
because of how easy I found programs like Avid and Final Cut Pro,
I've also been a great storyteller at heart with a cool imagination. Part of
storytelling is narrative and narrative is vital in editing a film. I also
enjoy scriptwriting and drawing.
What's your favorite video game.
I'm probably overthinking this, I could say thats a hard question and say there are dozens, but frankly,
one pops up in my head throughout. It has to be Mega Man 2!
Favorite Song?
I grew up with Grunge, Rock and Metal, becauses I'm in
filmaking I also listen to Soundtracks, but now, because of my rediscovered
love of retrogaming I think I prefer the primitive yet nostlagic sounds from
the 8-Bit console. Remixes are cool too, I have to say, I'm a little biased and
my favourite tune to date has to be "We're the Robots" from Mega Man
9.
Favorite Novel?
There's only one book I've read once every year my whole
life, and thats The Lord of the Rings. It never gets
old and its a timeless legend. Kind of traditional for
an englishman really, its
Is this your first fangame?
MKF is indeed my first fangame. I don't think I'd ever
thought of making a fangame before, always preffered to do original stuff, like
a Starsim's Universe game. If it hadn't been for Judgespears Bubble Man Stage
video, I don't think I would ever have gotten as involved as I ended up being.
I believe I may have been one of the first co-contributors,
the team began to grow from there.
Tell us a little about your role on the development
team, what is it you do.
I am World 3's primary stage developer. Judgespear was
satisfied that I knew my Mega Man lore, and knew how big a fan I was that I'd
be perfect. I have no real coding knowledge, but I do design the sprites and
level layouts. I should thank the many friends who have also helped out with
the sprite work for world 3, we've managed to create
some awesome custom shaded characters for Mega Man's World.
List a few of your contributions to MKF.
My first ever contribution was
You've done some very nice spritework,
I especially like what did for Tails. Are you an artist or did you pick up the
skill somewhere else?
I aquired the skills there and then. I'd never done sprite work before and it seems I just have a
knack for it.
There's a great deal of energy put into making sprites
look similar even when they're from entirely different games. Tell us a little
about the process.
Well there is often a shabby way of making sprites,
called "frankenspriting". I've heard the term before and seen the
poor results that this lazy spriting can bring. I know that with all the
material at hand you do have to do some original work yourself. You need to be
subtle, one thing people might not notice is how I added Tails' spinning two
tails from his Triple Trouble sprites and pasted them onto his Chaos running
sprites. With the re-tuning and shading these minor details can look authentic
and unnoticable. Care and detail is the key, adding a bit of your own shading
or adding additional pixels to a figure can make all the difference.
Of all the things you've worked on in MKF what's your
favorite?
I think it has to be my skin mods. I realised I've slowly
become a huge Ninji fanboy, my mod of Mario into Ninji has to be my proudest
work, because now I can play as the cute little hopping blighter whenever I want.
He needs to have his own game franchise!
On average, how many hours do you spend on this
project in a week?
Of late there hasn't been much work due to other projects
but in my prime when theres lots to be done and a new beta on the horizon I've
nearly provided over 40+ hours work over a week to get a particular level done
at one time. Yep thats crazy!
What was the most difficult part of working on this
project?
I'd say what I'm doing right now has been the most
difficult task for me, making my epic World 3 level of Megatropolis. Seeing
from the sprite sheets and mock screen shots, its
become highly anticipated. And its alot of work, a very ambitious and long
level with many edited tilesets from various Mega Man sources. The biggest
problem has been updating the level to go with all the new features in the
latest source/beta. Once we achieve in transferring my work to the latest
source, allowing all the new characters, power ups, features to be applied to
this level I can continue with it, adding the NPC civillians, enemies and also
the cool autoscrolling train section.
Much of the development process is a mystery to us, tell us a little about what it's like to be on the
development team.
We choose our developers wisely, I'm proud to be apart of
some great and talented people. In the past we've basically been allowed to
work on our chosen field and then we individually send our work to either
Judgespear or Obreck for "merging" into the main source code, where
its then checked as best as we can, for bugs and missing tiles etc. We are
thinking of revising this process because it does slow things down, having to
take turns contributing material.
I've seen many good fan and indi games ruined because
their developers split up, and yet the MKF team seems to not only be holding
together, but actually growing larger over time. What's your secret?
I think what keeps the project going (and I have to admit
that there has been moments when things have slowed
and threatened to end the development) is the occasional awesome new level or
new addition added to the game that brings back the excitement for the project.
With the excitement to play the game again, and these new features, comes even more volunteers. But we must agree that there has
to be a limit on the contributors sometime or MKF may become too big to handle.
How have the fan contributions helped MKF?
Well in my case, if I hadn't stepped forward to introduce
myself to Judgespear, I don't think the idea for MKF would ever have grown the
way it did (suggesting there actually be a Mega Man
World just for Mega Man levels like Bubble Man's). I think the fans have made
MKF what it is today, made it grow from its simple roots as a little Super
Mario Fusion of levels to the grander "Worlds collided" theme.
What advise would you give to those starting their own
fan/indi games?
I'd say try not to go it alone, make your project known
in videos, forums, etc. Gain some interest and friends to help you, who knows it may end up as big as MKF!
What are you working on now?
Well thanks to MKF, I've fallen in love with fangames. I
always had a deeper love for the classic Mega Man games, and its
led me to N64Mario and his Mega Man Open Source Engine. Using Multimedia Fusion
2, he's trying to make a PC Engine that when finished would replicate a NES
Mega Man game perfectly! Ontop of that we also have an example game in the
works made from that engine, MegaPhilX is the main developer of that game and
I'm proud to say that I've been allowed to include my own Robot Master to it, Yoku
Man, master of those dreaded dissapearing blocks. We're hoping with this
fangame and engine released we could create a huge community of Mega Man fans
who'll be making their own Mega Man fangames from the engine.