Electric Pixel Factory Interview

Just how many scrolling layers is a typical Gorilla Gondola background separated into? If the game’s website is any indication of how the parallax scrolling will look in-game, what did you have to do to achieve the neat moving reflections on bodies of water in the backdrop? Is there anything else about implementing the environments that the team is especially proud of, but players might not notice at first?

Dean: We’re glad you like the teaser of the background art we show off on our website, it’s actually all in-game assets from the game’s opening “Alpine” level. We have eight levels in the game, each one themed differently. I’d say most backgrounds run between six and eight layers of parallax. What we aimed to do was create a look that almost wanted to be 3D, by using as many 2D layers as we could get away with. We are very proud of the final result. Still, screenshots don’t quite convey the effect, so we are looking to show off some video footage soon. The neat reflections you speak of are just some very simple trickery using alpha and how we overdraw stuff, but is something we thought carefully about.

Dave: With Dean painting such vibrant backgrounds, for the 3D art I had to ensure all of my stuff didn’t just simply blend in with his, as we need it to sit on top to help give the visuals depth. All of the 3D assets have been rendered with a three point lighting system to really help punch out the details and give them nice subtle highlights.

EU: I’m just glad we’ve got it all working at 30 FPS. Phones are quite powerful these days but the fill rate, i.e. how many pixels you can draw per frame, is used up very quickly if you throw lots of transparent layers around. So it took quite a few optimizations and clever arranging of the parallax layers to make it run smoothly, but the results look fantastic.

And finally, how has the length and intensity of this project’s development cycle compared to your original expectations? Did things go slower or faster than the team initially projected?

Dave: We definitely underestimated the work involved.

Dean: I think we couldn’t have been more inaccurate in our estimations, really.

EU: We were hopelessly optimistic. We’ve taken about twice as long as we thought we would.

Dave: But I think it’s because we wanted to make sure that we were releasing a quality title. We didn’t want to simply chuck a half finished game out there. As we’ve gone along, we consistently come up with neat little ideas which really enhance the gaming experience. Half of the game’s features were only introduced after EU had announced he would stop putting in new stuff to get the game finished more quickly. He didn’t, obviously.

Dean: The more the project progressed the more we thought “Hey, we could be onto something here.” So in turn, we got more passionate about the project and put in a lot of extra hours doing the very best we possibly could. I admit I am a bit guilty of tweaking and redoing things, I got told off a few times but I’m a bit of a perfectionist in that way.

EU: Indeed, I think Dean’s redrawn “Alpine” like three times. The thing is, you look at some iPhone game and think, “Yeah, we could churn this out in a few weeks.” Well maybe you could if you worked on it full-time, had a fully working framework and tools and knew exactly what you were making. None of that applies to us. Also, for the first time in my game dev career I really appreciate the importance of a dedicated designer — a guy who just sits there and is good at tweaking numbers and building levels until everything just plays right. It’s a lot of work, but still, tons of fun.

Dave: Yes, I’m really enjoying working on the game and I hope people feel the same when they play it!

Dean: I think the result in the finished game will be worth the extra hours! If it’s any indication for quality, we are regularly locked into intense high-score battles until the early morning hours. Which I usually win.

Big thanks to Dean, EU, and Dave of Electric Pixel Factory for taking the time out to chat with us about their debut iOS title! Keep an eye on their site, Facebook page, and Twitter account for the latest news on Gorilla Gondola!