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INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW HAYWOOD - Play tester on Electrek
Andrew Haywood recently contacted AmigaPd with a full version of Electrek a wonderful puzzle / platform game played across two planes. Hmm quite difficult to explain but thankfully there is a video of the game in progress on this page which will clearly demonstrate this unique game.
Andrew was one of the play testers for the game has provided some memories on the background to the game.
At the end of this page are also some quotes from the EAB Forum where the original programmer made some comments during the quest to locate the full game. We are currently trying to contact Chirs and Wilf to see if they are prepared to answer some more questions about this great but criminally under rated game.
Andrew was one of the play testers for the game has provided some memories on the background to the game.
At the end of this page are also some quotes from the EAB Forum where the original programmer made some comments during the quest to locate the full game. We are currently trying to contact Chirs and Wilf to see if they are prepared to answer some more questions about this great but criminally under rated game.
How did the programming of Electrek begin?The seeds for Electrek were sown by, believe it or not, Jeff Minter's "Attack of the Mutant camels" (AMC). We'd all been big fans of the C64 original and Chris decided to do an Amiga version. Well, after a few weeks of hard coding from him and testing (and tea-drinking) from us, a rather spiffy Amiga version of AMC arrived.
Chris wanted to release it as PD but made, what was perhaps in hindsight, the mistake of showing Jeff Minter too much respect. Chris sent the game to Minter with a jolly little letter asking Jeff if he was okay with Chris releasing the game as PD. This was especially nice considering that AMC was itself little more the a rip-off of Atari VCS "The Empire Strikes Back". Jeff, unfortunately said no (although he DID heavily praise Chris' version). Chris, being the super chap that HE is, respected Minter's wishes completely and the game was only ever played by us lucky few (and unfortunately I lost my ADF years ago :-( ) So, all of this left everyone feeling a little dispirited. Chris, thankfully, still wanted to make Amiga games and decided that the best way to avoid the AMC affair from being repeated was to design an original game from scratch (although I think the idea of creating something completely new held its own appeal for him, as well). We've all always been huge fans of old-school gaming - and single-screen platformers were already considered old-school by the early 90s - and we all liked games that tested the grey matter as well as joystick dexterity. Thus began an idea to create a game which would become Electrek. Who game up the idea of Electricity and the circuit boards?Chris came up with the concept of circuits needing to be shut down etc. I can't remember who had the fantastic idea of switching between platform planes, but that may also have been Chris.
Unlike most shareware of the time this game did not seem to be the work of one bedroom programmer - who was involved in the game and how were tasks allocated?All graphics were drawn by "Wilf" in Dpaint 3. All music and sound effects were done by Chris (he had a splendid Korg keyboard connected to the Amiga and was tinkering with Protracker long before he wrote Electrek, and created some stunning tunes with it).
Doobury (real name also Chris) designed the later (rather tricky) levels and play-tested, came up with ideas etc. The rest of us contributed ideas, cried at Doobury's levels and tested the hell out of it (while continuing to drink copious amounts of tea, of course). Due to time lapsed since we made the thing, I can only vaguely remember as to who contributed what ideas, so I can't name names in case I get things wrong and offend anyone What was the feeling amongst the team once the game was completed?Everyone was rather pleased with the end result and Chris decided to release it as Shareware (we'd certainly seen plenty of Shareware that was WAY below what Electrek offered) so a limited-level demo version was sent out to a couple of PD outlets. I can't remember whether it was Chris who sent it to Amiga Power magazine, or a PD distributor, but the demo version was soon reviewed by them, and they were impressed enough to finish with "why aren't you ordering this already?".
If you would like to read the Amiga Power review click here. |
Electrek - Amiga      ADF Disk Image of Electrek
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What were the sales like?
Unfortunately, despite Amiga Power singing its praises, only one or two copies of Electrek were ever sold. Chris soon started another PD project and another conversion of a C64 game; this time, arcade-strategy classic, Archon. Graphics were more or less completed, together with some movement routines and maybe some basic AI, but by this point, Chris was losing interest in coding and focusing more on music, so unfortunately Archon was never completed.
YBN Review of Electrek from You Tube
EAB Forum discussions on Electrek
Back in May 2007 the Electrek team engaged in a detailed discussion about Electrek on the EAB forum - the full posts and original forum discussion can be read by clicking here. Below is a summary of some of the interesting points relating to the development including a level editor and confusion surrounding the name.
Wilf explains who was in the original team behind Electrek.
My name is Wilf, I'm one of the guys who put Electrek together, it was done with friends in York in my friend Chris Nodder's room where we all used to hang out, we called it Heworth Castle and our 'studio' was the HCCS, the Heworth Castle Creative Studios (or Cracking Squad dependent upon if we were creating new stuff or cracking other's).
As far as I can recall now, I did all the graphics and animations, including the font, Chris did all the coding and music and many of the early level designs, Doobs playtested and did lots of the harder levels, between us we came up with the ideas for gameplay and gimmicks as we went along, and the other names on the high score are just the rest of our good friends who hung around the place at the time, and may have done playtesting, ideas, commenting and drinking tea!
I don't think we ever did the final tweaking to get it to play with a nice proper difficulty arc and I believe we only ever sold one copy of the full game, but we did get a very favourable write up in some Amiga magazine as I recall!
As far as I can recall now, I did all the graphics and animations, including the font, Chris did all the coding and music and many of the early level designs, Doobs playtested and did lots of the harder levels, between us we came up with the ideas for gameplay and gimmicks as we went along, and the other names on the high score are just the rest of our good friends who hung around the place at the time, and may have done playtesting, ideas, commenting and drinking tea!
I don't think we ever did the final tweaking to get it to play with a nice proper difficulty arc and I believe we only ever sold one copy of the full game, but we did get a very favourable write up in some Amiga magazine as I recall!
Wilf recalls the other Amiga shareware games he was involved with.
I do recall we did quite a few games, either original pieces or modernisations of older formats such as Archaos and Attack Of The Mutant Camels and such, if I have got that title right, though I'm not sure of the legality in the modern age of the permitted distribution of such things as they weren't our own concepts, but we cut our teeth as games programmers on the Amiga by doing 'remixes' of favourite old hits (C64 games mainly), but as I say, I have no clue how much, if any, of this stuff, I or my friends still possess nor how feasible it is to retrieve any of it.
Wilf explains why their version of Mutant Camels is not released.
I've no clue about the Mutant Camels one, I do know it was finished and approved by Mr Minter himself, but we got a threatening letter from his lawyers so we decided we'd best keep it to ourselves! Still, proves we must have done a good accurate version, doesn't it?
If it still exists, I've no clue as to the logistics of being allowed to show it/share it in the modern age
*Edit by Andy Haywood* As I recall, Jeff Minter didn't go so far as to bring in the lawyers. I vaguely remember reading the reply on Llamasoft-headed paper. I now also remember that Minter's reason for saying no to Chris's PD release was on the vague possibility that Minter himself might decide to do a (commercial) Amiga version at some point (Needless to say, this never happened).
If it still exists, I've no clue as to the logistics of being allowed to show it/share it in the modern age
*Edit by Andy Haywood* As I recall, Jeff Minter didn't go so far as to bring in the lawyers. I vaguely remember reading the reply on Llamasoft-headed paper. I now also remember that Minter's reason for saying no to Chris's PD release was on the vague possibility that Minter himself might decide to do a (commercial) Amiga version at some point (Needless to say, this never happened).
Wilf remembers the difficulty level was slightly flawed.
The difficulty arc needed tweaking. I remember it was too quick & easy to recharge yourself when you were low on energy bars, and therefore too hard to die on the early levels for the first few stages, but then suddenly became impossible to survive when we got to Doobury's later harder levels where-upon most folks just put the joystick down, so hopefully they've also found the level editor and are gonna do some new 'inbetween' stages to smooth that out a tad, but I guess we'll just have to see!
Wilf provides an explaination for the confusion over the name; Electrek or Elektrek.
We've just been wandering thru the original script at my end and found out something that may explain the error in spelling, the original title screen (that I think Vic-e-Babes did) has the same error! Thing is I'm not sure whether or not it was used!?
Chris explains the updates he makes to the final game after locating the full shareware version?
1. Installed save routine for hi-score (never finished that bit before).
2. Copied full instructions onto disk, modifying the wording slightly throughout.
3. Changed Pause / Resume to DEL key only. It used to be DEL to Pause, HELP to Resume, which was a bit daft.
4. Removed ability to exit program by pressing left mouse button. Thought this was a bad idea in case of momentary lapse of reason and quitting the game accidentally 3/4 of the way through
5. Removed ability to quit game by pressing Pause, then Escape. Same reason as above.
6. As I was on a roll I altered Vic's loading pic to read 'Electrek' instead of 'Elektrek' myself so we can use it this time without perpetuating that spelling confusion. Also removed the 'He has the power...' line which I didn't really like. Have a look and let me know on that.
I'm just going to check some of the levels, 'coz I think there may be a few that aren't actually possible to complete!
2. Copied full instructions onto disk, modifying the wording slightly throughout.
3. Changed Pause / Resume to DEL key only. It used to be DEL to Pause, HELP to Resume, which was a bit daft.
4. Removed ability to exit program by pressing left mouse button. Thought this was a bad idea in case of momentary lapse of reason and quitting the game accidentally 3/4 of the way through
5. Removed ability to quit game by pressing Pause, then Escape. Same reason as above.
6. As I was on a roll I altered Vic's loading pic to read 'Electrek' instead of 'Elektrek' myself so we can use it this time without perpetuating that spelling confusion. Also removed the 'He has the power...' line which I didn't really like. Have a look and let me know on that.
I'm just going to check some of the levels, 'coz I think there may be a few that aren't actually possible to complete!
Wilf updates us on the search for the level editor.
The level designer has not been found, but it may yet, and I was rather surprised to find that I'm mistaken and the Amiga I have is NOT the original it was written upon, that one is with Doobs, mine was the later upgrade Chris got I think, so Doobs has the better chance of finding the level designer on his Amiga's internal drive.
Thank you
Amigapd would like to thank Andrew Haywood for his time in answering these questions and providing us with the full version of Electrek.
AmigaPd Charityware
We hope you enjoyed reading the interview - remember AmigaPd is charity ware - please visit our just giving page to support our chosen charity Mencap.
