Interview with Cakey

Interview with Cakey

The creator of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved speaks...

Tuesday, October 18 2005

Stephen Cakebread, affectionately known as "Cakey" throughout Bizarre Creations, is the mastermind behind both the original mini-game Geometry Wars, and its next generation sequel Retro Evolved.

Q: Steve, tell us why you decided to make the original Geometry Wars. Where did the inspiration come from?

The game as it is fell into place over a long period of time, whenever I had a new idea for a bad guy, or felt like tweaking the gameplay or effects; there wasn't really any initial inspiration for it, the original code was a testbed for some new joystick code I was writing.


Q: Was it tough to share your development time between Geometry Wars and PGR2? How did you schedule everything?

Fortunately GW was more or less finished by the time I started work on PGR2. Other than the front-end screens and sound, it didn't change that much from the original version.


Q: Retro Evolved is a massive leap from the original. What do you think is the best new feature of GW:RE?

I don't really have a favourite... I could tell you about all the rough edges I want to improve, but that would take too long!


Q: How many different types of bad guys are there in Retro Evolved? Can you talk us through some of the new guys?

I think there are 12 different types of bad guy this time around. I had originally tried a lot more than that, but I found anything which requires more than a moment's concentration to kill tended to accumulate on screen eventually, swarming the player with huge numbers of hard to kill bad guys...

So in the final game, at the low end of the scale there's a new pale purple bad guy that drifts and spins serenely around the screen. On the opposite side there's a dark blue one which is probably the hardest enemy in the game. However, they ARE possible to defeat without using a smart bomb!


Q: There are also a bunch of new weapons. Which is your favourite, and why?

The fast three way fire is probably the best weapon in the game as it gives you the best precision over range, and a good spread. The weapon which ripples the grid travels slower, but isn't affected by gravity as much so tends to stay on target.


Q: One of the most striking new graphical features in the game is the "gravity grid" play area. How did you make this look so cool; does every object in the game really have its own gravity?

The grid itself is made up of 60,000 points, each one exerting a small amount of force on its neighbour. The simulation itself sits on the edge of stability which is what causes it to swing about so much when one of the game objects gives it a small push!

Only a few types of object affect the grid. As the grid system is rather expensive to calculate, it actually runs on the second core along with the audio system, (the first core being dedicated to gameplay and particles, the third is used to render the audio).


Q: So GW:RE is now going to be available to download through Xbox Live Arcade. Why was the game made available in this way?

Geometry Wars is well suited to XLA, as it lets people who aren't into racing games play Retro Evolved. It just seemed like the right platform at the right time; something fun we could do without a dedicating a big team to a project.


Q: Do you think Live Arcade will open up a new opportunity for one-man developers, or are those days truly lost forever?

Even GW:RE was worked on by a few people this time around, the three sound guys (Nick, Nick and Mathias) did a great job on all the sound effects, we had Chris Chudley at Audio Antics, who's creating some of the music for PGR3 create the music for GW:RE, and then on top of that there's the artwork for XLA, the documentation work, and all the production stuff...

That said, I think we will see a few titles appearing on XLA which have been created by one-man developers, possibly outsourcing some of the work, but ultimately even a small game is so much work these days it takes two or three people just to get it done in a reasonable amount of time...


Q: Will we see any more Live Arcade titles from yourself; or Bizarre Creations as a whole?

I hope so! Someone usually comes up with at least one whacky small game idea a week at Bizarre... then it's just a case of persuading people to let us work on them!


Q: Any ideas for Geometry Wars 3?

Yes.