History | Game design

Below is a rather verbose CV and illustration-related history of sorts, intermixed with tall tales of my adventures in the video- and computer games industry.

| 2009-2010 | Present day:
At the moment I am busy making illustrations for Procogno AB - who specializes in web-based education tools and with graphic design work and images for the many and varied clients of daLugo digital design. I am also involved in making games for the I-pod and facebook. Details of these will be added as soon as convenient. I'm also desperately trying to take a holiday!



| 2005-2008 | The Mobile phone game craze that was'nt

In 2005 daLugo partnered with AUD mobile to make small enjoyable games for mobile phones. AUD had connections with several big name themed social networking sites and had the innovative idea of setting up high-score lists and supplying a steady stream of new games to play - subsidized by the social network who had their logo on the games title screens. Leaning on our game creation skills rooted in the 8-bit era we chucked out a fair number of games in short order - only to be cut down by everyone suddenly leaving the themed social networking sites.  It was great flexing the old game-design skills and getting a scent of a new golden age of low production value - fun to play software. Being on a shoestring budget I did all the music in midi format (for low end phones) and chucked a lot of reverb and effects on them and turned them into mp3's for the higher end hand helds. I loved every second of it. Below a collection of loading screens from our sadly lost-in-time-like-tears-in-rain mobile phone games:


Edutainement
Shortly after daLugo came to life we embarked on a two year, city council founded project making an educational game to teach students (and anyone else who might be interested interested) what it takes in Sweden to start their own business. It was an informative little business game with quite a bit of meat on the bones. Unfortunately the original producers for the game stepped up the ladder or got kicked sideways from their posts during production, their responsibilities getting taken over by others who did not feel that involved. Starta eget - the game probably sits on a server collecting dust...



















Working for UR (Swedish educational TV) and DR.
During 2006 we did a reverse psychology trading/industry game to tie in to a TV series about Globalization. We called the game "Mogul - Everything has its price." The game was darkly satirical and tried to teach the players that the world gets ruined as it does because people do anything to get on the high-score table. Te game was great fun to do, and featured tons faked newsreel video clips with our friends and pets and families got drafted as "actors". The game got translated into Danish as well and still resides in cyberspace at this address: http://www.ur.se/Ung/Amnen/SO/Samhallskunskap/Globalisering/



The mindblowingly  excellent theme music for Mogul was written and performed by my good friend Instant Remedy. Instant Remedy does fab remixes of c64 and Amiga tracks. Visit him here: http://www.irsounds.com/news.php

 
| 2006 - ???  | daLugo |- A two man creative collective
Between the years 2001 - 2006 I worked on a handful of games(see below), dozens of game pitches and demos. During this time AtoD AB turned to Warthog, turned to Gizmondo Sweden. After the Gizmondo debacle (Google it!) I was tired of big company politics to hang on to working in that environment - so me and a guy who shared my resentments, Thomas Liljetoft (a good friend and colleague whom I'd worked with ever since Geremy McGrath Super-motocross, and whom I've exchanged dreams of the ultimate sci-fi game with since forever) started a two man creative collective for illustration, games and technology. We named it daLugo - because it sounded nice and the .com was unoccupied. And we're still around.






| 2001-2006 | AtoD, WARTHOG, GIZMONDO
After my third tour of duty in the UK I moved back to Sweden and started up my own business - Dennis Illustration.  It did not take long however until I drifted back into the games industry. While I was away over seas  Atod AB had grown into a solid dev team full of creative and talented people. That coupled with a steady paycheck and inspiring projects on the horizon I took the job as creative director and started hassling the art staff about with great joy and determination.

 
| 2004-2006 | RICHARD BURNS RALLY |  PS 2, PC, XBOX

We traveled the world taking pictures, we went through rallyschool, we picked every corner of he brains of  the rally drivers that tested the game - we spared no effort. We dragged exhaust pipes across different roads with a microphone, and smashed windshields with stones for crying out loud! After all that - when we had delivered the perfect sim - the client though it "maybe a little too sim" - and chose not to promote it.
And on top of that the great guy Richard Burns fell victim to a brain tumor in 2005 and got lost to us forever.
(Audio recording for RBR. From the left: Richard Burns, Me, Robert Reid)











I'm not a 4 wheel sim guy normally (IL2 for me when it comes to simming)- But if you ever got the chance to drive a 4 wheel drive rally car - you would know that what we did with RBR is as close as it gets to the real thing. But don't take my word for it: (This is 2010 review when RBR is 6 years old. It still outshines all.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KM7L0ofsw0
 



| 1998 - 20002 | TERRACON  | Playstation

 
During 1998 I got involved in the highly creative doings of PictureHouse Software - A new part Sony-owned software company set up by Simon Pick, the main man behind Die Hard Trilogy. After some initial game design work, some of it done in Sweden, I moved back to the UK and we set up offices in London, Victoria. (We were neighbors with Buckingham palace and I could see the queens horses from my office window. I passed nr 10 every day on my way to work - nice.)
During 1999 and 2000 we developed are very own game - Terracon for the Playstation. We put all we had into this game and more. Style, story, character, gameplay - original yet easy to just pick up and play. And darn spectacular looking too - Terracon previews were met with enthusiasm and we got some great reviews - unfortunately there was no marketing. And then the PS2 came out. So Terracon became an instant forgotten classic. Damn. Ah well. Terra-con-dios!

 
(Terracon at E3. From the left: Chris Nilsson, Me, Simon Pick, Sean Scaplehorn.)

I did the character, vehicle, object and level design for Terracon. I also did textures and texturing, cut scene storyboarding, scriptwriting, promo material and some voice "acting". (Doc)

Terracon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h5eY6bi8rw

Terracon intro movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46brrsisB18&feature=related


  | 1997-1998 | JEREMY MCGRATH SUPERMOTOCROSS '98 | Playstation


After having finished work on Diehard Trilogy I went back to Sweden for some R&R until I ran out of money and got drafted into AtoD AB where I did a lot of unrealized game design pitches and became the game designer/art director on Geremy McGrath supermotocross. Having my head filled with Die Hard Trilogy, the game became rather arcady with lots of obstacles to smash and barns to storm through. This was not the cup of tea Acclaim had in mind though so all the fun bits got taken out and then the game was released. It got bland reviews but sold decently well I believe. I wonder how it would have fared if it had remained a crazy stunt racing motocross bonanza. Maybe McGrath would have pulled his name from the game?

Apart from actual game design I did mostly textures and texturing work and presentation art on this game.The game also featured a clever track editor, an idea stole from the greatest driving game of all time:Speedrally on the c64. Scripting the commentary was a blast, as well as drawing the driver portraits in the manual.  Severeal of the development team was in there. Each driver had a personality and skill set based on the true personality of the person involved - The programmer Thomas Liljetoft was a very sore loser for instance, if you tried to bypass him he'd try and tackle you ;o). We put quite a bit of depth into the AI.. I wonder if anyone ever noticed? "Todhunter - bites the dust!"

The game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G6Z8LNiSb8

| 1994-1996 | DIE HARD TRILOGY  | Sony Playstation

During 1994 to 1996 i worked for Probe Entertainment Ltd based in the London Suburb of East Croydon. When I first got there I did some presentation screens for a SNES Judge Dredd (Can't remember wich one). One day Simon Pick came in and said: "Hello Dennis. Long time no see. Come with me - We're going to make a die hard game." The rest is history. Not very known history, but history none the same. DieHard Trilogy was made for FOX Interactive and it was a massive undertaking. Three games in one. Our first PlayStation game. The first (I think) motion capture work in the UK.  Weird and wonderful meatball-men technology. It was crazy. It was not believed to amount to much more than a standard movie-tie in shelf-filler. It brought the house down. (In a good way.)

My work included game design, level design, texture work, story-boarding, mo-cap supervision and all other design and art related tasks. I started off as a lowly pixel pusher and soon got dubbed Art Director. (Titles were a big thing in the company structure, there is some funny commentary of it in the Making Of clips)
During the project the team grew from 2 to about 12 and our work hours from 100 to 200% in the last months. *Shudder*

There is a great article about the making of Diehard Trilogy in Retro Gamer Issue:69

For hardcore DHT buffs, I have posted a seven YOUTUBE episodes from footage taken during the development of the game. I found a VHS with the material on it when I was chucking out all my tapes - It proved to be the only surviving copy. If nothing else it's a great time document. Old Pepsi cans, fat little 14"  screens and PC turbo buttons. This was our very first 3D game using them new fangled polygons, Goraud shading and stuff. (I just can't get over that I've got my shirt tucked down my Jeans.. *the horror* )

| 1995 (1993) | MR TUFF  |  SNES

Mr Tuff - one of the best games I was involved in during my time at the Sales Curve Ltd. I mainly did presentation art and The Main character. "When the going gets Tough - Mr TUFF!"
Sadly Mr Tuff only came out in Japan years later. Mr Tuff was the brainchild of the masterful Ned Langman of Hades Nebula and SWIV fame. I learned a lot about atmos, colour and strange comedy from Ned :o)

There is a YOUTUBE clip showing some of the intro screens I did, If you look closely at the people queuing up to board the spaceship you may recognize my profile silouette to the far left:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLa_PM9wj2g

| 1993 | TIMESLIP | SNES

 Time Slip - Not the proudest of my achievements. This project introduced me to the dark side of games development. Timeslip had dragged behind horribly and I was put on it to draw the missing bits and bobs. I though I did a fairly decent job given the short time, and I even drew new versions of the main character and some of the stuff that already was in there because I though the styles between the other artists work (Who had left) and my own was very different. For a person proud of his work - PUT IT IN THE BOX! is a bitter pill to swallow. No time allowed to make better - only finish it and ship it. Ah well the result speaks for itself. Timeslip taugh me another valuable lesson I carried with me as a games designer from then on - constantly playing a game makes you good at it - don't forget to keep some testers in reserve who has not played that game until the end otherwise your game will invariably become too hard! Timeslip is a perfect example of this, as being a nugly duckling - its damned nigh impossible to play.

For the curious, here a German gentleman who at least makes entertaining commentary while playing Timeslip:

| 1992-1993 | TRODDLERS  | AMIGA, SNES

Troddlers - My (Our, Chris did all the programming) second proper game - This was my first game to be ported to several diffrent formats - including ( By a group of gung-ho VIC64 entusiasts to the venerable all times favourite bit box - the commodore 64 (Never came out though - far too late in the day.)). The music was made by the very talented Mr Allister Brimble. I still enjoy listening to the Troddlers tunes. It nearly drove me mad mapping all those levels - I think over 200. We did unique levels for demo versions, and the SNES had tutorial levels as well. This game got amazing reviews - but was not marketed to any degree. I could buy a bottle of Jack Daniels for the total sum of my royalties. This is one of my favourite games that I have ever designed. Still fun to play. And Ye-es it may LOOK a bit like Lemmings - but it don't PLAY the same! *sigh* Actually it plays a lot like Solomons Key with lemmings wearing sticky shoes it in :o).

Troddlers at play: (AMIGA version)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwGFghZV2E0&feature=related


Troddlers Reklamfilm: (SNES version)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdVS2k0FNqw&feature=related

For the truth, go Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troddlers

| 1991 | PARAMAX  | AMIGA

My very first proper game. This thing was cooked up by me and my later to become boss Christoffer Nilsson under his Crosstechnix banner. We did two attempts at proper games before that "Volcano Willie" Great title that! ;o) and a viking game that might have gone under the name of "Eric". Perhaps luckily those two early attempts were lost when Chris's Amiga suffered a hard disc crash.  Paramax game taught me amongst other things that six planned game environments easily gets cut down to three as time wears on. Many of the sprites are 4 colours for a reason I have forgotten - maybe it had something to do with the parallax backdrops.. The superb music composed by Jasmin Topalovic is still awsome!

The aged Paramax at play: (Those gold bar pickups still looks yummy though.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14zcR-o0LxA

| 1984 - 1990 | PRELUDE

The AMIGA
I did some loading screens for the computer store I worked in at the time: Sector 40, Helsingborg.
These screens were spotted by the talented whiz kid Mr Christoffer Nilsson - we started making games almost at the word go. (Se above)

The Commodore 64
This is when I started making loading screens for the completely unknown and highly unsuccessful cracking crew "The Fire Crackers" - Me and my Friend Orvar Ehn. We only managed to rip a few games using The Final Cartridge and Orvar did the magic numbers stuff to make the game display my screens before the games loaded. During this era I also did my first games - Animations, backgrounds, levels and all using SHootEmUpConstruction Kit. (Eyeball, and No Way To Die - How I wish I had taken some screenshots!) I hade tried with the more technical AMOS - but failed miserably. Any type of coding (Even the basic HTML stuff I have to perform to make this blogg work) is way beyond my limited capacity for rational thinking. I even tried to make music using my a basic tracker, and Simon Pick's (Later to become my boss) Microrythm.

First Contact with Computers (The Vic 20)
Playing at computer graphics, although at the time I could never dream that I could be doing something like that for a living, started off when I borrowed my friends Vic20 and I played Gandalf the sorcerer on it. I could not believe the reaslim of those running horses. I delved into this mystery by copying the horses animation frames pixel by pixel into a square pattern math exercise book. (As I had learned how make moving scribbles from drawing crude sequences on pads of paper and flipping through the "frames" I had a basic notion of animation.)

Here a video of the  Spectrum version: (No - The music is not from the game)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4Hryrn1VFg





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