Ask anyhting you want and I will try my best to answer your questions. I won't spoil anything though.
Created 10 years ago2013-11-18 17:11:01 UTC by Rimrook
Why did you choose to stay low-res?Well, given my love of pixel art, he's clearly trying to get into my pants.
Can we expect Oculus support?Still trying to justify your ridiculous purchase?
What was the original catalyst to the idea - what made you decide to make SMJ into a game?Essentially it was being able to have the right tools that enabled me to make the game. SMJ started out as a Super Mario World mod but like modding anything, there were some tight limitations. I was watching Stencyl's development for a while, and when it finally released, it was the toolkit I was looking for. This came some years later and I didn't know that SMJ was going to be the game I was going to make. I wanted to play around with Stencyl a little bit so I took some loose pixel art I've done that was inspired by the Super Mario mod. In a short two hours, I had the player character running, jumping, double-jumping, wall-jumping, and shooting. This captivated me instantly to try and make a little game of it. I remember how awesome it made the real Matt Jordan feel that he was starring in a game, so I was going to make a small project of it and just put it out there.
What's been the biggest difficulty in making the game?Uhm... Finding the time to work on it for starts. The most tedious part of the game is linking the individual levels together. There are 108 playable areas in the game right now and that's only about 15% of the whole. Most of it is still on paper. The hardest part is moving into a new section of the game where the backgrounds, foregrounds, enemies, etc., is all new. There's a lot to accomplish artistically.
Your skills are inevitably improved working on a project like this for as long as you have and it must be tempting to constantly rework and tweak early elements with a newer, better skillset. Do you find it hard to actually label things finished?I don't think about it that much. Yeah I will tweak a thing here or there, but to redo an area, it's all about how it feels. If the environment portrays enough of the emotion or message to the player that is necessary, then its done. Also, making each area consistant with each other is also something to keep in mind so I do still have to go back and improve some parts of the game. I deem it important because the scope for graphics I have at my disposal is unlimited, so I want to make good use of aesthetic story telling.
Can we expect Oculus support?If I honestly knew how to support it, I seriously would. With the many layers of background and foreground elements, it would actually look pretty bad-ass.
I love the 16bit/pixelated look and art style. Why did you choose to stay low-res?As mentioned above, I took some artwork that pre-existed. The 16-bit resolution fit immediately and I simply expanded what I already had, which also dictated the style in which the game would take form. Also, I have noticed that some stencyl games that run at 1x pixel or screen-res doesn't run as smoothly. 2x pixel size runs better and uses less memory. SMJ right now is about 50mb which is surprisingly small considering I do a lot of little specific graphics, sounds, and music.
What were your goals when you started working on this project and have they changed since then?The goal was to just make a game, just to get one under the belt and stop wanting to be a developer and start being one. Unfortunately my simple idea exploded into something far more involved. The issue of money surfaces from time to time, though I always do my best when I forget about making money with the game. Ultimately I think SMJ will be released for free. That would loosen up the creative process (and any unforeseen legal issues) and make a better experience for everyone, and everyone would be able to play it. The goal has changed from wanting to make a game to wanting to make a good game.