Showing posts with label hypertension. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hypertension. Show all posts

Developer Interview: Isotope SoftWorks' Coraline Annis

Isotope SoftWorks is a developer with a plan - a plan to bring independently developed first person shooting action to the Dreamcast. Isotope currently has two such titles in development - SLaVE and Hypertension: Harmony of Darkness. Both are FPSs, and both are coming soon via GOAT Store...but they really couldn't be further apart in terms of aesthetics and narrative. The Dreamcast Junkyard really wanted to know more about what makes Isotope tick, and so we got together with founder and lead programmer Coraline Annis to discuss the exciting projects currently under way and due for release in the near future.

DCJY: Hi Coraline, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Could you give a little bit of background to Isotope SoftWorks and TDG Mods? Who are you and how did you form as a developer?

Coraline Annis: My name is Coraline Annis (Corbin) and I’m the founder and lead programmer for Isotope SoftWorks. TDGMods stands for “The Doom Gods Mods” and was the name of my first independent mod team that formed Hypertension. The name change was done to move away from the “mod” and “Doom” mindset, and to differentiate that the current team working on Hypertension is completely different from the previous. The TDGMods monikor is only kept on to honor the previous developers throughout the lifetime of the game itself.

I was very small when I figured out I wanted to work on computer games. I got my start through a utility called DeHackED for DOOM, and BUILD for Duke Nukem 3D in my early years. It was awhile before I tried bigger things, but I got my start pretty much like everyone else in the 90’s industry. Determination led to the formation of TDGMods in high school, and many failed projects later, we are where we are today. Isotope SoftWorks is the ultimate culmination of all of our hard work to get where we are now, and believe me, it was very hard and complicated. None of this was started with a plan, we just kept rolling with it until we had enough to say “Hey, check us out!”
Hypertension features some impressive lighting effects
If you notice, historically, we have always presented our games with actual media, and not a bunch of concept art or babbling to a camera. In the end, I think that’s why people still believe in us, because we have never been big on ‘talk now, show concept art later’ - it’s always like, here’s in-engine material, suck on that! Haha!

And, despite my formal name being Corbin, I underwent a transition and now go by Coraline, but you’ll see my legal name accredited simply because it seems to confuse a lot of people or they don’t have the maturity to show respect towards me. I’ve never really addressed that part of myself publicly in detail, so there might be a time when I will, but for now it’s not important. I’m still the same person that’s worked on these things all these years anyway. Just prettier ;)
Isotope SoftWorks' new logo.

Doomcast


I'm a huge fan of the Doom games. I have played or own every single console release of the game, and know the ins and outs of each version with quite frightening detail - from the music-less Atari Jaguar version and the texture-less floors and ceilings of the SNES port, to the windowed 3DO and 32X versions and the sublime multi-coloured PS1 iteration. I've also played the PC originals to death and more recently the Brutal Doom mod on my mac...yet my personal favourite has got to be Doom 64. You can read about my love for that game here if you so wish, but let's get down to business - you've come to the Dreamcast Junkyard for DC-related prose, not N64 circle-jerking.

Sadly, the Dreamcast never got an official retail port of id Software's genre-defining shooter, which is understandable when you consider the timing of the console's release and lifespan. It was probably too late to put the original games out as an official release, and too early for Doom 3; plus the idea of semi-retro compendiums was quite new at the time and so a re-issue would probably have been derided as unnecessary, and a bit of an insult to those people who had shelled out for a 128-bit system. While retro collections are all the rage these days, back in the early 2000s they simply were not the de rigueur. That said, Doom 3 was years away from release and the game we all know today would have been far too much for the Dreamcast to handle with it's complex vertex shading and texturing techniques - even the original Xbox had to make do with a heavily compromised port of the PC game.

Hypertension Update

OK, so I admit straight off the bat that I nicked this information from RetroCollect...but c'mon - this is BIG news! Most of the recent indie games released for the Dreamcast have taken the form of (rather exquisite) 2D shmups or puzzle games, so to have a first person shooter being developed is really quite exciting. I'm a massive fan of the FPS genre so Hypertension: Harmony of Darkness is something I've been following for a while...and I'll be honest - I thought it had been quietly cancelled. But no! It's still alive and kicking, and developers Isotope Studios and TDGMods have released a new trailer showing some new gameplay sequences:



Looks pretty good for an indie game, no? Hypertension runs on a modified DOOM engine and certainly looks superior to Kiss: Psycho Circus and Soldier of Fortune. Apparently the game will feature a two-player co-op mode and will be getting a full physical release later this year...hopefully the delays have now been and gone and we'll get our hands on this great-looking FPS.

All hail the Undead Console!

New Hypertension gameplay



Remember this upcoming homebrew/indie Dreamcast release? Well I've been sent over this new footage to show you lot of it, showing off a split screen mode, though it turns out both players are being played by one person here, using a mouse for one player and a keyboard for the other! The team are even aiming for net play with this, however tricky that may be!

More on that Hypertension game!

Just in time for...no wait..just a little late of Halloween more details and a new trailer of TDGmods' Dreamcast FPS/PRG hybrid HyperTension. The gory trailer is just below, this time we get to see plenty of gameplay of this elaborate Doom mod. It even has Voodoo dolls! Oh yeah, it gets a bit noisy about 2 minutes in, just in case your volumes up to 11.




Better yet, there is a nice legthy interview with the guys making this over at Diehard GameFAN which you can read here, and there is also a Wiki set up for the game and you can hear more of the soundtrack at their blog.

Speaking of brand new Dreamcast games one just arrived in the post this morning. Expect a video soon!