Developer Interview - Space Pirates and Zombies

What can two dedicated developers with a dream create with their ingenuity? The answer: Space Pirates and Zombies or SPAZ. SPAZ is a combination of a space combat simulation, role-playing game, and pure awesomeness. A random star system is generated each time the player starts a new game, and from there they can explore, trade, engage in combat, and generally have a great time travelling the universe.

We caught up with the SPAZ guys at Minmax, Andrew Hume and Richard Clifford to find out just how two people could make such a deep and engaging space game.


Please describe Space Pirates and Zombies in your own words.
What was your role on Space Pirates and Zombies?
SPAZ is a top down space action RPG. You trek around an open and randomly generated galaxy, taking on missions, collecting new components for your ships, upgrading technologies, and wreaking havoc as you see fit. We let you control multiple ships in a fleet using physics simulated combat.

What makes your game unique?
We took a lot of inspiration from games like Star Control, MOO, and even Diablo. We tried to combine elements from these games in a unique way, as you tend to not see these genres combined. We munched together a lot of old school gameplay and did our best to bring it to the HD world of today.

Our most unique feature would have to be the zombie faction. They have quite a deep ecology where they can reproduce, lay eggs, as well as infect and take over other ships. They are quite frightening to see in action.

What was your inspiration to create Space Pirates and Zombies?
At first, we set out to satisfy our desire for an epic top down space shooter. We hadn’t seen any games like this coming out for a long time, and we were starving for one. We gambled that there were other people out there that felt the same way, so we set out to create a big 2D space game just the way we wanted it to be. It truly was a labour of love, and we’re very happy that other people are enjoying it.

What was your development process like?
The development of SPAZ was very organic. We spent about two weeks jotting ideas down on paper, but no discernable design document emerged. As we worked on various features, we made a lot of changes. After a while we couldn’t keep any sort of paper design up to date, so we abandoned the idea completely.

SPAZ became its own living design. We reworked just about everything at least once throughout the project to make the systems behave as we see them today. We talked constantly online, as well as had regular meetings to go over major tasks. We have done this consistently for almost 2 years now.

The rest of the time we spent writing script/code and producing content. Thankfully we have a lot of prior experience working together, so coming to a conclusion about a particular issue or feature was quick for the most part. We trusted each other to deliver on what needed to be done.

How many people worked on the dev team? How did you work together?
It was just the two of us working on SPAZ. We had worked together at an AAA studio for many years, so we had a good relationship going into the project already. We had a really good idea of what type of game we wanted to build right off the bat, so it didn’t take us long to choose a direction and go with it.
We talked a lot over msn and met in person on a weekly basis (most of the time). We each had a set of unique skills we brought to the table, and that allowed us to work together without crashing into each other constantly.

How long did it take to create?
SPAZ was supposed to take under 6 months to produce, but that turned out to be a pipe dream. We just released beta and we are at 22 months production now.

How did you accomplish QA and beta testing?
From the get go we enforced a strict “drop everything and fix it” policy for any bugs that cropped up. If the game crashed, work stopped until it was fixed.

Once we had something people could play, we focus tested it on friends and family on a regular basis. A few months ago we released a pre-alpha to several hundred people. That allowed us to find some of the bugs the two of us never could have. We also called that a pre-alpha compatibility demo. We needed to be sure that SPAZ worked on computers beyond our own.

The beta testing phase we are currently in was planned from day one. We knew we couldn’t test everything ourselves, so we got our community involved in it. Between the beta and the demo we’ve gotten tonnes of awesome feedback. People seem to enjoy helping us make SPAZ everything it can be, and we love them for it.

What software/tools did you use to create the game? Why did you use those particular tools?
We used Torque 2D to create SPAZ. We both had some hobby level experience with Torque, and it seemed to do everything we needed it to do to create a 2D space game. Torque was also very established and had lots of forum support. The licensing agreement and price were also big factors for us.

We also used Torsion to interface with Torque. That tool is a life saver.

Beyond that, Visual C++ for coding, and Photoshop for the art.

Describe 2-3 of your biggest technical hurtles and how you overcame them. Give as much detail as possible, to the point of getting uber-technical.
One issue was the use of GUI elements vs. the use if T2dStaticSprites. As SPAZ development progressed, we found ourselves using GUI’s less and less due to their more limited feature set when compared to a sprite. Part of the reason for the move from GUI to a more scene window based GUI system was also the GUI editor. For some reason for us it just always seemed misbehave at the wrong time, to the point where we started to do a lot of our work by hand in the GUI files themselves.

In the end, we struck a good balance, using the GUI system for what it was good at, and scene windows with objects using mouse over events for the rest.

Another issue was with the game builder itself. Over time, we found that although useful for initially setting up a project, it was not really scalable to a project the size of SPAZ. In the end we had to roll up our sleeves, boot up torsion and build the game the old fashioned way. Much of the time we got the feeling that we were not using Torque 2D as intended, but our methods were working well for us so we kept doing things our way.

For the most part though, instead of fighting with the engine itself when it didn’t behave the way we would like, we just modified the design to do something that it did like. In the end, Torque seems to have been built to make a game like SPAZ, and it came together well when we decided to just go with it.

If you had to do it all again, what would you change about creating this game?
I think we should have spent a bit more time working out some details on paper, as well as making small prototypes to prove features. We were both so excited to get to work, that it ended up leading to a lot of rework and cuts. Some of the rework is simply unavoidable despite how much pre-planning you do, but there is probably 6 months of work on the cutting room floor somewhere.


So there you have it! Some solid inspiration from a dedicated team that has put together an extremely complex yet simple-to-play and enjoy game. Space Pirates and Zombies is available now on Impulse.