Review Fix chats with “Ur Game: The Game of Ancient Gods†developer Dalibor Bartoš, who lets us know how he got started in the industry and what makes his newest game a unique one.
About Bartoš Studio
Dalibor Bartoš is an active creator of vast amount of software tools for games and other purposes since 2003. He has over 16 years of experience with hi-tech IT equipment and programming, and over 18 years experience with hi-tech electronics. His applications like “Real Time Picture Convertor†or “UAC – Universal Anticheat†were and are used widely all over the world.
Review Fix: How was this game born?
Dalibor Bartoš: Somehow I stumbled upon a video with Irving Finkel explaining the game and it
fascinated me. I looked around and there was nothing on Steam that could be played online with my friends, so I made it basically just for my own entertainment and I hope others will be entertained too.
Some time ago I had watched few episodes of Ancient Aliens and learned about the Sumerian gods called the Anunnaki, so I thought it would be nice to combine game, history and mythology together since it all revolves around the same time in history.
Review Fix: What is your role in the game?
Bartoš: I am basically a one man army, I had made all the coding, most of the sounds all
voices, almost all animations, one voiceover and many other things. Some assets were purchased, like music and some meshes. Few of my friends helped with the mesh of the main character, CZ and DE voiceover and of course testing.
Review Fix: How did you get involved in the industry?
Bartoš: Computer games interest me since early childhood, through natural progression I ended up creating them. I had started to create games in late 90’s, for Commodore 64, mostly text based. Later I made some games for PC MS DOS, but those were played by only hand full of people. Later on I started to create software of all kind. Most know is probably UAC – Universal AntiCheat , that was used in all major leagues in scope of 2006-2013. But what I wanted the most was to make games so I had created a basic 2D adventure engine and two games based on it. They were no hits but it was a lot of fun to create them. After that I had noticed that my local university has opened a department of digital games so I joined as a student, I had created an indie studio TEDI Games where I try to bring together students and participate in game jams. And of course I had founded Bartoš Studio, where my creations are made.
Review Fix: What has development been like?
Bartoš: It was not very hard, since the game it self is very simple. It is hard to describe development of such a simple game, but probably creatingassets was the most time consuming part. As a coder I have just some basic skills regarding 2D and 3D graphics and I consider my self to be very weak in those areas, so making the little things took me more time than I would prefer.
Making animations on the other hand was fun.
Review Fix: What makes this game special?
BartoÅ¡: It’s Royal Game of Ur that can be played online with friends, has a global ladder system that counts score from W/L ratio. Players gain emotion points which can be used in-game to express joy or anger by pressing one of the dedicated thumb up/down buttons. Characters will perform some silly moves expressing the emotion.
Review Fix: What games influenced this one the most?
Bartoš: The original Royal Game of Ur is the only source of influence. Really there is not much more to say, I don’t think that there are any other games that made any influence.
Review Fix: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?
Bartoš: Well, while working with skeletal mesh there were some funny moments that nearly made it in to the game, like reverse joints on legs and weird head postures. But the game would be very silly afterwards so it was not included.
Also there were some fun rage moments of my friends who did not believe that the dice are random when they were losing, but that happens probably in every game online or offline.
Review Fix: What were the major lessons learned?
Bartoš: Do not install Unreal Engine updates and migrate your projects to the new version.
… can cause many headaches. I know it’s just a technical thing but it can save hours of debugging and rework.
Review Fix: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?
Bartoš: Yes, I think that preserving old gameplay mechanics is important in games like this. That is why in this game are no special rules, just the basic ones. There is probably no other medium that can transfer the essence of fun through the ages as games can, we are lucky that there were clay tablets used instead of paper back then, because without them we would not have the opportunity to experience the game as it should be played.
Review Fix: What’s your favorite memory as a gamer?
BartoÅ¡: There are several moments from my childhood that I remember, like playing Pong, Retaliator, Perestroika (also known as Toppler) but the most favorite memory would have to be the day I got a copy of DOOM on several 3,5″ diskettes and first time starting it up on my 486DX@40MHz. I never forget how I felt, this was the future. I know that it might not be much for today’s standards but back then was something awesome.
Review Fix: How do you want this game to ultimately be remembered?
Bartoš: It’s no masterpiece by any meaning so I don’t think there is a room for such question. The best thing to wish for is to be remembered as a fun re-creation of the original game.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Bartoš: Several projects are already in progress in various stages. There is a sequel to my old game series Sociopath which will be a FPS adventure game, it is stage where there is about 20% done. And weird RPG style game with animals where I can’t tell anything more at this moment. There are many ideas but not enough time to explore them all.
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