Kevin Glass interview

    1) Hi Kev and welcome on Random Tower of Games, can introduce yourself?

    Hello, I'm Kevin Glass, normally seen as kevglass or "cokeandcode". I've been developing games for a little over 25 years spanning back to the NASCOM and Sinclair Spectrum all the way to the modern era of iOS and Android. I love RPGs, I love retro games and I love pixel art.  I'm known for several games probably the most famous being Putty Puzzle and/or Legends of Yore.

    2) Why did you developed Slick?

    Slick came about because of the tutorials I wrote many years ago. I'm a big fan of Java and it's tooling and I like to encourage people to use it so I wrote some tutorials about getting 2D games working in Java and then eventually using OpenGL. I got a lot of questions about the tutorials and how to take them further and I thought the most simple way to answer them forever was to write a library that showed the basic ways of doing everything... Slick was born.

    3) What are plans for future of Slick? We can read on forum you think Slick is "done" and "complete" it's right?

    Slick is pretty much what it was intended to be. A modular toolkit for writing 2D games in Java with OpenGL. It's never tried to be the fastest, or the most elegant, just the easiest way to learn in without getting bogged down in details. I'll be doing bug runs as I always have but I don't think I'll be spending too much time on adding new features.
    However, that doesn't mean it's "dead". I get frustrated when developers seem to believe because a library isn't in a constant state of development it's no more use. Code doesn't just die like that, a useful tool is a useful tool.

    4) Talking about game development, where your inspiration comes from?

    My inspiration comes mostly from late 80s and 90s games. I loved Bullfrog, Bitmap Brothers and everything around then. When games felt like games and not "visual and audio experiences". I really enjoy puzzle games so you'll generally find a bit of puzzle in my stuff. Though my big love is for RPGs, I lived on Ultima 6 for 6 months - no joke.

    5) What games are must-play in this days?

    Must-play games these days? Well, Minecraft is great, Cave Story and anything by Niffla is worth checking out. Puppygames do some wonderful purest games. I also recommend checking out decent roguelike's like Tametick's Cardinal Quest.

    6) Your last project, Legends of Yore it's interesting can you explain it and tell us why you started a similar project with so different "end-user-tecnologies"?

    Legends of Yore was just meant to me experimenting with things that shouldn't be, oxymoron type things. Legends was meant to be a casual roguelike and a single player MMORPG. It ended up being a test at building a roguelike UI that worked on the mobile and then things just started getting out of hand. The game is pretty huge now and set to get bigger shortly. The different end user technology is just me as a geek keeping things interesting!

    7) Do you have plans to open this tecnology in the future? More platforms maybe? C64 support?

    The multi-platform technology might be available in the future, I really don't know yet. I think the Java to Flash stuff should be - I can imagine that having a huge impact on the Java Gaming world.

    8) Do you will partecipate on next Ludum Dare?

    Ludumdare was awesome last time, I'm so in next time! Can't wait.

    9) How do you organize your work? A massive todo-list or more "engeneerized"?
    I'm afraid I'm not organised at all. I just have a big TODO list that things move up and and down. That's it. I don't use tracking systems or any of that, just a text file in source control.

    10) You have a work a life, so how to hadle all this stuff with game development?

    My day job has to come first, every time. It's what pays the bills and keeps me fed. However, I'm lucky enough to work somewhere I can do my job well without being stressed out all the time. That leaves me plenty of time at lunch and at home to get all the interesting games stuff done.

    11) Three opensource or freeware games to play (not yours, of course :D)

    Cave Story
    Titan Attacks
    Cardinal Quest

    Cheers, Kev

Thanks to you Kev for this interview and for Slick!