RoboRumble - Bartosz Brzostek

Interviewed : Bartosz Brzostek,  Lead Programmer
Metropolis Software House

Interviewed by : Frank

Date : July 14th 1998

Thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Perhaps you can start out by telling our readers a little about your background and your current role with Metropolis Software?

I started as a game programmer about two years ago. RoboRumble is my second project (the first one was not very successful). It was my job to create the 3d-engine and the sound engine. Now I'm responsible for catching up with the technology backend for every new game of MSH.

Great! May you tell us how long Robo Rumble has been under development? So far the Demo has came out, how much longer should it take for the initial release?

We started the project about a year ago. Now it's ready and has already been published in Germany. US release will take place very soon.

I previously downloaded the 4 stage demo, and noticed you don't use music or any form of midi. Do you plan to support a CD soundtrack or and midi in its full release?

We prepared 42 minutes of music as 8 CD tracks. We decided to use CD tracks, not midi to provide the best possible sound quality to the player. Today a lot of soundcards comes with quite good support for sound effects, but only a few do midi music very well.

What type of music will you provide in the release? Techno, Rock etc...?

It will be some kind of clima-music with a lot of background noises and other cosmic sounds.

While playing the demo I noticed your sound system supports 44100hz, would this dramatically reduce game speed if someone with a 3daudio accelerated card (Monster Sound) had a lower end system?

I don't think so. RoboRumble requires the Pentium 133 or better processor. It's more than enough to handle up to eight simultaneous sound effects. In fact we changed the default mixing rate for the final release to 22kHz to fit the hardware as close as possible.

What type of special audio effects will RR utilize?

We use two types of sound effects in RR - event sounds (weapon effects, explosions, etc.) and environmental effects like rain, a lot of fans, a steam sounds and many others. All sounds can be positioned in 3d space, a Doppler effect for moving sound sources is also available.

For your DS3D support are you using Qsounds QMDX? If yes, how has it benefited your task and if no can you tell us why?

We don't use QMDX. We support Aureal 3D chip based cards only, and only through their DS3D extension. In fact we didn't have enough time to make use of QMDX. RoboRumble 3d sound is only an experimental implementation. We are going to make something real good for the next project.

What was the time frame for the 3Daudio implementation?

I was thinking about 3d sound from the beginning of the project. After some experimenting I was very disappointed with software emulation of 3d sound provided by DS3D. In February I started with A3D. The full support was ready in about two weeks.

Was there ever a game to impact you to support 3d positioned sound or rather DS3D?

I'm fascinated with every new technology that makes games more realistic. That's why I implemented bump-mapping for RR as soon as Voodoo2 hit the marked and that's why I started experimenting with 3D sound.

Will you have an upcoming patch for the new Sound Blaster Live! card or any other, or will there just be DS3D as the final sound API?

We're still thinking about it. I personally don't like doing the thing twice, so probably there will be no native support for SBL in RR, but I'm going to extend DS3D usage for cards other than A3D based so SBL will be supported via DS.

Can you tell us anything about your plans beyond RoboRumble and more specifically is continued support for 3d sound in those plans?

As I have already said RR 3d-sound engine was only an experiment. Now I'm preparing to the next project, called "Witcher". It will be exactly what I like to do - the pure technology - very sophisticated 3d engine and 3d-sound engine. We are going to release the game in about two years.

Once again thanks Bartosz for taking the time to give us the interview.

Demo:
Download New Robo Rumble : (13MB - exe file)

Have comments or questions on this feature?
Why not post them in our forum?

All content, design and work is © 2001 - 3D Sound Surge Please respect the copyrights of the articles and writers herein. All copyrights are enforced by 3DSS.  
View the 3DsoundSurge Privacy Statement