Interview N+ - deel 1

X-Power: Seeing how you have no problems voicing your honest opinion about Xbox Live Arcade, could you tell what you think about its size limit? Even though this may not be a concern to you now, as you may or may not focus on technically / visually simplistic projects.

Metanet Software: We don’t think the size limit is a problem. In fact, it should be a great opportunity to abolish loading bars – since the download size is much smaller than the 360’s available RAM, games should in theory be able to load everything at startup. We’re not sure why this hasn’t happened though.

XP: Well, I’d like to correct myself here for a moment. I didn’t mean to imply that a limit is a bad thing per se, but what I meant to ask was: do you think the current limit is little too low right now and that Microsoft should increase it to somewhere around 500 MB, so that there’s a lot more room for flexibility over a much longer timespan?

Potentially having to cut certain features or compressing their textures / sound files moreso than they originally planned, wouldn’t be that big of a concern anymore for developers then.

MNS: We don’t have a problem with the current limit. We’re staunch believers in the idea that sometimes limits encourage creativity, and moreover, since the size limit really only affects graphics and sound, rather than any innovation in gameplay, ideas and code, we think developers still have plenty of opportunity to create amazing games, with the limit as is.

XP: Also, how do you think Microsoft should change Xbox Live Arcade as a whole, regardless of the games currently appearing on the service? Especially due to the relatively low sales of many titles. Maybe something about its marketing or how you can access it?

MNS: We don’t think that as a system XBLA needs to be changed much.

XP: Can you confirm to us that a patch is in development in order to fix some of the more drastic bugs, like the supposed save game glitch? Other bugs vary from the infinite sound loop of a rocket if you leave the replay too soon to some graphical errors, among other things.

MNS: We are planning on releasing a title update, however we’re not sure what it will include, and since it needs to be approved we can’t say for sure that it will be released.

The save “bug” is unfortunately not a bug; there are hundreds of rules detailing what your game can and can’t do. One of these, unfortunately, is a rule regarding saving – limiting the frequency of saves to once per X minutes (not sure if the actual number is NDA). As a result, we weren’t able to save after each episode, since you can beat an episode in less than X minutes. Instead, progress is saved when you return to the main menu – a bit awkward, and most damaging was the fact that this was a last-minute problem which caught us off guard, and thus we didn’t have time to get any sort of menu or screen to notify players about this!

If our request for a waiver is successful, we’ll be able to fix this “bug”, along with several dozens of other lesser items (like the sound loop).

XP: So one’s progress allegedly not being saved if someone doesn’t quit from N+ properly - the wrong way being: shutting off your console before selecting ‘Return to Xbox Live Arcade’ -, even though the game displayed a ‘Saving progress’ screen earlier isn’t a bug either? Or is this something you’re actually looking into?

MNS: If you quit to the main menu before turning off your console, you should be fine. Losing progress in this case would be a bug, however it didn’t come up in testing and we haven’t been able to reproduce it..

XP: How about improving the netcode of N+? I was kind of looking forward to the online multiplayer (especially co-op), but even as a host I had lag while playing with people living in the same country as me. This struck me as something odd in a game with a rather minimal presentation.

MNS: The networking code will quite likely not be rewritten, simply because it would take the better part of a year (most of the develpoment time for the game was spent with networking). Since it’s a single-screen game, it’s perfect for 4 players on the same machine – something we find a lot more fun that networked multiplayer. Plus, we only have a silver account ;)

XP: So in other words: loners that have no acquaintances in their neighbourhood have to find some new friends then if they’re bothered by the lag? :] And is the netcode something you’ll definitely improve upon with a future project?

MNS: Heh. Yep, find more neighborhood friends, everyone!

We at Metanet have no experience whatsoever in writing multiplayer code, and all we hear is that it’s terrifyingly difficult!

XP: What are the odds that you’ll include the option to download replays, or even saving some of your own to the hard drive?

MNS: This would require totally new code, and since the budget for N+ has long since been used up, it’s unfortunately not very likely.

XP: Why is there such a low limit on the names for custom levels? Please increase the number of characters allowed, since I was looking forward to give my creations excessively long names too!

MNS: You should be thankful that there are any characters at all! The initial recommendation (for legal reasons) was to disallow any naming, and instead auto-generate a name based on the gamertag and date/time. Some other awesome suggestions from the legal people included limiting the size of user-made maps to 8x8 tiles – so that players couldn’t possibly write objectionable words or draw questionable images using the tiles.

We have to cite the legal system in the US for these sorts of problems.. the fact that you can be sued because someone made a blocky penis shape out of tiles is a bit ridiculous. One thing we don’t understand is why some sort of waiver (i.e “by downloading user content you acknowledge that you can’t sue anyone blah blah blah...”) wouldn’t work -- anyway we’ve been assured that it wouldn’t.

XP: Could adding more variety in the start menu replays also be an option for a patch? Viewing them was a guilty pleasure of mine in the original N and I literally watched them for hours, so I was a tad dissapointed that it didn’t take long before they started repeating in N+.

MNS: This too will unfortunately probably not be added – there are already months of things on the to-do list! We figured that since the levels are obscured/scrolling, they weren’t as watchable to start with. One thing we did add, which you may not have noticed, is on-the-fly replays – if you quit to the menu after playing the game (or using the editor/etc) you’ll see replays taken from your most recent games.

XP: You’ve already told the world your plans for downloadable content. Seeing how there will be close to a 1000 levels at one point, what about a different kind of DLC? Maybe providing even more toys for fanatics to play with in N+’s level creator, like something that resembles a seesaw?

MNS: Because of the way the game is organized, this would require a whole bunch of new code, plus a title update, unfortunately. We do have lots of ideas, however we’re trying to channel them towards our new in-development game (Robotology). There _will_ be some bonus things in the DLC beyond the levels however ;)

XP: It’s been mentioned numerous times by now that Microsoft have essentially stopped you from including level sharing in N+. Have you already reached an agreement, or are you still struggling to get their approval?

MNS: It’s not a case of negotiation – once they have the operational and legal infrastructure in place to manage user-created content, we will be allowed to enable sharing. Hopefully this will happen soon, however they haven’t announced any sort of deadlines or plans beyond that it was something they are working on.

XP: Coincidentally: is there anything the community could do, so that Microsoft might realize that this is a feature Metanet and the fans of N+ really want? N+ is only been out for a few weeks, but I’ve already seen a ton of variety with custom levels on YouTube; someone even recreated The Legend of Zelda.

MNS: Yeah, seeing the Zelda thing was awesome, but also made us sad that it had to rely on an external sharing mechanism. Sadly there is little anyone can do, since it’s not an issue of a single small decision that concerns a single XBLA title, rather it is a policy issue. As we mentioned above, they are apparently working on it, so hopefully there will be a solution soon. However, they have told us that there is no guarantee that the issue will ever be “solved” – it’s possible that they will be unable to find a solution which ensures they’re not exposing themselves to any liability.

As frustrating as it is, we do appreciate this caution, since having level-sharing disabled for now sucks a lot less than our being sued out of existance because someone’s child downloaded a level with “FUCK YOU” written in tiles ;)

XP: Have you considered including enemies that can be destroyed by the player? Not by shurikens or any weapon a ninja would use, but instead something like deflecting a laser beam through carefully placed mirrors in a level or guiding the missile back to the unit that launched them?

MNS: This is something that is suggested a lot on the forums; we feel that it would change the nature of the game too much, and complicate things. But, the idea of more interesting interactions between the player and enemies (besides instant death) is something we’re working on for our next game ;)

XP: As a follow-up to the previous question: how about an enemy that has the same abillities that you do, maybe even a tad more (like wielding a katana)? The following games don’t exactly relate to N+, but I always liked the more humanesque opponents the most in Ninja Gaiden, God Hand and so forth.

MNS: We did in fact have an evil ninja on the list of enemies when we started – one which would chase the player. However, it turns out that designing AI which can guide a running, jumping character through arbitrary tile-based levels is an open research problem! So it was moved from N+ to “perhaps in future games”.

XP: A question about N+’s color palet: has it been kept monotonous on purpose, possibly to accentuate (I mean: make them more visible) the obstacles in a level?

MNS: This is something that many people fail to appreciate – if the level graphics were more detailed/busy, it would be much harder to take in at a glance everything that was going on, and apply the focused precision necessary to play the game.. which is very important! We definitely knew that the graphics had to be kept as sparse as possible in order to make things as clear as possible for the player.

XP: I personally didn’t mind those kind of graphics since I (and all of your other fans I’m sure) realized why you went with that particular art style from a gameplay standpoint. Is this a philopshy you’ll follow for Metanet’s next projects, trying to keep this clutter-free approach intact?

MNS: Sure! We enjoy minimalism, and will continue to explore that style of art where our future games warrant it.

XP: How hard was it to get N ported to consoles? Not only on a technical level, but getting a publisher et al on board for assistance as well? Could you also mention some reasons why a publisher turned N down if the game has been rejected elsewhere?

MNS: We can’t answer about the technical aspect, since development was handled by other people (Slick Entertainment for XBLA and Silverbirch for DS/PSP). Metanet published the XBLA version, so we didn’t have to deal with publishers there.

Getting it on XBLA was much easier than for most people, because one of the executives (who has since moved to another company) was addicted to N, and hunted us down in order to get it on. Still, we had to convince the rest of his team that it was a good idea, but the popularity of the Flash version definitely helped with this.

We actually don’t have any stories about rejections because our agent (Warren from Sherpa Games) handles all of the talking-with-publishers part – we just told him what we wanted to do, and he went out and found a publisher who was interested in the DS/PSP version.

XP: Did you have any difficulty getting the game approved for Xbox Live Arcade due to the ‘HD hype’ that’s been running rampant during this generation of consoles? And if so: when or why did they (I assume Microsoft?) cave?

MNS: This was a concern of ours initially, however the XBLA executive we mentioned earlier was a big fan of Lode Runner, and so in our first meeting we were able to agree that the simplicity was very important in order to not confuse the player (again, as mentioned in an above question).