Interview de Vince Valenti

Puissance-Advance : Can you introduce your Company to us ?

Vince Valenti : JV Games was first founded in 1994, and was incorporated in the year 2000. We started creating games for the Atari ST, Atari Jaguar, PC, Game Boy Color and now the GBA. Before 1994, Jag and I created games for the Apple ][ and Atari 800.

Puissance-Advance : What is your job ?

Vince Valenti : I am the main programmer for JV Games. I have always enjoyed designing 3D engines from scratch, and that has been our company’s main focus for many years.

Puissance-Advance : Why are you interested in the GameBoy Advance ?

Vince Valenti : The GBA allows a small team to create a quality game for the GBA. It’s much easier for small development teams to get contracts on the GBA.

Puissance-Advance : Can you remember to us your projects already realized ?

Vince Valenti : We have done many shareware games for old systems. Several commercial ones we have done were: Medieval Chess (PC), Towers (GBA), Towers II (GBA, Jaguar, PC), BackTrack (GBA), and James Bond 007:Nightfire (GBA).

Puissance-Advance : What technologies have you developed for the GBA ?

Vince Valenti : We have ported our PC version of the Entity Engine to the GBA, and kept many of the features that were available from the PC. We have also created our own sound routines, and solid network routines.

Puissance-Advance : Is it hard to develop on the GBA ?

Vince Valenti : It can be. The hardest part of GBA development is trying to optimize what you have programmed in small spaces, and making sure that you have a decent frame rate.

Puissance-Advance : Can you tell us more about your new game 007 Night Fire ?

Vince Valenti : We were able to get Nightfire running at 15 FPS, 90% of the time. There is almost non-stop action in the game. At times we had 20 visible enemies with practically no slowdown in our tests. Normally, you wouldn’t stand a chance with that many enemies on the screen, as we have accurate shooting AI.

Puissance-Advance : What do you think about the "3D games" ( Ecks VS Sever, Doom, the Pockeeters' games...) already released on the GBA ?

Vince Valenti : Each developer has taken many different approaches to creating a “3D or Raycast” game for the GBA. We have enjoyed looking at the many solutions that have popped up. I have enjoyed many of these games on the GBA. They have all done a really good job, especially considering the restrictions that this little unit imposes.

Puissance-Advance : Does your company envisaged to develop news games on other consoles (in particular on GameCube) ?

Vince Valenti : We have not been contracted to do a game for the GameCube yet, however we would jump at the opportunity should it present itself.

Puissance-Advance : How many people worked on the game?

Vince Valenti : We had 7 people developing the game, 4 of which were full time. We also had 4 beta testers.

Puissance-Advance : Did you use again the graphic motor of your old game Back Track?

Vince Valenti :No. This is a 3D engine, BackTrack used a 2D grid map, to represent 3D.

Puissance-Advance : What are the principal improvements since this game (Back Track)?

Vince Valenti : Perspective correct (or Corrected) textures, 16bit Z-buffer, Mesh 3D objects, improved 2D scalable sprites, improved sound routines, scrolling background, look up/down, jumping, crouching, precision 3D collision checking, and precision object to object sphere collision checking. Just to name a few…. :)