When Extinct Jim met The Artful Ninja himself
INTERVIEW
WITH
THE
DINOSAUR
CLIVE TOWNSEND
The Artful Ninja
A year or so ago, our intrepid dinosaur reporter Extinct Jim asked Mr. Clive ‘Saboteur’ Townsend a few probing questions. Including why his parents gave him that extraordinary middle name, but mostly about his awe-inspiring work in the field of digitised graphics. Clive very kindly agreed to answer them, saying it was refreshing to be asked some different questions for a change, not just about that famous game of his which I won’t mention again (probably). He was also pleased to be talking to a dinosaur, as it’s not every day you do that. So without further ado, and once more apologising in advance for the terrible ninja-based food joke near the end (sorry Clive), let’s remind ourselves what happened when these great minds met.
Soooooo Clive, thanks for answering some questions in between all that time-consuming training of new ninjas, it can't be easy.
Question numero uno coming up!
Having seen plenty of your recent work, I duly proclaim thee the undisputed King of Digitised Graphics. So when did you start doing them then?
Well Jim, it was just before when the Speccy came out! I'd programmed a bit on the ZX81 and started drawing graphics when I heard that a sequel machine would be launched.
Unfortunately I didn't know about the attribute system then, so only my monochrome pictures were useful.
When I started making loading screens for games, I'd design the graphics on paper, then manually draw each square (using Melbourne Draw on the actual Speccy) until I had a full image.
In the pre-internet days it was hard to find good source material, so when I needed a leather-clad Nina for Saboteur II, I had to trace her from an adult magazine!
Ooer sir! Moving on quickly, we at ZX Spectrum - It Lives!!! have been trawling through the Spectral archives, trying to find games which have incorporated digitised graphics as part of the actual games, and have found very few.
Unless you're into strip poker / interactive fiction / fictional interactive strip poker.
Are they a serious drain on the Speccy's meagre memory? Does that explain why it's relatively unchartered territory?
Aye Jim. Graphics do take up a ton of memory. But so does music, text and other data too, so it's a constant balancing act.
I've taken the rather boring approach of just storing the images uncompressed in the extra memory of the 128K machine. With a bit more effort I could have compressed them.
But each image is unique, so I couldn't use other techniques which save memory, such as repeating a tree image to draw different forest scenes. The style and type of game often dictates how much space is used for graphics.
Clive, I can relate to that, being a fictionalised jurassic monstrosity with a tiny brain, memory problems affect me too.
So…erm, Mike… if it's not giving away trade secrets, how do you actually do your digitised graphics? Does it take ages to get the colour looking so sweet, as I've noticed some less studious folk just throw blocks of colour at an image, and it kinda shows.
Easy there, Jim! But to answer your question - "YES IT TAKES AAAAAAGES!"
The first thing I do is use Photoshop to make a Speccy-sized image. I split the source image into important bits, like text, titles etc.
Then I arrange them neatly on the screen by having a layer which shows me the attribute grid. I can scale or move the pieces into positions which work best with the colour limitations. This planning stage is the most important bit.
The second part is to convert this image into 8 colours, by remapping it to my pre-defined palette of bright Speccy colours. This creates nice dithered gradients, which saves me trying to draw them by hand.
Then the fun starts! I go through each 8x8 block and 'fix' it, so it only uses 2 colours. This stage usually takes a day or two.
Finally I look to see if any squares would look better using the non-bright versions of the colours.
Ah, thought so. That's what I'd do too, if my arms were long enough.
On a serious note, it's so sad that we've lost Andy Remic, your partner in crime in recent times, as you seemed to make a great team.
Are you planning any further graphic adventures yourself, or are you moving onto something different now?
Andy has a lot to answer for! It's due to him that I've become re-involved with making Spectrun graphics and games.
We'd actually planned a sequel to The Iron Wolves, but sadly it wasn't finished.
Saboteur: Deep Cover was an experiment, suggested by Andy, as he was frustrated by the limitations of the game engine he was using. And I wanted to see if I could write a text adventure parser, as I'd never made one before, and had a vague idea that it could work in multiple languages.
It was successful, but the game engine was tailored to the Saboteur II universe, so probably won't be useful for future games.
But I won't say Never...
(Al - "I was going to pick the best of these pix from the unfinished Iron Wolves 2. But they're all amazing, so...here they all are." More details at: http://www.incognitogames.com/gallery/ironwolves2.php )
I think it's a great parser, whatever a parser may be, sounds tasty though.
Lowering the tone just a tad, I ****ing love the amount of ****ing swearing in your games! I think it shows personality, adds atmosphere, and maybe reflects the fact that we're all fairly old by now, and can swear freely if we ****ing want to! As long as our parents don't know about it, of course...
Have you run into any trouble with your...earthy approach?
I swear it's not my ****ing fault, Jim!
Andy Remic's characters swear a lot. And the protagonist in Ninja Carnage swears even more!
I will admit to being the culprit in The Reaper (1990) and the re-released The Reaper (2022).
I thought that adding rude words would get the game banned, or at least spark some controversy - and everyone would rush out to buy it.
They didn't.
Un-***-ing lucky there, matey.
Last question now, as I've got to go and get my tea. It's herbivores tonight, my mum does them real nice!
We're trying to promote the virtues of modern Spectrum software on our website, mostly because there's been so much written about the classic era that it's gotten a bit repetitive sometimes.
But do you think the new stuff is anywhere near as good as the old stuff? Maybe in some ways it's better?
Fair play Jim, my tea's beckoning too. It's ninjelly tonight, one of my faves.
Well, the old games will always have the nostalgia factor of course.
But some incredible new games are being made all over the world.
For example, the people at speccy.pl in Poland have made some fantastic demos.
And Natasha Zotova and her colleagues at Zosya Entertainment produce some games that are so brilliant, it's hard to believe they're running on a Speccy!
Amen to that, sister! THE SPECTRUM LIIIIIIVES!!!! IT LIIIIIIIVES!!!
Ahem, sorry. Well it's been an honour to talk toot with a Spectral legend, and we can't wait to see more of your outrageously good artwork and programming in future.
Night night, Clive.
Night night, Jim. Don't have nightmares about having to spend forever re-jigging attributes to accommodate the Spectrum's colour palette. Like I do every night....every night...every...
(FB) Lisa W: "Love this interview, his graphics process is really painstaking. And NINJAAAAAS!!"
(FB) Clive Townsend : " 'That's what I'd do too if my arms were long enough' :-) Still makes me giggle."