INTERVIEW WITH EDUARDO CAMPOS – DEVELOPER
OF THE UNCERTAINTY MACHINE

Conducted
by: Jerome

Eduardo
Campos – aka Ratracer – is an independent developer of adventure
games using the AGS engine. His first game, The Uncertainty
Machine, is free for download.  Curious
about the development of the game, I imposed on him for a short
Q&A.:

JA
– Hi Eduardo thanks for agreeing to this interview with JA+

Hi,
First of all, thank you very much for your interest (and JA+’s)
in my game (and me…). Let’s jump straight to the questions,
then!

JA
– I found the Easter-egg in the game telling me your name
is Eduardo Campos also known as Ratracer.  Who or what is
Ratracer.  Is it just a name or did you choose your alias
for a specific reason?

Ratracer
was my first (and only) nickname at an internet forum. It’s
just a nick, more than anything else, but if I want to find
the reasons, here they are: The “racer” part of the
name is related to a past dream of mine, of being a motorcycle
racer. But “ratracer” because we all are in this
ratrace, and also because I liked very much the comics book
Ratrace of a french author which I don’t recall the name at
the moment. (Red. Bodine Amerikah)

I’m
42 years and live in Porto, Portugal. I discovered the pleasure
of adventure gaming with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
I can’t say I “always” wanted to create an adventure
game myself; since I had no idea there were free adventure
game engines, until I found AGS a year ago. My profession has
nothing to do with games or something. I work in the IT dept.
of a bank. Before AGS, my previous hobbies (because they were
hobbies) were being a motorcycle racing team manager and journalist
for motor racing magazines.

JA
– To make a game like The Uncertainty Machine you must have
a creative mind, it has quite a lot adventure game elements.
What were your motives to create the game and did you have
any examples to follow?

I
must start by thanking Chris Jones, the maker of the AGS (Adventure
Game Studio) engine (which is freeware http://www.agsforums.com/),
for providing us, amateur developers, a powerful and easy tool
for creating adventure games and, as such, the possibility
to full fill our dreams.

I
don’t think I have a creative mind, really. As with most adventure
games, I think the plot is the strongest attribute of the genre,
so I tried to write a story. I also wanted my game would have
some mystery into it, which is the element I enjoy most when
playing an adventure.

But
back to the creative point: there isn’t really creation in
my game, I just took out the influences of my favorite games
and my favorite literature genre, mixing them as well as I
could. My art skills are limited, so I situated the game in
a modern city. It’s a lot easier to draw a straight line than
the wiggly curves of a cathedral.

JA – According
to the text on your website you might improve the music on
The Uncertainty Machine; you mean the game is not finished
yet? How long did you work on the game and will it ever be
finished?

The
game is finished and I don’t think there will be changes in
the future. A friend of mine was writing a new score, but time
has passed in the meantime, and it isn’t ready yet.

Because
I feared that I would never finish it I had the intention not
to take more than a year to develop the game. Surprisingly
for me, I managed to stick to that schedule: exactly 12 months!
Now the beta test is finished and corrected all bugs (I would
like to thank all the people at Gameboomers and AGSforums,
that did a great work testing and suggesting stuff), I’m in
decompressing mode and really don’t want to look back onto
The Uncertainty Machine to make more improvements. So probably
there will be no new music.

JA
– Physics appears to be a major part in The Uncertainty Machine.
What is your interest in this subject?  Do you have such
background?

No
special academic background apart from traditional high school
stuff. However, I am a “believer” in science (even
if the “moral” of the game may say otherwise), and
I try to read books from Sagan, Feynman, Michio Kako, etc.
as much as possible. I love SF-literature as well, preferably
the books that aren’t too fantastic and are based more on physical
principles. Once again, it was mainly a source for inspiration
but if the physics look somewhat reasonable it’s because I
took some ideas from Arthur C. Clarke’s The Gods Themselves.
I hope I changed those enough not to be a rip-off, but I can’t
deny that I based the physics behind the “other dimensions” on
that book. My next game, if there is one, may have a totally
different background, based on something I like some idea I
take from a book, a movie, or something else.

JA
– With The Uncertainty Machine, do you want to send a word
to the players of the game? What is the moral of the game?

One
of the reasons I enjoyed so much developing my game is that
I wrote the story as I was developing (drawing, scripting,
writing puzzles) it. By the way, this is not the best way of
creating a game; you should write the whole plot, before doing
anything else, to avoid inconsistencies later on. But my unorganized
way was more enjoyable since I didn’t know how the plot would
be. It was almost as I was actually playing it myself.

Anyway,
I am telling you this, to make clear that any moral in my game
was coincidental. The Divide bit of the plot was thrown in
the game very late in the development stages by changing backgrounds
to include graffiti’s, changing dialogs to add lines about
the Off Limiters, etc. At that moment, I tried to introduce
some kind of message in the game. But I never wanted to be
too explicit about it because I changed my mind about the plot
too many times. So, if I say that the Citizens are supposed
to represent the western world and the Off Limiters are the
equivalents of the third world countries it may be a totally
different interpretation of the players.

To
conclude this reasoning, the Divide part of the plot was forced:
as you play the game that subplot gets buried only to resurface
at the end. There are also references to freedom and truth,
but those are mostly a strike of luck. I was having a difficult
time thinking of endings that somehow would wrap up most of
loose bits lying around. Then I read an interview of a contemporary
Portuguese poet (I just reread that interview in the newspaper
and found out I got his name wrong in the game I might have
to change that) that said the lines that got referenced in
the game (Hmmm, this part of the answer is getting to be a
bit of a spoiler) and gave me the idea for the museum bit and
Mathus choice. If the game has a moral, if you want, hopefully
it will be subjective, and it will be interpreted in different
ways by different players.

More
than anything else, I am getting carried away here, and the
game should not be taken seriously. It’s just a game.

JA
– Can we expect more work from you in future and are you
exploring more techniques, if so what are you having in mind?

I
hope so. I have been trying to improve my 3D skills, not because
it’s trendy, but because I don’t like hand drawing. I think
I can draw so-so, but I’m much too slow. The worst part of
creating the game was the awful amount of time everything took
to draw, especially animations. So, I hope I can learn to draw
a lot faster with 3D tools. After that, I’ll start thinking
of new stuff. One thing I will try to do is to limit the developing
time to one year if I manage to draw faster. Hopefully, the
game length of my next game will be longer. I don’t know how
my next game will be; just it will be third person perspective
and will be influenced by my favorite games. But, in the meantime
I am also taking part in a team to work on a better developed
game (than the Uncertainty Machine). I don’t know if the other
members want it to keep it secret from the time being, so……

JA
– Thanks Eduardo for your time answering these questions.

Thanks.
I hope I wasn’t too wordy. I’m pretty quiet most of the time,
but once I’m on it, I tend not to stop. 🙂