Meet the Team!

Have you ever wondered: "Who are these people?" and "Why are these people?" We have taken this opportunity to introduce Team Jolly Roger, the makers of Interplanetary! Step on in, if you care.

Niklas Saari, team lead

Favourite Game: Cave Story

Special Skills: Turning otherwise useless information and cat videos into inspiration and game ideas.

Niklas is the guy tasked with the job of keeping the TJR machine rolling as smooth as possible. Sometimes this means wrench work and pirate language, but usually lubricating the gears with coffee is enough.

Antti Tikkakoski, programmer

Favourite Game: Deus Ex

Special Skills: Cynical person

Single-player hardcore PC gamer. Never have, never will buy a game console (will accept gifts to tinker with, however.) Also likes Sci-Fi stuff.

Jussi Hyttinen, programmer

Favorite Game(s): Final Fantasy VII / Silent Hill 2

Special Skills: Vivid daydreaming and remarkable skill to forget everything that doesn't relate to gaming

Jussi is a UI programmer and really enjoys listening to game music. Usually he sits quietly in his not-so-philosophical thoughts and scans his surroundings for things that don't belong there...

Jukka Kivijärvi, game artist

Favorite Game: Changing by the month, currently, Kerbal Space Program

Special Skills: Jumping from one thing to the other, learning it as he goes.

Jukka is our artist working on whatever the situation calls for, from concepts, textures and 3D to the occasional graphic design tasks. Usually wears headphones when working, but forgets to put any music on.

Tarita Tammela, game artist

Favorite Game: Baldur's Gate

Special Skills: Overthinking, turning into a bookworm on full moon

Tarita is still waiting for her letter from the local school of witchcraft and wizardry. She also practices her ninja skills when around people she doesn't know well. Has a silly pet name. Also has made a pact with a golden dragon.

Teemu Tammela, programmer

Favorite Game(s): Dark Souls, Ace Attorney series

Special Skills: Surreal logic, catlike curiosity

Teemu has been gaming since the age of two. He loves puzzles, including code debugging and creating game wizardry with the power of math and imagination.

Olli Leinonen, programmer

Favorite Game: Avoid Writing Your Profile Info

Special Skills: Not writing his own profiles, numerous club memberships

Olli is a member of the Team Jolly Roger Code Wizards-gang, the spiritual leader of the I-Don’t-Feel-Like-Writing-About-Myself – cult and a frequent member of the quite popular in TJR “Facial Hair Appreciators” club.

Valeriya Paykacheva, marketing idler

Favorite Game: Katamari Damacy

Special Skills: Being amazing, complementing herself, pronouncing her last name correctly

Valeriya is our absolutely fantastic marketing contributor, who enjoys spending her time with boring and tiring people with continuous eager talks about movies, rocking Trivial Pursuit and not caring about Olympic Games. Has never been bitten by a shark.

Sasu Kemppainen, game designer

Favorite Game: Grim Fandango

Special skills: Great at making pizza and eating it

Sasu is our designer extraordinaire, who enjoys talking about Star Wars, playing stupid games and eating bread whenever possible. Determined to either design a genius game or to become a blitzball someday.

Riku Leinonen, code monkey

Favourite Games: Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney

Special Skills: Breaking the repository, playing Super Mario eyes closed.

Code monkey likes tea and Dr. Pepper

Code monkey likes immersion and emergent gameplay

Code monkey very simple man

With a taste for silly hats



Maybe it was a bad idea to let people write about themselves?

Our week at KSAO

½ of TJR spent the week 12 at Kouvola, teaching Windows Phone 7 development at KSAO. The trip was not only a huge success, but also fun and educational for TJR as well, so I thougt I'd write a few more lines about it here.

 We decided early on, before the trip, that making a game is the only proper way to learn to make a game, so we asked the Kouvoleans what kind of game they would want to make. 2D platformer excelled in the voting, and we nodded our heads in agreenment, thinking that we could include pretty much all the essential elements of WP7 game making in the process.

The process of making an example game started about a week before the actual trip, and we went wild with it, this time we could use any crazy idea without worrying about target audiences or plot, as long as it would have all the needed elements and be finished within a week. Thus, Dr. Globdor was born! This is not the last you will hear from him either, but let's focus on Kouvola for now.

We only had five days to teach the whole process, and unlike originally intended, most of the students didn't have any previous experience of working with XNA, only basic programming skills. Needless to say we were a little worried about how things would turn out with such a tight schedule, but the KSAO folks proved to be one of the most motivated groups of people we have even seen!

The students were divided into four groups,  each with a goal to come up with a different theme for their games. After the themes were decided, the programmers in each group were to write the code based on the samples we provided, with the necessary tweaks needed for their own projects. The artists were to create matching graphics, complete with sprite animations. When each day was through, we spend some time commenting the code produced, helping to understand and remember the workings better. We also threw in some game design pointers here and there.

This tactic proved succesful as we managed to convey most of the knowledge we intended, and we were amazed how it all seemed to sink in. Pretty much only two things from the original list of things to teach were left for the follow-up session; particles and publishing. Here are a couple of screenshots from the WIP versions (most of the graphics are placeholders!) of their games, we can't wait to see how they will look like in a couple of weeks when it's time to publish:

What we learned was that it is possible to pour unbelieveable amounts of information when the people receiving it are motivated and interested in the subject. We should've probably honed both our strategy and material some more before the trip, but this time both worked out great.

So thank you KSAO, we hope to see you again! More about Dr. Globdor in the coming week.

Welcome!

Welcome to our development blog! You can follow us on Twitter and like us in Facebook, but this is where we aim to post a little more in-depth information about our ongoing projects, thoughts on games and gaming related subjects and so on.