It’s been a while since we’ve done an interview, but nevertheless, today we have one. A few days ago we got to talk to Portable Hole Productions – the development team behind “Bang!” and “TimeToHunt” for iPhone and iPod touch.
Hit the jump to see just how Portable Hole started out in iPhone development, and more importantly, what they think of all of it ..
When and how did you first get into software development?
I was intrigued by computers at an early age. I watched the original Star Trek all the time, I was really into bionics and cybernetics, and when I was about ten years old I build a simple statistical learning system out of a box of marbles. I got my first computer when I was 15 and promptly started programming games in BASIC. After college I went to work for NASA in Houston, and while I didn’t write a lot of code there, I did do a lot of systems modeling with software like STELLA and TK Solver. I got back into coding in 1994 when the Internet exploded into the world. JavaScript, Perl, Python, all those web scripting languages led me back into it. Since then I’ve done a lot of Java and C#, and of course now Objective-C.
Which of your two iPhone games do you like the most?
Bang! is our first game. It’s simple to play but because of that, it also draws you into thinking you can always do a little better each time you play. While we were playtesting, we found ourselves sucked into playing until the game was over even when we only needed to test a short segment. There’s something very satisfying about blowing the bombs up, like popping bubblewrap but more fun because there’s actually a point to it. And of course the graphics are better. 😉
Who is your favorite iPhone developer (excluding yourself) and which of their
applications do you like most?
I think the guys at RealTime Audio Adventures are doing some interesting stuff. One of the problems with doing ports of immersive 3D worlds on the iPhone like Brothers in Arms or something like that is that the screen is very small compared to an HDTV or even an average PC screen, which is where these games came from. It’s hard to see detail at arms length, colors tend to blur together. But if you’ve got headphones, you’ve still got great, immersive audio that can pull you into the game and the RealTime guys are leveraging that with their audio-enhanced adventure titles. SoulTrapper is the only one out but they’ve got more coming. Smule also deserves props. They’re sort of a guilty pleasure, because things like the lighter have become a cliche for useless apps on the iPhone. But their apps are accessible, perfectly executed, and leverage people’s social networks. I mean, who else could’ve had a hit with an ocarina sim?
Good point. Have you ever had any ideas that were snatched up before you had the
chance to release?
No, not yet. But we’ve always got more ideas than we have time to develop, so I’m sure it will happen one of these days. In terms of games, you’re seeing a lot of ports of existing games and remakes of classics because development costs are low and the games are already known. As time goes on, the iPhone platform will generate its own classics, I’m sure. Hopefully some of them will be ours.
What are the highlights of your job, both good and bad?
The good: Getting to that first usable build, where the app has become real even if there are rough edges or missing functionality. It’s like that Frankenstein moment when the lightning bolt hits. Another good moment is when other people use the app or play the game for the first time and actually like it. If it’s bad, they’ll be polite and tell you it’s great and hand it back to you. But if it’s really good, they’ll keep going on their own. Then you know you got it right.
The bad: When people tell you it’s great and you know they’re just being polite—I really value an honest opinion, it makes us better. Long days spent indoors with no contact with the outside is also a drawback. And realizing that no one in the world knows about your app because it isn’t on any of the App Store lists and that’s where 99% of the people get their apps from. Hopefully sites like RF will start to remedy that as people come to realize that the App Store is really just for buying apps; sites like RF are for finding them and recommending the good ones.
Thanks for your time Portable Hole.
Be sure to check out their new game “Bang!” guys – available here on the App Store. Also, check back next week for a chance to win copies of the company’s great software!
Leave a Reply