ULTRAKILL Developer Interview: Hakita

i am now recording just so you know all right um it's gonna be uh probably i should probably record myself too just in case yeah just in case something goes wrong yeah uh it's gonna be a pretty you know pretty pretty casual interview um did you you got the questions so you know what's coming uh yeah it shouldn't be anything all of them but yeah that's don't worry whenever i i do the same thing yeah um but yeah and then i'll do all of like the uh oh it's chance of charity or not chance of charity that's the old one ultra it's ultra charity this is the i'll do all that stuff in in post sure but um so yeah i guess we can just get right into the first set of questions so you know it's been it's been a pretty crazy year for everyone but i i specifically want to know how the last year of ultrakill development felt for you too slow honestly it's that's not really a surprise i don't think the fans considering it takes quite a while for ultrakill to get updates but it's always i always do when i try to improve the pace but it's sort of difficult to considering like this sort of how much content and how um high people's like expectations are at this point so you know i kind of just take it take it as i can and then that means it ends up being slow which is unfortunate and i wish i could be faster but i really can't yeah outside of that outside of that it's pretty pretty pretty nice because all the people helping out with the development have been very very good and helpful with the game and we haven't really ran into like any big issues and stuff yeah and and so over the past year it's been the greed and clash updates right yeah and um survivor ah yeah and soul survivor okay thank you yeah i i feel like those have all been pretty pretty pretty significant in my opinion but you know that's just me especially yeah it definitely depends on who you ask because a lot of people you know just be like oh it took it took like three quarters of a year to add four new levels yeah and then some people are like what the hell i paid 20 bucks for this game why do i only have 15 levels or something yeah that's true yeah well it's kind of it's yeah it's like he's kind of designed to be replayed yeah it really is um so out of i guess i want to put this in terms of just this last year these this last year of development as well but how what of the last year what was your favorite thing you've worked on and you mean like in terms of like my favorite of like the development process or just like the final thing just anything any anything you've worked on for ultrakill well in terms of development i guess uh i i guess i like them doing uh the p1 uh survival level because that was like that was just like i can do whatever the [ __ ] i want in terms of difficulty without having to worry about it being accessible or like having to worry about any kind of difficulty curve but in terms of actual like final final finished thing i i i'm obviously very partial to uh clash of the brandy code because it's yeah a lot of people are mad about it because they're bad and they're molding and seeding and coping yes there's obviously there's obviously flaws in it but that's you know because it's a it's a secret level in fps it's not going to be the greatest platformer available yeah you definitely had me seething there for a while when i was when i was trying to get some of those like more stupid runs that have no purpose going good but but yeah and like i i i i complained about it a lot but but i would always say like oh but you know it's just a secret for a secret level it's like it's fantastic of course you know when you're pushing it to its limits its cracks might start to show but it's just one little fun secret level yeah and it's definitely it's definitely showing that i need to i need to pair things down a bit for the next secret level so that i don't spend another couple of months on that level that everyone hates well i loved it thank you all right and um so i guess kind of going off of you know uh one one funny little level that took months to to implement um what what what idea of yours has been the most difficult to implement or or or or time consuming whatever whatever makes a little more whatever is easier to answer for you but it would definitely be clash of the brand he could because it's i had to do a bunch of like no not just because of the systems of like having to make an fps like game system and engine and stuff just work in a platformer but also having all these things be able to cross pollinate because you're able to play every level as clash as well so it has to all func all the levels and like enemies and stuff have to function in both forms and then there's then there's a bunch of like stuff that nobody really notices that i spend way too much time on like the the music in the clash level it's sort of it has like different phases which change between between like just if there's four parts and they change between them like depending on how far in the level you are oh so like when you're outside it's one song and then when you go inside it changes to a different version and then once you've got the side scrolling thing it's a third version and like for that in order to make that seamless because if you just change songs then then like it's gonna be it's gonna be really jarring when the song suddenly cuts into another song so i had to do start doing math and stuff for like okay well i have to count beats and measures to get the correct place to cut into the next song so that it feels smooth and then obviously because i'm a [ __ ] dumbass the music that i made has like d like changing some of the songs i think the first phase especially has like changing time signatures so they have to start counting those as well oh no it's just like a huge huge undertaking for this thing that no one even knows that's a testament to how seamless it is yeah it's it's really good that's awesome yeah i'm definitely gonna have to go back and uh appreciate that now that i actually know about that wow and i need to actually get around to uploading that song and all those phases on youtube because i forgot it's exclusive to the game only for now kind of like the seasonal themes those are ones that i don't really want to upload anywhere because i think they're more special if they're just in the game for like a short period of time yeah makes sense um all right so you know going to the from the most annoying thing to the thing to the next uh is is there anything in the in the game right now that you think needs like any improvements or or polish or anything like that yeah actually right now we're starting to work on a sort of um overhaul on the sort of uh framework of the enemies and stuff because it's a huge mess because it's sort of it's a like all the enemy code is based on like really old code that i made for just the one enemy and sort of started to balloon and become really hard to maintain and update and stuff so we're doing like a whole rework of that frame framework and we're also in terms of like there's going to be a bunch of changes and stuff because obviously that's probably the most common complaint is that the ai is pretty dumb in the game right now so we're also looking to improve that a bit because i i want to keep all the enemies very simple so they're sort of you can you can understand what they're doing even if you're not looking at them or anything and you can sort of predict enemy behavior so i do want to keep them simple but we're improving or at least trying to improve navigation and stuff so that enemies will be able to jump up to like ledges and over gaps and stuff like that oh okay so that's hopefully melee enemies will be a bit more dangerous than they currently are we already got like a sort of preliminary version of it working in this cyber grind so that's good but just having to sort of figure out how to make it feel natural and stuff will be uh will be difficult and then there's just a lot of sort of small details that i need to put in in terms of animation stuff to make the enemies feel a bit more alive and a little bit less a video game code opponent yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of work to be done there but we're we're sort of aiming to have that done before wrath so we can have like a one more fairly big update before we completely commit to having grass out next okay that's exciting that's that's very exciting because yeah i i i know i've heard my fair share of complaints from people about how simple the ai is but i i've never found it to be that much of a problem because yeah it's always it's always been simple by design but sort of i definitely understand the complaint so yeah for example the projectile enemies like um they don't really like the only really because i'm not a very good programmer so the only sort of thing i could do for like if you're outside of a projectile enemy strange is that they'll start just walking towards you yeah so we'll try to sort of find a way to have the projectile enemies maybe scatter around a bit more and oh interesting just to give themselves a bit more space instead of all of them just bunching up into one spot yeah because if they're out of range and on a ledge or something they'll all just kind of pile up in one spot and be even easier targets than normal yeah yeah that's that's that's interesting we'll see what we can what we can figure out and hopefully we'll find a balance where the game is still but the enemies are still very simple but that they're sort of a little bit more dynamic yeah well i'm certainly looking forward to seeing that me too right so moving on most annoying the most annoying bug you've had to deal with so far i think like the good old classic was the disappearing swords machine from the prelude that was like that was one of those because that was around that was around that was around from like before new blood picked the game up so that was i was i was and we i didn't have a qa team or anything yet so i had to bug on that myself so it was a huge issue issue but we did i i think we fixed it before um the first early access reveal was like that came out so that was only in the demo but that was very frustrating which was sort of um if you knocked down the swords machine in the final phase of zero three then sometimes he would just disappear because he would end up because of navigation stuff he would end up warping on the like the roof or outside the room or something oh god uh did so um what ended up being the cause of that yeah it was it was navigation mesh thing so because because the way unity has it set up is at least the default thing is pretty like from what i understand it really doesn't take height into consideration much so if you if you have like a enemy that's like that's like at the bottom of some pit or whatever and like they there's like a floor that's uh that's like 100 meters above them then it's if they're in the air and they suddenly try to navigate with the navigation mess it's kind of a total crapshoot of you if it'll it will snap them down to the closest surface so it'll just slap them 100 meters up into the higher navigation maskers it doesn't seem to care at all about height just like horizontal and you know like horizontal distance and stuff okay okay yeah that sounds it sounds pretty rough especially without a qa team or anything yeah there's there's so much like annoyance with navigation mission stuff so that's also one of the things that we want to try to do with the enemy update is have enemies get a move around with physics pushes instead of a navigation instead of just purely by navigation mesh which would also mean that they can navigate on servers and stuff that don't have navigation messages because currently you'll get you will occasionally get enemies that'll they'll just like get stuck on the bottom like a torch or something and you can't move at all that's that's super interesting cool very yeah that's enemies being able to move on things that aren't nav meshes is uh very that'll be that'll be fun to see for sure yeah it will probably just be like a very simple that if they can if they're not an amber still just try to move towards the player and then get stuck if they can't move but like at least it's better than just having having them before keep falling while staying still yeah excuse me that's right all right so uh media you've taken inspiration from just in in any of your work not not just specifically ultra kill but just just in general [Music] i don't think that's really like a well i i mean i get i guess the good old good old reliable answer like outside of just all skills that will make cry inspiration and stuff is uh god hand is a pretty pretty good general sort of iteration for me because it's especially in terms of sound design that's like that was like a very learning experience for me because god hands an unbelievably loud game it is always clipping yeah it really is yes that was that was sort of like uh that was that was a big thing for all to kill some design was like i wanna i wanna make the game feel as good as god hand feel so make it [ __ ] loud and everything's always clipping and distorting and it worked oh yeah it definitely did any any other any other media that's that's in that that that you take inspiration from uh it's mostly just whatever i'm like watching or reading or listening to or playing at the moment it sort of seeps in instead of there isn't really a lot of sort of big um overarching things outside of like you know godhead and they will make crimes yeah but it's sort of just like whatever i was doing at the time it's sort of like if i if i'm making a song for a level it usually ends up being influenced by whatever i was listening to around that time yeah all right cool cool uh have any other game developers ever inspired you hold um dave zamanski when he made dusk i remember because i was in i was in game development school and i already had started ultra kill like i was just uh recently started on it and then one of my classmates showed me dusk and i was like oh this is like a this is also like an fps and it's made like one guy i was like oh [ __ ] that's so that's cool that's just like you know this one guy managed to make this whole whole game so that was just like a very big sort of motivational push for me to commit to ultrakill because i was feeling that you know if he could if he can do it alone then i can do this mostly alone as well yeah and that was awesome and then obviously when i because before like when i started old school skill wasn't really a retro fps it has never really been a retro fps and it looks retro but it doesn't function yeah it plays like its own beast yeah because it was just like it started just from me like oh i wanna i want to make a fps devil may cry and that was just like and then i did the ps1 style because oh well i have to figure out an art style that's like really low budget and that that's easy and fast to make so there's different uh we can do a pixel thing uh everyone does pixel things and we can do like a doom thing it's like everyone just like do my sprites and stuff so oh well i love i love ps1 graphics so i'll just do a ps1 style thing so it's sort of it was sort of accidentally stumbling into a resurgence of a genre yeah that was sort of when i when i found out about dusk and i played dust that was just like a big like oh [ __ ] this is like really [ __ ] good and that sort of got me to revisit doom like the original doom and started getting me into blood and shadow warriors and stuff like actually getting into all those retro fps games so that was like a big for me is getting to play dusk and finding out about dusk and stuff yeah that's yeah i think that's awesome um the the ps that's funny that you kind of just stumbled into the the ps1 aesthetic of it all because that that that's probably what captured me most at first i i i'm such a sucker for that era it i really am it was in i when when i first like played the game and saw that psx filter i was like oh this is it this is for me this game was made for me yeah because it's very much the same kind of it's very much the same kind of thing for me as well because it's obviously i grew up with a playstation one so i have a lot of love for that so now that i'm growing up enough to be like a game developer than other people who are like my age and stuff who also grew up with the playstation 1 are grown up enough to like be and be nostalgic for that era so i think it's sort of it's sort of and also in general that's that's also sort of ultra killing stuff there's like a big ps1 horror scene currently and stuff so it's sort of everywhere everyone's starting to come together to this style now that's like the new hot new hot thing or it was a couple years ago at least yeah everyone's realizing damn ps1 is kind of nice yeah and it's really just it's it's very funny just like how lucky old skill has been on just strike oh you know it's just like these these small decisions i made earlier on that ended up accidentally making alkyl fall into multiple currently researched like resurgences of genres and old styles yeah it was kind of a perfect storm in terms of all the decisions all the like aesthetics and stuff yeah it's on it's unfortunate it's just one of those teams because right now it's like sort of you see a bunch of people starting to make retro fpss and stuff because like oh this it's like popular right now but then they don't really realize that it's going to take them a couple years and couple years from now they're going to be competing with a hundred other retro fps also made because of the research and so it's going to be sort of it's yeah when you when you know that there's a resurgence or wave happening then it's usually almost already too late to try to catch it so even like it's still no i'm not trying to discourage anyone who's doing that or wanting to do that because if you do then absolutely [ __ ] go for it but just like you can't rely on the wave you do have to actually you do still have to push as hard and market your game as hard and try to make it as good as all other indie games are right now instead of being able to rely on a wave happening unless you're trying to like predict the future because yeah there's there's probably like this sort of because you could say there's a mcm wave probably coming and that's probably like you might still be able to catch on to that and with like gloom wood and purple and a system shock remake and stuff like that yeah so it's sort of if you really want to catch a wave you do have to actually try to predict what's happening in the future instead of doing what's being a wave right now yeah that makes a lot of sense especially yeah because you'll just it's hard to when that wave is already happening if you've seen it everyone else probably has too so yeah exactly you either gotta work really really fast or i already have something yeah that you've been working on yeah or either that or just you'll have to you'll just have to struggle like like yeah you just you just can't really if you start to make a game at the point where a wave is already happening then you can't try you can't like trust that the way will still be happening by the time your game comes out so you'll have to actually like you'll you'll have to like commit to marketing and stuff just as hard as uh indeed indeed developers in general do you have to yeah all right so we'll be moving on to the kind of uh more community related stuff for the next couple questions um our i don't know if you've if you've seen the schedule for ultra charity yet but are there any runs you're particularly interested in seeing um i'm interested in the hive mind thing because i have no idea what that is but there's like six people playing at the same time yep that's exactly what it is it's gonna be uh i'll be controlling the mouse and whoever else wants to participate will be controlling my keyboard and that's so that'll be a that'll be a time yeah that's a good way of putting it but uh hopefully hopefully it doesn't go horribly but you know we'll we'll see we'll see but yeah that's that's something i'm interested in seeing and i would say the luna's blind speed run but honestly i don't want to see that because i want to play luna myself i know i i i have the same exact uh feelings as you when when roby offered that i was like oh man i want to be in this race so bad but i need to do all of the host stuff this sucks yeah i'm i'm super excited to see luna one one as well that's gonna be gonna be awesome i don't know yeah it's just sort of it's kind of like oh i wanna see i wanna see it because obviously i'm interested in the level but but then again i also don't want to watch the speed run because i want to just get my first experience when i actually get my hands on this stuff i don't want anything spoiled i'm gonna go ask roby hey yo can i get that map early yeah probably all right uh favorite community discovered tech or bug [Music] i would say i would say um shotgun self-pairing and projectile boosting or whatever but that's actually not coming already discovered because i accidentally discovered myself that was when the game was already in the community's hands but it was technically still discovered by me so yeah can you go into how you kind of found out about it it was it was pretty simple i was playing zero three and i um i parried i parried and sword machine shotgun thing and i was like i was like oh yeah you can do that because obviously because they like there's basically a bunch of small projectiles instead of being like a actual birth burst thing or whatever yeah and then then i was just like wait a minute but the player the player shot can also use this first thing so maybe maybe and then i just tried it and it worked i was like oh [ __ ] oh that's awesome did um did were the like little perry sparks in the in the game at that point yet uh which which sparks like the little yellow flash yeah yeah oh okay but i mean they were they were just like original they weren't really uh sort of paris props they were just like general attack warnings oh okay okay but now they've been sort of divided into variable and unparalleled machine i'm pretty sure the flash is uh because he has like a four pronged yellow flash for melee warnings and a eight pronged orange flash for uh ranged warnings oh i i never noticed that yeah it's pretty subtle which is obviously why it didn't really work out which is why it's just now i just use the yellow flash for basically whatever variable attacker yeah new blue flash for anything that isn't variable all right that's that's pretty cool that's a pretty pretty funny way to to find that i paired it up i guess in terms of like actually like community discovered uh i really like ultra boosting i think ultra boosting is really cool yeah i'm still not sure how it works but i sure love it yeah the all the old old version was just that you were getting hit by both explosions in the same frame i forgot that you changed it that's right yeah now it's now it's just like a manual override thing that if you do this and this and you're this within this like x distance away then uh then then we'll like change the amount of force you get from the explosion yeah and and just for anyone that doesn't know ultra boosting is when you shoot a core eject with a malicious rail cannon when it's right next to you and it gives you a huge boost of speed uh any surprising content that the community's made oh probably um multi-kill the multiplayer mod is is a pretty surprising one well it's not it's not surprising that people wanted to make it but it's surprising that people actually got something like that functioning on at least some level yeah and and i know it's been it's been coming along pretty well these past couple weeks so hopefully hopefully we'll get to see that relatively soon because yeah it it's crazy i i never thought that i would see it despite everyone asking for it all the time yeah and obviously i'm never gonna [ __ ] make it yeah and in terms of other surprising content i think just the most surprising sort of thing is just how much content like the comedian in general like fan art and stuff how much there is of its consideration it feels like it's like a much higher ratio than most other games get in terms of like player amount to uh amount of fan content and stuff it definitely seems like the uh the the fans of ultrakill are are very captured by the game which is which is great which is very good for me yeah it's going to be it's going to be very very i think it's going to be very interesting when people will eventually find out how the game goes or like where the game goes from here and how the story will go from here so because it was i was i was i was always hoping that video would make a make a sort of deep impact on people but i was never expecting it to already be doing that yeah halfway through yeah 4v2 never saw the yeah yeah really well regardless i'm super happy for you and i'm super happy for for all of the fans because it's such a such a great experience yes um it's it's very it's very fun to be able to sort of yeah the great thing about early access is being able to sort of experience the sort of games development alongside a fan base instead of them just seeing it from a distance all right so for our very our last question because sadly the uh the the question list has come to an end and and this one's kind of for anyone looking to get into game design i guess but do you have a a quote golden rule of game design i have a couple but the most by far the most important one is the lesson i learned from untraceable which was my previous uh attempted making a game which is although the sort of tldr version is that i was making me an a classmate of mine we were making a stealth game and the pro like give us a very it was a very cool stealth game it had a little bit low of really interesting like little systems and stuff and uh cool mechanics and stuff and then sort of and then sort of i got into like i graduated from that school i went into a different game design school because i didn't know what the [ __ ] i wanted to do with my life and then i met i met another classmate who was actually like the only only classmate at that new school who had actually done any game development before so we were sort of immediately hitting it off because of that and then then i brought my laptop and my game to my school and i was like hey check this out this is the game i've been working on and then he he played it for like two minutes or something he died like twice and then he started playing and he just looked at me i was like this is some fun and it was just like oh [ __ ] oh jesus because that was like that was just a sudden like lightning bolt going through my head like oh i i never actually i never actually did anything to make the game like fun i never actually considered that because i was just thinking that as long as the game is like cool and interesting then that will make it fun but you do actually have to design the fun into the game yeah it's not enough that it's like a game that's functional and interesting and stuff you actually do and and then that's that's sort of that was the sort of genesis of old skill was me sort of scrapping untraceable and then going from the scratch starting to go like okay well what is fun what is like fun in video games it's like well um high speed really over the top dumb violence explosive big weapons and lots of action and really high tension combat with high difficulty and stuff like that and then i just started piling all of that into like one game idea and then i was like well then i'll i'll make this i'll make all the things that i think are fun into just one single game and then lapse that will have to be fun i'll first [ __ ] give up or something i don't know yeah well it is that's that's sort of the number one thing is that you actually do have to like from from the very very start of your game development you have to focus first and foremost on trying to make the game fun like trying to have the core gameplay loop of the very base actions that you do in the game just make those functional and then just try to make them feel good and make them feel fun and then if you can do that then you already have a good game and you just have to coast out the rest of development and it'll already be a good game because the core gameplay that you spend 90 of time doing is already good and fun well that's that's a a fantastic role i think and then the second one that i that i think is important is clipping is not a bad thing make your audio as loud as you [ __ ] want it's really just most people like the only thing only people who really notice unless it's like badly made audio the only people who really notice are like audio engineers and stuff because for most people it's just like they're in the game they're in the zone they don't just feel like oh this this audio clip is quite distorted because it is a slightly too many decibels love it's just like nah it does that doesn't matter the people it's just as long as as long as long as it sort of feels right then you can really just do whatever the [ __ ] you want with sound yeah most people hear the loud clipping are like damn that's awesome this sounds [ __ ] crazy yeah as long as it's done in a good manner because obviously if you this there's been some games that have tried to do similar things but that don't really work out where it's like some of the sounds are just abrasive they just hurt you in the years because of the way they sort of it's just like yeah too too much doing too much from like the high frequencies and stuff and it's like now you got to do it real [ __ ] medium bassy and low and then you can make it loud yeah well yeah thank you so much akita for your time i'm i'm very glad we really did this pre-recorded now because i went a lot longer than i thought it was going to but we'll uh make it work yep but yeah thank you so much that was a nice little chat it definitely enjoyed it hopefully the people will enjoy it as well um i mean i would be it would be an unfortunate if people in the ultra charity stream didn't care about what happened yeah yeah that wouldn't be great but i guess before before we go um where can people you know follow you um i have i have a twitter that's at hakira dev dev shot for developer i have a band cam with my music it's heavenpiercer.bandcamp.com i have youtube page you can just look up hakida or ultrakill or something and find that and then obviously you can go to devilwayquake.com to actually find the game itself all right awesome thank you so much hikita for your time and uh always always like doing some good interviews let's let's uh hope the rest of ultra charity goes goes well yep

Channel: ULTRASWERVE

Views: 21,200

Keywords: ultrakill, video games, videogames, speedrun

Id: nE4MyZlfFb4

Length: 36min 51sec (2211 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 04 2022