Space Captain Steve

Art from an award winning game designer and space pirate. Creator of TY the Tasmanian Tiger and Blade Kitten.

[spacecaptsteve]

Here's a random bunch of bit from my current game project GUNWALE. It's a 2D cozy slice of sci-fantasy life aboard a narrowboat called the Gunwale Regis.

[spacecaptsteve]

Here's a random bunch of bit from my current game project GUNWALE. It's a 2D cozy slice of sci-fantasy life aboard a narrowboat called the Gunwale Regis.

[spacecaptsteve]

im watching gameoverse {about 13 minutes in} and i cant help but miss kit ballard when i see this... i think about kit ballard a lot she's so important

I'll just leave you with this then...

[spacecaptsteve]

Brace yourselves - The Doomeranger Collection is a comic for anyone who missed out on the kickstarters. Also with a new 8-page comic that introduces the new character, Ginny.

Keep your ears peeled for more info in the next few weeks.

[spacecaptsteve]

Slowboating Gunwale style. A little animation experiment for the project.

[spacecaptsteve]

Was there any particular development philosophy that you guys took to making Ty 3? I know you said y’all wanted to immediately start work on it after finishing 2, and I recall something you said how that was a quickly made game, made with 2’s engine, and to fix any bugs you guys had with 2, do whatever you guys could with a smaller budget. Was that all intentional, by design, or was it something that just kinda was happenstance, or developed naturally?

Also my apologies for asking so many questions about Ty, I recently got to really dig into the series (I had the first one as a wee lad, that was about the most I knew of the games), and for some reason, you Aussies managed to get this 30 year old Texan hyperfixated on this series. 😅

We did all that work pushing the tech forward on TY 2 that we didn't want to just leave that and the TY series behind. So, we made the best we could with what we had in a limited time. That's pretty much true of EVERY TY game.

One day I would love to make a TY game that has a decent budget and time to make it super awesome.

[spacecaptsteve]

Slightly less serious question this time: out of the Ty cast, who do you think canonically likes Vegemite?

Look, the franchise is Australian af, someone has statistically had to have wondered.

Even less serious question: Why do you think there are any characters that don't like Vegemite?

[schwarzfeesecond]

Intron Depot 1 Artbook - Appleseed

[spacecaptsteve]

I was having a rough day and over-ate on cereal BUT then I saw you talking about your inspirations on my feed and it cheered me right up. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and work 💪 🌅

I too, have had it rough the last few days (my internet died at the start of a 4 day weekend), so I feel you, but I'm glad my post cheered you up, as this post cheered me up too. Thanks!

[spacecaptsteve]

Another behind the scenes question to ask, what was the process of maintaining the rights to the Ty series? As in, the first two were published by EA, the third by Activision, and then all three were re-released by Krome, alongside the fourth game. What was the history behind that, were there any particular waiting periods where you guys had to wait for certain licenses from the publishers to expire? I figure EA and Activision are both kinda infamous for holding onto IPs firmly, so I’m interested how Ty managed to slip through their fingers, as it were.

EA and Activision were simply distribution deals. Krome owned the IP all the time. After TY 2 EA was happy to wait 2 years to put out a TY 3 because 1 and 2 were selling well enough and they didn't want to cut into sales of those two. We were on good terms with them and they were fine with us trying to find another distributor.

I remember at one point EA offered to buy the rights to TY but we felt it was too low to consider after all the work we'd put into the series.

The reason it took some time for us to self publish later was basically we really weren't in a position to do that until we got the publishing rights back for Blade Kitten from Atari. That let us take control of the Steam version back when it was still hard to get onto Steam. That led to us getting TY on PC and then things went out from there. The most important lesson here is that most publishers are actually happy to work with you if you treat them fairly too. We just talked to them and asked. Even Microsoft was cool about us doing the Steam version of TY 4 when we asked them.

[spacecaptsteve]

I've always admired your mecha designs, ever since I was a boy playing TY 2 and seeing the battle bunyip for the first time. It's something about the way you can give a mecha Gundam-like machinery yet retain a kind of cartoonishness and zoomorphism. It's sort of similar to Akira Toriyama's mechs, or maybe Jhonen Vasquez's. More generally, I also like the ratio of roundness to hard angles in your designs. Did you have any special inspirations when you were first developing your ideas for mecha?

I think that a lot of it comes from getting hooked on mecha stuff as a teen in the 80s. I am a big fan of Toriyama's approach to mechanical stuff as well. His approach of making them cartoony but still look like real things is vastly different from the western animation approach back then which leaned more heavily into the 50s retro aesthetic. But here's a short list of my biggest inspirations - Masamune Shirow, Shoji Kawamori, Shinji Aramaki, Artmic.

[spacecaptsteve]

Strange question, not so about the lore, moreso a production thing: I noticed over the course of the games that, as far as voice acting goes, it seemed to be a combination of Australian actors, but also a lot of the LA voice acting scene (you can’t hide Charlie Adler from me, I know that man’s voice when I hear it). I was wondering how exactly did that process work? Was it a union thing, something mandated by EA/Activision, etc.?

We recorded in both Aus and the US for all three games just because that worked out best to get the actors we wanted.

[spacecaptsteve]

Would you ever go back to cons like Supanova in the future or if your health allows it? I’d love to see one of my favourite comic artist and video game creator there again!

Yeah, I'd love to at some point in the future. I miss chatting with folks about the nerdy shit we all like 😊

[spacecaptsteve]

recently played through all the ty games (even the gba ones!) and totally fell in love with all the characters and that world! anyway this is a weird thing to bring up, but i learned real tasmanian devils actually have long, plump tails, but ranger ken's tail is cute and stubby, was that just a mistake that stuck, or was there going to be some gag there that never made it into the games? personally i always imagine it got snapped up by a crocodile he was trying to bring in for rehab lol

Tail not 100% realistic is a "mistake" but standing upright, wearing clothes and talking is "OK"?

Got it. 😊

[spacecaptsteve]

Whenever the next Ty game is made, will the characters in Gunyip! be repurposed and introduced?

I really like your design on Po the Kakapoo and if my memory serves, I think you mentioned years back that he was an analogue to Chewbacca?

If I'm involved, yes, some will be. I've already started working Ginger into the world, as of the comics.

[firestorm-fox]

I like to imagine a Sonic x TY crossover AU where Rouge is Shadow's daughter and Shade's sister

[spacecaptsteve]

Shade is actually half ghost bat and half flying fox. Her father is a flying fox and she has a half-sister flying fox called Ginger. It was going to be a big plot point in the first version of TY 4 that was called "Gunyip!" PS: That's Po the Kakapo with Ginger and Shade.

[spacecaptsteve]

I hate to ask you a travel-related question and not a Blade Kitten or Ty one!

I plan on visiting Queensland, probably Gold Coast this year before my fall semester of uni begins. It will be my first visit in the country.

As I like hiking, nature walks and a bit of thrill, what are your personal recommendations I can add to my itinerary?

If you're hitting the Gold Coast then I'd recommend any beach south of Broadbeach, there and north of that (Main Beach/Surfer's Paradise) is super touristy and pretty tacky. My faves are Burleigh and Currumbin. There's some good hiking up Telebudgerah creek into the hinterlands. Also Mt Tambourine has soime fantastic bush walks as does Lamington Nation Park. North of Brisbane is the Sunshine Coast and the Glasshouse Mountains (where you'll find the inspiration for Cass' Crest). There's also plenty of sand islands you can catch a ferry out to in Moreton bay like Stradbroke and Moreton. https://www.queensland-australia.com/destination-brisbane-moreton-bay-islands.html

South East Queensland has heaps of cool shit to see.