Your questions for Jurie Horneman
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TijnKeymaster
Podcaster
Albion lead-programmer Jurie Horneman agreed to do an interview with us. Pretty cool huh!
Please drop your questions for him here and we’ll try to put them in front of him when we get to speak to him 🙂
yozyParticipant
Podcaster
– What was the story behind the intro? It doesn’t seem really tied to the game.
– Who is your favorite character?
– How did the design of the Iskai come to be?
Would love to hear any inside info on how Albion relates to Ambermoon, in terms of tech, team/development history, etc.
How did it end up being an MS-DOS game instead of an Amiga one?
How did it end up getting an English translation+release?
Is there any chance that the source code could be released or at least preserved?
Hello Jurie! We spoke on Twitter recently about a little WebGL renderer that I made. (I’m @guroflower there).
I’ve always found Albion’s visuals really interesting, so I’d love to hear anything neat about art direction or rendering tech, or just overall how the Albion/Ambermoon “look” came to be.
Some other specifics:
– What were the main differences between programming for Amiga and MS-DOS? Did the differing instruction sets (68000 vs. x86) matter that much, or could you write similar code to run on either machine?
– Why was the call made to build Ambermoon and Albion as hybrid 2D/3D games, rather than one or the other?
– What informed Albion’s world building? (in terms of other works, or just general style)
– Cut content! Albion fans have found info in the code about a “cut” nation described only as “hedonists”. They were supposed to live in the place where the Dji Cantos are and use the same beautiful tile set. Is there any truth in all that?
– The Prison Quest! In the desert part of the game you can find a prison with a female prisoner you can free. The whole thing feels very random, but also like a part of a much bigger quest line that was cut for some reason. Could you tell us more about that?
Jurie, Albion remains my favourtie game of all time. I still remember emailing Blue Byte as an 11 year old asking for tips on getting through the Drinno dungeon. I actually got a reply from one of your colleagues!
My questions:
1. Was the exploit where if you run and then right click and reach over counters in shops (and walls) a deliberate design feature? (Eg. reaching through the wall in the Iskai combat trainers house to steal a sheild)
2. What is your favourite area/island/building in the game and why?
Thank you!
Ninetongues: – Cut content! Albion fans have found info in the code about a “cut” nation described only as “hedonists”. They were supposed to live in the place where the Dji Cantos are and use the same beautiful tile set. Is there any truth in all that?
We’ve talked about those on the Discord, and I don’t think there was more to the Decadent (Dekadenten) other than it was supposed to be Jurie’s nation and involved in the quest for the Seed. But I’d love to hear more!
Something I was wondering about: As a world, Albion feels a bit “small” in-game, with only two iskai settlements, and more but still a handful of human ones. Is the world as explored in-game to scale, or did you imagine it bigger, with potentially more cities and villages to explore on the existing continents, or perhaps with even more islands and continents out there, unimplemented?
I’d love to know if any lore or design documents still exist – there seems to be a ton of background information in the game that’s easy to miss! Today, I’ve only just gone around talking to everyone on the ship extensively for the first time, and learned a lot about the previous species that humanity has encountered, as well as their wiping them out or pushing them into reservations.
How much of the Iskai language has actually been written down? It’s not spoken often in the game beyond a couple of key terms, but we hear Rainer and Gira say a few words in it just as Tom is waking up. Did those lines have a definite meaning or were they just made up?
(I remember being disappointed that the game contained no actual Iskai language reference, when Rainer said that he would give Tom a training course 🙂 )
I’d like to know more about how the world was created by the team – modern games tend to have a Director where all the story and world decisions are directed. Was this the process for Albion or were multiple people’s ideas involved in building up the world and setting?
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