The folks over at Dialogue Designs took time out of their busy day to have a chat with us about their latest game, Tank Universal. Will there be multiplayer? What inspired the creators? All of that and more are answered after the jump.

Tank Universal Developer Q&A
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 – by Ryan Lodata, Executive Editor

1. What inspired you to create a game with this specific kind of art style? It's definitely a different approach than many other developers would take. Were you inspired by Tron? 

As an indie, you can try art styles that the mainstream may not be so keen to implement. I chose the glowing neon artstyle for a number of reasons. Firstly it can be very evocative, even sensual in its contrast between pitch black and bright primary colours. It also encourages the player's imagination to 'fill in the blanks'.

Another consideration is that as an indie designer, I simply don't have the resources or time to create the sort of highly detailed art assets typically seen in big budget commercial productions. In that respect, the neon coloured 'Tron' style is almost a form of graphical  'shorthand' for more detailed artwork - but one that does allow for a grand sense of scale.

Finally, the abstract style meant that all sorts of weird and wonderful play elements could be introduced without butting up against pesky 'real world' conventions.

2. Are you planning on creating any more followup titles to Tank Universal? 

The game is touted as part one of a two part story - but it does depend to some degree on how well the first game does.

3. When you first planned on making the game, what was your vision? What were you looking to do?

I simply wanted to create a 3D title that I personally would like to play, that others might enjoy and which had a bit of depth to its action. I started out with a Commodore Vic20 and C64 and had always wanted to write a game on those great machines, but never got round to it. With the PC being as powerful and flexible as it is today, I decided to do something about it.

Honestly, my favourite games have little to do with TU except in that they often offer an immersive experience either through strategic depth or a first person perspective. In that respect, I definitely don't like many console 3rd person games as much - perhaps because it's more apparent that your character is less 'you' and more a 'cursor' - but I'll still play them. 

So, favourite game titles would be the original Elite, Dreamfall:The Longest Journey (a great 'page turner'), Gothic3 (community patched - great work there by the fans) and any of the Total War series. Also any indie game that keeps me occupied for hours.

5. What games are you guys playing right now? Anything you're looking forward to?

You won't believe it, but I'm actually playing a game from a couple of years back called Boiling Point:Road to Hell. It's pretty flaky - missions are broken, there's too much driving, sound often cuts out and the AI's pretty borked but I love 'sandbox' games - or at least games where you're placed in a large world and can make your own way through the game. I really enjoy just being able to wander around and discover 'stuff' (come to think of it, some of this gamestyle did make its way into Tank Universal as things can happen independantly of the player on the virtual battlefield). Trouble is, sandbox games take longer to produce than the standard A->B games, so they're not as common. But I'm looking fowards to Fallout 3, even though I've not played Fallout 1 or 2. I've purposefully been avoiding all the hype surrounding this title.

I also have Spore on the hard drive. Interestingly, I've played through to the tribal stage and haven't gone back. It's obviously a great game with a lot of depth but I'm having a hard time with its cutesiness - my tribe reminds me too much of Jar Jar Binks and that makes me angry.

See question 2

7. It was a very innovative decision to base some of the story in the real world. How did you come to that decision?

I don't think I'd quite agree that the virtual world/real world 'split' is all that innovative - its been seen before. If you wanted to praise one aspect of the story as being innovative, it would probably be that the main character is actually an older man - a retiree. That was a deliberate move to buck the usual the generic video game hero - you know - bigger guns/sword + outlandish armour/spacesuit = hero (yawn).

8. Any plans for multiplayer support in the future?

Looking at it - nothing certain to report at present.