The Vacuum competition being held by Door-6 will be starting in 2 days so we thought what a perfect time to interview our friend, Jeremy Shafton CEO of Door-6. If you haven’t heard about the competition, this is the first one to be held with cash prizes on the Android platform with the top prize being $500.
Here is what Jeremy had to say on Vacuum, the upcoming competition and developing the game…
D.G. – First off I’d like to thank you again for forwarding the press release of Vacuum awhile back. I continue to enjoy the game still. Where did you come up with the idea for Vacuum?
Thanks for covering the release of Vacuum and I’m happy to take your questions today. Vacuum started with Atmosphere: The Training Mission which was a finalist in Google’s Android Developer Challenge 2. The Training Mission was the starting point for the graphics and controls in Vacuum. We wanted to make something that had good graphics and gave the user an enjoyable challenge. I think we delivered on those objectives.
D.G. – How has the response been to Vacuum and the competition that’s going to start April 1st?
Vacuum has been covered pretty well by the Android-centric media, and I think the competition is obviously a big part of that. We’re giving away money to the top 3 players, and that’s a first for the platform. Users have been great, emailing us their ideas and helping us build a better game.
D.G. – I’m excited to see this competition get under way since this is the first cash competition for Android. How about you?
I’m definitely excited for the competition to begin. The scores before the competition starts have been pretty awesome with someone already breaking 1300 points. I’ve never even gotten over 800.
D.G. – Do you plan on continuing this competition in the future or is it just this one time? If so, how often do you think you’ll hold competitions?
I think that there will be future competitions for players of Vacuum. Vacuum will likely get updated for any further contests so that the gameplay has a fun, new twist. We may also consider putting out other contest-backed games in the future. We’ll announce any solid plans closer to the end of this first competition in May.
D.G. – You have been right on top of keeping Vacuum updated and listening to feedback from users, do you plan to update the game with more features?
Yes. We released the 1.1 update to fix issues with the game running on the HTC Hero, and we’ll be releasing a 1.2 shortly to add a few languages to the mix and a couple requested features (that won’t change gameplay for the contest obviously). We’ll probably send out a release with the details of the update as well as letting everyone know that the contest is under way April 1st!
D.G. – What’s on the horizon for Door-6 in terms of upcoming games? Do you have anything in the works right now?
We’ve definitely got other projects on the table. I don’t have a lot of details to share yet, but I can say that you can be sure the great games of the future will come from Door-6. We’ll keep you informed 🙂
D.G. – A question about development. With all the different Android versions and screen sizes that are out (and continue to come out) and with the power of new phones recently announced like the Samsung Galaxy S and EVO, do you find it difficult when developing Vacuum (and any upcoming titles) to cater to all of these various phones and OS verions?
It is a little tricky, but so far I’ve been impressed with how easy it is to deploy an application across all these different phones. Obviously we had that problem on the HTC Hero, but I’d say thats not the norm. With the graphics we’re using we do see lower frame rates on the G1 and higher frame rates on the Nexus One, but in the future I think we’ll be able to make software that can adapt to the phone’s available hardware.
D.G. – What’s been the biggest challenge so far with Vacuum as far as development and deployment/updating?
So far the biggest challenge has just been time. Its hard to set aside enough time to put all the development time necessary to roll out specific features. For this update that’s about to come out we’ve been pushing really hard the last week.
D.G. – Is there going to be a way we can watch the scores in the competition?
This is something we’re trying to tackle right now. I think that we will launch something during this competition to allow users to monitor the scores on our Facebook page. Door-6 FaceBook
D.G. – It’s always great talking to you. I know you’re busy getting ready for the competition to start and I’ll definitely be watching how it progresses and reporting on the winners, I’m excited to see how this turns out. Thanks for taking the time right before the start of the competition to answer a few questions! Best of luck!
Thanks for sending me your questions. I hope that we’ve given some more insight into what’s going on at Door-6 and interested your readers in checking out Vacuum! The game is a lot of fun and with the whole 24-hours to return deal that the Android Market has, I think everyone should at least try it out 😉  We’ll keep you up to date with any more exciting developments regarding Vacuum or Door-6.
We’d like to thank Jeremy again for taking the time to answer our questions during this busy time right before the start of the competition. If you haven’t picked up Vacuum and given it a try you can via the QR Code below or if you don’t know what Vacuum is you can read our coverage of the beta and it’s official release for more details. If you want to try the competition you still have a couple of days to practice for it as it starts April 1st. Good Luck!
Click QR Code for easy scanning: {rokbox}images/stories/QRCodeLibrary/QRVacuum.png{/rokbox}
Developer Website: Door-6
