YOU
\nDON\u2019T KNOW JACK has its fans on Facebook, is a SPIKE TV Video Game Award
\nwinner, and is now available on the App store. Gregory Castle, senior manager,
\nproduct marketing, at Autodesk spent some time with Jellyvision Games Engineers
\nBen Jacobs and Pascal Pochol to discuss the latest release and how Autodesk software
\nhelped to bring this brainy social title to mobile gamers.<\/p>\n
Gregory Castle: A: (Pochol) I worked as the lead on the Android GC: Tell us about YOU DON\u2019T KNOW JACK. What makes A: (Jacobs) : The content. The fact that even when GC: YOU DON\u2019T GC: Your team used Autodesk Scaleform in a unique A: (Jacobs) Scaleform let us use Flash where it was GC: What Autodesk GC: The A: (Jacobs) I like Pascal\u2019s answer. Pretend I said
\nCongratulations on the recent launch and VGA win. Can you tell us about your
\nrole in developing YOU DON\u2019T KNOW JACK?
<\/strong>A: (Jacobs) I am the lead engineer on the iOS
\nversion of YDKJ. That includes iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iTelevision and
\niRefrigerator versions. Oops, was I not supposed to mention that?<\/p>\n
\nversion but also helped squeeze the iOS version until it fit and ran on the
\nolder devices that we support. <\/p>\n
\nit so addicting?
<\/strong>A: (Pochol) I'm sure many people have many answers
\nto that question. The writers are extremely talented and always come up with
\nsomething new, twisted, and side-splittingly funny. Tom's voice over is
\nincredible, so just listening to the questions is a very enjoyable experience.
\nThere are so many traps that you're more likely to fall into, especially if you
\nknow the answer that makes you slap yourself over the head for pressing the
\nwrong button because you didn't pay attention to a \u201cnot\u201d in the question or
\n\u201cmore\u201d etc. Let's face it,you can be the smartest man on earth, and it'll still
\nmake fun of you; I guess that's addicting to most. <\/p>\n
\nyou answer a question wrong, you get a laugh out of it. The multiplayer aspect
\nhas always been what drew me to the game. I love that moment when you realize
\nyou know an answer and then find out all your dumb friends don\u2019t. <\/p>\n
\nKNOW JACK is now available on iOS. What new features can gamers expect on the
\nmobile version?
<\/strong>A: (Jacobs) : We wanted to keep the game as close to
\nthe Facebook version as possible, feature-wise. However, it\u2019s not just a
\nstraight port; the user interface is completely optimized for mobile. There are
\nother mobile-specific features, like being able to play the game without a
\nFacebook login, that make it unique. I think the best experience you can have
\nwith YDKJ is playing it on an iPad. It feels like you\u2019re playing on a little
\ntelevision! <\/p>\n
\nway to bring YDKJ to iOS and Android. Can you walk us through how you used the
\ntechnology?
<\/strong>A: (Pochol) That is quite simple really. The game is
\n100% done in Flash, which Scaleform runs for us. We added a handful of native
\ncallbacks to display the videos in the background and communicate with the
\nservers, for example.<\/p>\n
\nappropriate, and native code where it wasn\u2019t. Our artists could work in an
\nenvironment that they were familiar with, but we could still integrate in any
\niOS or Android library that we wanted. This left the door open for us to use
\nthe native Facebook integration, and native e-commerce dialogs, while still
\nmaking the game primarily using Flash. <\/p>\n
\nScaleform features drew you to use the software to launch the brand on mobile
\nplatforms?
<\/strong>A: (Pochol) Being multiplatform, so we could get the
\ngame on both iOS and Android, was the biggest draw for us. We already had the
\nFacebook game done in Flash that we could leverage. We had a prototype playing
\nepisodes on both platforms running rather quickly. <\/p>\n
\nJellyvision Games team now has experience releasing titles on all major
\nplatforms, from consoles and PCs and now mobile. Do you have any tips for other
\nmobile developers out there on how to get the most out of their technology?
<\/strong>A: (Pochol) Don't reinvent the wheel: find a good
\nmultiplatform game engine that fits your need and go from there. After we made
\nthe first version in native iOS and Android, we decided to port the Facebook
\nversion instead. Even though we had previous experience with Scaleform with the
\nconsole game that we released a couple of years ago, we looked at many game
\nengines before settling with Scaleform again for iOS and Android. <\/p>\n
\nthat. <\/p>\n