Caverns of Hope

Interview with Peter Ligeti

Introduction

Peter Ligeti was a tester for Ecco DotF and worked for Appaloosa in Hungary. Today he is a Game Designer and works for StormRegion. Peter experienced the whole work spirit at Appaloosa during the developement of Ecco DotF. Someday he spread some of them in our old chatroom.

The Interview

Hauke: Hi! Who are you?
Peter: My name is Peter Ligeti, my nick is OCC. I worked on the DC version of Ecco 3D.
H: You mean, you're a designer?
P: Yeah. I'm working for StromRegion now.
H: What was your job for DotF?
P: I was a tester. Since then I'm a game designer.
H: Ah, i see. But you worked in hungary i assume.
P: Yeah, at Appaloosa. Ecco was my first game. I'm still listening the original music.
H: Was ecco DotF also your first Ecco game at all?
P: First and last. I've left Appaloosa after the developement on Ecco 2 began.
H: So they were working on a sequel.
P: They were... I've got a running version of Ecco 2 somewhere. It's almost 4 years old though, so it will not work.
H: Why not?
P: We worked with an emulator called "Game Builder". It is to obsolete for todays hardware ...and i forgot how to operate it :(

H: I see... Do you remember anything special from your testing time at Defender of the Future?
P: A lot of things! We planned 15 levels for the game originally. In the the final game there are a lot more. Do you remember the cinematics? They all started out as levels.
H: Ah, such a pity, the part where Ecco morphs into a Foe and attacks the ship would've been fun to play!
P: Do you remember the hanging water level? Where those huge water buggles are? This level was never planned! The level's programmer and artist created it just for fun. We've had project managing problems at that time :) But is was so beautiful that everyone wanted to play with it!
H: Yeah, it seems to be almost everyone's favourite level, even though it's tough as hell!
P: Sleeping Forces of Doom - that was our nightmare! It was called Doomsday Machine. There was HUGE crash in that level that prevented us to relase the game. Our boss said "Who can find this bug will get 100 US dollars". After a a week of testing... we eventually found the bug. It was not on the level... The coder rewrote the maps' whole code! He is still working for Appaloosa on that shark game.
H: Yeah, I've heard about that!
P: Do you remember the vitalits? There is 100 of them in the game as far I can remember. SEGA planned to give the player who would find them all first a great prize!
H: It was a pain to find all of them at all!
P: The prize was a trip to an oceonarium, to swim with dolphins and things like that, but sega cancelled the idea...

H: Do you know why the sequel to Ecco DotF was cancelled?
P: It's all about SEGA. Did you know that it was planned to be like an MMORPG?
H: Online Multiplayer?
P: Yeah, it worked with SEGAnet. There were four different worlds (not only Earth) connected by portals. Each on represented an area and you had to solve all of one in order to reach the next.
H: Which worlds were planned? I presume one would've been oceanic.
P: Another one took place on an ice planet, but I cannot remember the others. All worlds had quests like in Ecco DotF but all of them required lots of characteres to achieve. Most of this was only in the design stage though. The game was cancelled after two or three months.
H: Ah man, that would've been too good... Too bad it has been cancelled!
P: Yeah! The dolphin soccer from Ecco DotF was converted into multiplayer too.
P: Anyway, I have to go now, if I find any Ecco material, I will contact you!
H: Thanks for filling us in this infos :)

Attachments

  
A couple of days later Peter sent me an email with an old photograph of the Appaloosa team. It's from July 2000. Nice to see the guys who did our favourite Ecco games :)

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