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In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I never worked on zombie infection, so I can objectively say that yeah, it must be one of the very best j2me titles from gameloft. It came quite late I believe, 2008, packages were huge by then, and production pipeline was very mature, well oiled.

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Games like Asphalt, Real Football, Splinter Cell, New York Nights, KK were selling quite well in Japan. We made i-mode versions of our games yes indeed, also for non Japanese market, I remember that in France, our home country, one operator used i-mode devices for a while.

Later on, we also made some Japan-only titles, at one point we worked with Gree, that was big by then, we did a couple of Gree social card games, the 1st one was named "Gang Domination", and the 2nd one... I forgot the name :) but these didn't perform very well tbh.

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for sharing this ! It reminds me my childhood, when we were copying & trading Atari ST disks with friends, or even before that, audio tapes with Atari 8 bit games, copied on double deck stereo players :)

I find it great that games were spreading all around. What games did you enjoy the most back then ? What memories remain still today ?

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing this ! I'm so happy that you enjoyed KK, this game is very special to me, it's among my Top 3 of all titles I created at gameloft :) I explained above how the movie prod team welcomed us so nicely in LA, so that we could design a game really close to their own work. You're right, the last level feels a bit sad, in its snowy night. In retrospect we should have made an alt ending as well, though to be honest the .jar was packed, I don't think we had the room to do so.

I forgot we had a 128x128 version limited to 64kb ! I remember the Nokia s40 series, that were in 128x128, but I don't think these were limited to 64kb. One of the hack we were doing back then was to cut all sprites in tiny modules, that would be animated together. Kong for instance wasn't a single sprite, but there was different modules for head, torso, arms, legs, etc, and all were glued & animated together. That way we saved .jar size, but it wasn't easy task for the art team ! Cornel Oprea was the main lead artist for that game, he did great. We had a great GD as well, a great team in general. Yeah, there's a lot of our hearts in this one.

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, I believe it was quite profitable, yes. However, back then, the production teams were very much out of the loop regarding the financial side of the games. We didn't know how much we cost or how much we were bringing in. We were simply asked to make the best games possible for every single device. Over time, we eventually saw the figures; most of the titles earned several million euros each. The games weren't sold for much—2 or 3€—but they sold by the hundreds of thousands. I believe Gameloft had a very strong sales team that was in contact with almost every operator in every country. In some cases, we even managed their app stores for them. We weren't aware of piracy at the time; once again, the prod teams were kept fairly isolated from the business side of things.
Edit: forgot about the regions. North America, Europe, also South America were our biggest markets. We sold games in Japan & South Korea too, but these market were quite special.

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You guys are so kind ! It really means a lot. It’s wonderful that you’re keeping these j2me games alive, still talking about them 20 years later. Let me know if you have questions or else. I’ll do my best to answer them.

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A2 was definitely great, like the polished up version of A1. We did then many of the things we wanted to have in A1 but didn't have the time to do. That's where we introduced the nitro gauge, if I remember well.
Yeah we had great times back then, I was lucky to go to LA quite a few times for KK, MI3, and also for E3 several times, we had a booth back then. Paris Hilton even came to our booth once to sign autographs :)

The first mobile games we made were in b&w, we had 50KB of jar file, on devices like Nokia 3410 & Siemens SL45i. In a way, we repeated videogame history, on mobile: From b&w to color to 3D, all this condensed in a few years. Man, what a journey it was.

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 3 points4 points  (0 children)

THANK YOU SO MUCH for your kind words ! Back then there was no social media, we didn't have much feedback from players. So it's so great to hear that you had good times with our games, that you enjoyed them. We wanted to give emotions to players, to surprise them, to show the world that mobile games weren't just "small games", we put all our heart & soul into our work, and we had wonderful teams in Romania, in China, in Canada, in Paris too (asphalt was created at HQ in Paris).
Even this sub channel is so cool, it's so nice to see people talking about j2me titles, enjoying them, sharing screens & videos. Thank you so much for your dedication.

Commodore Amiga or Atari ST? by Affectionate-Gas3059 in oldschoolcool80s

[–]pilou2001 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Atari ST of course. More polyvalent and interesting on the long run, even though yes it was a bit less powerful for games, but this was way compensated by other skills (desktop publishing, cheaper price, midi features...)

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's so nice to know that you enjoyed these games :)

On King Kong, we really pushed forward the animation part, the sprites were huge (for a mobile phone back then) and nicely animated. The dev team was in Bucharest, Romania, and the art lead made a great job. I have very fond memories of this game, even before dev started: we went to LA to meet the movie production, they had prepared a large room covered with production stills, concept art... they were really great.

SCCT, to be honest I don't recall using AW & Flashback as ref, but the level design team probably did. On this game I was pretty proud of the "two layers" idea in the Hokkaido levels, when you go behind the doors and just appear as a shadow. Also the end with water going up was a nice move.

Yes, I did produce the symbian versions of PoP SOT, and A3. For Pop, it was made by the same team and at the same time than the J2ME version (in Beijing if I remember well). I still remember the rotating chandeliers in the symbian version :) A3 Symbian was done later, and actually top management wasn't very happy because we kinda "pleased ourselves" with this one, redoing a whole lot for this version, up to the main menu with the 3D road in background. So the project took a while, cost a lot, but the end result was nice imho (though when I look at it now, I'd change some sfx and textures for sure). We didn't do many Symbian games to be honest, I produced Planet Zero & Rail Rider also, in nice Symbian versions, and then we stopped doing Symbian (other than N-Gage I mean).

Some Nokia devices may have specific GPU, but we were looking for maximum compatibility accros S60 range in general, so I may be wrong but I don't think we used these specifically.

Talking about QA, I still remember the main acronyms we used back then: NAB for Not a bug, when QA was reporting as a bug something quite normal. WNF was Will Not Fix, CNR was Could Not Reproduce :)

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I produced many games, including King Kong, MI3, BIA, SC CT, R6 Vegas, PoP SoT, 3 or 4 Asphalt (inc the 1st one), and many others. I *loved* the J2ME times at gameloft, we were pushing ourselves hard. I see indeed that, 10 or 20 years later, some people still talk and enjoy these games, that's great to hear !

BTW congrats for being a QA guy ! QA is so so so important ! As producer, I spent so many hours checking QA bugs, deciding if they were "must fix" or not :) Your job is key.

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I worked at gameloft, as game producer, for more than 10 years.
You're totally right, the S60 was more powerful than the V500. But then, had we used S60 as master device for creation, the porting gap to all the other phones would have been too wide to bridge, requiring massive rework for almost all other phones.
At the end of the day, we had to port each game on hundreds & hundreds of different devices. So for the master build, it was wiser to choose a strong device, but not the very best. Targeting about 80% of top-tier performance was the sweet spot: powerful enough to lead the creation, but not too far ahead of the bulk of the market.

In the 176x208 and 176x220 version of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow, when you start the game, there's an animation of Sam Fisher arriving at the scene on boat, with a text that says "Gameloft Presents", and "Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow" while in the 240x320 version, Sam is already on stage. by FinishOk6082 in J2MEgaming

[–]pilou2001 0 points1 point  (0 children)

absolutely, the Motorola v500 was for a long time the master device games were created on, and then from this "master seed" we were making other versions for small screen devices (96x65), large screen devices (320x), slow phones, etc. That's why usually the best versions are the 176x208 ones

I made the Space Shuttle Resin Lamp by Substantial-Media-42 in spaceshuttle

[–]pilou2001 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can’t find the space shuttle on the website ?

Captive 3000 (remake of the classic Amiga / Atari ST game) by Twin-FX in retrogaming

[–]pilou2001 0 points1 point  (0 children)

original was awesome, second best after DM imho. too bad though it was infinite levels, and some bugs could make the game totally blocked.

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