Midnight Rises Is the New Black

How would you describe Midnight Rises in 140 characters or less?

Midnight Rises is an interactive graphic novel that introduces and deepens the universe of its action game counterpart, Midnight Star.

What inspired you to create the e-book?

As we started work on our first game, we looked at how narrative is experienced differently on mobile, and realized that we could tell the story of our game universe in a deeper way outside of the game itself. We’re huge comic fans and our lead concept artist, Mike Choi, is a veteran of the comics industry, having done famous runs of Uncanny X-Men, X-Force and a bunch of others. That led to us having a conversation with science fiction author, John Scalzi, who is a big part of our world-building and narrative. The rest happened quickly– we played “wouldn’t it be cool if…” about the way the book would be laid out, how it would control and what we would show readers.

What was the most surprising part of the process?

Probably the fact that we figured out really early on that we didn’t want to go deep on effects. When you experience the graphic novel, it is very much a comic book. It flows with the readers’ control, there’s no animation, no automatic forward movement. We chose to take advantage of a touchscreen device’s strengths by doing things like parallaxing artwork and layering, so that readers see more of the art, versus a printed comic book where you only see the top layer. I guess we were surprised a bit by how the process led to an app that really feels like a traditional comic book despite the fact that we added some of those interactive features.

What is your hope for those who read the e-book?

I hope they love it! It’s as long in the making as Midnight Star itself is, and there’s a ton to dig into, so my hope is that a reader feels immersed in the universe we’ve created, gets excited to continue the adventure they are helping to shape and wants more of the same. That will give us the indicators that this is the type of experience that goes well with a deep game like we’ve developed.

What kind of interactive features can we expect in the book?

The book allows readers to make choices in the book, which affects the storyline. What we think is even more interesting, though, is that the book “remembers” the choices that you make and sends them to the game. This, in turn, affects narrative elements in the game. For example, when the reader makes a choice on behalf of the main character when he’s in the Armory of the spaceship, he can then expect to see some narrative in the spaceship Armory in the game that reflects that choice.

I mentioned what we did with the presentation of artwork, but there are also a bunch of textural items hidden throughout the “book.” There are informational callouts for going deeper about technology or culture in the 22nd century as well as interactive schematics and personnel reports about the characters in the book. If readers want to just go through a great comic book experience, they’ve got it, but if they want to dig deeper, all of those things are there for them as well.

Why did you choose to make the e-book with LiveCode?

LiveCode is a robust engine that is really well suited to our project. It has built-in support for creating page based experiences. LiveCode’s scripting system is super fast for prototyping and very flexible for creating many different kinds of views and input schemes. LiveCode also provides hooks for adding in library code from external languages which allowed us to do a lot of custom implementations that wouldn’t be possible with other 2D engines. LiveCode also has support for accelerated rendering which we took advantage extensively of. LiveCode also natively supports many iOS libraries such as in-app purchasing. On top of all this, the LiveCode Team in Scotland is super focused on making LiveCode as good as it can be and supporting their dev community. They’ve been super helpful in making sure we had everything we needed to make Midnight Rises turn out as we envisioned.

What would you say to other people aspiring to make an e-book or using LiveCode for the first time?

I would advise anyone embarking on an e-book to consider the spirit of what they want the user’s experience to be and design towards that. We set out to create an experience that delivered everything we love about graphic novels – great writing and amazing art – but also took advantage of the platform it was built on – i.e. a touch device. It would have been really easy for us to focus on one over the other – which in my opinion is how things like motion comics or ‘guided view’ came into being. Instead we tried to make something new that really maximized the art and storytelling while delivering a cool touch interface and experience.

Anyone using LiveCode for the first time should definitely check out LiveCode’s community forums – there are tons of people out there using LiveCode for a wide variety of applications. Seeing what’s possible will give you plenty of ideas.

What other projects have you worked on before this?

Across the team, we’ve worked on everything from AAA video games to traditional comic books to all sorts of mobile apps, so this ended up being a natural experiment for us.

How have those projects led you here?

Having done lots of related projects, but never one quite like this, means there were tons of opinions about what we should and shouldn’t do when approaching a graphic novel on touch devices. Digital comics are obviously all over the place, and we’re fans of comics on device, but we wanted to also break some new ground and offer some unexpected features while staying true to reader-controlled sequential storytelling.

How long have you been working on this project?

We’ve been working on Midnight Rises since we conceived of it in the middle of 2012, so a few years now. The bulk of the work happened over a year’s time, but we’ve been adding features, shining up the app and editing throughout.

What are your favorite graphic novels? Why?

That’s a tough question, because of our love for them and our constant arguments about them. I’d say the best ones are the ones that transport you– Watchmen, Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns and We3 come to mind. When a graphic novel takes you to a uniquely visual– but believably real– place, and makes you stop and stare at the page while really wanting to get to the next story bit, it’s done its job.

How would you persuade someone to read this book using only five words?

“Unlike & like comics you love” (I cheated and used an ampersand).

If you had to cast the characters of this book with film stars, who would you choose?

Unknowns.

Anything else you’d care to add?

Check out the Extras section if you grab the app. It’s like the repository for all the texture that usually doesn’t make its way into a comic or game, but is still fun to check out.

You can download Midnight Rises for FREE here.

I don’t know about you, but I get pretty inspired hearing about what Alex and his team have created. What will you create in LiveCode? Share your comments below!