Recently we were contacted by BestFreeAndroidApps, a website dedicated to finding and reviewing the best free Android apps available. They asked us to do an interview via email about DayDream Dave. Here's the interview in full, and you can also read it on the BestFreeAndroidApps site.

Q: Can you share some information about yourself with our readers?
A: We're a father and son team, our names are Scott Williams (father) and Scott K Williams (son). Between the two of us, we manage to do all of the design, graphics and programming for our games. We also occasionally do freelance work for other companies. Our last freelance project was converting Fluid Football from iOS to Android, for Chromativity.

Q: How did you come with the idea to create Daydream Dave, what inspired you?
A: We looked at "bounce-em-up" games like Doodle Jump. We thought it would be cool to do our own twist on that type of game. We wanted to expand upon this type of game by having distinct levels that contained puzzles, enemies, boss fights and levels that require exploration.

How long did it take from that idea until the first public release?
A: It took us about four months to design, create and publish DayDream Dave from start to finish. We were actually playing it with placeholder graphics and a single level within the first two weeks. The majority of the development time was in designing and testing the levels, as each level was it's own self contained idea or puzzle. With a game like DayDream Dave you have to extensively test each level to make sure that it works and that it is fun.

Q: Have you developed other games/apps or is this your first one? Do they target only the Android market or others as well (i.e. iOS)?
A: We have developed two other games prior to DayDream Dave. The first of the two, Butterflies, is Android exclusive. Our other game is RoboShock, which was our first game written simultaneously for Android and iOS, same as DayDream Dave. If you would like to take a look at these games, here are the links:
www.devwilliams.com/butterflies
www.devwilliams.com/roboshock

Q: With hundred of thousand of apps in the appstore, how do you make people aware of your apps?
A: We send to review websites, we tell our family and friends (who we also sometimes to get to test our games) and we use our website www.devilliams.com and our Facebook Page www.facebook.com/DevWilliamsOne.
We also have a blog at www.devwilliams.com/blog. We use this to keep people up to date with our thoughts during development.

Q: What future plans you have for Daydream Dave (new features, ...)?
A: At the moment we are in the middle of writing a new game, but we do have future plans for DayDream Dave. We would like to incorporate an achievements system, a built in map editor so that people can create their own levels, and we might add in some tunes.

Q: What popular games or apps are an inspiration for you as a developer and why?
A: The best game we have seen in the last couple of years is definitely Fluid Football, which is why we took on the project. We occasionally get asked to work on projects but we will only take on work that we think we will enjoy doing.

Q: Have any tips/advices for other developers that want to start working on an app? Any tools that you consider to be a must?
A: As we specialise in arcade games, all our tools are geared around production of games of this type. Here is a list our our essentials:

-Marmalade SDK - A brilliant cross platform development kit. This allows us to have mostly one code base and deploy on multiple platforms. All our games are written C++ using OpenGL. Marmalade gives you easy access to the OpenGL API.
-Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express - We use this in combination with the Marmalade SDK, it is the best IDE out there with fantastic debugging tools.
-Texture Packer by Andreas Loew - We use this to create sprite atlases. It's very cheap, and saves us bags of time. We used Texture Packer heavily for the development of DayDream Dave as all of the graphics are pre-rendered.
-Blender 3D - A brilliant program for creating 3D assets. All of our game graphics are pre-rendered and output by Blender.
-Silo 3D - A great subdivision modeller. Very quick to create models.
-Paint.NET and GIMP - Free 2D graphics creation software, we could not be without these.
-Tortoise SVN - A free client for SVN version control.

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The updates we spoke about in our last news entry are now on iPhone, iPod and iPad. You can get RoboShock and DayDream Dave for free on iTunes. We hope you enjoy them!

We have just published updates to the Android versions of RoboShock and DayDream Dave.

In RoboShock we have listened to your feedback and made some improvements to the camera system. The camera now gives you a much better view of enemies and pickups, which gives you a tactical advantage against the enemies and lets you see where that next vital pickup is more quickly!



In both games we have added some advertisements that are provided by InMobi. They only appear on the main menu so your enjoyment of the games won't be affected.

We have also updated the links in both games. They now link to the mobile version of our website making it easier for visitors with smaller screens to see what other games we have to offer and to catch up on the latest DevWilliams happenings.

And don't worry iOS players, we're rolling out these updates to you next!

Many of our visitors are on mobile phones or media devices. This makes sense since our games are designed for mobile devices as well as tablets.

For this reason we have created a mobile-friendly version of our website where you can get our games, check what's going on and/or send us a message with a simpler contact form.

Our mobile site has less graphics/resources to reduce loading times and a single column layout structure so that information isn't squashed down too much.

To visit the mobile version of our site, go to m.devwilliams.com. Most of our visitors come from links within our games, so they are taken to that website automatically.

We hope you like our mobile site! Please let us know if you have any difficulties.