We spoke with the creators of premier ice fishing sim Pro Pilkki 2 about their game.
Pro Pilkki 2 is the gold standard for multiplayer ice fishing games and has been around for a long time. It’s time to ask the real questions about this Finnish masterpiece. Here is an interview with the developers, Mikko Happo and Janne Olkkonen from Procyon.
Developing the game
How did you come up with the idea of Pro Pilkki in the first place?
During his last years in elementary school, Mikko got excited about ice fishing because he caught a rainbow trout on the first try on his school’s ice fishing trip. Soon after that, fishing as a hobby started to take more space in life. Mikko made a fishing-themed board game (at the age of 11-12) and tried to program an ice fishing game on the Commodore 64, but he didn’t know how to make graphics. A text-based ice fishing game was born, which is perhaps the very first approach to this game type.
In the PC era, fishing was already a more serious thing for us, and we wanted to keep records of our biggest fish. Janne, at the age of 15, programmed and Mikko designed a fishing diary program, which was sold at a low price. It was rated in a Finnish hunting/fishing magazine ERÄ, and they gave it rating of 3/5. At the same time, we enjoyed making programs with a video camera, a bit like making YouTube shows before the internet. All the equipment needed for editing, lights and so on was expensive, and there was no money in our pockets. So we needed to do everything by our own hands from scratch.
The animations for the video programs etc. were made with Deluxe Paint Animator. Mikko often drew, Janne did the animations. Once, Janne had made an animation where an old man was sitting next to an ice fishing hole, lifting up a perch. The same animation is still the fish lifting animation of Pro Pilkki 1. When the speed of the animation was increased multiple times, it reminded me of an owner of the local fishing tackle shop who always won ice fishing competitions. We were laughing that we should make a game where that master fisherman would be on the ice, and a player would be competing against him.
Before we starting programming the game, we decided that the game would be nothing like the old Commodore 64 game made by Mikko, where the fish was just caught mostly randomly. It should matter where a player went to fish and what lure they used. The fish shoals should move, and fish should not bite, if there were no fish under a player. Lakes should also have bottom shapes that affect the presence of different fish species and different sizes of fish. Based on this idea, over one night, Janne coded a «lake editor» on top of which he made a map and a game interface. This is how the first version of the ice fishing game Pro Pilkki 1 was born.
Before the first official release of Pro Pilkki 1, Mikko improved the graphics for the lakes, and in addition we created more lakes. Janne made a decent user interface and game modes for the game. He also created more animations for various places. At that time, we were also working for another fishing-themed “point-and-click” adventure game, but this was not continued after the success of Pro Pilkki 1. After Pro Pilkki 1 was presented as a «best Finnish game of the month” in the MikroBitti computer magazine, our efforts were mainly put to Pro Pilkki.
We decided to make Pro Pilkki 2 when we understood the limitations of the programming language of Pro Pilkki 1. For example, we wanted to make lakes larger than only one screen, animate characters and add more lures. In the beginning of the development of Pro Pilkki 2 we spent a lot of time just staring at a black screen, because the whole graphics engine had – again – to be created from scratch. First, the object editor came out, then the lake editor. With the help of these two internal tools, the content creation for the game started, and it eventually began to take shape. Janne did the engines and programming, Mikko developed different ice textures, openings, shorelines, fonts, and so on.
Pro Pilkki 2 has been around for a long time. What has surprised you the most about how users reacted to the game?
There were several things. Perhaps the best feedback has been that even die-hard «real life» ice fishermen play Pro Pilkki. It means that the game is so realistic that even real life fishermen want to play it. And on the other hand, many players of the game have learned ice fishing in real life after first learning to fish with Pro Pilkki. The tip among the players is to try the same things in the game that you would do in real life when fishing.
On the other hand, the reaction to the fact that the game creators were also playing the game or participating in virtual ice fishing competitions caused some debate. Initially, one reason for creating the game was so we could play and enjoy it ourselves. When Team Procyon, our own team, won the Finnish league championship, our participation raised discussion that the «author team is cheating». We have always had an absolute zero tolerance for cheating in the game, so that feedback was quite distressing. In the end, we practically stopped playing in public altogether.
Mobile version
You created a mobile version that is compatible with the PC version. How challenging was that?
There was actually a significant amount of effort throughout the whole development to design everything in a way where most of the code is independent from the underlying hardware or platform. Luckily we kept this possibility in our minds from the early beginning even though it was not sure if the design ever got really ported to any other platforms than PC.
The first practical use for all this previously done work was when DirectX7 became obsolete and graphics and audio needed to be ported to a new Microsoft gaming interface, DirectX10/11. DirectX10 was also a mandatory requirement for Microsoft Store and Windows Phone Apps (so called Universal Apps). Work continued towards Microsoft Store support, mainly to get the first mobile version for Windows phones, which was the biggest leap. When that task was eventually completed, even more operating system isolation was built to be able to create a graphics-less and soundless ProPilkki 2-server for Linux (pp2host), mainly targeting Raspberry Pi.
This proved to be an excellent order of porting work, because having Linux support in the underlying system gave a nice kick-start for Android porting – Android is running Linux under the hood. The low level graphics (GL shaders) and sound engine needed to be ported completely. After the Android version was released, the next step was iOS. Porting to iOS was relatively easy as everything was in a good shape already. The sound engine needed to be ported once more, but graphics required only some minor changes after the Android.
In general, we could say that porting work is typically just hard work, but the most important thing is to have the software architecture done in a way that maintaining all the various platforms does not become an overwhelming maintenance task for a single person to handle.
Having our own 3D-engine originally made it possible to keep the system requirements for memory and graphics low enough, so the game could be ported to run on pretty much all the Android devices on the market at that time. The performance of the low end Android devices at that time (Kitkat, Android 4) was a fraction of what it is today.
And the touch screen user interface in the mobile devices fit surprisingly well with the original mouse control.
Will Norwegian lakes be added at some point?
Perhaps. Some inland charr and grayling lake or perch and pike in shallow water where the fish species are similar to what are already available in the game. The game’s graphics engine doesn’t easily adapt to mountains or fjords, and therefore it’s not possible to replicate the atmosphere of a Norwegian fjord idyll in the game.
Sometimes it seems like there are no fish in a lake at all, and other times, they bite constantly.
That’s how it goes in real life. More often than not, especially on new lakes, it feels like fishing from a well. When you are fishing on familiar places, you catch more but even then there are also bad fishing days. In real life, each lake has special features that may or may not improve your chances of catching fish. We’ve tried to include this feature in PP2 as well.
What are your best tips for catching big fish?
We have never advised players in any other way than saying «you have to play more». Perhaps we could also tell them to «do the same things as you would do on real ice».
Competitive ice fishing
There is a Pro Pilkki World Cup. How involved is Team Procyon in that tournament?
There are several different competitions that are played annually. Each country where Pro Pilkki is actively played has its own internal tournaments. Perhaps the biggest among all tournaments is the World Cup (World Championships). Then there is the European tournament which is played by (national) teams throughout the winter. Finland also has its own high quality Team League and also national championship tournaments for individual players.
Team Procyon played in the first two Finnish team league tournaments, winning the championship in the first year. The following year, there were a couple of foreign teams in the tournament, and we lost to one of them in the final. In practice, we were still the best Finnish team. After these well played seasons, we stopped playing. “Team Procyon” changed their name to Procyon II, and continues the legacy of the old team.
The first World Cup and Finnish championships for maybe the first 5-10 years we ourselves – especially Mikko – were the main organizers of tournaments, but as the workload increased, Mikko transferred the main organizing responsibility to the players and other volunteers. We didn’t receive any prizes or funds for organizing the tournaments, although at the same time the prizes in the World Championship were worth several hundred euros and the participation for players was free of charge. At that point we decided that we would focus on game development, and the players would take care of playing. Otherwise, the total amount of work would become too large because both of us also have our day jobs elsewhere. Game creation is not our profession, it is just a hobby.
During the pandemic, did you see a spike in active users?
There was some increase in activity seen in the statistics of online games but nothing hugely significant, maybe a 20% increase compared to the previous season. The activity in online games is strongly tied to the time of the year. The majority of players play Pro Pilkki from the beginning of September to the end of April. There are only a few players in the summertime.
One thing worth mentioning about the pandemic period in particular: the annual ice fishing competition of a Finnish firefighter club had to be canceled due to the pandemic rules. They asked us for help whether we could organize a private server for them where they could play their ice fishing competition virtually, since they did not have the knowledge on how to set up a server. We made them a server, and they got the competition held.
There have traditionally been many Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian players. Did you notice any change after the invasion of Ukraine?
Nowadays, we are hardly into online games, so we have no personal experience of this. There were some reports from the games that some of the players had behaved against the rules. For example proclaiming Putin’s propaganda is unequivocally forbidden. There also were some small disputes, but apparently the hosts have taken control over the situation. Currently, Russia is excluded from for example the World Championships.
Recognition in Finland
What is the deal with the Pilkki game in My Summer Car? Are you involved in any way?
In short, Mikko asked the game museum to convey a message to Rojola himself (the creator of MSC) that we would like to cooperate. Our idea was to make Peräjärvi in Pro Pilkki 2 and use the characters familiar from My Summer Car. This idea was approved, and in return My summer car author made a small playable version of Pro Pilkki 1 for “MikroPekka” in My Summer Car. He did it following our advice, but basically from scratch.
We assume you mean The Finnish Museum of Games. We see that you’ve got an exhibit there – how did that happen?
Mikko read in the news that The Finnish Museum of Games was about to be established at Vapriikki, Tampere. His first thought was, ‘It would be awesome to get Pro Pilkki 2 included in the exhibition somehow.’ A couple of weeks later, he received a message from Niklas Nylund, informing him that we had been recognized as one of the top 100 most meaningful or interesting games in Finland, across all types of games — from board games to computer games — throughout history. We would be part of the permanent exhibition, and they mentioned that if there was anything we wanted to donate, it would be greatly appreciated. We were genuinely excited about this opportunity. It was a tremendous honor for us, so we selected a lot of items to donate in order to help build our showcase.
What you can see in Vapriikki’s Pp2 showcase includes:
- A playable version of the special lake, Museojärvi, which is available exclusively at the museum.
- A video interview with Mikko, where he shares a brief history of the game.
- Mikko’s first PC (an Intel 200 MMX), which was used to create the lakes and graphics for Pro Pilkki 1.
- A selection of cards received as ‘cardware’ during the development of Pro Pilkki 1.
- Mikko’s first ice fishing rod, which he bought with his own money at age 13 from E. Kainulainen store in Kajaani. This rod was used as the model for the first rod in Pp1 and also became the default rod in Pro Pilkki 2.
«Cardware», what does this mean?
The idea was that «if you like the game, send us a card». We wished that the players would tell us something about their experience, like «where the card has been sent from, sender’s age, story of playing etc».
Why did you decide to publish the game for free in the first place?
During the Pro Pilkki 1 days (1998-1999), there was no such thing as «[online] game business» as we see it today. There were no channels for publishing and so on. Preparing a game to be sold in stores meant for example a designed packaging, a printed manual, a hard disk and someone needed that would invest money in it (compare this to music industry, movies etc). Releasing a game came with a responsibility that the product itself should also be functional. The chances for releasing updates, similar to nowdays, was minimal.
In those days, games were distributed in a manner «play if you will, at your own risk». Pro Pilkki 1 was first made to our own interests as a hobby, but it accidentally started to grow bigger and bigger. Several years later, when we finally reached version 1.0 for Pro Pilkki 2, the game itself was already old, having been available for years. Times had changed, and now there was a huge competition over players. At present, free games are published (with or without adverts) all the time. New games are forgotten fast. If you want to keep your position in the game market, you need to consider wisely what you want to do. Our decision is that we continue to work with Pp2 as a freeware for PC players (without adverts).
Will there be a Steam version at some point?
Never say never, but at the moment that would only be additional work without any real benefits for us, except maybe visibility. The PC version is currently free, and anyone can download it from Microsoft Store with a couple of mouse clicks without creating any separate account. What could be easier?
What does the future hold for Pro Pilkki?
The development of the game continues. We have a lot of ideas that we would like to include in the game. Some of the ideas have existed from the very beginning of development work, and there even is some space reserved for them in the game. One of these ideas was a «thermometer» that could be seen in the past versions of the game. Back then the idea was that the player needs to take into account prevailing weather conditions, in other words whether the fingers will freeze or not. That has been left behind for now, but not necessarily completely buried yet. There are a huge number of game functions planned that are not even started yet (several other features need to be finished before something else can be activated).
We are not going to reveal the exact plans for the game development, because other authors in game industry would copy our ideas «ready-made» or even «directly». We no longer announce ready-made ideas in advance, because we surely want to publish our unique ideas by ourselves. We are still the authors that created the ice fishing game genre from scratch, and we still want continue to be its biggest and strongest pioneers!
Thank you Mikko Happo and Janne Olkkone for taking the time to answer all our questions!
You can download Pro Pilkki 2 for free here.
