page_title: Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Julian Eggebrecht, former president of Factor 5, at Gamescom 2012, Cologne.Italiano: Julian Eggebrecht, ex presidente di Factor 5, al Gamescom 2012, Colonia.
context_page_description: Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader is an action game co-developed by Factor 5 and LucasArts and is the second of the Rogue Squadron series, it was published by LucasArts and released as a launch title for the GameCube in North America on November 18, 2001 and Europe on May 3, 2002.
  Set in the fictional Star Wars galaxy, the game spans all three original trilogy Star Wars films. The player controls either Luke Skywalker or Wedge Antilles. As the game progresses, Skywalker, Antilles and the Rebel Alliance fight the Galactic Empire in ten missions across various planets.
context_section_description: Developer Factor 5 decided to create a direct sequel to their most successful game to date—Star Wars: Rogue Squadron—when Nintendo approached them about its upcoming new video game console, the GameCube, in the summer of 2000. When they received the early prototype hardware, Factor 5's development team was working on Star Wars Episode I: Battle for Naboo. With LucasArts' approval, the team immediately began developing a tech demo to exhibit at Space World, a Nintendo-hosted trade show. In 19 days, Factor 5 produced an introductory cutscene that emulated a scene from A New Hope and a playable demo to premier alongside Nintendo's GameCube hardware at the show. According to GameSpot, the cutscene "wowed audiences", and IGN described the demo as "drop-dead gorgeous". After the Space World demo, an artist continued working on the 3D models for the player craft in anticipation of the full game's production while the rest of the development team continued to work on Battle for Naboo and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine until late 2000. According to the game's director, Julian Eggebrecht, Rogue Leader's development was in jeopardy after the Space World trailer was unveiled. A LucasArts development team working on Star Wars: Starfighter, unaware of Rogue Leader before the reveal, attempted to stop its development to prevent it from possibly overshadowing Starfighter and Microsoft offered LucasArts incentives to move the game to their new console, Xbox.
  In late December, 2000, the core development team met with Eggebrecht and producer Brett Tosti to start planning the game engine. According to Eggebrect, when Factor 5 was developing Rogue Leader, they had access to an early prototype of the GameCube controller that incorporated motion controls. He believed that motion controls worked well for the game's style of gameplay in terms of flight, but when Nintendo decided not to incorporate motion controls into the system, the idea was abandoned. Full-time development of Rogue Leader began in January 2001. The game was scheduled to release simultaneously alongside the GameCube hardware as a launch title in September 2001. The planned nine-month development cycle was extremely short by industry standards, and it has been estimated that a game such as Rogue Leader could typically take 15 to 24 months to produce. Because of this abbreviated production schedule, the game required every development resource available during its entire production. According to technical lead engineer Thomas Engel, "it wasn't long into the project before six- or seven-day weeks became the absolute norm for everybody on the team." Software engineer Dean Giberson recalls that the project was "the most hectic nine months of [his] life".
  As with Rogue Squadron and Battle for Naboo, Rogue Leader was again co-developed by Factor 5 and LucasArts, however this time the bulk of the game's development was done by Factor 5. Their in-house development team consisted of 25 people plus two freelance employees. One level designer as well as the game's lead artist were employed by LucasArts. The art team was unable to use the computer generated film models from visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) as they were constructed using NURBS and it was not practical to convert them to the polygonal models necessary for game development. Instead, high-polygon models of the playable craft were created using Maya, in-house tools, and usable art pulled from archives. During the early stages of development, the new and highly detailed 3D model of the X-Wing was created and perfected in approximately a month. However, toward the end of the project, new ship models were being produced in about a week because of the time constraints. The team's artists referenced Star Wars movies, reference books, and kids' toys in the effort to make the ship models look as realistic as possible. Landscapes were created by applying multiple textures to heightmaps plus bump mapping to add additional detail. The game has three levels of detail; the closer the player comes to objects, the 
caption: Factor 5's Julian Eggebrecht was the game's director.
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