Article/Forsaken Interview

> Err, by admission, yes, we did play Descent, but we were also playing games like Quake. So not just a Descent beater but a first person shooter beater. Some of the press that we’ve been getting is like, “it’s a Quake killer!” and I much prefer that line.
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> Well, that’s because Quake is a much bigger game. So what was your criteria for creating the game?
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> At the time, Acclaim had a comic division, Turok was starting up, and that was their mega-game based on Acclaim comics characters. We wanted to do a game that could be turned into a comic, [and we] really we decided we wanted characters in the game. We’d ported Mortal Kombat here [in Europe] and you can see the phenomenal success of that, with the comics, the TV show, so we really wanted to make sure that we had strong characterizations. I think we took influences from some of the other games, we played Duke Nukem a lot, I just love the voices in Duke Nukem, and we felt that if anything, Duke added so much to the Doom engine; and I think that we’ve tried for that extra detail in Forsaken.
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> What is your opinion of multi-player games, both on-line and on the consoles?
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> Stonking! Stonking great fun! [Republic note: the term stonking is an English colloquialism used to describe excitement] I mean, Red Alert, was a big one, but I have to admit that Quake 2 didn’t have much of a look in here. We still play Quake a lot, and if I’m honest, there are people here who still play Descent 1…
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> Really!? Okay, how many staff were there on the teams for the PC, Playstation, and N64 versions of Forsaken?
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> Yeah, I think there’s about 10 people over there [at Iguana UK, responsible for the N64 version of Forsaken[. For our version there were about 25 to 30 people.
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> Why was the decision made to completely change the N64 version of the game?
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> Because N64 cartridges cost so much, especially last year, because when Iguana UK started, Turok had just come out and cost about 70 pounds [110$], and yet the PC version cost 30 [47$]. We werelike, “if you’ve got an N64 and a PC then you can buy the PC for 30 quid, then why would you want to buy the N64 version?” So we thought that if people played the PC version and enjoyed it, then they might want to buy the N64 version and play that because it’s different.
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> What problems did you run into when you were converting the game to run on Playstation and N64? What sacrifices had to be made?
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> Oohh… errr… do you want me to get technical on this?
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> Yeah that’s fine. Like memory limitations and those sorts of problems.
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> Yeah, memory and optimization. Running speeds were an absolute nightmare on the Playstation, trying to keep up with the PC runs were impossible. Z-buffering was the biggest problem on the Playstation, as you’ve got no depth-sourcing of your polygons. With some of the more intricate 3D objects, we had to build different objects for the Playstation to put in place, whereas on a PC if you have a sliding door, it works fine on a PC because of the depth-sourcing, but on the Playstation, it really falls apart. So we had to build a different door, one that was ‘Playstation friendly’. On the Playstation, you’ll notice that a lot of the doors have beveled edges, and that’s the way to sort that problem, because if it was just square, you’d have popping problems between the polygon door and the frame of the door. There was a lot of re-modeling and a lot of trial and error involved.
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> How much memory were you working with for the Playstation and the N64 compared with the PC?
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> On the Playstation you’ve got two megs, and on the PC, umpteen megs. So a lot of Playstation code had to be written in assembler to make it faster, with lots of huge optimization. The N64 was done by the other team.
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> Where do you come up with the names and guises for all the characters and computers? We know that Brenda is one of them [she works at Probe with Tony].
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> We had a storyboard department here, we said we wanted 16 characters, and they just came up with loads of drawings and sketches, and we looked at them and said “not like that” or “like that” until we had honed it down to 16 bikers. At the end o the day, 16 was a lot and maybe we should have really only gone for eight. It just gave us a hell of a lot more work to do, but more choice is better.
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> Absolutely. Now, what was the main concept behind the game?
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> The mission statement for the game was really to do a first person shooter with flying, to make a good one player game, and if anything, to do to Descent, what Duke did to Doom. But with a Quake-style graphics engine. And also to make sure that there was a strong characterization like in Duke Nukem, so that if people want to make toys and stuff its all in there. Like I said, we learned from the Mortal Kombat experience. Try and make it commercial.
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> Okay… so why then did you use scantily-clad models to advertise the game?
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> That came from New York. That was nothing to do with us.
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> Oh really?
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> Yeah, that’s NY marketing. They’re not using that marketing campaign in Europe. Hmm. Why did New York do that? They wanted their packaging to stand out on shelves, they didn’t want to look like a million other products, and that’s a way of bringing it to people’s attention. Once you have the box in the consumers hands, that’s half the battle. They turn round and then they see the game screen shots and see what the game’s all about.
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> Were there any game features you couldn’t implement due to time/memory/taste restraints?
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> Yeah, a map feature, that was really the main feature, I think that we needed. But I do think that we didn’t need a map feature as much as other games because of the auto-leveling, and because… well, when I’m playing Quake, I find myself in a brown room, then another brown room, and then another one, and when I play Descent, I’m in a gray room, and then another gray room, etc. and you get lost, yeah? With Forsaken, you’re in a blue area, then a green area, y’know? It’s like Duke Nukem, you can’t get lost, because you remember; “oh this is the bit with the stairs.”
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> Could you tell us a little more about the 3D enginge? How many polygons is it throwing around on screen, say, on the PC version?
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> To tell you the truth, I don’t know about our polygon budget, but I know about the bikes. When you see an enemy biker in the game, single or multiplayer, there are six detail levels. So as they get further into the distance, there are less and less polygons. I think the lowest polygon detail level is about 50 and the highest goes up to about 400 or 500.
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> Was Forsaken based on the Descent engine, or was it totally new?
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> Nah, it wasn’t based on the Descent engine. That’s based on cubes. If you look at Descent’s worlds, they are deformed cubes. Each room is just a cube with its corners pulled out, but it’s still a cube at the end of the day. Now the Forsaken engine is completely free geometry. The modellers can build anything they want; it’s up to them. I believe that was our biggest technical hitch in the entire project, because we set that goal for ourselves and we didn’t want to limit our modelers. This made writing the collision system really difficult, but we cracked it in the end. We’ve got a good system that allows us free geometry.
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> How long did the levels take to design and implement?
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> They take a hell of a long time. A lot longer than a Quake level. The reasons being because of free geometry, you can build anything you want, and this makes things very intricate. With the texturing, you can see the richness of it because it isn’t slapping grey, grey, grey textures room to room. Each room takes a lot of thought. Then there are the 3D models; the guys can build anything they want. They’ve got a level in which you push a switch and like a little droid-thing, like a fork-lift truck, goes off and picks up crates and reveals a new path to take to get further into the level, and that animation is nothing to do with the programmers. There’s another level that has a panel, it just looks like a normal panel with gas coming out of it, and as you shoot it, it goes down a little bit and we have added a morphing system in here. so basically it looks like the panel is buckling and you hear creaking of the super-structure and then it explodes.
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> Was this designed as a single or multiplayer game?
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> First it was going to be multiplayer, and secondly a single player. But the goal right from the start was not to do a multiplayer only game. I can say that there are games out there that play really well multiplayer and crap as a single player. Now that’s an accusation that I’ve heard leveled at Quake. Not meaning to be dodgy here, [laughs], but even people here think that. Quake 2 seems to have fixed the problem, because it plays really well in both modes. So, yeah, our goal was to spend the first year doing multiplayer and the second year doing single player.
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> What then are your opinions of Descent?
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> Excellent multiplayer game. Crap single player game.
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> Has work begun on a sequel to Forsaken?
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> Err. No. No sequel.
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> Just how many types of texture maps are there in the game and how were they created?
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> They were all created with 3D Studio. Other companies use different software. The Quake ones are created in Dpaint, and a lot of companies use Photoshop, but we use 3D Studio. How many texture pages are there? Well, I think there is five to a level for the environments, and then there’s eight different kinds of levels. You’ve got different kinds of environments. You’ve got capsized ship ones, Diosphere ones, an abandoned subway, there’s the Aztec temple, there’s Military, there’s the Death Star, er, sorry, the Space Station! [laughs] well it looks like the Death Star… and Volcano.
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> Will there be a level designer coming out for the PC, so you can make your own levels?
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> Yeah, we have been talking to some third party companies at the moment, and obviously, a lot of companies are interested in doing this. Obviously, we haven’t got time to do it ourselves, because of our next game. But as I said, we are talking to different people, and then it would be more than six months before these add-ons come out.
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> Tell us more about the astonishing lighting effects, and was the game created with 3Dfx and other 3D accelerators in mind?
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> Yeah, when the game was first devised, 3D accelerators were really in their infancy, and the spec was to write a game that was primarily designed for 3D accelerators, but they weren’t even available at the time, so we had to a lot of theoretical code. As in write the code and it will work when the hardware is available. So we were kind of writing ahead of ourselves here!
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> Are there any add-on expansion packs in the pipe-line?
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> Yeah, we will be working on them straight away.
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> What, like new levels?
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> New multiplayer levels, new single player levels and possibly new bikers.
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> What previous experience has the Forsaken team had?
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> There’s about 25 to 30 people who have worked on it for the various times, and most have written video games. One guy designed the levels for Die Hard Trilogy, the guy who wrote the Playstation version of Forsaken also wrote Alien Trilogy, and the guys who did the PC version worked on games like FIFA 97 and Batman Forever.
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> Are you going to use the engine to create other games? Will you be licensing the engine to other companies?
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> We’ve been approached by other publishers that wish to license it, but we won’t because Acclaim technology can only be used by the acclaim group. And yes, there is a strong possibility our other studios may use it.
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> Can you tell us more about the enemies? How were they created and what are the AI standards like?
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> [laughs], Erm, AI? Well, the enemies have the ability to evade an attack, and dodge your weapon. If we wanted to, we could set the AI so that the enemies could dodge every attack and you would never be able to hit them. That would make the game too difficult, so we had varying levels of dodge ability; enemy bikers, for example, can be really good at dodging a shot, whereas the Swarms just go around and walk into your shots. Also, enemies run away when damaged, because sometimes they have good pick ups inside them, so you have to chase them and kill ‘em to get the pick up.
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> What is your favorite version?
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> My favorite is PC mainly because of the control setup; you have much more freedom with a mouse and keyboard.
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> How difficult was it to implement the multiplayer aspects on the console versions?
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> Not that difficult, I mean the only good thing is, two player on the Playstation is really good fun, but nothing beast 16 player! Obviously the Playstation can’t handle that but other than that, two player is really good fun and the frame rate is still really high on the Playstation. And the same goes for the four player on the N64. Although there are a lot of tricks in there; to try and get as much ‘grunt’ out as possible on the four player version.
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> What games were you playing whilst you were designing the game?
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> In the early days, it was Descent, Quake… Quake 2 hasn’t been played too much, Descent 2 wasn’t played much, Red Alert was played an awful lot, and for the past year, no, six months, we have hardly played any games at all.
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> What are your personal favorite types of video games?
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> Erm, first person shooters or real time strategy. Although I will say that as soon as the game is finished, the guys are dying to play Starcraft.
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> We’ve just got that in the office and everyone says its fantastic!
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> I won’t let the guys go and buy it yet!
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> And are you ultimately pleased with the final game?
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> Absolutely; think multiplayer, right? The first year we were working on multiplayer and you could tell that we were doing a good game because the guys were playing it when they weren’t supposed to. They were supposed to be getting on with their work, but it would be like; “oh! I’m just playing one more level, I’m just testing this bit!”, so that’s how you could tell. And when you have to tell people to stop playing their own game, you know it’s a good game.
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> Thanks very much Tony.
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