Boiling Point: Road to Hell Interview

AK: The progress and safety of the character in many ways depends on his relations with main forces which rule in Colombia. Altogether there are six main groups: officials, coca mafia, Indians, CIA, gangsters, and guerrillas. All of these will often get in Kevin's way. But we're sure that during his adventures the player will soon pattern the behaviors. The increase in difficulty is proportional to the improvement of the character's parameters. So, if the character doesn't manage to adapt to the world he is placed in, he will surely perish.

AT: Since the game has no level selection (players will just be going through one huge section), what sort of environment are we looking at here? Does the formation of the terrain and the backdrop change in anyway, or is the game mostly restricted to a certain type of environment?

AK: You are right. The character has to conduct his search across a rather huge territory. He'll get to see many different locations. The character may choose various paths; different cities, Indian settlements, military bases, secret objects, etc. Who knows, maybe his fate will even lead him to the emerald mines; and, if Kevin has dealings with members of the coca mafia, he will visit their palatial villas. Of course, he'll also go through cocaine warehouses and underground factories. Basically, the whole thing's very unpredictable and the search for his sister could lead Kevin anywhere. All these sections are divided by untouched soil and the tropical nature of Colombia: the rich centuries-old jungle, ancient canyons, crystal-clear lakes and rivers (which are populated by alligators and piranhas). The locations are loading constantly as the player moves, so the character can move about in an area that covers over 600 sq.km. It's a territory without barriers or respites - no new missions and no level loading. Incidentally, the area is so huge; it would be almost impossible to get to certain spots on foot. Thankfully, the players will be able to use a wide range of vehicles. Kevin can drive cars, motorboats and yachts, and even different helicopters (which can use to cover great distance at speed and to fire at potential pursuers).

AT: Some of the in-game models we saw were quite impressive tell us more about the visuals. And give us more details about the engine you are using.

Dang, my scope is all dirty, I can't see a thing.

I'll wait for Jacko to come out of his villa, and then, his ass is mine!

AK: A brand new, modified Codename: Outbreak engine powers Boiling Point: Road to Hell. The engine allows for some pretty impressive graphic possibilities - outputting up to 300,000 polygons per screen. One model consists of 4,000 or more polygons. The environments, particularly the natural jungle backdrop, are highly detailed. Also, the multi-texturing technology is worth a mention. It allows us to use up to 32 textures per terrain simultaneously; this feature was not available anywhere before. The detailed approach to texturing helped us to achieve extremely realistic features, such as true-to-life reflections, fluent passages of the roads to edges and lawns, old dilapidated buildings, the surfaces of mountains' slopes and vertical slopes in mines.

Here is a list of the main engine features:

• Unique technology of rendering huge (but very detailed) territory 25x25 km
• Skeleton animation with blending between up to 3 bones
• Facial animation
• Multilayered textures 512x512
• 5000 faces per character
• Lightmaps
• View-independent progressive mesh for models and view-dependent progressive mesh for level geometry
• Rigid body physics comparable with Math Engine (a set of predefined models: car, helicopter, box, and player).

AT: What types of weapons will the players get to use throughout the game?

AK: About twenty different types of weapons will be available to the character. Our aspiration for realism was demonstrated here as well. All weapon models in Boiling Point: Road to Hell were inspired by real-life prototypes like pistols, machine guns, grenade cups, etc. Plus, there will be many additional weapons attached to the vehicles. Suffice it to say almost any weapon can be found in Latin America if you have the appropriate amount of money. For sci-fi fans, we plan to add a couple of futuristic weapons...

AT: Do you intend to create a multiplayer mode? If so, name some of the modes we will be able to try out?

AK: Of course. We were not going to stop our work on Boiling Point: Road to Hell until the multiplayer mode is finished. LAN and Internet variants will be available, allowing up to 20 players (depending on the server capacity, that is). We plan to support GameSpy Arcade technology. In Codename: Outbreak we worked on a multiplayer, which was used a ping-independent technology, and now we use the same technology in its advanced variant for Boiling Point: Road to Hell. As for the game modes, there will be cooperative and command.

AT: What's the current development status of Boiling Point: Road to Hell, and when can we expect in Europe and the US?

AK: We plan to release Boiling Point: Road to Hell project in Q3 2003. Our focus remains on the final modeling of gaming environments and creating a large number of NPC models, which will be present in the game. We finished optimizing most of the weapons and vehicles and now we are testing them along with the engine. Every moment we are closer to achieving our goal, and we'll be doing our best to make the deadline.

We'd like to thank Deep Shadows and Russoibt-M for their time. Also, if you're after additional info and media from Boiling Point: Road to Hell, head over to the official game web site.