Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter Preview

MA: The player will speak to many hostile and friendly NPCs, some of whom he will have to protect or will help him with his mission objectives. The AI behavior is created by mixing a bunch of factors together - species, bravery, intelligence, agility, accuracy, and weapon carried. These factors can be altered incrementally, giving us a massive number of permutations for different behavior. It will make gameplay varied and unpredictable.

How do I get up there? Should I use the Force?

What a cute playground.

AT: Speak more about the Xbox technology that allowed you to make this game. What are the main differences between the Xbox and PC? Which one of these is slated to come out first? And while we're at it, can you give us a specific release date for the game?

MA: In terms of consoles the main advantage the Xbox has is the amount of memory available. This gives plenty of scope for textures, animation, and sound. The best graphical features I think are bump-mapping, specular lighting and depth sprites. The version for a high end PC will look identical to the Xbox version. On the minimum spec PC some of the graphical effects will be lost, but the gameplay will stay the same. The Xbox and PC versions are both planned for release for Thanksgiving.

AT: Explain more about Warthog's Tusk engine and its features.

MA: Rendering - Bounty Hunter's engine was created with the highest possible console spec in mind, the Xbox. All aspects of the engine were written from the ground up using highly optimized code. All aspects of modern 3D hardware present in today's consoles was utilized. Some of these advanced features are:

Portals - The bounty hunter engine uses a rendering technique called "scene graph" In each level portals or doorways are defined that allow the engine to know what areas of the world can be seen by other areas of the world. This portal system allows for very large levels and very high frame rates. Also, this technology allows us to have levels inside levels, such as a larger spaceship that can go inside a large space station. In addition, this allows us to have Seamless transitions between first person combat and space flight action.

Volumetric fog: this is a technique that draws fog on the ground versus normal fog that is only obscures objects in the distance.

3 dimensional shadow casting: unlike games that use crude circular shadows, Bounty Hunter uses a fully representative, fully animating articulated shadow. That means that the shadow is a real representation of the character. Also, the shadow is drawn in 3D space and will cast onto other surfaces such as walls and objects.

Per pixel shading is employed to create unsurpassed surface rendering, texture, and relief. Unlike other engines that do shading on a per-polygon basis, we use pixel shaders to shade individual pixel for spectacular lighting effects!

Decal system: in conjunction with the particle system, we can apply decals or small textures on top of the existing textures in a map to dynamically show damage or indicate liquid spillage.

Radiosity lighting effects: using the fancy per pixel shading effects, we can apply a glow effect to lights. This makes environments look more natural.

Particle effects: particle effects allow us to have a very natural effect to show sparks or other small metal bouncing objects.

Bump mapping: bump mapping is an effect that allows us to draw multiple texture passes to add a "bumpiness" to a texture. This makes the texture look 3D and allows the world to have a natural feel.

Animation: Bespoke animation system: this is a system that allows us to merge different animations together to make a more natural moving character. For example, upper torso, leg, arm and face animations can be created separately and merged together in real-time.

Multiple weighted skinned animation system. This is an advanced animation technique that creates an endoskeleton (a hierarchic structure of joints), which drives a skin - a vertex mesh representing the shape of the object. Each skin vertex is given information about which bones influences that part of the skin which allows the character to move more naturally.

Per polygon collision systems. In the old days, we used a square or round "collision box" to represent the part of a character that gets shot or interacts with another object or character. In Bounty Hunter, we calculate collisions on a per pixel basis, which eliminates the funny looking artifacts of a bounding box system.

Rag doll inverse kinematics. Using the advanced Multiple weighted skinned animation system and the Per polygon collision systems, Bounty Hunter can animate a character in real-time when that character is hit or knocked back. The skeleton of the character is used to move the limbs of the character in a way that is normal for those bones. This allows a character to be thrown and fall like a "rag doll." Also, the character will collide with walls and objects, instead of intersecting or "clipping" through them.

AT: Could you clarify how the transition between first person combat and space flight action works?

MA: The player gets into their ship, takes the controls and the ship lifts off and flies into space. From a technical point of view it's all about controlling what has to be rendered by using portals.

AT: The game is going to offer a wide variety of environments. Can you describe some of them?

MA: Gas refineries, Alien cattle ranches and Temples, located on planetoids, space stations, ships and many others.

AT: What did you have in mind for the game's multiplayer aspect?

MA: If and when we do multiplayer, I guess it could be Deathmatch and Team Fortress style, with lots of jumping from ground to space and vice versa. I'm not keen on the idea of co-operative mission play for this game, as Ranger is a bit of a lone wolf.

AT: Throughout the course of the entire development, what do you feel was the most complicated task of all?

MA: There are too many to list. From a level design point of view you have to deal with some big scale issues, especially when having to create a hanger which you have to land a ship in, but which doesn't make the player feel that they are in 'Land of the giants'!

AT: Maybe it's too early to ask, but do you guys plan to make a sequel if everything goes well with Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter?

MA: Sure, we have ideas for the story and some new features already. But it's all top secret right now.