Reign of Fire Interview

Reign of Fire elaborates the original storyline from Touchstone Pictures' flick of the same name. Our thorough (mammoth - ed) Q&A with Mark Washbrook, the Executive Producer at Kuju Entertainment, reveals many details about the gameplay, unique animation system used to convey realistic in-game models, other neat visual effects, the AI routine, etc. Mark reveals the release date, and he also mentions the possibilities of a multiplayer add-on after the game's release.

Some of the members of the Reign of Fire design team worked on titles such as Quake III (PS2), Dungeon Keeper II, Populus: The Beginning, while others were involved with projects like Colin McRae Rally 2. With such an impressive track record under its belt, the Reign of Fire design team leaves no doubt that they are more than capable of making one kick-ass action title. And we certainly hope that is the case. Read on...

ActionTrip: We'd like to know more about the team that's currently working on the game. How many people are involved with the project, their background, previous, experiences in the gaming industry, etc.

Mark Washbrook: The team is comprised of approximately 20 people, although this number varies at certain stages of the project. Among the team members is a core group that manages and directs the project, guided by a shared vision for the game. This core team is as follows:

Mark Washbrook (Exec Producer): Responsible for managing the team and ensuring a shared vision for the project is maintained over the duration of the project. The Exec Producer works with the Leads and Project Manager, maintaining an objective view of the development of the title to complete the project on time to the quality and depth defined by the initial vision for the title.

Richard Underhill (Project Manager) - Responsible for planning and coordinating development of the game the project manager, maintains the project schedule and allocation of resource based on the initial plans laid out by the initial design and the plans provided by the leads on the project.

The dragons are torching the tank brigade!

Put another tank on the fire.

Matthew Whitton (Lead Programmer) - Has led a team of 12 programmers in his last role on Quake III Revolution (PS2) prior to which he has worked on Bullfrog/EA Titles such as Dungeon Keeper II and Populous the Beginning.

Tancred Dyke-Wells (Lead Artist) - Having worked on many projects, his most recent involvement includes the real time strategy game based on the series of Dune books by Frank Herbert. Tanc leads the art team on Reign of Fire and manages the production of art within the defined style guides as well as producing artwork himself. The rest of the art team has a wealth of experience spanning such titles as: Ecstatica II, Disney's Aladdin, Microsoft Train Simulator, G Police 2, and Colin McRae Rally 2. The animation skills which brought the Dragons to life in the game come from a small team of skilled and experienced animators with a history of working both in the games and film industry. Working with Spyglass helped a lot as they had done much of the design work for the Dragons in the film. Visiting Disney's secret labs to see the Dragons develop and get a feel for how they moved and behaved allowed us to form a core essence for the Dragons that we then mapped out into the other Dragon types we created.

Alex Cullum (Lead Designer) - With a proven track record working on leading titles for Bullfrog and Argonaut, including Populous The Beginning and Disney's Aladdin. Alex is the vision holder for the gameplay in Reign of Fire and manages a team of designers producing the levels in the game.

AT: Describe the game in a few words so that our readers know what we're actually talking about here.

MW: Reign of Fire throws the player into fierce battles between two species competing for survival - Human and Dragon. A fast moving, arcade action game set in the near future over scorched landscapes. Take the side of the Humans struggling against a seemingly insurmountable foe, or play as a Dragon, out to exterminate its enemy once and for all. Based on the forthcoming Spyglass Entertainment and Disney Studios movie, the game captures all the atmosphere and tension in a pyrotechnic maelstrom.

Reign of Fire is split into two sections. Initially beginning the conflict on the side of the humans, the player must overcome pitch battles with the Dragons before unlocking the playable Dragon side of the game. These missions provide the player with the opportunity to play some of the human missions from the Dragon's perspective as well as many other missions allowing the player to explore the limits of the Dragon's destructive abilities.

As a human, you participate in the fight for survival as a resistance fighter, controlling a variety of well-equipped vehicles. Your purpose is to defend the last remaining humans from attack and battle your way to the site of the sole male dragon - London, now lying in ruins.

As a dragon, the player takes the role of an infant, governed by an instinct to survive and destroy. Progression through the game sees the player maturing, eventually becoming so powerful, that the human race is surely destined for extinction.

Missions are linked by a fast-moving plot; based on events in the film.

AT: Reveal more details about the game's story. How closely is the game plot related to the movie?

MW: The basic premise for the film is carried over into the game. The player in the Human missions plays the part of a resistance fighter starting at the Norfolk stronghold defending the fort from the Dragons before joining up with Van Zan's Irregulars at Dover and eventually facing the final conflict, the father of all Dragons in London. The player in the Dragon missions effectively gets to play the game in reverse, wreaking havoc and mayhem as they attempt to burn them from the face of the earth.

Story Background

In the year 2024, highly evolved dragons are the dominant species left on the planet. Only a few human beings exist. A brave Englishman, Quinn (Christian Bale), and his follower's battle for survival against the creatures, taking refuge in an abandoned castle. They unexpectedly encounter American dragon-slayer Van Zan (Matthew McConaughey) and his rag-tag squad, who are planning a dangerous crusade to post-apocalyptic London to fight the dragons. Rob Bowman (X-Files) directs with Matthew McConaughey (U-571), Christian Bale (Shaft, American Psycho) and Izabella Scorupco (Vertical Limit, Golden Eye) starring.

It's present-day London when a construction crew, led by the mother of young Quinn Abercromby (played by Christian Bale in the film), unwittingly unleashes a dragon that's been hibernating for centuries. Within a quarter of a century, dragons have multiplied and replaced humans as the dominant species on Earth.

The game's story picks back up in Britain where Quinn has grown up to be a "resistance fighter" for a small community hiding in an old castle in the burnt-out English countryside. His people have been reduced to living in near-medieval conditions. There's a pair of dragons prowling the vicinity, attacking the few remaining villages, destroying crops, and generally making life hell for the humans. The fire brigades risk their lives to put out the awful firestorms caused by the dragon attacks as they rescue the trapped or wounded survivors.

AT: Let us know more about the general mission design. What sort of assignments will players get? How long will the whole game last, roughly?

MW: The game is very much an all action affair with missions linked and based around a fast-moving plot; based upon events in the film. The player has very specific objectives on every mission although they may be working with, or providing support for other units. We have tried to make the player feel that they are working within a team and although not the sole protagonist they are the catalyst for success in both Human and Dragon missions.

The Human missions provide the player with four different types of vehicle with very different weapons and handling characteristics. As you play through the human missions battling the Dragons, you'll learn to defeat them and perfect your moves and use of weapons. When you then unlock the Dragon missions you have the advantage of knowing the strategy of the Human defenses but then have to learn to maneuver passed their defenses and which units are the important ones to destroy first. The Dragon missions present the player with a different perspective on the maps they have played through from the ground, allowing more freedom of movement but quite a different style of gameplay. At its core however, Reign of Fire is a visceral action game whichever side you play.

AT: In terms of gameplay, what do you feel are the most important innovations that will distinct the game from other Xbox titles?

MW: The film has a strong post-apocalyptic look to it and features extensive fire effects throughout. We wanted to closely mirror the realistic gloomy brooding atmosphere of the film and make the game one long pyrotechnic joy ride.

The biggest problem was how to get lots of realistic looking fire effects occupying the entire screen, whilst still getting the game to run at a fast pace. In order to recreate the way that fire spreads in real life, we created a completely unique and new 'reactive fire system'. This pioneering technology means that every single item in the game is flammable, each has its own flash point, burn rate and the ability to set alight items near it. Essentially the fire 'lives', it moves from object to object heating its surroundings as it burns. For example, a small crop fire left unchecked will quickly spread, engulfing everything in its path from humans, to livestock and military hardware.

On top of the fire system sits a sizeable number of special effects controllers linked into the engines particle systems. For intense fires on some objects these systems create the main fire effects, fire detail effects, sparks, and smoke. For a small fire containing just 30 objects this system may contain over 2000 active particles at any one time. With this level of fire control and effects, it wasn't a huge surprise when we started to hit the Xbox's drawing limit. With such a system in place the aesthetics of the fire had to equal the realism of its behaviour. Using an advanced particle and level of detail system, large scale fires look great no matter what your viewpoint. Whether you're far away looking at a cloud of smoke rising from behind the hills, from atop the hill as you survey the inferno below, or up close as the fire rages around you with smoke and spitting embers obscuring your view, it always looks realistic.

This fire system has generated new levels of firefighting gameplay: with precious few crops left to feed the surviving human outposts, players will need to fight fires quickly and effectively. To do this they are given access to an armoured fire engine equipped with a water cannon and water grenades. Smart players will quickly learn that in addition to extinguishing fires they will need to douse the objects around fires to make them wet and make them harder to set fire to, thus creating natural fire breaks. The result is a dynamic gaming environment that's constantly evolving and challenging players to keep both the dragons and the resulting fires at bay.

We also had to spend a great deal of time on the vehicle physics. As we did not have the processor bandwidth to allow us to use a real physics model, we had to specially tailor an approximation instead - which has turned out really well.

Getting the dragons right was also a mammoth task, Ken Doyle our Animator and Tancred Dyke-Wells the Lead Artist on Reign of Fire, spent a great deal of time at Disney's secret laboratory working with the movie makers, making sketches of the Maquettes they were using and analysing the movement, pace and look of the movie's dragon so they could be recreated in our studio. To help them with the task of bringing these great beasts to life we implemented a soft skinning system to allow the Dragons fluid and organic movement. This system effectively allows the artists to create bones for the Dragon and animate its moves using these bones. The skin is then wrapped around the bones and moves as you would expect the skin around the bones to move.