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Monster Madness Q&A Feature
Derek dela Fuente
26/09/2005
4-Player Online Co-Op, Explosive Physics and a pastiche of the horror genre...
Artificial Studios may not be a name you would have readily heard of nor their Reality Engine but if you delve a little further and find out that Epic Games now own this next gen gameās engine which the studio developed. This talented team has also a very innovative game in development called Monster Madness for both PC and 360 and our roving reporter, Derek dela Fuente, spoke with Jeremy Stieglitz, Lead Designer & Lead Programmer of Monster Madness, about the game, their technology and their focus.
Please can you tell us about the set up at Artificial Studios? How many are working on the game Monster Madness, what games individual members have worked on before and what you see as the core expertise of the team?
Artificial is based in Gainesville, Florida and comprises 8 programmers. These are the guys who created Reality Engine, along with Tim Johnson and myself (Tim now works at Epic Games). Reality Engine is a next-generation game engine that was being licensed for a brief period of time, and then the IP was sold to Epic earlier this year. Thus our core expertise is squarely in the realm of technology development. The teamās also got some game development experience to draw from, such as an advanced FPS game demo for Reality Engine, and Journeyās End, a small Computer RPG that some of us developed in 2000.
Can you tell our readers about the many units/companies involved with you and what influence they have - Immersion Software & Graphics and Epic Games - had?
Immersion Software & Graphics are co-developers on Monster Madness; they handle all the art content production, while Artificial handles the bulk of the programming. As you can see in the gameās visual design, Immersionās doing a superb job.
Epic Games has no affiliation with Monster Madness or Artificial Studios, theyāre the IP holders of Reality Engine now.
What does the ownership by Epic Games of the engine mean to you now, are there many developers using or showing an interest in RE and for the average gamer what features do you see as being ones to impress?
Reality Engine is no longer being licensed as itās own by Epic now; their complete focus is, of course, on the UnrealEngine3 powerhouse. For our part, weāre using Reality Engine for our own game development and that of Reality Engineās existing licensees (of which there have been many good studios).
Reality Engine does have a lot of capabilities for such next-generation games: fully dynamic per-pixel lighting, High Dynamic Range Rendering (for realistic bloom lighting), dynamic soft shadows, shaders to produce surface effects as normal mapping, parallax mapping, anisotropic scattering (fabric), sub-surface scattering, and various frame distortion effects.
"We've been very impressed with the Xbox 360; its online gaming capabilities are going to dominate the industry."
Letās talk about the game. Artificial has an impressive array of technology experience and expertise so what technology features from Monster Madness stand out as being innovative?
Reality Engineās graphics are advanced, but needless to say most games of the next-generation are going to have pretty visuals. Our particular focus here is more on the area of physics & networking. Namely, through the use of Ageiaās PhysX technology weāre able to have a ton of physical objects interacting at once, and handle everything from rag dolls to vehicles which will be demonstrated in the next demo. This allows us to do things that have never been done before in the top-down shooter genre: to model the gameplay with rigid-body physics, and thus Monster Madness plays more like a dynamic First Person Shooter than a canned arcade-style shooter or hack-&-slash game. On the networking side, weāre big fans of cooperative play, so we feel that the online coop mode is something a lot of players are going to get a kick out of. Plus the game has a set of very fun competitive modes (think Super Smash Bros. Melee), which will also be online.
What has inspired the design and idea behind the game and also the very stylized graphics and donāt you feel that the game being unusual and not the norm will hamper you getting a publishing deal?
Hah hah, the gameās visual style has received a lot of praise since itās unveiling, so I hope weāve been vindicated there. For my part, I think the horror genre is a wee bit pompous, so itās ripe for a playful send-up. Regarding the marketing angle, one of the nice things about the gameās visual style is that weāre able to create the game for a slightly younger demographic of players, while the mechanics are suitably deep and intense to interest more experienced gamers.
Tell us about the game, how would you best describe it and how much focus is there on shooting as opposed to driving vehicles and how sophisticated is the driving experience?
Shooting is definitely emphasized most in Monster Madness, namely surviving the gameās crazy combat sequences using traditional FPS skills. Vehicles are, shall we say, a way to get an advantage over the competition by gaining speed, armour, and powerful mounted weaponry. However, you have to spend in-game Monster Tokens in order to use the vehicles, so they function similarly to a temporary power-up. The driving experience uses Ageia PhysX, and the physical representation of the gameās vehicles is akin to what youād find in a go-kart driving game.
Monster Madness offers up 5 locations. How varied and open are these locations and do they offer differing challenges and objectives? Can you describe one in a little detail please and how big are they?
Monster Madnessās locations run the gamut from angular city streets to rolling hills. The gameās look-up/look-down mechanic allows us to do more with 3D environmental structure than has traditionally been attempted in games of this type. So, for instance one of the āCemeteryā levels has hilly area surrounding a couple of cemetery plots, as well as low-lying marsh-land adjacent to a small hut. When you enter said hut, the exterior walls fade-out, so that you can easily view the inside of the building. Inside you meet a crusty old grave-keeper. He tells you that in order to let you out of the cemetery, you have to recover 3 of his household items that mischievous ghouls have stolen. An on-screen indicator points the way to these items. One of them leads you into a crypt, which heads deep down into the ground. In this underground area, you fight a mini-boss to get the first house-hold item, Grave-keeperās Pyjamas.
In this way, the 3D mechanic allows us to branch out the environments in a lot of different ways, such as indoor/outdoor and up/down movement. The mission objectives will generally be short and humorous, but there will be the occasional tricky puzzle using PhysX, such as swinging a crane to knock down a wall.
Once again back to the technology issue. The game is both on PC and 360. Firstly how impressed have you been with this next gen machine and will you give 2 impressive features/details of the way the physics engine works within the game?
Weāve been very impressed with the Xbox 360; its online gaming capabilities are going to dominate the industry. As for the physics engine used in Monster Madness, Ageiaās PhysX platform is some very powerful technology. On the PC side, using the PhysX hardware will dramatically increase the density and interactivity of visual effects; for example every bullet impact can spawn physically-active particle effects. Weāre also going to use the hardware for enhanced environmental effects such as interactive volumetric fog and discrete volumetric water bodies (tiny pools). For users without the hardware, these effects can be disabled or scaled down. For all users, PhysX factors heavily into the gameplay. Examples include: rolling an explosive barrel over towards an enemy, then blasting it when it reaches the ideal position; throwing basketballs at a group of enemies; dodging incoming physical projectiles; or stacking objects together to create make-shift barricades against enemies.
What kind of progression does Monster Madness offer? Is success rewarded with new weapons and what kind of body, vehicle and environmental deformation is there?
Success in the game involves improving your character by upgrading your Weapons, which is done by spending Weapon Parts and Monster Tokens (money) that youāll acquire throughout a level. Each Weapon has 3 Upgrade Levels, and by level 3 (which is generally quite difficult to reach) each Weapon becomes very powerful. For instance, at Level 1 you have a flashlight which does minor damage to monsters, at Level 2 it becomes a more concentrated beam that stuns monsters and damages them significantly more, and at Level 3 it becomes a laser-sword that handily chops through groups of monsters.
Furthermore, the game has a Points system that rewards you for pulling off stunts and killing monsters in interesting ways. If you kill several monsters in succession without getting hit, youāll get ā3x Comboā Points. If you blow up a Zombie by shooting a nearby barrel, youāll get āToasted Zombieā Points. There are many, many Points variations so players will find replay value in earning the highest score for any given level by doing the most outlandish things. These Points can then be spent at the end of each Level to Upgrade your Characterās Health, Ammo, and other stats.
By using a certain item, the Players themselves can also change into Werewolf form, where for a short period of time they are nearly invincible and have a set of powerful attacks.
Finally, vehicles can themselves be damaged & destroyed, and environments have destroyable elements (sometimes involving puzzles, other times purely for combatās benefit) that make use of the PhysX capabilities.
How important is the online experience to the game and can you tell us what will be on offer?
Monster Madness truly is best played in multiplayer, online or offline, since thatās where the combat dynamics really come into their own. You can mix & match ālocalā & āonlineā players, so that you and your friends will never be without partners. On the cooperative side, the full campaign will be playable online with up to 4 players. The gameplay scales to the number of players, so there are more enemies, items, and interactive objects as the number of players in the game increases. You can use your saved profiles (with their Character & Weapon Upgrades) in both online and offline modes, and your High Scores will be visible to other people online. On the competitive side, thereās offline Deathmatch in small, enclosed arenas (fixed camera, so that you can see everything without a split-screen). Online, thereās Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture The Flag. These modes include the vehicles from the campaign as well.
Finally tell us a few interesting snippets about the in game cast?
Zack: Your typical comic-book geek, his parents are away for the weekend, so heās invited a couple of friends over for a party at his place. There, heās going to try to put the moves on the girl of his dreams.
Carrie: The goth chick whoās seen everything, sheās able to maintain a calm demeanour even in the face of unusual circumstances.
Andy: The skater dude with a short attention span, he tends to have a sense of humour that nobody quite understands.
Jennifer: A talented cheerleader, Jennifer doesnāt want to have anything to do with Zack, Carrie, or Andy. For some reason, however, everyone else was busy this particular weekend.
The story is told through animated comic cut-scenes, as a general satire of cheesy (and self-serious) horror movies, comics, and games. Over the course Monster Madnessās dark evils will be unleashed, terrifying secrets will be revealed, and many a monsterās butt will be kicked!
TVG would like to thank Jeremy Stieglitz for taking the time to answer our questions; weāll have a closer look and further information on Monster Madness soonā¦
