|
|
Vol.
2, Issue 14
February 28, 2000
|
Must
have made it really difficult from a project management point
of view.
Ewing: Well management
in game development is much different than management in regular
everyday business. There is a hierarchy, so you know who the
main guys who are in charge, like Tim from Epic and James from
DE, but almost everybody has a choice and is free to go their
own way within reason. You have to answer to the whole group.
There’s not one person you have to answer to. There’s not like
a complex chain of command or anything. So in that way that whole
mishmash sort of thing works well.
Eekels: And that’s the same thing
that we’re doing right now too. Everybody here has a voice.
Because it’s been proven to be successful for Unreal and Unreal
Tournament, so we’re going to keep that same philosophy.
So
while you’re designing Dark Sector, you bring everybody together
and say, “What do you like? What do you dislike?”
Eekels: Yep.
Ewing:
Totally.
Here’s
a question that I’ve always wondered. You guys are level designers
and you’re working on a game that is a lot different than what you’re
used to, but you’re still in the design phase. What are you working
on right now?
|
|
|
More new Dark Sector concept art. (109k).
|
Eekels: Well we look at the whole
overall picture of Dark Sector and designing the world. And we
broke it down and said okay, we have the disc, now slowly move out.
So the level designers have to be organized in that respect.
I
guess what I mean was, you don’t have any tools to work with,
right, so you can’t actually sit there and start building levels.
Eekels: Oh
no, we do! We’re using the Unreal Tools.
Ewing: We have the Unreal engine too.
How
do you compare Dark Sector to other Massively Multiplayer Online
games, would you compare it to something like –
Ewing: Asheron’s Call or something like that?
Yeah.
Eekels: I think it will be very close but science fiction of
course.
Let’s
go back and talk a little bit more about Unreal Tournament. UT
won a number of awards such as Best Action Game, Best Shooter,
etc from a number of publications. How do you feel about those
awards? Was it a big a surprise to win all these awards?
Eekels: It is kind of a surprise
because you don’t expect it. You’ve been working on the game
for so long and it’s getting old in your mind and all of a sudden
–
Ewing: It’s not like all of us
were watching the awards and thinking, “Oh please, oh please.”
And then all of a sudden, oh we won. Cool.
Eekels: And that’s kind of cool
to hear that. That means that people actually love your game
and that year that we spent in our hot room was not all wasted.
That’s
very good. I’ve done a lot of writing and the books I’ve read
on the subject, and I think this goes for pretty much anything
where you’re in some type of artistic role, is that first thing
you should do is put your acceptance speech on a sticky and place
it over your monitor. And every time you sit down you’re looking
at your acceptance speech and you’re thinking, “Ok I gotta make
something so good that one day they’re going to give me an award
and I’m going to get to give this speech.” I think it’s the ultimate
–
Ewing: Motivation.
Eekels: That’s not
what we did though <laughs>. Actually what it says on top
of our monitors is, “Save your work often!”
Ewing: Oh god.
Eekels: That was the biggest sign
on our monitors.
Ewing: Yeah.
|
