Interview: Final Questions with Richard Wyckoff

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Interview: Final Questions with Richard Wyckoff

Post by tatu »

Please see http://tatu.tresgame.co.uk/Devs/questio ... vs_016.htm for images.

Final Questions with Richard Wyckoff

One more thing on voiceovers… In build 96, this voiceover was discovered:
AnneUse3: Yaaayy... Scary toy clown.

1. Any clue what that’s about? Haha

That might have actually been something to do with the Plantation House, or maybe something found in the Town, but I can’t remember anything more.

2. In the retail version of the test scene level, you can find a bodiless head. We don't know who it is. It was imported into the level within a month before release. Do you recognize him?

I think it might have been one of the artists? I think this was mostly a joke object, I don’t think we had any real plans to use it. This is the kind of thing that happens at the end of a project, often some people have time on their hands while others are finishing up the last bugs.

3. A certain developer once boasted that the Trespasser engine would be able to render 40 thousand trees at once. There are not even 40 thousand objects in any of the original levels (but the engine cap is 65536), do you remember anything about this??

This is probably one of our least-wild claims, actually. Since I built many of our levels I do remember that a lot of them had 26,000 or maybe even more than 30,000 objects in the Max file. Our distance-rendering techniques where distant objects are rendered out to a handful of large bitmaps (we had a name for this that I now forget) only every few frames meant that it’s possible that we might have been able to “render” thousands (or maybe tens of thousands) of objects in one camera view. But this is also typical game developer exaggeration where you take one number (the number of objects in a level), and use it in a different context (the number of objects we can render simultaneously).

Kids, never trust a game developer describing a game they haven’t shipped yet unless they’re showing you the demo and it does what they say! And maybe not even then, if I think of all the very misleading demos I’ve seen put together over the years. :)

4. If EA Games ever went crazy and decided to remake Trespasser, would you be interested?

I’d consider taking the project on with my company Reverge, but only if my team were equally interested in doing it. Some day I do want to make an outdoor, first-person adventure that’s not a shooter. I’m not sure the restrictions of the Jurassic Park license (dinosaurs on an abandoned island, generally) would actually be the ideal setting for the game I want to do.

5. We would like to know if at some point you would be interested in playing a bit of the better modern-day Trespasser levels that have been made by fans, and telling us your thoughts and reactions? You would find that many new things are possible in Tres with the additional time fans have had which developers didn’t. Alternatively, there are some nice videos of them online, though not for all of them.

I saw videos that showed some of our levels enhanced with a lot more foliage that looked pretty good. If the scene finds a programmer to write a new engine from scratch with two arms that actually are fun to use, I’d consider playing it. :)

6. Have we fried your brain enough with these millions of questions, or are you still breathing? Any final thoughts?

It seems like in every gathering of games people (at a conference, or at companies I’ve worked for), there turns out to be one person who still remembers Trespasser fondly, and I’ve often been contacted by fans who remind me there’s been an ongoing community ever since the game came out.

Considering how much of a disappointment the game turned out to be compared to our dreams for it, it makes me happy that there’s still a whole scene of people who found something to like in it and are dedicated to keeping the game alive and maybe even improving it.
Active project: Trespasser: Isla Sorna
Status:
BE-PH1: Released
PH2-IT: Pre-released
PL-SUM: In production

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Re: Interview: Final Questions with Richard Wyckoff

Post by Dragonlord »

tatu wrote:5. We would like to know if at some point you would be interested in playing a bit of the better modern-day Trespasser levels that have been made by fans, and telling us your thoughts and reactions? You would find that many new things are possible in Tres with the additional time fans have had which developers didn’t. Alternatively, there are some nice videos of them online, though not for all of them.

I saw videos that showed some of our levels enhanced with a lot more foliage that looked pretty good. If the scene finds a programmer to write a new engine from scratch with two arms that actually are fun to use, I’d consider playing it. :)
Perhaps he might not have to wait that long for this to happen :D . But after reading all the interviews and with my current experience with that topic he is right in one point: it's damn fucking difficult to get two arms to work properly. It is though not impossible but you really need a dedicated team and animators willing to work overtime to get this dream done. I'll definitely keep on dreaming :mrgreen:
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Re: Interview: Final Questions with Richard Wyckoff

Post by LtSten »

Thanks for posting all of these interviews tatu! A very good, interesting read. :)
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Re: Interview: Final Questions with Richard Wyckoff

Post by Draconisaurus »

Yeah Tatu, thanks for getting so many devs to answer all these!

Kids, never trust a game developer describing a game they haven’t shipped yet unless they’re showing you the demo and it does what they say! And maybe not even then, if I think of all the very misleading demos I’ve seen put together over the years. :)

:lol: Yes, Teacher!
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