Interview: The Game with Kyle McKisc

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Interview: The Game with Kyle McKisc

Post by tatu »

Please see http://tatu.tresgame.co.uk/Devs/questio ... vs_004.htm for images


The Game with Kyle McKisc

1. We’ve heard there were going to be med packs. In fact, there is still one in the Smuggler’s Plane in Industrial Jungle in the build 96. By that build, health automatically regenerates pretty fast over time. How was health originally supposed to work? Was the player going to be able to eat wild foods in the game, and how would that work?

[km] I don’t remember many details on the gameplay design aspects of the health system, although there was a strong ‘need’ to not have any ui on screen health meter/bar ... which is where the tattoo came from. I don’t remmebr any health packs, although you say there’s on in build 96 - I believe you :). In hindsight, I think this ended up becoming more of a joke then anything else as you always had to look at your tits to see how damaged you were.

2. There is an old interview somewhere where a developer talks about trees crashing down as a dinosaur (like T-Rex) walks through them. This is actually pretty easy to do in the Trespasser engine, why was it not done?

[km] Not sure - likely AI pathing issues. Once you start altering the environment making sure you don’t block the player can become a tough problem to solve. Sometimes the ‘easiest’ fix is to not allow the player to alter the environment. There have been a number of games that allow you to do this, and they spend a lot of time addressing the issues and edge cases - it’s a great thing to provide to the player, but its a difficult and time consuming problem to solve.

3. One of the biggest complaints for players of Trespasser is not being able to carry guns or other items from one level into the next. Do you know why this ability was not included?

[km] Most likely to make it easier to ship the game. People do funny things ... bringing an item all the way from the beginning of the game to the end of the game and using it in different ways - you have to test against all of those cases.

4. It seems like there was originally going to be monitoring for Anne’s emotions. There are voiceovers in the game for when Anne gets tired from physical activity. “I really should have used that stair machine!” There are voiceovers for when the player leaves the game idle and Anne starts talking back. There are also voiceovers for caution and fear. How was this going to work? Why was it not done?

[km] I have no idea :/

5. The “tire” voiceovers include Anne whistling random tunes. Do you remember if these were known to be from somewhere, or just made up?

[km] I suspect they were things Minnie Driver made up during the voice recording sessions, but I can’t say for sure as I wasn’t there.

6. Do you remember what dinosaurs were planned for Trespasser but not included? The ones we have are: Brachiosaurus, Velociraptor (3 tribes), Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Parasaurolophus, T-Rex (male, female, alpha), Albertosaurus, and “RaptorCBoss.”

[km] I think there may have been a Dilophosaurus...

7. We understand that dino genders were going to be in the game, and baby dinos. Do you remember anything about what this would have been like, or why it was removed?

[km] I think that was an early direction that we abandoned

8. The oldest images of Trespasser show pre-positioned tiger raptors all over the levels, as well as green rexes, obviously while AI and rigging was yet to be implemented. Early images of working raptors show at least one tribe of them as having been changed to all-brown, including all video from the Trespasser game trailer. They were later changed back into tiger raptors, though far less poly than the original of course. Do you remember the decisions involved with these facts, and why a brown raptor temporarily replaced the white & orange tiger skin?

[km] Those early screens were staged, and we changed the design direction of the dinos over the course of the project. The poly differences we due to the constraints of making things run fast enough to ship the game. I think the white/orange raptor was created to be the more powerful/agile strain of raptors as you encounter them late in the game.

9. We also know dino genders were planned, and the presence of the brown raptor does not *seem* to be involved with this, since when it is seen there are no other raptor skins. Were genders cut for reasons of dino population, AI, texture space, or?

[km] Yeah, it was a population explosion!!! ;) As before, I think that was an early direction that we abandoned. I don’t remember very many memory issues, frame rate was our big problem in getting things running as a reasonable frame rate.

10. The T-Rex showcased by all Trespasser promotion is known in TresCom legend as “the green rex,” highly sought after for its vibrant coloration and high resolution textures, as well as having a better model. Members were very disappointed to not find him in any of the build 96 levels, especially Pine Valley, even though an old Parasaurolophus test model (seen in early images) is found in a couple levels. The rex it was replaced with is darker green, with lower detail of course. The original skin seems to have been taken directly from the male rex model used in Spielberg’s movie. Was the skin changed to avoid copyright to materials that were not allowed, or? (could also be related to the tiger raptor)

[km] I don’t think there were copyright issues; we were in contact with Steven during the production and even took a field trip to the set of the Lost World while they were filming. I think the green Rex was just one of our early versions, that we changed to what we wanted to ship with. There were some early dinos created to prove out tech, artistic techniques, internal demos, and early press shots that didn’t end up shipping in the game.
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Re: Interview: The Game with Kyle McKisc

Post by Draconisaurus »

I think there may have been a Dilophosaurus...
:|

I don’t think there were copyright issues
Damn, I forgot to ask about the removed hummers... I wonder if we'll get it one day.

and even took a field trip to the set of the Lost World while they were filming.

:o Lucky.
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