Crackdown 2: The Pacific City Archives

I was sorting through some stuff this weekend and came across a bunch of Crackdown 2 comics in PDF form. They were originally a pre order bonus but were also released in animated form as promotional material for the game.

The comics were written by fellow Crackdown 2 designer and series veteran, Ed Campbell with art by ex-2000 AD artist, Alex Ronald (who did some artwork for Ruffian Games in the past). They acted as a prequel as well as bridge between the Crackdown and Crackdown 2 games. In essence they were propaganda setting up the Agency in a sympathetic light – though as anyone who played the original Crackdown through to the final act can attest, the Agency was a much more sinister organisation.

I can’t say I was ever really overly attached to the story in the Crackdown series, I saw it more of an excuse to jump around a city and shoot some bastards, but these comics were well done and at least their intentions were good.

You can download the comics in PDF form or view the animated versions exclusively hosted at the Machinima channel on YouTube.

Episode 1 “Home Truths” – Comic Download

Episode 2 “Evil Seed” – Comic Download

Episode 3 “The Virus: What We Know” – Comic Download

Episode 4 “The Cell: A New Threat To Peace” – Comic Download

Episode 5 “Sunburst: A New Dawn” – Comic Download

Full Series Download

Memoria: Crackdown 2

It was thanksgiving, 2008 and I’d not slept in 2 days. We’d been crunching hard to get the Goliaths and the locations that they occupy ready for review. Our work however was in vain, they weren’t good enough - there simply wasn’t the time or resources to do them any justice. They were on the chopping block.
We were coming up to a pretty important milestone and the Goliaths weren’t ready. They just didn’t work. The problem was with scope, we were trying to do something too great in scale and sharing too few characteristics with the rest of the game, which given our time frame was ridiculous.
The Goliaths were huge hulking beasts set to roam their subterranean locations using strict patrol paths punctuated by scripted attacks and behaviours, only deviating for dynamic attacks when players moved into close proximity.
The dynamic attacks would target players that got within attack range…

• Ground Pound (rear 270 degrees)
• Slash (front 90 degrees)
• Acid Bomb (front 90 degrees, multiple targets)

We had these cavernous locations for these monstrosities to roam, but the Goliath’s slow movement pace just couldn’t cut it against our nimble agent characters – no matter how powerful we buffed the Goliaths. Their great size meant any quick movements looked jarring and totally unconvincing, so the speed couldn’t change.
The prototype location, a subterranean multi-storey car park set at the base of Wang’s Tower was created. The Goliath simply plodded its way down to the base of the car park, picking up cars from scripted locations to toss at the beacon. The Goliath followed a predetermined path to the beacon to destroy it – the idea was that if the Goliath wasn’t stopped, it would destroy the beacon, destroying any players in the vicinity – a fixed time mission of sorts.
Whilst the location’s size was perfect for their lumbering behaviour, it made navigation a slow and laborious process for players. We battled on because the theory behind the objective worked, it was just how the Goliath was being used – it still wasn’t fun and the planned atmosphere just wasn’t there. The location just took too long to navigate. It just felt dull.
So as Christmas approached we went back to the drawing board. We pulled an all nighter or two and redesigned the Goliath. We adopted an approach whereby the Goliath would completely ignore the player. The Goliath would sprint as fast as possible to the beacon at which point he would pummel it until it was destroyed – the player’s job was to kill the Goliath before that could happen. It was simpler, cleaner and had a much more interesting visual impact. The first Goliath revealing itself in the old communications center by running through the junk pile was a real visual highlight for me.

…though that’s making light of the work involved – let’s just say a great deal of effort was put in by the team to stop them being cut from the game, namely Andy Heywood, who painstakingly programmed every one of my whims before it was too late, and Paul Simms for coming up with an awesome concept and model to match the Goliath’s new nimble design.

I’m glad we successfully saved the Goliaths from the chopping block – I feel they added some much needed variation to the freak “army”, and was a lesson learned that sometimes what reads well on paper may not translate so well to the game.
Some random facts and related images follow…

• Ruffian’s first piece of released media for Crackdown 2 was that of the original Goliath concept
• This is the music track for the Goliaths: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvO0knbAKp8
• The old Shai Gen Car Park lair is mistakenly listed as the final lair in the official Prima guide (it should be the old Research building)
• The Crackdown 2 development team had a t-shirt with a crude drawing of the original Goliath drawn by lead level designer, Steve Ianetta whilst he was annotating a level design on the whiteboard
• …this crude drawing ended up as graffiti in the final game as part of the Crackdown 2 graffiti competition
• The Radio Station Ruins were originally meant to contain a Goliath (see the huge cave that the enemies spawn from) but we held it back to have a reveal on the final island
• The old Shai Gen Car Park in Unity Heights Square is roughly a tenth the size it originally was meant to be with the old Goliath design
• …in fact the old Shai Gen Car Park was once meant to be a freak infested mall as an homage to Dawn of the Dead but it’s location being on the final island best suited a Goliath encounter
• The Security Ruins contains the only Goliath that throws rocks
• The final Goliath was originally meant to climb the walls of the Research Ruins and throw explosive scroungers at the beacon
• At one point we talked about having a Goliath climb the agency tower as a final boss, but the idea was scrapped
• …we briefly discussed having a Goliath featured in the game intro, tied down King Kong/Lost World style, but felt it would ruin the reveal later in the game
• …we also talked about including them in the Deluge DLC, but we ran out of time to really include them or any objectives that would support their addition

Goliath Concept Art

Original Goliath Concept

Another Original Goliath Concept

Final Goliath Concept
Goliath Renders

Original Goliath

Final Goliath
Goliath Graffiti

What Noonan did next…

I couldn’t have asked much more than to progress from one good open world title to another. Wheelman had it’s fans, and Crackdown 2 recently broke 1 million sales with it’s praises being sung by fans of the franchise and genre alike. I also contributed to Kinect Star Wars, which is well on the way to hitting the 1 million mark.

During the last two years I’ve worked on some great pitches and prototypes. Unfortunately a lot of this won’t see the light of day, and that’s a shame, as it’s some of my best work. I wish Ruffian all the best with it’s current and future projects.

However, it’s time to move on.

I’m moving away from the country I was born, from the family that brought me up, from the friends that I spent my free time with and the companies that kept me afloat financially. Thanks for the opportunities, but it’s time to leave for foreign shores.

My days at Ruffian will be coming to a close sometime in the next month or so – I’ll be around for a bit for anyone who wants to buy me a drink or give me a high five...

Out with the old, in with the new.

In August I will be starting at Ubisoft Montreal to work on Watch Dogs, a game that got a more than positive response at E3.

Lookin’ good…

I will try to document my move away and settling period through my youtube channel for the benefit of friends, family, and most importantly, myself.

…and yes, this is why my UDK projects (Shootan and On The Run) have seemingly been put on hold – getting a new job and moving country kinda gets in the way of hobbies. I might get back to them when I’m more settled over the pond.

Wish me luck!

The iPhone and some other stuff

As of late I’ve been spending a great deal of time on trains, planes and toilets playing games on my iPhone, since getting it fixed last month. Initially I had my nose turned up at any form of mobile gaming, having sampled terrible iPhone interpretations of Sonic and Megaman 2. However, they were just bad ports. I needed a gateway drug - a killer app if you prefer.

Enter Doodle Jump, a dangerously addictive platform game – or as the game’s tagline warns, “insanely addictive”. The controlled method used is the chief difference between this platform game and the two titles mentioned prior. In both Sonic and Megaman 2, players are forced to use the touch screen as a makeshift controller, which is pretty fucking horrible. With games that rely on such speed and accuracy, the player needs some tactile feedback - having to check if one’s finger is in the correct place on a flat touch screen is no fun at all, and it leads to one’s chubby digits covering the action. Rubbish.

Doodle Jump however takes the hardware into consideration by using the tilt functionality to control horizontal movement. This is used in combination with your character’s automatic constant jumping to get from platform to platform. The player must make their way up the stage as far as possible using the edges of the stage to loop to the other side a la Pac Man (something necessary as the challenge increases). There are some enemies dotted between platforms, but they are few and far between and telegraphed way ahead of their appearance through amusing gurgling audio cues. They can be either jumped on or shot and killed. The latter is executed by tapping anywhere on the touch screen. The enemies, player character and platforms all have a hand-drawn, make shift look which works reasonably well, bit it’s not going to be winning any awards for visuals. An area it excels at other than accessibility is longevity. I've put a few hours into this offline, but the real time was clocked whilst attempting to oneup the people on my Facebook friends list - this integration should be on every iPhone game. You simply attach your facebook account to the game and your scoreboard is updated with the furthest point your friends managed to jump to. I don't need or want anything more than the that. I just need the ability to see what my friends have scored and let them know when I pass them on the score board. Fuck achievements - this is war. It weighs in at £0.59 for iPhone, so buy it and beat my score!

Next up is Zen Bound, and in contrast to Doodle Jump, a very relaxing experience. It’s a puzzle game without a time limit attached, very pretty and set to a great soundtrack by Ghost Monkey (which is downloadable upon purchase of the app). It’s a very interesting idea; one simply has a three dimensional block of wood attached to a piece of paint covered rope - the aim is to coat the block in paint by wrapping up the block with the rope. When you get close to the extents of the rope you must wrap the rope around a nail found somewhere on the block. The challenge comes as the blocks become more intricate and shorter rope is provided. The control method again takes the hardware into mind. The block can be rotated using the touch screen and the angle at which the player can wrap the rope is determined by the angle the iPhone is tilted. It’s quite a pretty game; the 3D blocks are rendered beautifully on the iPhone’s screen with dynamic shadows being cast on the backdrop as well as the blocks themselves and the textures in the scenes are all of a respectable resolution. It's bloody addictive and you'll find yourself going back to cover more of your previous blocks with less rope. It's very much dip-in, dip-out - the sweet spot for mobile gaming. If you have an iPhone and £1.79 to spare, you should buy this. If you’re a bit of a fat cat and have an iPad with a spare £4.99 to spend, then I would advise picking up it’s sequel, Zen Bound 2.

The moral of the story? When it comes to iPhone games, create with the control method in mind, and stay on the casual dip-in, dip-out side of design.

A couple of things worth mentioning…

I played and completed a pair of early Playstation 3 exclusives; Heavenly Sword and Haze.

First up, Heavenly Sword. Very pretty, very short, but that’s not a bad thing. I recommend picking it up if you want something to do on a lazy Sunday and would like to be wowed by some of the most impressive cutscene animation to date.

Second, I gave Haze a whirl as it was gaining dust on my shelf. Haze was such a fascinating idea with tonnes of potential, but with the worst execution I’ve seen in years. Finishing it was a chore. Steer clear of this train wreck. In this day and age it isn’t enough to make an average first person shooter – so you certainly can’t make a bad one and get away with it. Free Radical closed it’s doors shortly after the release of Haze. They didn’t get away with it.

…and Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe grabbed my attention again (thanks to a friendly poke from one of the game’s producers on twitter). Great visuals and good fun to be had – though I found it impossible to pull off a single Fatality/Brutality (I have been offered some form of a tutorial for the next game). There’s a story mode complete with cheesy cutscenes and almost zero load times. I advise picking it up in anticipation for the upcoming Mortal Kombat reboot.

Squid In A Box (Waves) now has a website, check it out.

Gamewank is back for another season, find it here. They’re a good laugh, give them a listen.

E3 has been and gone, I won’t comment on it, but I shall leave you with the new Crackdown 2 trailer.

Oh, and I’ve been playing a lot of this.

…and for those who want to play it and ask me some questions, I will be around GAME in Dundee Friday July 9th.

Savygamer Podcast, Evolution Festival, Croatia Holiday, etc.

The last few weeks have been crazy busy - though for the first time in a 12 months it is not for work reasons. We at Ruffian have now finished work on Crackdown 2, as confirmed by our company twitter account. Exciting, huh? It’s less than a month until release - it’s hard to believe it’s over in such a short time. It’s been hard work, but the results have been worth all of the struggles and pain (getting a “AAA” game out in just over a year is no walk in the park). I’ve played through the game’s campaign start to finish a couple of times recently – it’s a huge improvement over the original title and still manages to innovate in areas where competing titles do not. The drop in/drop out four player co op is seamless – I don’t think I’ve played an open world title that has managed to pull that off. The multiplayer is great fun too – reminds me a lot of Quake 3. I’m pretty good at it too.

I addressed the short development time and other such subjects when I was interviewed on the Savygamer podcast, which can be found here.

…and if you don’t like listening to podcasts, then fellow designer Martin Livingston answered some questions over at Gamasutra.

Anyway, back to why I have been busy outside of work.

I do go on, don’t I?

Two weekends ago I attended the Evolution festival in Newcastle along with another Crackdown 2 designer, Graham Wright who took that photograph you see over to the left. I found the event to be a pretty sobering experience. I felt really out of touch with modern music and I didn’t quite understand what was going on with the “fashion” adorning “the kids” around me. The seemingly random mix of materials, clashing colours, trousers dropped to their ankles and luminous elastoplasts on their faces, all just struck me as rather odd. Despite these borderline “old man” complaints I managed to scrape some fun out of the event. Not only did I get to taste salt and vinegar flavoured shredded potato on a stick, but I was exposed to some music that had previously passed me by; De La Soul and The Horrors. Though completely dissimilar in genre, both had the correct audio credentials to keep my ear holes happy. These are likely going to be hitting my Spotify playlist very soon.

That same weekend I got my iPhone fixed! Cost a hefty £139 – I went for a brand new one, rather than letting the apple store workers fob me off with a replacement screen to accompany my already scratched iPhone body. At least now it’s all pretty and new again… I must buy a case/cover for it this time.

The following weekend I joined some fellow ex Midway employees on a small weekend away in Croatia. I got suitably drunk, tanned and penniless from the whole experience. Well worth it. Got to shoot the shit about old times and what we are all up to nowadays…

…which is a good opportunity to “pimp” the work of some of my previous co-workers at Midway.

Steve Lee, a fellow mission designer on Wheelman is working hard on People Can Fly’s new first person shooter, “Bulletstorm”. It’s looking very pretty and appears to tap into the same kill/score mechanic that I was so addicted to in The Club/50 Cent Blood on the Sand. Really looking forward to it.

The second, a game being worked on by two ex Midway guys – Chris Rowe and Rob Hale over at Ninja Theory. They’re currently in the latter stages of development on “Enslaved: Odyssey to the West”, third person action-adventure set in a post apocalyptic world. It promises to deliver in the story department thanks to being penned by 28 Days Later’s Alex Garland. I’ve yet to play Ninja Theory’s previous title, “Heavenly Sword”, but it’s on my shelf in a long-ass queue of PS2 & PS3 games I need to play.

Rob Hale gets a second shout out for his work on his own personal project (under the pseudonym, Squid In A Box) known as “Waves”, a modern take on the design that made Robotron so great. It’s looking very reminiscent of Geometry Wars (not a bad thing). Check out the videos over at the Waves moddb page.

Another fellow ex Midway designer, Evan Michaels along with a large chunk of the Wheelman QA department are celebrating the announcement of the next Driver title. I’m sure they are all currently crunching their collective arses off on an E3 demo. Have fun with that :D

And finally the old Midway guys at Warner Chicago have announced their new studio name, NetherRealm Studios and their first game, a new title in the Mortal Kombat franchise. Shout outs to Shaun and Hector (both of whom worked on Wheelman).

So given that lot, I am really looking forward to E3 – I won’t be there (sad face), but I’ll be sat at work watching it on my secondary monitor from Tuesday onwards. Wondering what Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft have up their sleeves…

Oh and as a last minute bonus, my wrasslin’ obsessed pal just spotted this in UFC…

WRASSLIN’!

Kotaku Talk Radio

Last Wednesday I was on the Kotaku Talk Radio along with three fellow Ruffian designers, Steve Ianetta, Dean Smith and Graham Wright. It was great fun, and I feel we may have at last put to rest the bone of contention that is transforming cars and the lack of female agents – both of which I believe are non issues, but people get can become attached to features no matter how big or small – I for one haven’t enjoyed Halo multiplayer since the removal of health/health packs post Halo: Combat Evolved.

You can download the podcast over at iTunes or directly here.

For those who want further explanation for the elephant in the room, please read on.

Transforming cars were a feature that I had personally forgotten about until the mid point of Crackdown 2’s development. You have to understand, most of my work has been below the ground around freak lairs - cars are not plentiful in these locations, although you can bring them with you…

There were multiple reasons to drop morphing cars, one of those was memory. Contrary to common forum dweller belief, when one crams as many features as we have into the game, you begin to discover that a console’s power is finite. There is a set amount of memory to use and we had already allocated it with our many other game features (which players can and will take advantage of when we release this July). That’s not to say this ends up bad for the player – not in the slightest. In the first Crackdown, as you levelled up your driving skill you were provided upgrades to the Agency vehicles, the most fun/important of which was the Agency SUV which allowed Agents to drive/bounce up vertical surfaces (provided they were handy enough behind the wheel). This ability was not granted until the player had maxed out their driving level, which is something very few people achieved (based upon achievement statistics and Microsoft user tests). Now we are providing all vehicles fully maxed out from the get-go. As soon as a vehicle is in your possession, you are able to use it to it’s full abilities. Enjoy.

Remember, this time we have a helicopter.

It’s fucking awesome.

Next up, female agents.

In the early stages of development these were planned (it’s true, I’ve seen concept art) but as with the other elephant in the room they were dropped due to technical limitations; memory required for an entire batch of animations to match the male character, the texture sets, the character model, the head models… this would have impacted other areas of the game, where we were crafting a bigger, better and more badass experience.

Also, Ruffian Games is a fucking sausage fest.

So there.

I hope that clears up some of the issues remaining from the podcast. I think it went really well, though the following events did not go without hiccup, in the hysteria following I got rather inebriated and smashed my iPhone screen - £146. Ouch.

If anyone knows of a reliable cover/protector for iPhones, please let me know in the comments below – I don’t want to be replacing any more screens in a hurry.

Oh and thanks to Brian Crecente and Stephen Totilo for having us on.

I’m back!

It’s been some time since I’ve updated, but that’s because I’ve been busy working on Crackdown 2. It’s been a whirlwind project with little to no time to really look around and take in the scenery. This month marks my final month working on the project and I have to say I’m quite pleased with the result.

I find it amazing how quickly the game has come together in these last few weeks – it now looks and plays like a finished game. There’s obviously a lot to do for the rest of the team (read: programmers) but as far as I’m concerned, my work is done. Time to move onto something new…

…which I can’t talk about right now, but the future is all very exciting. As is the past. I’ve recently been working through a rather large backlog of games spanning various platforms, one of those games was Metal Gear Solid.

It’s a game that needs very little introduction, Metal Gear Solid was released in 1998 to critical acclaim - though I personally didn’t play it until 2000 when I finally realised what I was missing. I had missed out on one of the most cinematic experiences of the decade - an experience that still stands up today; from it’s excellent voice acting, rich characters, it’s deep and engaging story to it’s ground breaking graphics and convincing environments.

The game had it all and offered an unprecedented level of interactivity for a console game, sometimes even breaking the fourth wall. Moments such as placing the controller on the table for the mind reading boss, Psycho Mantis to manipulate the controller using the dual shock’s force feedback, and having to check the back of the CD case for a code required to progress the story - though the latter was possibly an attempt to foil piracy. There are too many moments to list where Konami broke the mould, my personal favourite being the first time I played around with the genome soldiers – placing my back to a wall just around the corner from said unsuspecting guard, rapping my knuckles on the wall to get his attention, and then sneaking around behind him as he cautiously investigates my knock. Awesome.

The only flaw I could find playing it today was regarding the use of the analogue sticks which don’t appear to take into account the sensitivity curves, so any first person action feels clumsy, and although that is a nitpick, it did make one of the final battles more difficult than it needed to be. Saying that, the controls for all other player actions are excellent.

I think I will always go back to MGS when I’m looking for character inspiration or a reminder of how varied the design of a game can be. A reminder that you can change perspective for dramatic effect, you can limit a player’s movement when the situation demands it, and again, you can break the fourth wall whenever you want to ‘play’ with the player.

Also, it’s worth playing to hear Sniper Wolf’s ridiculously sexy voice. Schwing!

Metal Gear Solid is available for download on PSN and is playable on both Playstation 3 and PSP.

Wikipedia Article

I must address some sad news. On July 14th, 2009, my previous employer Midway Studios – Newcastle closed it’s doors as a result of Midway’s continual financial woes. Subsequently this also resulted in the death of it’s project, “Necessary Force”, a game which I had a personal attachment and a great deal of faith in it raising Midway’s reputation. Alas this was not to be.

Not all was lost, as most of the team went on to other development studios. Several designers had already joined Ruffian Games before the collapse, and a large portion of the programming team moved to CCP. Others scattered to Ubisoft, Sega, Sumo Digital, People Can Fly and Ninja Theory. Shortly after the closure some artists banded together and formed Atomhawk Design, a studio specialising in concept art.

I wish everyone involved the best of luck.