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| 6/22/99 |
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"Of course he has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183 and we're barbarians!" -Katharine Hepburn, -The Lion in Winter- While I usually like to link my quote to what I'm writing about somehow, I just couldn't resist using that one this week, even though it has nothing to do with what I was going to be talking about. "What are you going to be talking about, Colin?" I'm going to talk about the unsung heroes of this project. They're the people who put in crucial elements of design, but because their job is to make the world come to life by making it seem like reality, you don't notice. In other words, their work is subtle but essential. I'm talking about the technical designers. I'm talking about Scott Everts, Dave Hendee, and Jason Suinn. We'll start with Scott Everts. His job - aside from talking about EQ - is to put characters into the game and "clown" the generic animations (please bear with my dramatic oversimplification of his job - he's a wizard artist-type as well, and everything he touches turns to gold). He has, by his own admission, "done too much crap to keep track of." Since I mainly understand the clowning aspect, I'll explain that. You know how generic characters in some games all look exactly like each other, with the exact same color patterns as everyone else? Scott's job is to make a color template for each of those characters and then make it possible for us to change those colors, so that we have the ability to personalize even the most basic of the generic townspeople in the game. In a cast of thousands, this is essential to us. Without Scott E. doing this, our game would lack a certain color. I'm sorry, I had to say it. We'll move on to Dave Hendee. In addition to playing Ping Pong like a madman, he's responsible for search maps, height maps, and clipping (this latter bit with Jason Suinn, Derek Johnson, and Dennis Presenell) - he'll be moving on to character placement soon, as well as helping out with certain area design. Search maps are the invisible overlays on a background that tell you where the character can and cannot walk. For example, a search map will prevent the character from walking over walls and buildings. Clipping is a subset of the search map - it tells the computer what things the player walks *in front of* and what he walks *behind*, and where on the map that information is applicable. Dave also makes sure that the height maps work, and that all of this stuff looks right in the game. It looks really stupid when it's not done right. Dave does it right, so it doesn't look stupid. Finally, Jason Suinn. I'm not sure what he does to blow off steam. Maybe he cooks. Maybe he beats people up. For all I know, he's a Congressman. He's pretty tight-lipped. One thing's for certain, though: Without him, you couldn't get anywhere in the game. He's responsible for linking the areas together and making sure our portals go where they're supposed to. If he didn't do his job, we'd all be stuck in the Mortuary, unable to get up or down the stairs, much less out into Sigil. Jason also did about 50% of the clipping waaay back when; added search map sounds, and about half of the height maps. He's also worked on the area maps, inventory items, and he's solely responsible for figuring out the containers and keyed doors in our game. It's a lot of arcana, but Jason handles it with equanimity. Their jobs constantly change and evolve with the project's needs. The story designers tend to focus on a few major areas; these guys work on the underpinnings of the entire game. What they do is essential. You might not realize what they've done while you're playing the game, but you'd sure as hell notice if it weren't there. Technical designers are often overlooked, but they shouldn't be. Without them, our games wouldn't be half as good as they are now. Oh, and by the way: How about a nice welcome for Scott Warner and Kihan Pak? They're our newest designers. SCott's on loan from QA, and he's taking care of creature placement and movement patterns. He's also throwing in a couple of dialogues to liven things up. Kihan was a producer in another division, but he's giving up the fast life for the more sedentary pace of a project in its final throes of birth. Welcome aboard, guys.
Colin McComb |
| Planescape: Torment & Design: © 1998 Interplay Productions. All Rights Reserved. © 1998 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Planescape, the Planescape logo, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Torment, the AD&D logo, and the TSR logo are trademarks of TSR, Inc. and are used by Interplay under license. TSR, Inc. is a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Interplay, the Interplay logo, Black Isle Studios and the Black Isle Studios logo are trademarks of Interplay Productions. Exclusively licensed and distributed by Interplay Productions. All other trademarks and copyrights are property of their respective owners. |