Ryan Feltrin part-2

Kingpin Release

A: Ryan Feltrin (A.I. and effects programming)
Q: Kunfu

Q: Kingpin is out, are you happy with the way it turn out? And the communities reaction to it?
A: I'm happy with most of the comments I've heard. Obviously it's not the sort of game to appeal to everyone, but I think it hit a spot that needed to be hit.

Also we never really pushed it as a multiplayer game, and the "on-line" community is largely dominated by people that only or mostly play multiplayer games. Since it's hard to actually gauge the response of the single player market, all we can do is wait for sales figures to come in.

Q: on the note of "its not the sort of game to appeal to everyone" do you think the violence and bad language was over done, maybe even putting people off from buying it?? how about the media reaction too, do you think they went alittle 'over board' on the violence thang?
A: I don't think the violence was overdone at all, but it all depends on which context you are looking at it from. You could look at it from the point of view of the language, and say that it's the most profound game ever made. You could also look at it from the perspective of it being another form of entertainment, and say it's not very profound at all, in respect to what else is out there.

The general theme is where I think Kingpin targets a certain audience. It's not a generic hero saving the world type game. In fact you could argue that the player takes the role of a bad guy, but that's not set in stone. It's up to the player to decide whether they want to be a good or bad guy.

Q: There was alot of cool shit that got dropped from kp like the vehicles (in which you coded the psyhics for too), and most notably the weapons. Do you wish they vehicles could have stayed?? and what about dropping all the sci-fi weapons? I personally wanted to see the different weapon ammo but it looks like Drew was listening to the communities voice on that one and went for balanced real weps instead.
A: I would have liked to see the vehicles make it in, unfortunately we didn't have the time or resources to get them in a state we felt compfortable releasing them in. There is a lot more than just code required to make vehicles work, there is also a lot of tweaking involved to get the gameplay right, which isn't easy in an FPS engine. The weapons were modified after we got a lot of feedback from the demo, that suggested people wanted more realistic weapons. This was also a matter of the game evolving through development, and it becoming apparent that futuristic weapons just wouldn't fit the theme.

Q: Is there anything you would like to have in Kingpin, just something you yourself would have liked to have seen, gameplay or techwise. I remember an old .plan where you mentioned thanks to a couple of guys at ATI and nVidia and that kp would have some special features for their cards? What was this feature and was it ever included? I'm guessing it was stencil buffering right?
A: I was working a bit on dynamic specular lighting on BSP surfaces. It was a very hard effect to get everyone to agree on, since it varied so greatly with different surfaces. I'd see it on one surface, like ceramic walls, and think it was cool, others would only like it on metal floors, for instance. It was one of those things that needed everyone to devote some time to it in order to get it in, but unfortunately we just never found the time to do so.

Even though that particular effect didn't make it in, I was able to use the information to make the environment mapping look somewhat clearer on those cards.

I was using the stencil buffering to play around with volumetric shadows, but I found the trade-offs too high to warrant spending the time finishing the technology off.

Q: Whats your thoughts on the current crop of upcoming fps games being multiplayer based? Do you think Q3, Unreal Torunament, and Team Fortress 2 are the right way fps games should go? Or do you just think of it as a genre within a genre?
A: I think there is a market for multiplayer-focused FPS games. I for one am looking forward to playing each of those games, they all have some parts of their feature set that stand out above the rest. Quake3 obviously uses the Quake brand name and is made by id, therefore it will kick ass. Unreal Tournament sounds like it will have a nice range of game types, which should make it fun, and I know Steve Polge is just busting to show his AI talents haven't rubbed off over the years. Then somewhat in a class of it's own you have Team Fortress 2, which despite having an Aussie influence, I'm sure will still be very cool ::grins::. Valve are doing great things for the FPS genre at the moment, and I doubt they're going to stop anytime soon.

Q: What about the Voodoo4 and GeForce256, do you think 3dfx have eventually got their act together and made a card that looks good as well as moves like the wind, or do you think the GeForce will steal its glory?
A: I haven't seen or heard enough about either of those cards to draw any type of conclusions at this stage. From what I've seen, it looks like each of those cards have a largely different feature set, which probably means they'll have pros and cons against each other. Only time will tell which will survive the battle for the consumer dollar.

Q: In yout time away from coding, what other games have you digged recently and have played alot of? Any that your really looking forward too?
A: Unfortunately I haven't had the time to play much lately. I did buy Driver for PSX a few weeks ago, which is very cool, although I haven't had a chance to play it since the day I picked it up. We got up to a stage that was really difficult, and unfortunately it's one of those games that makes you replay a large section if you get killed. I hope to finish it off eventually.

Q: With the SDK coming out soon (or probably out by the time i post this) what are some of the mods you'd like to see for Kingpin?
A: I wouldn't mind seeing someone make use of the motorcycle code I put in. The tracks are a pain to make, but we will be including an example map which may help guide the design process a bit.

Q: Anything else you wanna add?
A: I was going to use a stupid gag involving a calculator, but that just wouldn't be cool.

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