Recently while at Comdex Luckee was able to sit down with John Gwen, a member of the Sacrifice Development Team to ask a few questions about the game.

Luckee:   I know that you’re product is by Interplay, but what is the name of your company?

John:   We’re called Shiny Entertainment. 

Luckee:  Tell me a little bit about the game and how you came up with the idea and what did you accomplish that we don’t see in other games.

John:   What happened was the team started out really small and the programmer originally wanted to do another game of wizards fighting wizards.  Kind of a simple version of Net Storm, which I think was one of the first online wizards versus wizards game.  We started out wanting to make a game where we had a cool collection of characters and spells.  We tried to keep it simple with enough strategy elements to be interesting.  It is an RPS game with a lot of role-playing elements to it, you level up as you gain experience and you can gain more creatures and spells as you go up the game.  There is an action element because it is non-stop once you get going and it is a constant battle once you start fighting.

Luckee:  Would you say your engine is unique from other engines?

John:  Yes the engine, unlike what you’ve probably read, is unique.  It was built from the ground up, programmed by Mark Brownlow our Lead Programmer on the project.  He basically just pulled out all the stops and made a game that doesn’t look like anything else and it is pretty amazing.  It maintains a nice frame rate even from the minimum spec to a high-end machine.  You can really have an equal game online between the two machines because it will look at your configuration and then optimize the game to what will best maintain a constant frame rate.

Luckee:  Just by looking at the graphics, would you say your code base is written more for Geforce 2 and the V2 cards coming out?

John :   It’s hard for me to say because I’m not really the technical guy on it.  All I know is that we’ve gone through every card imaginable in the three years we have been developing this.  I don’t know of any cards that don’t work on it.  I do know that we have had compatibility guys testing it and we haven’t had any problems.

Luckee:   The graphics are so detailed, it would have to be a regular Geforce or a 3000 VooDoo, right?

John :  Well you’d have to ask Martin about that really.  I know that we have a wide selection of cards in all the machines at work and there is really no appreciable difference between them.  Some are low-level machines so you get a little less detail, but that is the way the machine is made to handle the game.

Luckee:   Will this have a multi-player aspect to it then?

John:   Yes, it has been heavily beta tested for multi-player.  We are up to four players with about 30 maps.  It comes with a very cool and easy to use level editor that we actually used to make the levels.  SkapeX is going to be included with it.  Anybody can get onto SkapeX and get right in to create a map in about five minutes.  You just create a new world, lay what tile sets you want in it, cut some holes, stamp some creatures, save it out, and load it right away and be running around in it.  It includes all the creation tools including the ability to create your own mini campaigns.  The guys at work are creating little campaigns in their spare time, they’re making little RPG tiles where you buy and sell souls and do things like that.  I have a feeling that within a few weeks we’ll start seeing posting on Interplay some of the crazy levels people are making.

Luckee:   The sound is good.

John :   Yes.  The sound is great and awesome on the game.  The music, sound effects, and voiceovers all came together really well.  We had some really good talent on it.

Luckee:  So if I had an EX soundcard and a Dolby digital 5.1 soundcard, I could really take advantage of the sounds coming out?

John:  Yes we have a really nice sound setup here too, but you really can’t hear it because of the show.  But if you were ever to go over to the Creative Labs area, in the other hall, we have a guy demoing it on a full blown-out system and it is really amazing.

Luckee:  Tell me about how you came up with the idea to create your models and what do you see different in your models versus other RPG games.

John:  There was really a concerted effort to make the models different looking from what you are used to seeing, yet have them fit within their own world.  There is nothing in the game that looks like it doesn’t belong in the game.  It is very unique and doesn’t look like other games that have standard characters or creatures.  We made a real effort to have the five Gods show their creatures and really be able to tell which God they’re from.   Luckily Jobe, the Art Director, and I were really able to mix the art styles together to get the creatures that come into the game.  We had so much freedom to just make whatever we thought looked the best, and everything just came together including our animations from Anjet, our Lead Animator, and it just looks great.

Luckee:   On every game there is usually a big monster.  Who is the big monster, the big beast in this game?

John:    In this game there are five Gods, each God has his own “highest level” creature.  The Fire God has a Phoenix, which is kind of a Chinese dragon with about ten wings that all move in a single wave that is really nice.  You have a unique ground-based creature for the God of Earth.  But he does have a halo of earth that swirls over his head so he can knock dragons out of the sky which makes him so he’s not really useless against flying creatures.  There is a dragon for the Life God, a demon for the Death God and a kind of polar bear/monkey/ape/dragon for the Snow God, a silverback, big, furry, white dragon.  Those are really good when you get them and a good payoff for lasting throughout the game.  They are really powerful and they really come in handy in the last level against the big bad guy.

Luckee :  In creating your models did you want to have more of an M rating?

John:  The models themselves could be perceived as more mature than others in the way they do things, but I think we just went for creating what was cool looking.  Maintaining a kind of shiny look or oddball look to it, but also going with what looks cool, dangerous or powerful.  The form on a lot of the creatures was designed to meet the functions of the creature.

Luckee:  If I never play RPGs, is this game one I could just sit down and figure out how to play?  Is it like a first person shooter at all, because that is all that I normally play.

John: It is not a first person shooter, but yes you could sit down and learn to play. It has a really thorough, in-depth tutorial with three levels that tell you exactly what to do.  The first few levels are very easy.  The interface is different from what you are used to seeing in normal games, but the gameplay is still very basic and fun.  It is not too complicated in that we don’t bog you down with a lot of stats and information you have to remember.  They are built into the game and there is the RPG element that you level up in experience and creatures.  I think it is an easy game to get a hold of.  I can’t see anyone having a real problem.  If they are a gamer, they’re likely to get into it.

Luckee:  Thanks for your time.

Special thanks to John Gwen for taking the time to sit down with us to do this interview about the new game Sacrifice

Check back tomorrow for Part 2 of the Sacrifice Interview