SiN Episodes: Emergence

• Platform: PC
• Published by: Valve Software / EA
• Developed by: Ritual Entertainment
• Release Date: May 9, 2006
• Genre: Action
• Multiplayer: No
• Online: No

SiN Episodes: Emergence Interview Continued..

Shack: One prominent SiN Episodes feature is auto-adjusting difficulty. Tell us about that.

Ritual: The dynamic difficulty system is something we invested a lot of time and effort in. The basic premise is that the system constantly analyzes your style of play and then creates a customized challenge to suit that style.

As you play the game, that challenge is constantly refined and updated, so even as you get better and become more skilled, the game will remain challenging. To pull this off, we have a number of so-called Advisors tracking a ton of parameters, including obvious things like your health and your accuracy, but also seemingly outlandish stuff, like how much you jump during combat.

Based on these observations, the Advisors then make suggestions to another module called the Decision Maker, which will take a few of those suggestions and implement them. It then checks to see if the changes had the desired effect or not.

The advantage of this system is that we can track a ton of stuff and really get an idea of how you play the game. For example, it can tell if you go specifically for headshots and make the enemies in the game wear bullet-proof helmets in response. It might also tell the enemies to strafe more and to use cover more effective if your accuracy reaches a certain point. This goes so far as enemies being able to tell when you're aiming at them, so they can get a move on and get out of the line of fire. These are just a few of the many adjustments our system can make in order to respond to particular player actions, which is what makes it truly dynamic.

Shack: Since the game tracks so many statistics, do you have any plans to save them and have players share them with friends? Like most used weapon, weapon accuracy, monster kills, etc.

Ritual: Right now, it's possible to export all of your statistics to an HTML file. We're also looking at setting up some kind of online statistics service, but I don't have any specific information about this yet.

Shack: SiN: Episodes has a more reality based look than the first SiN, which looked more like a comic book. Why the change?

Ritual: Processing power has come a long way since 1998, and today's computers allow us to make the game look a lot more detailed than the first SiN. But while SiN Episodes looks more realistic than the first game, it still keeps some of that special stylized SiN flavor in there.

Shack: Is Zak Belica returning to do the music and sound for SiN Episodes?

Ritual: Yeah, just like he did in the first game, Zak is handling both the music as well as the sound design for the game.

For SiN Episodes, we opted for a more incidental approach, rather than having music constantly playing in the background. Music is only used where it makes sense and in some areas, the soundtrack is entirely created via ambient sounds. A great example of this is the U4 Lab, which is housed inside an overturned tanker - the sounds of machinery and the creaking walls of the ship really help you get immersed in that environment.

Stylistically, the music in the game is more orchestral and unified than that of the first SiN, which had a soundtrack that actually reflected the specific environment you were in. This new approach works extremely well for the character-driven story we have in the game, and thematically, each character has a musical signature, so you can actually tell what's going on in the story by just listening to the music.

Lastly, we are currently planning to release the soundtrack both online and at retail – we'll have more information on that shortly.

Shack: Have you made any kind of changes to the Source Engine to better serve SiN Episodes?

Ritual: We added a number of features to the Source engine so far. Obviously the most substantial upgrade is the dynamic difficulty system, which we talked about earlier. On top of that, we've got the Context Look system, which allows characters in the game world to respond to what the player is looking at. So Jessica can actually tell if you're staring at her and respond accordingly. This system is also used in a few puzzles here and there, where the player has to find a certain object with JC's help. We've also added locational damage for vehicles, so you can shoot through certain areas like the windshield, and even shoot off fenders and doors. The HardCorps vehicle in the game, for example, is pretty much fully destructible, so if you're not careful, you might literally end up sitting on a board with wheels.

We'll also be integrating Source tech updates into future episodes, including high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, which was demonstrated in Valve's Half-Life: Lost Coast and Day of Defeat: Source. We're actually looking at retrofitting Emergence with this when we do get it in, but ultimately that will depend on how time-consuming that turns out to be.

Shack: Lastly; people who pre-order Emergence now, get to play a Steam enabled version of SiN 1. Are there any kind of improvements, and do you have any plans to create a Source Engine powered version of the original game?

Ritual: The Steam version features a few enhancements as compared to the retail version. The most important one is that SiN multiplayer uses the Steam architecture, including the server browser, so that will make online SiNning the easiest it has ever been.

SiN: Source is something we really want to do, and the first chapter is mostly playable already. However, all our efforts are focused on wrapping up SiN Episodes: Emergence at the moment, so SiN: Source had to take a backseat and we haven't really had time to work on it lately.

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