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CellFactor: Revolution, in development at both Artificial Studios and Immmersion Software & Graphics, faces a problematic scenario similar to that of the original Perfect Dark, developed by Rare Ltd. for the Nintendo 64. It featured great graphics, fantastic level design, and fast-paced action--but unless you had the N64 memory expansion, you couldn't really play too much of the game. Somewhat similarly, CellFactor will be absolutely free, but unless you have one of Ageia's PhysX cards, you can't really enjoy it too much. Will it be worth a purchase to gamers looking for what Ageia, Artificial Software, and Immersion Software & Graphics are touting as a true next-gen FPS experience? I had a conversation with Ageia's Adrian Jones, producer on CellFactor: Revolution, to learn more about the game.

Shack: Let's start off by learning a bit about you. When did you become a gamer, and when--and how--did you get started in the industry?

Adrian Jones: I started in the industry about 15 years ago. I'd been going to college for Mathematics, but I'd learned to program Assembly Language on the Apple II. I followed an ad in the paper where someone could make minimum wage by programming 6502 Assembly Language. Then I started writing video games, and it turned out to be so lucrative, I never finished my studies in Mathematics. It [writing game code] was really a lot of fun.

I've been a video gamer all my life. I mean, I can't remember a time... let's see, I remember the first Pong machine!

Shack: Is that the game that got you excited about the industry?

Adrian Jones: Really, the first completely addictive game [I played] was Robotron. I would play that and completely zone out, getting to the point where I was drooling. Have you ever played it?

Shack: Yes I have.

Adrian Jones: Oh, it's just fabulous. You get to the point where you don't even see the individual robots any more. You're just sort of going around, seeing the game in front of you.

Shack: [Laughs] Yeah, that happened to me with the first Diablo. I played for so many hours straight that, when I was finished, I would see the map grid over my eyes for quite some time.

Adrian Jones: It's wonderful, but it's a strange sort of feeling. I went to college very young as a sixteen year old, sort of retreating from the young. They had a Robotron machine in the basement of the student union, so in between classes I'd just put a couple of quarters in and play. I got up to playing for about half an hour on one quarter.

Shack: You've got some skills, then.

Adrian Jones: I did back then, but I'm sure I'd get killed immediately now!

Shack: Tell us about some of the projects you've worked on.

Adrian Jones: Definitely, I'm most proud of my work on Medal of Honor. I had a grand old time with that. When we were making it, we had no idea it was going to be a big hit. It was a small team, and we just had a lot of fun [creating the game]. We worked through three console versions and a PC version, and I learned a lot doing that. I took a lot of lessons with me. I think that's where I learned everything, because that was a huge shift in genres for me. Back in the old days, it was about the programmers making entire games by themselves, using artists as tools. At Dreamworks, it was really all about art. Dreamworks is where Medal of Honor started before Electronic Arts absorbed us. I learned a lot about art, and supporting artists [in their endeavors]. Whenever I'd come in every morning, there was something new in the game. The game designers began to outstrip me in terms of what I could imagine, and it was just really... it changed the whole way I looked at video game production.

Shack: Did you feel that being outstripped, as you phrased it, put a damper on your artistic creativity?

Adrian Jones: Oh no, absolutely not. What it did is it really helped me realize how I could really leverage what I could do well, and how I could really bring everybody into the creative fold. I made a product [at Dreamworks] that was better than anything I'd ever made before.

Shack: Where did the idea for CellFactor: Revolution come from?

Adrian Jones: The idea for CellFactor happened before I joined the team. CellFactor was sort of a discovery that happened at a trade show. PhysX was integrated almost overnight by Jeremy Stieglitz [at Artificial Studios], the guy who wrote the engine and the game's lead designer. He pitched the idea to Ageia, who saw the game running, and it looked just fantastic. Prior to that, CellFactor: Revolution had been an idea that the guys had been kicking around for a while. They designed all of the concepts, and they'd been working together over the Internet. It was a classic sort of guys just getting together over the Internet, kicking a game idea back and forth, between programmers, artists and designers all over the world.

Shack: I understand that the development team is rather spread out over locations such as Columbia and Egypt. How does that affect factors such as getting work done on time and managing working relationships?

Adrian Jones: We actually have a really great working relationship. The people who wrote the engine are in Florida; the art and game designers are in Columbia; and the game programmers are in Egypt. Time zones are a drag. The guys in Egypt stay up all hours of the night. We look at what time they're online, and they're just... they're online until dawn over there. There's always some online in the Egypt office. The Columbians keep more regular hours, and they're basically on Eastern time. As a producer, it's a little bit rough some times, because I want to walk around the office and see what everybody's working on, you know, spy on everybody.

But you know, as a producer, it's taught me to trust [my team] a lot more, and to not reach out and spy on everyone. We keep in touch via Skype most of the time, we have a huge virtual meeting area we all go into every day, and it works really well. In fact, from a management point of view, we have to document a lot more and make sure everybody's all on the same page, so we probably talk a lot more than people in a regular office.

Shack: You kind of have to, I'd imagine.

Adrian Jones: Yeah. In order to satisfy my paranoia [without resorting to spying], I make sure everybody's in contact quite often.

Shack: Many gamers are under the impression that a PhysX card is necessary to run CellFactor: Revolution. Is that the case?

Adrian Jones: Well, there's big thing about the PhysX processor. PhysX-based games are more visceral, and we wanted people to be able to fully experience [that immersion]. So we made two levels that are just about playing with physics. You can take a huge mass of objects [scattered around the level] and just kill another guy with the ball. Or just whack another guy with a pipe. That's just fun. Those two levels are completely playable with a PhysX card, and people will really have a fun time with that, and they'll really enjoy that kind of interaction.

We also wanted to demonstrate what a PhysX card can do. There are three levels that are basically turned up to 11, so to speak. They've got all sorts of things where players can take fluids [such as lava] and kill people with those fluids. There's a particle beam weapon with 7000 particles [in it], and you can use your Psi powers to push those [beams] around. Those three levels need a PhysX card in order to really run well. If we released those three levels without a PhysX card, you'd get something like three to five frames per second.

So, people who don't have a PhysX card will be able to play those two levels, and they'll be able to play LAN games. People who do have a PhysX card can play every level, and there's a single-player game that's a sort of tutorial, that teaches players how to use all of their powers. The guys who made this game, the designers and artists, they love it. There are only five levels, but they're incredibly deep. In the tutorial, there are fifteen different challenges. Each challenge has two basic [lessons] that it's trying to teach, and each lesson takes maybe ten to thirty minutes. No one will ever master each lesson.

All of the powers are available to everybody. We've done our best to [construct the game] so that everybody can learn quickly. We're putting strategy videos and such together, but the tutorial levels are available only to those who have a PhysX card, because we needed the card's benefits for those levels.

Of course, only the two [aforementioned] levels will be available over LAN games to those players who don't have a PhysX card, but they can use every ability, every weapon, and pretty much do everything but play the other levels.

Turn the page to learn more about CellFactor: Revolution's development.