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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.
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Shack: Do you feel that the limitation of only having access to two levels without a PhysX card will hurt your prospective user base?
Adrian Jones: Well, not necessarily, not for this game. I don't think prospective user base is an issue. The game is free, and I think that it's gonna be a riot for anybody who downloads it. It will be really fun and really novel. Anybody who picks it up should get hours and hours of enjoyment.
Shack: What led to the decision to release CellFactor: Revolution, originally announced as a standard retail game, for free?
Adrian Jones: It's really to everybody's advantage. I think [our developers] are interested in the leg-up. None of them have ever released an original game before, and they're really excited about getting their names out there and having everybody see what they can do. We really want to show two things. We want to show how fun it is to play a game with PhysX, and what the PhysX card can do.
Shack: Many gamers feel that CellFactor: Revolution isn't actually "free," since a PhysX card is necessary to fully take advantage of all that the game has to offer. How would you say that the use of a PhysX processor compares to an engine such as Source that has been highly optimized for physics? In other words, why not just use a pre-existing game engine instead of essentially mandating a PhysX card purchase?
Adrian Jones: It's interesting. The Source engine... it's not an apple-to-apples comparison. The Source engine has done a good job of giving programmers a good interface to physics. The game programmer can do a lot of things with PhysX. Psi Power is a lot like [Half-Life 2's] gravity gun, but the gravity gun can't pick up and smash thousands of objects around the game world simply because the processor doesn't have the horsepower. It's very possible to take the Source engine and modify it to use the PhysX card and have the best of both worlds. The PhysX card just enables very, very rapid calculations.
Shack: What are some aspects of the game that you feel are particularly adept at demonstrating the power of PhysX cards?
Adrian Jones: Lately, I've really been enjoying the reactor processing core [level]. There have always been pools of lava, right? And we've always been able to push guys into pools of lava and watch them die, and that's fun, but in the reactor processing core, we can actually take lava and push it into players, which is really fun. I wait for a guy to come through the door, and then I just pour lava onto him with my Psi powers. I've been having a lot of fun late at night just being malicious. The fluid system is really, really nice, and quite beautiful.
Some levels are covered in spider webs that are all simulated via cloth, so I watch people walk through the webs, or better yet, I watch the webbing to see if anyone has passed. I can make sure that I'm not walking into [an ambush].
I'm not a physics rocket scientist. I'm a good programmer, and I understand mathematics, but for me, it's all about the gameplay that PhysX empowers me to do. I really like the visceral feel of things, like the spider webs floating around. On another level, Proving Grounds, I didn't want the artist to put in flags. Physics-wise, flags are pretty tired. But the guy absolutely insisted. He really wanted to make [the level] look like a gladiatorial arena. For him, that was a really important thing in making the world real, and the thing I like about PhysX is, we're able to do a lot of things that aren't just static geometry. The way the flags billow is just beautiful.
Shack: What are some of the weapons and items that will allow us to interact with our environments? To cite an example, the way you used lava against your opponents.
Adrian Jones: The big one is Psi Power. I won't go into an explanation of where Psi power comes from in the game, but basically, you're able to use--the Bishop character, especially--is able to [telekinetically interact] with the environment. You can do basic things, like pick up a pipe and smack somebody with it. He can push a huge pile of objects. And he can pick up a large number of objects and throw them, one by one, at [other players]. But the best ability is Psi Rift, where she draws all objects in the area into a ball and throws it. The Bishop can't use any weapons, but when she picks up all of the objects, they'll tear off the walls and form a big ball, and that's a really good [alternative to conventional weapons]. It's also a really good defense, because the Guardian might have a rocket launcher, and that can lock on, which is definitely a huge pain in the ass. But when you've got a huge ball of objects in front of you, it also forms a shield. Now, the objects are breakable, so the rockets will break apart the ball you're holding, but at least you didn't die. Now, when you eventually launch that ball of objects at a guy, he's going to have a hard time. In Proving Grounds, for example, the ball of objects is usually comprised of lots of knives, wadded up in a huge ball of cloth.
The Bishop also has a power called Psi Wave, and that takes all of the objects in front of her and parts them like the Red Sea. She's got an Overcharge, and on some levels, you can nearly knock every single object on the level all around, whacking people with the objects.
Shack: I know it's a generic term, but your answer prompts me to ask how destructible the environments are in CellFactor: Revolution.
Adrian Jones: Well, it depends on the level. Some levels are more sturdily constructed than others. It really depends on the design of each individual level. For instance, when you're playing Capture the Flag on [some levels], it can be a pain if you can't fly, because all of the environment is destructible, and you may find a platform underneath you by something that the Guardian [character] did. You can't get [up onto the platform], or you may even find yourself under it. A level like Fueling Station is pretty sturdily constructed, and you're going to find yourself able to get around pretty well, but it might be pretty easy to get tossed off the edge of the level.
Each level has a certain degree of destructibility that's been sort of preset for that particular level.
Shack: Would you say that certain levels are more suitable for certain character types?
Adrian Jones: Yeah, everybody has their "home." The Bishop's home is Proving Grounds, and that's a big gladiatorial arena. It's filled with knives, and it's an open area. Even though the Guardian has rocket launchers, he'll never beat her in that area, because he needs a place to hide to shoot rockets from, and he needs range to hit the Bishop.
Shack: That's interesting, because potentially, the Bishop could just tear away objects just to get at him, correct?
Adrian Jones: Yeah, but the Bishop needs a certain amount of range. The real home of the Black-Ops is the Eastern Weapon System Control. That level is really hard for the Bishop to function in, even though it's destructible. She can tear objects off the wall and try to hit people [with them], but the Black-Ops also has some Psi abilities, as well as some sneaky things. He can place proximity mines, [as well as] an alternate fire on the sniper rifle that really ends up working well. We were hoping that his [the Black-Ops] home would've been on Fueling Station, simply because that's a really great place to drive vehicles, but he ended up just dominating on Eastern Weapon System Control.
Shack: Have there been any aspects of CellFactor: Revolution's development that have been particularly challenging?
Adrian Jones: The biggest challenges... there are two. There were a lot of visions for CellFactor: Revolution, and bringing them all together into one vision was very challenging. Also, I didn't have any experience with PhysX, and really, you have to get your hands dirty [with it] before you understand it. Experimenting with PhysX was very exciting, but bringing that together into a game, it's almost disappointing to ship it because there's so much more I want to do with PhysX. The learning curve was a bit steep, but it was pretty darn rewarding. I'm really looking forward to the next game.
Shack: Thanks for your time.
CellFactor: Revolution is due out for PC on May 8, 2007.
