American McGee Presents Scrapland Wrap Report (Action)

Development Timeline Enric Alvarez: The project began during summer 2002. It was done on schedule. There were many keys: - We all were experienced developers quite aware about the things that could put a project in danger. - Key people always responded. Problems were usually solved in a fast and clean way. We never lost our direction, and we changed it only a few times. - The whole team gave to the project enthusiasm, hard work and creativity in this order. Discipline was always the top priority. - The design group had very creative people from all the key development areas -technical and artistic. Issues were always discussed from a multi-perspective way, and the group as a whole never lost its direction.

you can solve missions in a lot of different ways and when you fail, the world keeps working instead of saying to you "Mission failed, try it again".

Changes and Enhancements Enric Alvarez: In my opinion, having a concept of a game is a completely different thing from having a game. This may sound obvious, I know, but my point is you can't talk about "changes" between the concept and the final game, because the concept is so high level that you can't see anything about the real game from that height.

When you start working on the real game and start making decisions, your previous concepts act as a mere compass but doesn't show you the way. For example, here you have some concepts: we want indoors / outdoors emergent gameplay, we want several approaches to most of missions, we want 3D gunship combat and races, we want strong characters and a humorous touch in dialogues, we want character switching indoors... From an operative point of view - the only valid one when developing a game - these concepts are on a higher level, and you must focus on how you implement them, which means you face completely different problems. You are in another world, that simple. From that perspective, we didn't change anything from the conceptual design of Scrapland, and we did change millions of things from the first operative versions of the game.

Major Challenges Enric Alvarez: 1. Indoors / outdoors. We wanted both aspects of the game at the same high global level of quality. This goal meant we faced tons of problems and specificities from a technical point of view.

2. AI and logic. NPCs in Scrapland do a lot more things than those in standard action games. We wanted a believable robotic world, and their behavior is key to get this. They are able to behave in a friendly way or aggressively, and they react to other NPCs' actions as well to the player's. This cocktail was a nightmare in terms of AI and logic.

3. Multi-platform perspective. More than a challenge, this was exhausting because tons of issues were considered from both perspectives - PC and console. Aside from the technical issues, there was quite a challenge with all the gameplay considerations, specifically control issues.

Best Decisions Enric Alvarez: 1. Multi-platform perspective. From the very first moment, we felt Scrapland should be a multi-platform game. Almost ALL aspects were considered under multiple perspectives. This resulted in a high degree of polish for the final product, and in a very pleasant game for both PC and console.

2. The team. By this, I mean we hired amazing people, and today, I can say this is a dream team, able to develop any game we have in mind. Technically and artistically, they are unique and among the best, and they are far from reach their top.

3. Having American McGee on board.

Key Strengths Enric Alvarez: 1. Integration of all aspects of the game. Scrapland is really complex, but for the players, the experience is simple and pleasant. The path from the real complexity of the game to the seamless integration of all its components was very difficult, and the team did a wonderful job.

2. How the game looks is an awesome achievement from both the artistic and technical points of view. Visually, I think Scrapland is a wonderful game, charming and really unique.

3. Scrapland is easily one of the best looking games out there for Xbox. We are really proud of it and we think Xbox players have a great version.

Areas for Improvement Enric Alvarez: 1. Scrapland is extremely open-ended, almost all missions have several approaches and in-game time never goes back. That means you have an unusual freedom of movement in this world, you can solve missions in a lot of different ways and when you fail, the world keeps working instead of saying to you "Mission failed, try it again". All these features have been poorly perceived - or completely ignored - by some reviews out there. I still don't know if we failed in focusing on these features, or some reviewers play games for only five minutes before writing their articles... I'm confused about this, but what is certain is that some reviewers have not been appreciated these features as we intended.

2. We started paying a lot of attention to character / gunship design. We used a meticulous process to make sure the final result was exactly we asked for. This is not bad at all, but after some months working this way, we had to change some procedures we considered critical to success because of time constraints and considerations. Surprisingly, the result was as good using the new, simplified method as the old one. Our 2D and 3D artists managed to obtain the same quality from some rough sketches as from the dozens of perfect views and ultra-realistic drawings we did at the beginning. Now, I know our artists have enough skills to create astonishing characters from minimal concepts, and I also know we could have saved a lot of time. Our first method was good, but not optimal.