Drew Markham Interview
20 January 1999
on http://www.next-generation.com/jsmid/news/5573.html
A = Drew Markham (Original Concept, Design and Direction)
Due for release in Spring of 1999 for PC, Kingpin's minimum specifications look like being a P200 with 32 Megs of RAM, and a Voodoo-based accelerator card. Xatrix is developing the game so that the user will have a multitude of installation options, including lower resolution textures and sounds, to significantly increase the game's performance on any given machine.
Set for publication by Interplay, Kingpin is an unusual first-person action-adventure based in the seedy underworld of an alternative 1930's Chicago. The game is based on an enhanced version of the Quake II engine and Markham offered an explanation as to why this was the case.
Q: Did your work on the Quake II mission pack influence you when developing Kingpin? Did you learn anything from this experience?
A: "The Quake II mission pack was a great experience for us, our first real foray into true 3D after working with the Build engine for so long. It was a very liberating experience for us and inspired us to do our own work on the engine."
Q: Is it true Kingpin uses the Quake II engine? Did your work with the Quake II engine influence this decision?
A: "Yes, Kingpin uses the Quake II engine, although a heavily modified version. We have added a ton of new features, including 32-bit color; full alpha transparencies for chain link fences; goraud lighting of characters and all non-world objects; procedural fire and smoke; environment mapping and a few other surprises.
We rewrote the .md2 format that Quake II used for models into the .mdx format. This allows us a model to have up to 32 separate articulated pieces, and works really well with the characters. We have broken up all the characters in the game into 15 discrete pieces: feet, lower and upper legs, pelvis, torso, upper and lower arms, hands and head. The player can target and cause damage to those individual pieces, which makes for some interesting battles. Now you can shoot an enemy in the legs and watch him limp away, and head shots are obviously deadly. We also have a very cool weapon physics and body armor system that will keep the player guessing as to which weapons to use in different situations."
Q: How would you describe Kingpin? How are you going to overlap the adventure and action elements in terms of gameplay?
A: "Kingpin is an action-adventure game. There are enemy gangs, rogue gangs and neutral characters that you must talk to make it through the game. If you kill everyone that you see, you will never finish the game. There are scenario-specific elements in each episode and the player will need to use a combination of brains and brawn to make it through in one piece."
Q: How will you incorporate the different vehicles into the gameplay?
A: "Once an episode is completed the player will encounter a vehicle-based level. These levels are integral to advancing the plot forward, and also serve to give some geographic separation between episodes. The controls will be the same as the first-person levels, but the dynamics will be tweaked to represent the particular vehicle's physics."
Q: What different environments can we expect to see in Kingpin?
A: "Some of the environments include urban ruins, a chemical plant with acid rain, and MicroVac laboratories, complete with bizarre retro-tech machinery."
Q: What would you consider to be the main features of the game? Are there any features of Kingpin unseen before in all the other shooters out there?
A: "The biggest thing that we are trying to accomplish is creating a world filled with characters that have their own agendas. This might sound trivial, but once you move away from a play experience where everyone in the game is basically trying to kill the player, the complexity goes up dramatically."
Q: How much interaction between characters and NPCs will Kingpin feature?
A: "The characters are broken down into three groups - dominant gangs, rogue gangs and neutral population. Dominant gangs run a specific territory and generally want to see you dead. The player can hire individual thugs from the rogue gangs that populate an episode, and neutrals include scenaric characters, who might have valuable information about how to accomplish a certain task. Interaction between the player and NPC's is crucial to staying alive and getting through the game."
Q: Can you confirm any multiplayer modes of play at the moment?
A: "Absolutely. I think it's safe to say that the Quake II engine still does multiplayer better than anyone else, and we will be building on top of that already successful system. We will, of course, be adding a few new wrinkles to deathmatch options."
Q: What weapon options stand out in Kingpin?
A: "One of the cool things we're doing is allowing the player to purchase modifications to the weapons, and also the ability to use different kinds of ammunition. For example, there are .45 slugs that are acid tipped, but they won't work in the tommygun unless you have the right modification.
"Another cool thing is the flame-thrower; we just got that working recently, and it is a spectacular, gruesome weapon."
Q: What are your hopes for Dreamcast and PlayStation 2? Are there any plans for Kingpin to be seen on any of these consoles?
A: "My hope with these two systems is that we will finally get some kind of decent level of graphic and CPU performance out of a console system. A game like Kingpin is just too complex to run on the current crop of console machines, and that's the real trap that we get into developing for the PC where we have such a tremendous amount of power at our disposal.
"Of course, the big plus developing for a console is that you have a known standard, that your game is going to run exactly the same on everybody's system. So, I'm really hoping that these two systems will finally give us the power to do a decent version of what we're now doing on the PC and bring it out to the masses."
4 Februari 1999
on http://www.stomped.com/interviews/xatrix.html
A = Drew Markham (Original Concept, Design and Direction)
Q = jcal
Xatrix Entertainment has come a long way from Cyberia and Redneck Rampage. Its upcoming first person shooter, Kingpin, looks extremly promising with its film noir crime-based setting and its use of the Quake II engine combined with a number of nifty technolgical and gameplay features of its own. We asked Xatrix CEO Drew Markham to talk a bit about what gamers can expect from Kingpin.
Q: Give us a brief bio of who you are and what you do at Xatrix.
A:Brief bio: Born, played games, grew up, played games, got in the game business. Currently CEO and lead designer at Xatrix.
Q: What was the genesis for the idea that then became Kingpin?
A: Probably my boredom with almost every first-person shooter being based on either sci-fi or fantasy/dungeon themes. I wanted to see more of a "real world" setting.
Q: What sets Kingpin apart from the rest of the first person shooters coming out in 1999?
A: Attitude, ambience and attention to detail. There are quite a few RPG and adventure game elements that we've woven in, like the ability to talk to NPC's and buy weapons and items at the Pawn-O-Matic (conveniently located in several levels of the game). Also, the ability to hire other gang members to run with you is pretty cool.But, make no mistake, the action quotient will still be high.
Q: You used the Quake II engine for the offical QII mission pack, The Reckoning. Why did you decide to use it again as the engine for Kingpin? Also, what changes have you made to the Quake II engine to make it work for your game?
A: Working on "The Reckoning" got us quite comfortable with the QII engine, and it was a natural progression to use it for our next project. Obviously, QII Death Match is still the hands down winner, and we wanted to make sure that that component
of gameplaywas something that we didn't have to sweat too much.
As for changes to the engine, here's a short list of feature enhancements:
1) 32-bit color
2) True Gourard lighting on all models
3) Sprite effects, like coronas around lights, gun flares, etc.
4) Procedural smoke and fire effects
5) Fog
6) Environment mapping
7) Material differentiation (metal, concrete, wood, etc.)
8) Team AI functionality
9) 15-segment character models with location specific damage
Q: Advanced AI is becoming more of a requirement in a first person shooter. What advances in that area can players expect in Kingpin?
A: We have completely re-written the AI code for characters in Kingpin. First, all characters use a NavData system that allows them the navigate the levels more efficiently. Also, all characters are able to recognize a variety of variables that determine their behavior in certain circumstances. For example, if you encounter a lone enemy and you have a lot more firepower than he does, he will more than likely have a tendency to run off and find some buddies rather than marching head-first to a certain death by engaging you in a battle.
Characters are also given a "morale" value from 1 to 7, that will affect their behavior.A morale value of "1" is the lowest, with "7" being completely psychotic. The shades of gray in between allow us to create groups of enemies with realistic individual behavior.
Q: What kinds of weapons will the player have access to in Kingpin?
A:
The current weapons roster is:
1) Lead pipe (my personal fave!)
2) Pistol
3) Sawed-off pump shotgun
4) Thompson sub-machine gun
5) Sniper rifle
6) Multi-grenade launcher
7) Rocket launcher
8) Flame thrower
9) ECD (Electro Capacitance Discharger)
0) Concussion rifle
We're also adding mods for some of the weapons. These will enhance the lifespan and playability of those weapons by adding new features to them. For instance, the pistol will have four mods. The first is the ROF (rate of fire) mode, that does exactly what it says; increase the pistol's rate of fire. The second is the RLD (reload) mod, which increases the speed at which you can reload the pistol, and the third is the MAG (magnum) mode, which increase the muzzle velocity of the pistols bullets. The fourth mod is a silencer, which will last for about ten or so shots before crapping out.
Q: Much has been made in other articles about Kingpin about the animation system. Can you go into more detail?
A: As we mentioned earlier, Kingpin uses a proprietary character model system that breaks the body up into fifteen pieces; head, torso, upper arms, lower arms, hands, pelvis, upper legs, lower legs and feet. Each of the fifteen pieces has its own dynamic bounding box, so that accuracy is increased dramatically in tracking where a character has actually been hit. Pain skins are also attached to those specific areas, so that you will know exactly where you hit an enemy. This also
allows for tracking of exit wounds so that enemies "bleed out" properly once dead.
Q: The subject matter of Kingpin is definatly adult oriented. Do you believe that the game could cause controversy in that regard?
A: I think that anything that's even SLIGHTLY over the line these days will cause controversy, so its a safe bet that Kingpin is bound to ruffle a few feathers. However, we haven't set out to create a game that uses gratuitous elements just for the sake of controversy. In fact, we have purposely avoided putting in
certain "easy" elements that would have made the game wildly controversial.
Q: Dennis Farina has been announced as the voice for the player's character in Kingpin. How did you get such a popular actor to work on the game and how was he to work with?
A: I must sadly report that Dennis will not be doing the voice for the player's character. He's still one of our favorite actors, but we're searching now for someone else portray the character's voice.
Q: Cypress Hill will be handling the music for Kingpin. Will they be contributing all new songs for the soundtrack?
A: Cypress will be contributing three songs off of their latest album for the game. We have the original tracks as well as instrumental versions that will be
used in various locales in the game.
Q: What do you expect the system requirements will be for the game?
A: Minimum spec is a P200 with 32 megs RAM and 1st generation video accelerator. We recommend the fastest machine that you can get your hands on, of course! We also wholeheartedly endorse the Riva TNT card, as Kingpin uses
all 32-bit artwork. The game looks amazing on a TNT.
Q: Is the game still on target for a Spring 1999 release?
A: If I can get all of these interviews out of the way... ;)
Q: Finally, can you give us some clus as to Xatrix's future projects?
A: Unfortunately, not at this time. But, we hope to be announcing something quite
cool in the very near future as a follow-up to Kingpin.
11 Februari 1999
on evilavatar.com/Gib/kingpin/kingpin.htm
A = Drew Markham (Original Concept, Design and Direction)
Q = Ryan Schwarz
Kingpin: Life of Crime is shaping up to be one of the top first person shooters of '99. In excess of it's impressive list of technological features it also boasts something very few of the other upcoming FPS titles shall -- character. When poised with the choice of assuming the role of Quake 3 or Unreal: Tournament's generic space-marine like characters versus Kingpin's Mafia crime lord, the obvious choice is readily apparent. Top it off with the fact that the title is being developed by Xatrix Entertainment, the fine folks behind quality software like Redneck Rampage and Quake 2: The Reckoning, and you've got yourself a sure to be winner. </p
I was recently able to ask Xatrix CEO Drew Markham a few questions regarding the upcoming game.
Q: What improvements has Xatrix made to the Quake II engine?
A:
A laundry list:
1) 32-bit color
2) True Gourard lighting on all models
3) Sprite effects, like coronas around lights, gun flares, etc.
4) Procedural smoke and fire effects
5) Fog
6) Environment mapping
7) Material differentiation (metal, concrete, wood, etc.)
8) Team AI functionality
9) 15-segment character models with location specific damage
Q: How modifiable will the world of Kingpin be? Just as, or more so, than that of Quake II?
A: We will be including a copy of QERadiant that has been modified to work specifically with Kingpin. The texture set for KP is very rich, which should give level designers plenty to work with. Also, there are a ton of different skins for the characters, and they should act as templates for anyone out there who wants to create there own skins. So, the world is basically as modifiable as Quake II, but with some extras.
Q: Will there be a playable demo? If so, when will it be released (approximately)?
A: We're currently finishing up a "press demo", and the public version should follow shortly after that. Should be within a week or two.
Q: What will the minimum system requirements be in order to achieve a passable game speed?
A: Hmmm...I guess that depends on your definition of "passable". I've actually played the game on a P200 with a Voodoo 1 card, and its okay, but I certainly prefer playing it on a PII 450 with a TNT card. A PII 233 with Voodoo 2 is also a decent setup, but I must say that we wholeheartedly endorse the TNT card due to its killer 32-bit color rendering.
Q: What degree of environmental interactivity is planned? What will the player be able to destroy?
A: That's one of the things that the animation department is working on, and we currently have crates and stuff that you can destroy, with tables and chairs coming up next.
Q: Will the player be able to operate vehicles? If so, what types?
A: We have an early version of the motorcycle in right now, and its pretty cool. The next big effort will be to get the driving enemies in place for that. Another segment takes place on a moving train, and there will be jetpacks in the final level.
Q: How refined will the movement code be? Are you aiming for a speedy Quake II style of play, or a more realistic Half-Life type approach?
A: We're all a bunch of Quake II junkies here, so we decided early on not to screw with the physics too much. We have altered the player's height and few other little things, but basically its going to be pretty "speedy". We do have a "sneak mode" key that lets you move around without making any noise; very useful for creeping up on a guy and capping him in the back of the head with your silenced pistol. However, you do move pretty slowly while in "sneak mode".
Q: Do you plan on incorporating differing pain skins to realistically portray where an enemy has been shot (as seen in SiN)?
A: Pain skins are a big part of the character animation system in Kingpin. We have taken the character models and broken them up in to 15 pieces for more accurate damage. So, if you pop a guy in the upper leg, the damage shows up in that spot. There are two levels of pain damage for each part of the body.
Q: Will the player react to positional damage? For example, if shot in the leg will one develop a limp?
A: We have accounted for that with all of the NPC's, but we're waiting to see if there's enough RAM left over to actually pull if off, as it adds more animation frames for each character. Currently, the NPC's do react based on the damaged area; if a guy gets shot in the gut, you'll see him double over with pain.
Also, damage is more intense in the pelvis, torso and head areas, making them particularly juicy areas to aim for.
Q: On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank Kingpin in terms of goriness? Are we in for the usual score of generic giblets, or do you guys have something "special" in the works?
A: I think that we'll wind up with about an eleven. When you beat an enemy down with the lead pipe their eyes swell and close up as the blood smears their face. When you kill someone, they will bleed out from the exit wound. And, yes, we are working on something "special" for the gibs, but since we're still working on it I'll leave it as a surprise for now.
21 Februari 1999
on gangland.org/interviews/dminterview.shtml
A = Drew Markham (Original Concept, Design and Direction)
Q = Slade
Q: Kingpin is based heavily on a mobster theme with a modern touch, what mob related movies do you and the guys around the office love to watch. Also what if any movies have had some sort of influence with the game (any references in the game).
A: Tons of movies, some mob-themed, some not. All the favorites, of course, the first two Godfathers, Scarface (Pacino and Paul Muni from the original), Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Angels with Dirty Faces (Cagney and Bogart), Midnight Run (Dennis Farina still rocks), Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, Casino, etc. And, for non-mob movies we like Twelve Monkeys, Blade Runner, City of the Lost Children and Dark City, all for their ambience.
All of these movies have had a huge influence on the game, as we can't really distinguish between "just watching" and "being influenced". (It's all a blur!)
Q: Does the game live up to everything that you thought it would when you first started on development.
A: That's an interesting question. When I start pre-production on a game I usually go pretty overboard in a design sense. I don't generate huge design docs (Kingpin's are about 10 pages), but there are strong gameplay themes that I usually want to explore, as well as technological innovations. I've done this enough to know that you never get everything that you want, so as the process evolves the best stuff sticks and the weaker stuff is weeded out.
At this point, the game is actually beyond what I had anticipated we would be able to do. Working in all of the RPG and Adventure game elements into an FPS is no trivial matter, but I think that the balance is really cool right now. And, on the technology side we were able to accomplish alot of the original ideas, including the 15 segment characters (for wounding individual areas), true gourard lighting for that cool "film noir" effect, plus tons of other little things.
Ultimately, with time and money being major considerations, I think that the game will definitely live up to my original "abstract" expectations.
Q: Although I know the game isn't finished and stuff may still be changed is there anything that was cut out of the game that you would have really loved to be in it.
A: I think that everything that's been cut up to this point was done so because it just didn't work in the game as a whole. There hasn't been any real painful surgery yet.
Q: Recently a lot of game companies have been taking heat for releasing games that have had a lot of bugs, and in some cases a patch was needed to finish the game. What steps if any are you taking to ensure this doesn't happen with Kingpin.
A: I know that this won't be an answer that most people want to hear, but this situation isn't going to get any better with time, for us or any other developer. Every title that we start is much more difficult than the one that preceeded it. There's the new technology curve, the fact that somebody else's game will do some cool little thing that everyone expects you to have in yours, models get more complex, textures have to approach photo-realism, on and on. The only real way to put out a bug-free title is to make it, finish it, test the crap out of it and fix all of the mistakes. That, or just doing a "cookie-cutter" game that essentially rips-off a proven title with cosmetic changes. Unfortunately, there are very few developers in the biz right now who can afford to take former approach. The economics of this business are brutal, and the meter is running from production day one.
Its a tough balancing act between getting in all of the cool stuff you want and doing it in a timely fashion. That's why we're so thankful for the guys at id software, paving the way with new technology and getting it out in a timely manner. If we didn't have that jumping off point it would be virtually impossible to create an innovative product and the technology required to run it without it costing an astronomical amount of money. Also, by the time you'd get it finished, it would probably be so stale that few people would want to play it. There are exceptions, of course, but its a dangerous risk.
As for KP, we're just testing constantly, looking for every little leak that we can find. I have personally played the maps in the first episode at least a thousand times, if not more, and I'll probably play them another thousands times before its all done. Of course, we'll have a ton of QA guys and beta testers banging on it as well, so we'll do our best to spot as many problems as we can. But, with the level of complexity that gamers demand today, there are going to be bugs. Our job is to keep them to an absolute minimum.
Q: Any specific mods out there that you would like to see versions done for Kingpin when its released.
A: I'd love to see a lot of cool DM mods. I still think that there's some great innovations out there for DM that haven't been done yet. We're talking to a group right now who's interested in doing KP mods, and they have some cool ideas. I really love the idea of the community taking the game and making it there own. If Kingpin strikes the right chord with people I think that it will have a chance to generate some good community feedback and modification.
Q: Whats the favorite snack food around the office, any particular food or beverage you get a craving for when working late into the night.
A: Well, we do tend to keep a lot serious junk food around here, but I try to avoid it if at all possible. (Too much sitting on my ass staring at a monitor all day!) Of course, there's one snack food that no one can resist here at Xatrix; Krispy Kreme original glazed donuts. We gather around those boxes like apes around a monolith.
At night the biggest cravings are for Sushi and/or Japanese noodles. We're really lucky to have a killer noodle house right around the corner from the office.
Q: One of the things that has been pretty clearly stated is that Kingpin will have a lot of violence and some heavy language, what is your take on the UK and other European countries basically censoring games.
A: I think that censoring any entertainment product is crap. Obviously there will be a large contingent of people who think that this game is too violent, too harsh, too whatever, but that's fine. They don't have to buy it. They also don't have to go see any movies that they think might be potentially offensive. Fine, just don't tell me what I can and can't see, or what I can and can't play.
Of course, I don't advocate kids getting their hands on inappropriate entertainment product of any type. But, its ultimately up the parents to determine what their kids are or are not exposed to.
Q: When do you think a decision will be made regarding mac and linux client ports of Kingpin, and what is basically going into that decision as to whether to do it or not.
A: Those issues are under discussion right now, and we're looking into the viability of both ports. I think that the mac port will wind up happening without too much of a snag, linux bears a bit more investigation.
Q: Seems that more companies are doing more after the game is released, like valve working on TFC as a free addon, are you planning anything like that to follow up the release to maybe round out the DeathMatch features.
A: Well, Valve has a unique situation in that they went out and got the guys who originated TFC. I think that if Kingpin takes off and gets good consumer support, we will certainly want to see its on-line presence evolve. There are so many options for that right now that we'll have to wait and see what happens once the game is released. Of course, we're doing everything we can to make a cool DM experience "out of the box".
Q: Any luck finding a voice guy to do the lead character I know it was mentioned you were having some trouble because of some of the things he was required to say.
A: Heh...Yeah, the language is pretty brutal. But, it definitely fits in the world that we've created. We're looking around right now and have some pretty interesting candidates for the main character voice. I'll be sure to keep you guys posted once a decision is made.