Features

1. Raising the standard.
   We are particularly proud of the way that The Getaway looks and the level of detail and realism that we are achieving. To get to this stage, we have had to repeatedly explore new techniques to raise the quality of our exterior streets, cars, interior locations and characters. In this discussion, rather than look at the specific techniques themselves, I will focus on the changes we have made to our production processes and tools to help reinforce and control the rapid rate of change.
   
   
2. Managing the sheer scale of the project and the complexity of the content.
   In order to re-produce such a huge play area to these high, self imposed standards, we have had to completely overhaul our tools from the original Playstation 1 set. At the same time, the specification for all new tools insisted that they could be re-used for other, as yet undecided games. The second part of this presentation looks at what we set out to create, the problems we encountered along the way and what the team have ended up working with in order to get the game out in time.

Introduction & a Little Bit of History…

I'm not going to apologize for this - if you are expecting some technical bloke from Sony to give you the inside track on optimizing your code for the Playstation 2, then you're in the wrong place. If you think that I'm going reveal novel modeling and texturing techniques that make our game look fantastic then you're in the wrong place too because we don't have any. What you see on screen comes from simple hard work and a direct refusal to accept the reality of our situation and be beaten by the scale of the game we've set out to make.

Simply put, this presentation is about managing the creation of a mass content game. In the case of The Getaway that content is the city of London, its locations and inhabitants, but the same principles apply to any title with a huge amount of graphical resources and large number of art and design staff. I will be discussing how we have gone about updating our production processes to cope with the demands of The Getaway while scaling up a European studio to produce blockbusters.

However, before we go any further, you may be wondering…

What Exactly is "The Getaway?"

For those of you who don't already know, here's the answer…

	The Getaway.

The Getaway is a crime-em-up. Set in contemporary London's criminal underworld, the story revolves around inter-gang rivalry and warfare and the efforts of the Metropolitan Police to contain the violence while fighting internal corruption.

From the player's point of view, they take the role of an east-end gangster, propelled by the events unfolding around him through a third-person action adventure and driving game.

Gangsters, cars, and guns, what more could one ask for…

The action is split roughly as follows:

• 60% urban driving through London's traffic filled streets
• 40% on-foot shootouts set in London's sleaziest locations.

• On foot gameplay added -
  • Externally - the player can now get out of the car at any time and progress on foot if they wish. They can hijack any vehicle found on the streets to aid them and finding and stealing the correct car for the job has become a key game mechanism.
  • Internally - the most substantial change to the design, the player now not only drives between key locations but also participates in action when they arrive. Eighteen interior levels are being constructed - several designed to be re-visited during the course of the story.
• A whole new story -
  The leading player is now a retired bank robber, Mark Hammond, manipulated by his old rival, Charlie Jolson, into igniting confrontation between London's criminal gangs. Jolson's aim is to weaken his rivals so that he they can step in and clean up once the dust settles. More by chance than design, Hammond hitches up with the disgraced cop, Frank Carter, who is after Jolson for his own, less than pure, reasons. On completing the game as Hammond, the game can be re-played, this time as the bent cop Carter. Only then is the true picture revealed and all loose ends tied up. The story is now the focus of the game, the action being driven by the two interwoven narrative strands rather than a mission based structure.
• Just one massive play area: the city of London -
  In the Playstation 1 version, London was one of five driving locations. For the Playstation 2 version, it has become the focus of all attention with rival gangs fighting it out for the control of their home territory. We have set out to build London as we know it, not just the standard tourist locations. Consequently, the play area has become a vastly expanded London map; ten times the size of the original Playstation 1 version. London is an incredibly complicated city and I think you get a real feel for the place you get when you play the game, the good and the bad, the new and the old, the beautiful and the ugly and the expensive and the sleazy. We are particularly proud of the lesser known areas included in the map, like the run down areas south of the river where a lot of the dodgy deals go down. I really don't think there is another game out there which really captures a place in quite the same way as The Getaway: from Buckingham Palace to Council Flats in Lambeth (what you call "projects" in the US, I believe), from Hyde Park to derelict waste land off Old Street, the whole city is represented.

So just how much work is there in recreating London?

Getting across the size of the exterior play area isn't easy unless you know London well. I'm going to assume that most of the audience have never been to London, let alone explored it in the detail The Getaway team has. In an attempt to get the scale of the task across, I'll describe the volume of work in several different ways.

	A map of the area covered in The Getaway.

• Graphically - the above map shows all of the roads included in the game, each square is a development grid cell and measures 250m x 250m.
  
• By Distance - over 110Km (70 miles) of drivable roads have been accurately recreated from Ordinance Survey map data.
  
• By Area - the free roaming map is spread over 50 square kilometers (20 square miles) or 5000 hectares (12350 acres) of central London.
  
• By Time - breaking all speed limits and running every red light it takes over 15minutes to travel between the furthest points east and west.
  
• By Resource - the cityscape alone will take 10 full time artists over 2 years to build, 50% more than the total number of artists on the whole Playstation 1 version.
  
• By Geography - from the far edge of Hyde Park in the west to Shoreditch & Bethnal Green in the east. From the Angel in the north to Lambeth Bridge in the South.
  
• For the locals - and finally, for any Londoners out there, the map covers an area close to what you get when you buy a "Zone 1" travel card.

join | contact us | advertise | write | my profile
news | features | companies | jobs | resumes | education | product guide | projects | store



Copyright © 2003 CMP Media LLC

privacy policy | terms of service