Muckyfoot
Productions was formed back in '97 by four former employees of Bullfrog
— Mike Diskett, Fin Mcgechie and Guy Simmons, with the later addition
of Gary Carr. It was during these early days that the concepts for their
first two projects came together. Mike and Fin took the lead with Urban
Chaos, a departure from the style of game they had worked on at Bullfrog.
This would be the primary project for Muckyfoot, and it's debut game.
Meanwhile, as a secondary project, Gary and Guy decided to follow their
roots and develop a sim/God style game that would compete with the "theme
series" they had helped create for Bullfrog. One of the ideas they
had originally proposed to EA as a follow up to the successful "theme
series" of games, revolved around running a space station, and while
Bullfrog and EA showed little interest in the idea, their new independence
allowed them to make the concept a reality. With publisher support for
Muckyfoot acquired in the form of Eidos, Startopia (or Space
Station as it was called then) was born.
The style
for Startopia was quickly laid down in a broad concept document
developed by Gary and Guy — the game would take place within a torus
with multiple decks, and would revolve around the interactions of a number
of distinct alien races. The player would have some kind of indirect control
of these beings, and would have to provide facilities and entertainments
to keep them happy. It would draw inspiration from classic Bullfrog games
as the "theme series", Populous and Dungeon Keeper
to provide gamers with a familiar hook, as well as introducing some innovative
elements of it's own. Above all the game would be humorous and comic,
borrowing heavily from popular science fiction, and satirising as many
science fiction shows and books as possible.
The original
concept-document conveyed a more mature aspect to the graphic style —
perhaps with little thought to matching the game style to the target market,
though it was at the time nothing more than a rough draft of how the game
might eventually develop. With this very basic brief in mind, the basic
technology framework was laid down, and creation of game models and objects
were started.
For the
next year, a small team of programmers and artists generated what was
essentially a graphical demo of a space station game, with little regard
to actual gameplay — an unfortunate necessity when trying to acquire
continued funding from a publisher who will judge the progress and suitability
of a project on look rather than feel. However, the demo successfully
won the support of Eidos, and Startopia was officially signed as
Muckyfoot's second project.
At this
point more serious thought was given to how the game would actually play,
and a game designer with experience in this type of project was hired
to develop the gameplay systems, levels, and interface and produce a more
technical design document that the team could refer to. Taking into account
the demo work already done, Startopia the game began to take shape,
detailing the interactions between characters and objects, the goals of
the player, scripting language requirements, additional features required,
and various other gameplay details. As the game progressed more serious
thought was given to target audience and target platform, resulting in
some modification of earlier artwork and concepts. We chose to go with
as broad an audience as possible, toning down much of the overt sexuality
in the game to the level of innuendo, so the humour would still appeal
to the adult gamer while being sanitary enough for a younger audience.
We also decided to aim for a lower base specification machine — fortunately
a reasonable under-estimate of projected target hardware in the original
concept document meant little needed to be removed or changed.
While work
continued steadily on the game, it remained unplayable for quite a large
proportion of the development cycle. This had to do with the complex nature
of the interaction between all the final game elements — everything
relying on something else to work in a balanced fashion. Until almost
every game element was in a near complete state, it was impossible to
construct or accurately balance playable levels. Everyone had to assume
the disparate pieces of code and art they where working on would mesh
together as planned, relying on faith and trust that the design would
not only work in theory but in practice too. There would be no time to
re-write or re-design the game if it didn't work as imagined.
Fortunately
(particularly for me!) almost every gameplay concept and system, theorized
and proposed in the game design document proved accurate, and the final
product differed little from the game originally imagined.
Much of
the project's success stems from the experience and professionalism of
the Startopia team. Art, design, programming, and sound were each
led by an industry veteran with a strong knowledge and realistic outlook
of development. Supported by experienced staff, the team required little
in the way of management — probably much to the delight of our Eidos
based producer. Tasks could be handed over to individual members of staff
with only the lightest of briefings, secure in the knowledge that it would
be carried out in an efficient and professional manner. The dedication
shown by the team was also impressive, and certainly helped ship the product
in a reasonable timeframe, especially in the last few months of development.
Despite
the team's practical approach to development, the atmosphere in the office
during development always remained informal and light, which helped minimise
tension and conflict among staff that usually arise during the more stressful
crunch periods and deadlines. This was helped by the hands-on nature of
the company directors — who not only run the studio, but also work
full time as project leaders alongside the staff.
Startopia
also benefited from experience gained while working with Eidos' external
QA and localization during the development of Urban Chaos. Learning
from the mistakes and problems encountered during that project, both Eidos
and Muckyfoot revised their communication channels and protocols resulting
in a much smoother flow of information between the two companies, an aspect
of development most appreciated by our own small internal QA department.
Though by
no means a perfect project, it's generally agreed that Startopia
had a relatively smooth development cycle when compared to past games
that the staff had worked on.