25 March 2003

John [JCal] Callaham interviews Paul Carrington (director/programmer)

UK based Vulcan Software recently announced their plans for Hybrid, their upcoming sci-fi first person shooter using their own game graphics engine called Mother3D. HomeLAN got a chance to chat with the game's director and programmer Paul Carrington to find out more about their plans for Hybrid.

How did Vulcan Software come to be formed?

Vulcan Software was formed in 1994 by myself (Paul Carrington) and partner in life Lisa Tunnah, we started out developing and publishing games for the Amiga computer. After 15 commercial products, we switched to PC development in 1999 and started programming our 3d game creation tools and engine, now known as Mother3D, which is being used to develop Hybrid.

How did the idea for Hybrid come about?

The idea for Hybrid was formed from two motivations. The first motivation is to create a 3d game that concentrates heavily on game-play, this isn’t to say that Hybrid won’t be visually stunning, but we have placed an equal amount of importance on how the game will be experienced. Using advanced AI and a high level of environment interaction, provides an arena for believable escapism. The second motivation comes from our love of anything sci-fi, so you can expect Hybrid to extend and be influenced by the wealth of sci-fi material found in books and films over the past 20 years.

What can you tell us about the storyline for the game?

The player takes on the role of Lieutenant Marek Hale on board the Navasota resource and cargo ship. The Navasota is nearing the end of a 6 month voyage to Neptune, and has been ordered to investigate the lack of communication between Earth and MF-KL769 a remote mining facility located on the 3rd moon of Neptune.

Upon entering Neptune's orbit the Navasota is intercepted by an alien vessel, intent unknown. Massive ship damage reported with over 90% occupant casualties, self destruct sequence initiated. This is the point in which the game starts, Marek is awoken by ship alarms, explosions and the screams of crew members.

The unraveling of the plot (by progression) will reveal a nasty bunch of aliens who use living organic material (in this case the crew of the Navasota and the occupants of MF-KL769) to further their own genetic structure. One example is the removal of human female reproductive organs that are biological integrated with other species DNA to allow the creation of genetic hybrids to further the aliens work force. The player can expect some disturbingly unpleasant findings on their journey.

What sort of levels and environment will be seen in Hybrid?

There will be three main levels (environments) in Hybrid that will contain many locations. The first level is on board the Navasota in the midst of alien interception, so you can expect some devastation, crippling structures, explosions and general carnage throughout the ship. Without giving too much of the plot away, you will eventually find yourself on Nereid, entering MF-KL769 (the research and mining facility) where you begin to unravel the gruesome fate of the original inhabitants. The final level is kept under wraps for the time being.

What kinds of weapons will be featured in the game?

Hybrid will have a range of weaponry to suit everyone, and some fancy gadgets, the only details I can release at present is the standard issue Navasota .44, however you can expect to eventually get access to some alien weaponry which includes DNA reversal and force field implosion weapons.

What kinds of enemies will be encountered in the game?

In short, extremely new and extremely clever. The aliens in Hybrid create their workforce via the hybridization of organic species and their own bio-technology. You’ll find an entire orchestra of creatures and enemies that all have unique purposes and skill sets. For example, there are some tiny spider like ‘chrome based’ scouters who’s sole purpose is to seek temperature variants and send signals back to Skerrets. A Skerret’s main task is to board vessels and disable any organic entity (in this case humans) using optical and olfactory senses for orientation. That aside, Hybrid’s enemies adopt advanced mobility AI which means they are fully aware of their surrounding (just as you and I are) and will use those surroundings to their advantage.

Will Hybrid have any multiplayer modes and if so what will they be like?

At this stage of development we are only concentrating on the single player aspect for Hybrid.

Why did you decide to make your own graphic engine for the game rather than license an existing graphics engine?

The main reason is innovation. Our engine extends from our tools, and our tools allow us to create models and environments with extremely detailed and advanced structures. The short of this means that by building models within our own model creator application (Mother Model Creator) we can incorporate a models animation, sound, intelligence and interactive capabilities as an inherent part of the models structure, prior to it being placed within a world, thus allowing the player to experience environment interaction at an extremely high level.

What can you tell us about the features of the Mother3D engine?

All the features are what you would expect from a cutting edge 3D engine, 16 to 32 bit rendering up to 1600x1200, perspective corrected multiple texturing with dithering, anisotropic and bilinear filtering, mip mapping, alpha blending/rejection, dynamic lighting, dynamic materials, dynamic pose motion over multi limbed skinned characters, IK, physics system that includes angular momentum and planer/point collision. Environment mapping, 3D sound, advanced AI and in the pipeline is real-time shadows and bump mapping. (hope I didn’t forget anything)

Will the engine and Hybrid itself be "mod friendly" in any way?

Yes, Hybrid is built using Mother3D, when these tools are eventually released, they will allow all game content to be modified, we also plan on making a simplified world builder available for the construction of Hybrid levels.

What is the current status of the game's progress and when will it be released?

Mother3D has been in development for the last 4 years, whereas the creation of Hybrids content (models, textures and sounds) has just begun. Being an independent developer, we’ve always been in a nice position to set our own development schedule so we have no definite date as of yet, although we are aiming for the end of 2003 to have Hybrid at a finished state. As to when it hits the shops would be down to the publisher for which none has been assigned at this time.

Finally is there anything else you wish to say?

Not really at this stage, oh if you get some time, install our Vulcan Portal application from www.vulcan-portal.co.uk, join our virtual community and send me a 3dVoiceMail :)