Random Retro Studios tidbits

2007-05-12 07:29:30 am

Originally posted on www.samus.co.uk, which has since been shut down.

Some of Samuel H's art below (from when he was hired back in 2005)

http://www.cerebral-art.com/Sammy/B_CREATURE%20COSTUME/federationtrooper.jpg
http://www.cerebral-art.com/Sammy/D_THUMBNAIL%20ROUGHS/A_Crocomire%20Thumbs.jpg

There's an interview from last October talks about some of the new hires: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A414023

But contrary to that, many of the new artists seem relatively inexperienced. Maybe they're just the ones most visible online?

Plus they hired Aaron de Orive http://www.aarondeorive.com to write the story.

Another interview from November - When were they planning on releasing this again?

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Wii, which comes out Sunday, will sell for about $250. The buzz about the Wii focuses on the controller, which mimics a player's movements. In a golf game, for example, the controller becomes a golf club.

Creating games for the new hardware is no piece of cake.

Retro Studios, with a staff of 50, had a home-court advantage because it is across the street from Freescale's software operations, which makes the Wii development kit. A kit helps programmers write the code for a game.

Retro is working on the third installment of the popular "Metroid Prime" series, which chronicle the adventures of a galactic bounty
hunter, for the Wii. The company is keeping the details under wraps.

The creators say this month is "crunch time."

"We're in the final stages of development, so we call Freescale a lot," said Michael Kelbaugh, CEO of Retro Studios. "What is unique about the console market as opposed to the PC market is once it gets approved, you can't upload an addition to it. With a PC, there is always a patch. So it has to be as bug-free as possible."

And another from Mark Wikan - http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=92179

I am finishing up making Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii right now. It is the final installment of the FPS/A series(First Person Shooter/Adventure).

We have it tuned so it is nearly as easy as a Mouse/Key combo with the added benefit of being able to sit on your couch and play. Each developer is probably going to have a different take on it until we decide on the "Best Feeling" solution.

We take it a bit farther than a mouse keyboard can, though. For instance, you can walk up to a handle and using the movement of the controller twist and pull it into position to activate something. Your hand movement mirrors the movement of the Wii controller.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the oldies who have left -

http://cube.ign.com/mail/2005-09-06.html

Matt responds: Not much to report at the moment, unfortunately. Last I heard, Retro was still waiting for appropriate Revolution development hardware. The team is allegedly plugging away on it based on preliminary specs. Meanwhile, there have been two significant departures from the team. Karl Deckard, who was a designer, and senior engineer David "Zoid" Kirsch, have left the company. Deckard came to Retro from Valve where he was a designer on Half Life. Kirsch came to Retro from id Software, where he was credited for creating the infamous Capture the Flag mod. These are exceptionally talented fellows and their absences will undoubtedly be felt, but you shouldn't view this as a sign of bad goings-on at Retro because that isn't the case. Evidently spirits are high and the game is moving forward at a steady pace.

Karl Deckard's with Blizzard now, and Zoid's with NCSoft.

Michael Cheng and Chip Sbrogna are both with Sony now, they did Level Design for God of War II.

Clark Wen is with Activision.

Kai Martin left in August to become a financial coder

Other random links:

Some of Paul Tozour's thoughts on game AI:

http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000077.html
http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000099.html
http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/2005_06.html
http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000107.html

Photos!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanhdsl/293119496/in/set-72157594367974964/

Plenty more photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63063066@N00/with/256114834/

Thread title:

Originally posted on www.samus.co.uk, which has since been shut down.

Some of Samuel H's art below (from when he was hired back in 2005)

http://www.cerebral-art.com/Sammy/B_CREATURE%20COSTUME/federationtrooper.jpg
http://www.cerebral-art.com/Sammy/D_THUMBNAIL%20ROUGHS/A_Crocomire%20Thumbs.jpg

There's an interview from last October talks about some of the new hires: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A414023

But contrary to that, many of the new artists seem relatively inexperienced. Maybe they're just the ones most visible online?

Plus they hired Aaron de Orive http://www.aarondeorive.com to write the story.

Another interview from November - When were they planning on releasing this again?

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Wii, which comes out Sunday, will sell for about $250. The buzz about the Wii focuses on the controller, which mimics a player's movements. In a golf game, for example, the controller becomes a golf club.

Creating games for the new hardware is no piece of cake.

Retro Studios, with a staff of 50, had a home-court advantage because it is across the street from Freescale's software operations, which makes the Wii development kit. A kit helps programmers write the code for a game.

Retro is working on the third installment of the popular "Metroid Prime" series, which chronicle the adventures of a galactic bounty
hunter, for the Wii. The company is keeping the details under wraps.

The creators say this month is "crunch time."

"We're in the final stages of development, so we call Freescale a lot," said Michael Kelbaugh, CEO of Retro Studios. "What is unique about the console market as opposed to the PC market is once it gets approved, you can't upload an addition to it. With a PC, there is always a patch. So it has to be as bug-free as possible."

And another from Mark Wikan - http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=92179

I am finishing up making Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii right now. It is the final installment of the FPS/A series(First Person Shooter/Adventure).

We have it tuned so it is nearly as easy as a Mouse/Key combo with the added benefit of being able to sit on your couch and play. Each developer is probably going to have a different take on it until we decide on the "Best Feeling" solution.

We take it a bit farther than a mouse keyboard can, though. For instance, you can walk up to a handle and using the movement of the controller twist and pull it into position to activate something. Your hand movement mirrors the movement of the Wii controller.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the oldies who have left -

http://cube.ign.com/mail/2005-09-06.html

Matt responds: Not much to report at the moment, unfortunately. Last I heard, Retro was still waiting for appropriate Revolution development hardware. The team is allegedly plugging away on it based on preliminary specs. Meanwhile, there have been two significant departures from the team. Karl Deckard, who was a designer, and senior engineer David "Zoid" Kirsch, have left the company. Deckard came to Retro from Valve where he was a designer on Half Life. Kirsch came to Retro from id Software, where he was credited for creating the infamous Capture the Flag mod. These are exceptionally talented fellows and their absences will undoubtedly be felt, but you shouldn't view this as a sign of bad goings-on at Retro because that isn't the case. Evidently spirits are high and the game is moving forward at a steady pace.

Karl Deckard's with Blizzard now, and Zoid's with NCSoft.

Michael Cheng and Chip Sbrogna are both with Sony now, they did Level Design for God of War II.

Clark Wen is with Activision.

Kai Martin left in August to become a financial coder

Other random links:

Some of Paul Tozour's thoughts on game AI:

http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000077.html
http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000099.html
http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/2005_06.html
http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000107.html

Photos!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanhdsl/293119496/in/set-72157594367974964/

Plenty more photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63063066@N00/with/256114834/

BarryH

2007-06-20 03:38:13 am

Some more little updates.

Here's a blog by a beta tester - http://www.gamespot.com/users/UnlivedPhalanx/

On of the last posts on http://www.samus.co.uk SkippyJr posted a post from Bobby Pavlock (aka xcalibur) who'd been hired by to work on Metroid Prime 3 - yet another engineer from 3D Realms. He said that he was told in his interview that Retro were working on some other Nintendo IP after Metroid. There have been other conflicting rumours since, that they might work on one of their older projects instead, or something completely new.

I found a few more interesting comments from him on www.evilavatar.com

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=522458&postcount=11

"Yes, there is free look.

Yes, of course there are outdoor environments. One of which is going to be the coolest world in any of the Prime series yet, imho."

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=775816&postcount=7

"In my experience, most companies are like this. It is difficult to find a company that has its shit together enough to actually put out good games without overworking/underpaying their employees.

It took me 8 years in the biz, but I finally found such a company, and am enjoying my job, and still have plenty of time for my wife/daughter. "

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=782252&postcount=71

"Halo and Metroid Prime are 2 completely different types of games. Just because they are both sci-fi and use a first person camera does not mean they are the same. Halo is about blasting your way to the next level in a linear progression. Metroid Prime is about exploration, adventure, puzzle solving.

Regardless, your opinion does not seem to be shared with reviews.

Metacritic ratings:
Halo - 97 http://www.metacritic.com/games/pla...xbx/halo?q=halo
Metroid Prime - 97 http://www.metacritic.com/games/pla...metroid%20prime

Gamerankings ratings:
Metroid Prime - 96.3 http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpag...metroid%20prime
Halo - 95.6 http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpag...2132.asp?q=halo"

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=803975&postcount=27

"Hope you guys like MP3 when it comes out. I am confident it will show how well the Wiimote works with first=person games when implemented properly, better than previous 3rd party titles such as Red Steel or Call of Duty. Of course, I might be a little biased. "

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=806140&postcount=94*sigh*

"I could sit here and try to defend these screens, and talk about how the game looks way better in motion, but that would sound lame. Color me disappointed with these shots. "

And some posts by Jesse Spears, an AI coder -

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/22743/2/

"Yes, there are Metroids in MP3"

"The "space station videos" only represent one area of the game (or maybe 2, depending on your definition of area). The "sense of isolation" is definitely there in most of the areas I've played through."

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/22772/2/

"Yes, it looks much better at 60 FPS than 0 FPS ;)

And those screen shots look dark to me too (probably snagged straight off the video signal without any correction).

FWIW, the demo string covers some of the same area that the one from E3 did last year (there's more to it this year, and everything's been
reworked and cleaned up, but the actual location is pretty much the same).

There is a bit of a new area for this demo too, but I only see one screenshot of it (middle of the top row). It's not a very good representation of that world, but if you look closely you can see some of it in the background (behind the grapple stuff).

That world is really gorgeous when you can just stand around and look at it (as opposed to the other world you've seen before, which isn't "pretty", but it does look like what it's supposed to...the inside of a military ship and a military base...lots of grey metal and stone)."

"I can neither confirm nor deny if that is the official frame rate it will run at

But I think that's the target for pretty much every Wii game (and probably every 360 and PS3 game as well).

And it runs at 60 on my TV (well, at least when I'm not debugging ;). "

And finally, a minor tidbit on creature creation: http://www.yotogi.net/2007/05/i_should_feel_complemented.html

Some more little updates.

Here's a blog by a beta tester - http://www.gamespot.com/users/UnlivedPhalanx/

On of the last posts on http://www.samus.co.uk SkippyJr posted a post from Bobby Pavlock (aka xcalibur) who'd been hired by to work on Metroid Prime 3 - yet another engineer from 3D Realms. He said that he was told in his interview that Retro were working on some other Nintendo IP after Metroid. There have been other conflicting rumours since, that they might work on one of their older projects instead, or something completely new.

I found a few more interesting comments from him on www.evilavatar.com

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=522458&postcount=11

"Yes, there is free look.

Yes, of course there are outdoor environments. One of which is going to be the coolest world in any of the Prime series yet, imho."

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=775816&postcount=7

"In my experience, most companies are like this. It is difficult to find a company that has its shit together enough to actually put out good games without overworking/underpaying their employees.

It took me 8 years in the biz, but I finally found such a company, and am enjoying my job, and still have plenty of time for my wife/daughter. "

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=782252&postcount=71

"Halo and Metroid Prime are 2 completely different types of games. Just because they are both sci-fi and use a first person camera does not mean they are the same. Halo is about blasting your way to the next level in a linear progression. Metroid Prime is about exploration, adventure, puzzle solving.

Regardless, your opinion does not seem to be shared with reviews.

Metacritic ratings:
Halo - 97 http://www.metacritic.com/games/pla...xbx/halo?q=halo
Metroid Prime - 97 http://www.metacritic.com/games/pla...metroid%20prime

Gamerankings ratings:
Metroid Prime - 96.3 http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpag...metroid%20prime
Halo - 95.6 http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpag...2132.asp?q=halo"

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=803975&postcount=27

"Hope you guys like MP3 when it comes out. I am confident it will show how well the Wiimote works with first=person games when implemented properly, better than previous 3rd party titles such as Red Steel or Call of Duty. Of course, I might be a little biased. "

http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=806140&postcount=94*sigh*

"I could sit here and try to defend these screens, and talk about how the game looks way better in motion, but that would sound lame. Color me disappointed with these shots. "

And some posts by Jesse Spears, an AI coder -

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/22743/2/

"Yes, there are Metroids in MP3"

"The "space station videos" only represent one area of the game (or maybe 2, depending on your definition of area). The "sense of isolation" is definitely there in most of the areas I've played through."

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/22772/2/

"Yes, it looks much better at 60 FPS than 0 FPS ;)

And those screen shots look dark to me too (probably snagged straight off the video signal without any correction).

FWIW, the demo string covers some of the same area that the one from E3 did last year (there's more to it this year, and everything's been
reworked and cleaned up, but the actual location is pretty much the same).

There is a bit of a new area for this demo too, but I only see one screenshot of it (middle of the top row). It's not a very good representation of that world, but if you look closely you can see some of it in the background (behind the grapple stuff).

That world is really gorgeous when you can just stand around and look at it (as opposed to the other world you've seen before, which isn't "pretty", but it does look like what it's supposed to...the inside of a military ship and a military base...lots of grey metal and stone)."

"I can neither confirm nor deny if that is the official frame rate it will run at

But I think that's the target for pretty much every Wii game (and probably every 360 and PS3 game as well).

And it runs at 60 on my TV (well, at least when I'm not debugging ;). "

And finally, a minor tidbit on creature creation: http://www.yotogi.net/2007/05/i_should_feel_complemented.html

13M13

2007-06-20 04:07:02 am

l'appel du vide

Wow. Who is on the up and up? Barry H. is on the up and up!

arkarian

2007-06-20 11:15:25 am

red chamber dream

"yesterday I had to stop the session and I turned around and said "I hate this map, this place sucks, I freaking hate this." Instead of getting upset it was nice to see them raise their eyebrows and ask me to explain how I would change it. It was very rewarding and every moment I could I was shaping the game in a way you all will appreciate I'm sure."

That part worries me. Let's hope it only happened that one time, as that was how I felt during the entirety of Echoze and don't want to have to experience it again.

UchihaSasuke

2007-06-24 03:24:47 pm

my umbrella goes directly to Bankai

the bad news always has talent leaving retro but i wonder what have they gained in the same time.

to me it seems like most employees will bail out massively once mp3 is done.

and, hell i hope those 60 fps jokes are just jokes. i don't want to see another game get worse like mp8 (for the uninformed, mario party 4-7 ran at 60 fps but the "geniuses" at hudson made mp8 run at 30. when i played the game the first time i was like "what the hell happened?!?!?")

nate

2007-06-24 05:15:58 pm

heh.

the few, the proud: the f1 fanatics.

Yoshi348

2007-06-24 07:38:44 pm

PAGE BREAKER

Ready and willing.

Heh you're not the only one who noticed that. At least it was only on the boards and not the minigames.

BarryH

2007-08-25 05:37:06 am

Launch party pictures -
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/index.php?user=UnlivedPhalanx

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/23917/2/

Eh?

Unless my brain has turned to complete mush, I'm pretty sure Nintendo
has already said that Galaxy will be out THIS year for Japan and the
US (not sure about Europe).

Or have the 80-hour weeks finally caught up with me....

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/23998

And, uhh, that MP3 demo was kinda lame (but then I guess all of us that know how to play it well are a bit busy right now).

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24052

I keep trying to tell people the Wii has a lot more power than you've seen in a released game so far. Everything I've seen so far could have been done on a GameCube (and, most of them were probably developed on GameCube hardware, at least at first...MP3 was too, but we've had a fairly long time to work with the real Wii dev kits now).

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24139

Actually, the Wii is about 1.5 times as powerful as GameCube for CPU
_and_ GPU. It's closer to 2 times as powerful as a GC overall (1.5 X
1.5 = 2.25 in theory, but it seems to be about twice as powerful as a
GC in practice...although maybe that means we just need some more time
to optimize our engine to reach that full potential).

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24421

Hmm...I wonder what we might have used a Mii for in MP3....
This is a smilie

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24556

If you plan on playing MP3, you'll need this update (although, I think
the MP3 disc can install it...I'm not 100% sure about how that works
though).

Also, there is, uhh, something else that I think you'll need this
update for...and it will be appearing soon. Sorry, can't be any more
specific than that This is a smilie.

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24622

Yeah, but the target for this marketing isn't people that already know
about MP3 (which are the people that already read
IGN/GameSpot/Cubed3/whatever).

It's aimed at people that own a Wii but don't have a clue about what a
Metroid is This is a smilie
Quick Edit
And this would be the thing I've hinted at in the last few days :)

Quote:

NintendoArielle said:<br>I genuinely thought it was a
gameplay demo when I first read the letter upon waking up. Then I just
saw that they were videos which couldve simply been distributed to IGN
and whatnot. :sleep:

Yeah, but the target for this marketing
isn't people that already know about MP3 (which are the people that
already read IGN/GameSpot/Cubed3/whatever). It's aimed at people that
own a Wii but don't have a clue about what a Metroid is :)

I got to see it finally, and it looks pretty good. Although, not
nearly as good as the actual game.

Compressed video running at 3/4 screen size at 30fps is no match for
480p 16x9 60fps uncompressed video goodness :0

Also, the guy that posted that video completely missed the blinky
button that lets you hide the video window and play scratch and peek
with some pretty concept art. Course, he sounded pretty sleepy (took
him quite a while to notice the date for the 2 yet to be released
videos 8) ).

And, it's already been leaked elsewhere on the web (so no point in
keeping it a secret), but there are more than 4 videos total that will
eventually be viewable through this channel.

I guess they decided to keep the bandwidth usage down by rolling it
out in stages. Not what I would have chosen, but it's not my decision
to make (I b programr...me not qualified to make "marketing" decisions
:| ).

Keep in mind that this is all new territory for Nintendo, and they're
a fairly conservative company. They've never done anything like this
before, so, as usual, they're being very cautious about it.

As Garth put it so elegantly, "We fear change" This is a smilie

I don't know all the details (I didn't write any of the code), but
here's what I do know:

The channel is a separate program, like any of the other channels.

It plays videos that are streamed from a server.

I _think_ it stores the last one played in local memory/storage, so if
you watch the same video 2 times in a row it should play much faster
the second time.

I _think_ it uses the H.264 video compression (at least that's what it
was using at one point...not sure what was picked in the end).

The entire channel (programming, art, video) was all created
internally by people at Retro Studios (although, obviously using
libraries supplied by Nintendo).

Edit:
Modplan Man's internet connection is apparently a lot faster than mine
This is a smilie

Heh. This has actually been planned for awhile....I mean, uhh...

yeah, we whipped this up in 2 days. Retro am godz! This is a smilie

( Edited on 10.08.2007 18:44 by Mongo )

I'm not 100% sure (and the 2 programmers that worked on this are both
out this week, so I can't ask them).

What I do remember when talking to J(*) about this was that it was
using some variety of H.264 (which is the same movie
format/compression used for movies in iTunes and Video iPods), but
some form of WMV was also an option.

I'm pretty sure this was built in to the channel code, not the Wii
(although, now that a player has been written, I guess it's not out of
the question that it might be ported back in to the libraries used by
the Opera browser and other channels...it wouldn't be the first code
written by someone at Retro that's made it way to more general use on
the Wii ;).

I know J had to write some custom assembly to decode the data faster
than the original sample code did it, so we could play these
particular videos without losing the audio sync.

(*) I'm just using J's first initial. Not sure if he wants his name
bandied about on a public forum This is a smilie.

That would be nice, but until there's a whole lot more storage space
that can be directly accessed by Wii Channels, it's not going to
happen.

Keep in mind that your Wii has 512MB of built in storage, a large
portion of that taken up by other stuff you've probably downloaded.

To give you an idea of the size required, the extremely limited demo
shown at E3 in May 2006 was 480MB. The slightly larger demo made a few
months later (forget what it was for) was 630MB. The demo that was
shown off in at the "Gamer's Summit" in May, 2007 was 1.9GB (that was
the one all the media was invited to so they could get a preview of
the game, but they weren't supposed to release any of the actual info
about it until July...and most waited till then to start raving about
it).

I can't seem to find the E3 demo from this year, although it may have
been the same one we showed at the Gamer's Summit...the last 4 months
are a bit blurry at this point. This is a smilie

Could we make a demo? Sure This is a smilie

Could you download it to your Wii? Not likely. It would probably have
to be on a disc, which means it would probably have to be sold in
stores...at which point it's not really a demo anymore (ok, I know
that some companies have sold demo discs in the past, but that's not
what I consider a demo). A slightly more reasonable way to do it would
be to include it free with game magazines (Nintendo Power for
instance), but then you're right back to targeting the people that are
probably gonna buy it anyways.

Even if people were willing to buy a limited demo on a disc (or buy a
magazine, or buy another game, etc.), we would have had to finish it
first, since it takes just as long to make a demo disc as the full
game (it still has to go through QA, still has to be manufactured,
still has to be shipped, etc.).

Which means we would have had to delay the game (again) in order to
make the demo.

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24865

One thing to note: The music they've added to the trailers is NOT the
game music. It appears they've turned off their music in game so they
could still have the Sound effects, and then added in their own music
for the videos.

Since they're splicing together a bunch of separate video clips, that
makes sense.

And, this might be obvious to most people, but I saw a comment on the
GameTrailers site about how the music was so "awesom", so I thought
I'd clarify it

Some of those were on the preview channel. Others were stuff they
captured from their own gameplay.

Also, check out Nintendo's official Metroid3 page:
http://wii.nintendo.com/site/metroidprime3/index.jsp

(also available as a link from http://metroid.com ).

It's got another video with a bunch of snippets (some that haven't
been seen before), and a little bit of extra info about the game.

And an update from the lead AI guy - http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000132.html

Launch party pictures -
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/index.php?user=UnlivedPhalanx

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/23917/2/

Eh?

Unless my brain has turned to complete mush, I'm pretty sure Nintendo
has already said that Galaxy will be out THIS year for Japan and the
US (not sure about Europe).

Or have the 80-hour weeks finally caught up with me....

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/23998

And, uhh, that MP3 demo was kinda lame (but then I guess all of us that know how to play it well are a bit busy right now).

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24052

I keep trying to tell people the Wii has a lot more power than you've seen in a released game so far. Everything I've seen so far could have been done on a GameCube (and, most of them were probably developed on GameCube hardware, at least at first...MP3 was too, but we've had a fairly long time to work with the real Wii dev kits now).

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24139

Actually, the Wii is about 1.5 times as powerful as GameCube for CPU
_and_ GPU. It's closer to 2 times as powerful as a GC overall (1.5 X
1.5 = 2.25 in theory, but it seems to be about twice as powerful as a
GC in practice...although maybe that means we just need some more time
to optimize our engine to reach that full potential).

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24421

Hmm...I wonder what we might have used a Mii for in MP3....
This is a smilie

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24556

If you plan on playing MP3, you'll need this update (although, I think
the MP3 disc can install it...I'm not 100% sure about how that works
though).

Also, there is, uhh, something else that I think you'll need this
update for...and it will be appearing soon. Sorry, can't be any more
specific than that This is a smilie.

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24622

Yeah, but the target for this marketing isn't people that already know
about MP3 (which are the people that already read
IGN/GameSpot/Cubed3/whatever).

It's aimed at people that own a Wii but don't have a clue about what a
Metroid is This is a smilie
Quick Edit
And this would be the thing I've hinted at in the last few days :)
[quote][b]NintendoArielle said:[/b]<br>I genuinely thought it was a
gameplay demo when I first read the letter upon waking up. Then I just
saw that they were videos which couldve simply been distributed to IGN
and whatnot. :sleep:[/quote] Yeah, but the target for this marketing
isn't people that already know about MP3 (which are the people that
already read IGN/GameSpot/Cubed3/whatever). It's aimed at people that
own a Wii but don't have a clue about what a Metroid is :)

I got to see it finally, and it looks pretty good. Although, not
nearly as good as the actual game.

Compressed video running at 3/4 screen size at 30fps is no match for
480p 16x9 60fps uncompressed video goodness :0

Also, the guy that posted that video completely missed the blinky
button that lets you hide the video window and play scratch and peek
with some pretty concept art. Course, he sounded pretty sleepy (took
him quite a while to notice the date for the 2 yet to be released
videos 8) ).

And, it's already been leaked elsewhere on the web (so no point in
keeping it a secret), but there are more than 4 videos total that will
eventually be viewable through this channel.

I guess they decided to keep the bandwidth usage down by rolling it
out in stages. Not what I would have chosen, but it's not my decision
to make (I b programr...me not qualified to make "marketing" decisions
:| ).

Keep in mind that this is all new territory for Nintendo, and they're
a fairly conservative company. They've never done anything like this
before, so, as usual, they're being very cautious about it.

As Garth put it so elegantly, "We fear change" This is a smilie

I don't know all the details (I didn't write any of the code), but
here's what I do know:

The channel is a separate program, like any of the other channels.

It plays videos that are streamed from a server.

I _think_ it stores the last one played in local memory/storage, so if
you watch the same video 2 times in a row it should play much faster
the second time.

I _think_ it uses the H.264 video compression (at least that's what it
was using at one point...not sure what was picked in the end).

The entire channel (programming, art, video) was all created
internally by people at Retro Studios (although, obviously using
libraries supplied by Nintendo).

Edit:
Modplan Man's internet connection is apparently a lot faster than mine
This is a smilie

Heh. This has actually been planned for awhile....I mean, uhh...

yeah, we whipped this up in 2 days. Retro am godz! This is a smilie

( Edited on 10.08.2007 18:44 by Mongo )

I'm not 100% sure (and the 2 programmers that worked on this are both
out this week, so I can't ask them).

What I do remember when talking to J(*) about this was that it was
using some variety of H.264 (which is the same movie
format/compression used for movies in iTunes and Video iPods), but
some form of WMV was also an option.

I'm pretty sure this was built in to the channel code, not the Wii
(although, now that a player has been written, I guess it's not out of
the question that it might be ported back in to the libraries used by
the Opera browser and other channels...it wouldn't be the first code
written by someone at Retro that's made it way to more general use on
the Wii ;).

I know J had to write some custom assembly to decode the data faster
than the original sample code did it, so we could play these
particular videos without losing the audio sync.

(*) I'm just using J's first initial. Not sure if he wants his name
bandied about on a public forum This is a smilie.

That would be nice, but until there's a whole lot more storage space
that can be directly accessed by Wii Channels, it's not going to
happen.

Keep in mind that your Wii has 512MB of built in storage, a large
portion of that taken up by other stuff you've probably downloaded.

To give you an idea of the size required, the extremely limited demo
shown at E3 in May 2006 was 480MB. The slightly larger demo made a few
months later (forget what it was for) was 630MB. The demo that was
shown off in at the "Gamer's Summit" in May, 2007 was 1.9GB (that was
the one all the media was invited to so they could get a preview of
the game, but they weren't supposed to release any of the actual info
about it until July...and most waited till then to start raving about
it).

I can't seem to find the E3 demo from this year, although it may have
been the same one we showed at the Gamer's Summit...the last 4 months
are a bit blurry at this point. This is a smilie

Could we make a demo? Sure This is a smilie

Could you download it to your Wii? Not likely. It would probably have
to be on a disc, which means it would probably have to be sold in
stores...at which point it's not really a demo anymore (ok, I know
that some companies have sold demo discs in the past, but that's not
what I consider a demo). A slightly more reasonable way to do it would
be to include it free with game magazines (Nintendo Power for
instance), but then you're right back to targeting the people that are
probably gonna buy it anyways.

Even if people were willing to buy a limited demo on a disc (or buy a
magazine, or buy another game, etc.), we would have had to finish it
first, since it takes just as long to make a demo disc as the full
game (it still has to go through QA, still has to be manufactured,
still has to be shipped, etc.).

Which means we would have had to delay the game (again) in order to
make the demo.

http://www.cubed3.com/topic/24865

One thing to note: The music they've added to the trailers is NOT the
game music. It appears they've turned off their music in game so they
could still have the Sound effects, and then added in their own music
for the videos.

Since they're splicing together a bunch of separate video clips, that
makes sense.

And, this might be obvious to most people, but I saw a comment on the
GameTrailers site about how the music was so "awesom", so I thought
I'd clarify it

Some of those were on the preview channel. Others were stuff they
captured from their own gameplay.

Also, check out Nintendo's official Metroid3 page:
http://wii.nintendo.com/site/metroidprime3/index.jsp

(also available as a link from http://metroid.com ).

It's got another video with a bunch of snippets (some that haven't
been seen before), and a little bit of extra info about the game.

And an update from the lead AI guy - http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000132.html

SkippyJr

2007-08-25 12:14:40 pm

A list of the uncovered new developers (only a few more days to know if they are right!). I'm not too sure about the ones with leading '?'s. This list includes BarryH's discoveries.

Artist: Samuel H. - Midway
? Artist: Ian M.
? Artist: Stephan W. - school - no longer with Retro
? Designer: Mark W.
Character Artist: Cliff
Character Artist: Ian O. - Sony - now at Terminal Reality (2007) - http://www.sciance7.com/
Environmental Artist: Matt M. - school
Programmer: Ryan C. - school
Programmer: Andy H. - 3DRealms
Programmer: Bobby P. - 3DRealms
Programmer (tools engineer): Aaron W. - EA
Programmer (AI): Jesse S.
Writer: Aaron O. - Funcom/Sony/NCsoft

Edit: forgot Jesse S.

BarryH

2007-08-26 07:52:06 pm

Ian's there alright. I haven't come across Stephan or Mark though. The others all check out. According to Aaron W, they've 55 full-time employees. Hardly seems worth it to go listing 'em all, seeing as the thing's actually shipping today!

Samuel H at the office 5 weeks back, photo take by Matt M: http://conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=180003&stc=1&d=1186175006

Doodle from Ben Sprout - I doubt this guy made the final build: http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r2/bsprout/metroidX3web.jpg

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1545674/20061113/index.jhtml

Here's a video from last year -
http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1545687&vid=119685

Can't watch it from here in Ireland - anyone care to host it elsewhere?

BarryH

2007-09-05 07:43:50 am

Bobby Pavlock's actually listed as an artist. He was a designer on Daikatana, American McGee's Alice, The Hobbit, Duke Nukem Forever and Batman Begins (the mobile phone game)

More new folk -
Brian Kowalczyk and Raphael Perkins came from 3D Realms too.

Retro hired the legendary Frank Maddin as a coder - Crystal Caves, Monster Bash, Realms of Chaos, Shadow Warrior and Brute Force

Brandon Salinas - Designer on The Hobbit, Area 51 and Asheron's Call.

(He was previously a tester on Crusader: No Remorse, Wing Commander: Prophecy, Jane's Combat Simulations: F-15, Ultima Online 2 and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri)

Bill Vandervoort from Monolith Productions - Level Designer for Claw, Blood II: The Chosen, No One Lives Forever, Aliens Versus Predator 2 and Tron 2.0. He was also the Senior World Designer for The Matrix Online

Jay Fuller - Level Designer for Tex Atomic's Big Bot Battles, Alien Versus Predator 2, Tron 2.0, The Suffering and Mob Enforcer

Scott Carpenter worked as a designer at Fastlane Games and an environmental artist at Castaway Entertainment, before becoming a world builder for Ultima Online: Samurai Empire. He's now with Midway Austin.

Karen Welford worked on 100 Bullets at Acclaim, and on Jaws Unleashed and The Outfit at Critical Mass Interactive. She works at Midway Austin now too.

Jonathan DeLange was a level designer at Edge of Reality, working on Pitfall: The Lost Expedition and Shark Tale.

Andy Schwalenberg - Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, Turok: Evolution. Also worked at Edge of Reality for a while.

Aaron DeOrive was also "Minister of Fiction" for Ultima Online 2

Thomas Robins used to work for The Amusement Machine and High Voltage Software

Cliff Young was an artist at Timegate Studios and Terminal Reality.

Ian Olsen is at Terminal Reality now.

Kip Carbone's left for Bottlerocket Entertainment.

Alejandro Roura's left for Crystal Dynamics.

Ryan Cornelius on Neogaf:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=7678340#post7678340
"This game is quite a bit better than TP."

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=7688043#post7688043
"I've seen proof of 100% in 6 hours... so... yeah."

Andy Hanson says it took him just over 20 hours to finish it on "easy".

Jack Mathews left some comments on Shacknews review regarding the 2 month wait for Europeans:

http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=15012658

"Also the same place where there are six different languages to work with and a TV "standard" with two completely different refresh rates and resolutions!"

"It's a large number of things.

It probably has to do with the way Nintendo has traditionally worked, which is to toss translations over the fence after the Japanese version is done. Either way, it is unfortunate for Europeans to have to wait. With the way TV's are now though, I'd just buy an NTSC Wii and import everything if I lived over there. I'd also probably wear a beret."

"One more thing that you have to keep in mind is that we're all terrible engineers. That's the primary reason why."

Then Bobby Pavlock chimed in with "No no, they really are horrible engineers. :) -X"

Bobby - "Don't get me wrong, I totally understand your concerns. In the end, I think you will find a nice mix."

More of Jack's comments:

"Or maybe it's that shooting is what makes for good movies, and the sum of the game can't be defined by the pre-press? Maybe?"

"The person recording the video didn't use hyper mode until the end of the encounter for dramatic effect. However, popping into hyper mode right at the beginning lets you pop the enemies in a few shots."

"Did you play sky town? It's got really ambient music."

"I'm not sure it really matters in the "timeline" where Metroid 2 is. FWIW, I believe Hunters happens after Prime 3 though."

Don Hogan's thoughts on Hunters - He was a 'Supporting Artist' - working on character textures

"As this game was built on Metroid Prime art assets, the original team was asked to help out on occasion. A lot of us contributed to it and had a really nice time doing it as a break in the middle of the MP:Echoes development cycle."

Bobby Pavlock's actually listed as an artist. He was a designer on Daikatana, American McGee's Alice, The Hobbit, Duke Nukem Forever and Batman Begins (the mobile phone game)

More new folk - 
Brian Kowalczyk and Raphael Perkins came from 3D Realms too.

Retro hired the legendary Frank Maddin as a coder - Crystal Caves, Monster Bash, Realms of Chaos, Shadow Warrior and Brute Force

Brandon Salinas - Designer on The Hobbit, Area 51 and Asheron's Call.

(He was previously a tester on Crusader: No Remorse, Wing Commander: Prophecy, Jane's Combat Simulations: F-15, Ultima Online 2 and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri)

Bill Vandervoort from Monolith Productions - Level Designer for Claw, Blood II: The Chosen, No One Lives Forever, Aliens Versus Predator 2 and Tron 2.0. He was also the Senior World Designer for The Matrix Online

Jay Fuller - Level Designer for Tex Atomic's Big Bot Battles, Alien Versus Predator 2, Tron 2.0, The Suffering and Mob Enforcer

Scott Carpenter worked as a designer at Fastlane Games and an environmental artist at Castaway Entertainment, before becoming a world builder for Ultima Online: Samurai Empire. He's now with Midway Austin.

Karen Welford worked on 100 Bullets at Acclaim, and on Jaws Unleashed and The Outfit at Critical Mass Interactive. She works at Midway Austin now too.

Jonathan DeLange was a level designer at Edge of Reality, working on Pitfall: The Lost Expedition and Shark Tale.

Andy Schwalenberg - Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, Turok: Evolution. Also worked at Edge of Reality for a while.

Aaron DeOrive was also "Minister of Fiction" for Ultima Online 2

Thomas Robins used to work for The Amusement Machine and High Voltage Software

Cliff Young was an artist at Timegate Studios and Terminal Reality.

Ian Olsen is at Terminal Reality now.

Kip Carbone's left for Bottlerocket Entertainment.

Alejandro Roura's left for Crystal Dynamics.

Ryan Cornelius on Neogaf:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=7678340#post7678340
"This game is quite a bit better than TP."

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=7688043#post7688043
"I've seen proof of 100% in 6 hours... so... yeah."

Andy Hanson says it took him just over 20 hours to finish it on "easy".

Jack Mathews left some comments on Shacknews review regarding the 2 month wait for Europeans:

http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=15012658

"Also the same place where there are six different languages to work with and a TV "standard" with two completely different refresh rates and resolutions!"

"It's a large number of things.

It probably has to do with the way Nintendo has traditionally worked, which is to toss translations over the fence after the Japanese version is done. Either way, it is unfortunate for Europeans to have to wait. With the way TV's are now though, I'd just buy an NTSC Wii and import everything if I lived over there. I'd also probably wear a beret."

"One more thing that you have to keep in mind is that we're all terrible engineers. That's the primary reason why."

Then Bobby Pavlock chimed in with "No no, they really are horrible engineers. :) -X"

Bobby - "Don't get me wrong, I totally understand your concerns. In the end, I think you will find a nice mix."

More of Jack's comments:

"Or maybe it's that shooting is what makes for good movies, and the sum of the game can't be defined by the pre-press? Maybe?"

"The person recording the video didn't use hyper mode until the end of the encounter for dramatic effect. However, popping into hyper mode right at the beginning lets you pop the enemies in a few shots."

"Did you play sky town? It's got really ambient music."

"I'm not sure it really matters in the "timeline" where Metroid 2 is. FWIW, I believe Hunters happens after Prime 3 though."

Don Hogan's thoughts on Hunters - He was a 'Supporting Artist' - working on character textures

"As this game was built on Metroid Prime art assets, the original team was asked to help out on occasion. A lot of us contributed to it and had a really nice time doing it as a break in the middle of the MP:Echoes development cycle."

nate

2007-09-05 01:03:18 pm

definitely sounds like the eurape is nintendo's fault and not retro's, but then again i suspected that already (why wouldn't it have been?). cute how they're recommending people buy an ntsc wii.

SkippyJr

2007-09-05 01:20:10 pm

A Retro employee's take (identity withheld to protect the guilty) on Hunters (paraphrased): Hunters is to Metroid and FPSs as AvP was to the Alien and Preditor series.

Loads of videos:

Inside Retro Studios (plus interview):
http://uk.gamespot.com/wii/action/metroidprime3/news.html?sid=6177914

Matt Manchester designed the "famous" Metroid wall! Famous? Who knew about it before BarryH and I found employee snapped photos? ;)

Interviews with Mark Pacini (director), Michael Kelbaugh (president), Bryan Walker (senior producer).
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/678854/Developer_Interviews_Metroid_Prime_3.html

And another interview:
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=1475790&cl=3873449

BarryH

2007-09-05 02:52:20 pm

Thanks, meant to post those videos too! Some spoilers in those, naturally.

One video metions 'speed runs', and another mentions they follow fan message boards and 'newsgroups' (what is this, 1994?)

Matt's project made it to PLAY magazine in February 05, and he has pictures on his website here: http://www.modelforge.com/MiscMetroid.html

He actually finished it a year before he started work at Retro.

Andrew Mills

2007-09-05 04:19:45 pm

Strategy Guide Writer

Which video is it where they mention speedruns?

BarryH

2007-09-06 05:49:11 am

Video here

Mark Pacini:

"I think people, more veteran players, or players that, say for for example, speed runners, things like that, will very much enjoy the benefits of what Hypermode gives you.

People who are just playing the game to play it and have a really great experience will scratch the surface of Hypermode, but I think people who spend a little bit more time with the game and and really want to understand how the systems work will get a great deal of benefit from Hypermode and encourage people to try and find different ways that they can use it to maybe get through the game quicker or make parts of the game easier on themselves, and I think that they'll enjoy it."

BarryH

2007-09-08 10:08:14 am

BarryH

2007-11-28 03:24:08 am

Interesting interview on Retro's history so far:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16389

I didn't know they'd done some work with Rare on Jet Force Gemini.

BarryH

2007-12-09 08:50:23 am

More art (spoilers!)

Sammy Hall's concept art -
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2362/2097079791_c76a16aacf_o_d.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2106/2097104869_7fea16cac8_o_d.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2036/2097883240_88e0e3fec1_o_d.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2097/2097882696_8ac7d0162c_o_d.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2123/2097883612_bdef54a5cf_o_d.jpg

Ben Sprout's environments and creatures - http://bensprout.com/mp3.html
And textures: - http://bensprout.com/textures.html

Matt Manchester posted some screenshots to show his contribution - http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=17807976

Prime Hunter

2007-12-09 10:08:45 am

Quote from BarryH:

Ben Sprout's environments and creatures - http://bensprout.com/mp3.html
And textures: - http://bensprout.com/textures.html

Textures made FROM SCRATCH without photo references??? Yeah... and THAT is why I will probably never be a good texture artist. laugh new

But those enviornment, door, and creature images that show off the polygons are great for a 3D artist such as myself to look at and study. Thanks for finding these!

Dazuro Ghenari

2007-12-12 01:55:51 am

[ M a n a t e e ]

Haha, that stuff's awesome!

Any pirate concept art/modelrips like that?

BarryH

2008-01-04 08:47:06 am

Another Retro Studios interview - http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8476&Itemid=2

Quote from Dazuro Ghenari:

Haha, that stuff's awesome!

Any pirate concept art/modelrips like that?

Not that I've come across.

Metakraid

2008-01-04 09:41:36 am

Amazing stuff in here! :-D Do you have any links to concept art from Metroid Prime 1 ?

SkippyJr

Edit history:

SkippyJr: 2008-01-04 09:31:06 pm

2008-01-04 07:43:41 pm

More concept art - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=9121404&postcount=9752

@Metakraid: Here is concept art from Andrew Jones for Prime and Echoes

Some "old" stuff
--
Things here come from Don Hogan's website. He was a world designer (aka environmetal artist) for Retro Studios starting with the first Prime up until May 2006. His homepage: http://www.donhogan.com

Quote:

World Development: This was the first pass at defining concepts, forms and textures of a world for a new title. It was ultimately not used, but was part of a pool of worlds we developed and selected from.

http://www.donhogan.com/gallery/other_CG/reptile/index.html
My notes: Scrapped concept from Corruption or from his new company's project?
Date: November 1 2006

Quote:

Another World Area: This was taking an approved world and starting the modeling. Concepts had been done by my Lead Artist and I was using them and trying to develop new techniques. All the terrain was sculpted in MAX using paint deformation on an editable poly object. The technique is a good way to quickly rough in an area, but hand detailing seems to be the best way to finish the model.

http://www.donhogan.com/gallery/other_CG/landing/index.html
My notes: A new Landing Site (one of many)! Very high level of geometry. Looks similar to the area being carpet bombed by Samus' ship in the demo video.
New notes: Original Thorn Jungle landing? There's a bit of Norion influence. Might be from his new company.
Date: May 19 2006

Quote:

Utility Vehicle: This prop started from a designer created object in a prototype room and evolved several times before it and the room containing it were finished. The texture was assembled by me based on ones by Ryan Powell for the other vehicles already done - I did the pixel pushing, I just used a template.

http://www.donhogan.com/gallery/other_CG/cargo_truck/index.html
My notes: Ryan Powell is an artist at Retro who worked on Prime and Echoes. Other vehicles? Matches up with the Galactic Federation motif in the already seen videos.
New Notes: Appears on the Olympus in at least two rooms.
Date: May 22 2006

More concept art - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=9121404&postcount=9752

@Metakraid: Here is concept art from Andrew Jones for [url=http://www.conceptart.org/artist/andrew-jones/images/foxy_/]Prime[/url] and [url=http://www.conceptart.org/artist/andrew-jones/images/MP2_BONUS/]Echoes[/url]

Some "old" stuff
--
Things here come from Don Hogan's website. He was a world designer (aka environmetal artist) for Retro Studios starting with the first Prime up until May 2006. His homepage: http://www.donhogan.com

[quote]World Development: This was the first pass at defining concepts, forms and textures of a world for a new title. It was ultimately not used, but was part of a pool of worlds we developed and selected from.[/quote]
http://www.donhogan.com/gallery/other_CG/reptile/index.html
My notes: Scrapped concept from Corruption or from his new company's project?
Date: November 1 2006

[quote]Another World Area: This was taking an approved world and starting the modeling. Concepts had been done by my Lead Artist and I was using them and trying to develop new techniques. All the terrain was sculpted in MAX using paint deformation on an editable poly object. The technique is a good way to quickly rough in an area, but hand detailing seems to be the best way to finish the model.[/quote]
http://www.donhogan.com/gallery/other_CG/landing/index.html
My notes: A new Landing Site (one of many)! Very high level of geometry. Looks similar to the area being carpet bombed by Samus' ship in the demo video.
New notes: Original Thorn Jungle landing?  There's a bit of Norion influence.  Might be from his new company.
Date: May 19 2006

[quote]Utility Vehicle: This prop started from a designer created object in a prototype room and evolved several times before it and the room containing it were finished. The texture was assembled by me based on ones by Ryan Powell for the other vehicles already done - I did the pixel pushing, I just used a template.[/quote]
http://www.donhogan.com/gallery/other_CG/cargo_truck/index.html
My notes: Ryan Powell is an artist at Retro who worked on Prime and Echoes. Other vehicles? Matches up with the Galactic Federation motif in the already seen videos.
New Notes: Appears on the Olympus in at least two rooms.
Date: May 22 2006