Lost Planet 3 game director Matt Sophos discusses the technology that drives the new game.
“The tools are extremely powerful for artists and designers who are creating content for a game,” said Sophos. “Unreal has a fast iteration pipeline and the ease of use allows the artists and designers to be directors so they can work on shaping the scene and the experience rather than simply creating assets that go into a game. Another major benefit to using Unreal is the amount of documentation and training videos made available by Epic. This can dramatically cut down our training time for new employees.”
Although there are many tools to work with, Spark used Kismet and Matinee extensively in Lost Planet 3. Sophos said using these tools have allowed the team to empower level designers, artist, animators, and sound designers to quickly prototype, iterate, and polish gameplay scenarios and cinematics. With multiple departments being comfortable with Kismet and Matinee, engineers and designers are no longer the bottleneck when it comes to implementing assets into the game. This allows for rapid development and leads to a higher level of polish across the entire game.
Spark has had an ongoing relationship with Epic. Sophos said the feedback and communication between the two studios has been great. In addition to this tight-knit relationship, the studio has been able to utilize the Unreal Developer Network for any issues with the engine throughout development.
“UDN offers a great community knowledge base that we can tap into any time a question arises for how to tackle tough problems,” said Sophos. “This has helped answer many questions that would normally have taken weeks of R&D, allowing us to iterate more quickly than if we had to recreate the process from scratch.”
Spark has added a lot of proprietary technology on top of UE3, including dynamic storm states that punctuate the volatile nature of the hostile planet of E.D.N. III. The storm states allow for environmental storytelling, as well as giving the player new visuals that show the damage and the effects of the extreme weather conditions on the planet and its inhabitants.
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