The third issue of Black Prophecy: Behind the Scenes has been released, and this one involves Creative Director Timo Krahl and Art Director Nick Ebenhoch discussing aspects of Black Prophecy's gameplay and art direction. They also talk about their careers in the games industry and their personal interests.

While the bulk of the interview focuses on the duo's interests and duties, there is some information regarding the game scattered throughout the piece. For example, Krahl provided some information on the in-game death penalty: "We don’t want to seriously punish the player – this would not fit the general atmosphere and gameplay direction. Therefore you will not lose any ship parts or receive any other permanent losses. But a ship gets "disassembled" slowly during a fight, single ship parts can be destroyed and alter the overall values of the ship – a ship with only one engine will become slower – if you lose a wing the attached weapons won’t be available anymore, etc. Of course these damages will not be permanent."

You can read the full interview below.

In this issue of Black Prophecy: Behind the Scenes, we have the pleasure to talk with Creative Director Timo Krahl and Art Director Nick Ebenhoch about Black Prophecy’s game design and graphics. We will also learn more about their career in the games industry and their personal interests.

Chris: 

Hi Timo, hi Nick. Thanks for taking the time for the third issue of Black Prophecy: Behind the Scenes. Why don’t you introduce yourselves to our readers for a start and tell us more about your area of responsibility in the development of Black Prophecy and your career in the game industry?

Timo:

Hi Chris, except for some short interruptions I have been working in the game development industry for about 10 years now and was on the payroll at Reakktor for most of that time. But at the age of 28 I wouldn’t call myself an old dog yet. I’ve started out with “modding” (at a time where this term wasn’t established yet), where I created campaigns for Warcraft 2, maps for Duke Nukem 3D and Jagged Alliance and animated characters for DOOM. I did my first professional works as level designer in the early conceptual phase of Neocron. Since then many things happened and if I would have to describe my current scope of duties I would say that, for a large part, I am the one who has to make the appropriate global design decisions for the game – this sometimes renders as a difficult endeavor to bring the interests and possibilities of the designers, artists, authors and the technical departments to a common ground. In addition to this I am also responsible for the audio/video department, have cut most of the trailers and also intensively grappled with graphics at times.

Personally I get quite much out of games, but I also am a huge movie buff and like taking a closer look at how they are produced. My big love is still the music – as I am a musician I often tinker with sounds, work with other bands and also produce my own tracks if time allowing. Next to all this mind melting media stuff I sometimes do sports or paint the town red with my buddies.

Nick:

Hi Chris, I am 28 years old and have been working in the computer games industry for 6 years now. Like many other game developers my actual job training has nothing to do with my current job. I’ve started at Reakktor as a career changer and originally applied as a level designer. Fairly soon thereafter, I switched positions into the graphics department, where my actual career took its beginning. Next to my interest for level design I also have a passion for technology and design. During the Neocron development I was able to live out this foible very well by developing and modeling weapons, vehicles and other futuristic assets (Editor note: In game development, assets are all components of a game, e.g. graphics, source code, music tracks, etc.). Thanks to the support of the other talented artists, who were already working at Reakktor at that time, I was able to break into the matter quickly and gather precious working experience. With Black Prophecy I had the opportunity to help design a game from scratch in my role as a graphic artist and contributed to the design of the game world and the space ships with my own ideas. In the course of the development I was promoted to the position of an Art Director and became responsible for the graphical direction of Black Prophecy, with everything that coheres to this.

In my leisure time I am often on the move with my camera to look out for new motives especially in old ruins, industrial areas and harbors. This is quite interesting for my passion as a level designer to study lighting situations or create new textures. Another benefit from this is that I can be creative in a completely different manner. Surprisingly I don’t play games that often. I am more interested in the technical implementation of game levels and assets instead of just playing the game. Also I still engage in game modding from time to time but rather in a small scale.

Chris:

In comparison with programming, game design and graphics creation appear to be less technical but more creative and artistic. How much technical knowledge is actually necessary to achieve results of high quality?  

Timo:

Quite much – also you have to distinguish carefully. A pure concept artist who works with pen and paper or with a graphic tablet and Photoshop in the best case doesn’t necessarily have to have a technical background, but the creation of 3D graphics in Max or Maya appears to be quite technical – I think that skilled 3D artists possess some sort of technical understanding for the matter. In the game design things render a bit different – hereby ideas can spout out of you without any kind of technical understanding or restrictions. Basically this isn’t wrong at the first glance – as unbound creativity actually never can be – but should be stemmed in an early phase to prevent to get lost in any versions that cannot be implemented. To have the technical understanding for possibilities, restrictions or working effort is of great advantage in the game design and even inevitable for some purposes. It is rather difficult to find these unbound ideas and hold on to them if your understanding tells you “This never will work out – way too difficult!” – Because if you can financially and time wise take the liberty to do so, the answer should be “Now more than ever!” Unfortunately this is not always the case.

Nick:

The creation of graphics also won’t work out without any kind of basic technical knowledge. This not only relates to how to create a “normal map” (Editors note: A normal map is a term from the 3D computer graphics and is used to achieve a high level of detail within shades without increasing the polygon count) but also the technical conditions how a graphics card is processing data to implement an asset optimally to tease out as much frames per minute as possible.

In the graphics creation, the working effort is growing day by day as well as the necessary knowledge and understanding. The times when it was possible to create low resolution textures without any additional effect maps are long one. In fact, modern graphic cards steadily offer new possibilities. As a graphics artist you have to grapple with these possibilities in the first place to achieve the best results with this newly gained knowledge, even if it the learning of new techniques to create said effects or maps in a time-efficient manner. The mix of technology and creativity is very powerful because you can create completely new things no one ever has done before and achieve fantastic results without much effort if you possess this appropriate understanding. It is definitely an ongoing learning process.
 
Next to said requirements for a graphic artist to create assets of high quality, it is also necessary to accept and heed self critiques and critiques from others. But without being a coder I would confirm that the artist job is much more creative and artistic. ;)

Chris:

In other space MMOs, but also single player games, it is possible to dock to a station with your ship to attend to your business in a graphical designed 2D environment. The gameplay trailer already showed that Black Prophecy will also have this possibility. In which form and scale will see this feature implemented in Black Prophecy?

Timo:

A real graphical docking (the flight into the hangar) of the player ship is not available at the moment. But if you reach a specific distance to a dockable station, you have the possibility to dock to this station via the menu after that the ship will get removed from the current scene and the player can use the station features like ship alteration, modding, trade, clan administration, etc. Depending on the menu selection, the appropriate interiors are displayed as a 3D scene in the background. We consciously designed these interiors somewhat lavishly as we might have plans with this feature in the near future.   

Nick:

As Timo already explained, there will be no visual docking for now. However, the required assets already exist. The implementation would be pure technical but you have to set priorities, like with so many other things in the game development, and the priorities are currently set to more important systems.

Chris:

Which way does a game feature go, beginning from the idea to the final implementation, if you take the just mentioned “station docking” as an example?

Timo:

In the beginning there is the game design document which is the operative collection of ideas and describes the overall construction of the game. Ideally this document is perfect in its first version, burned into titan plates and is then the bible of the further development process. However, this ideal case never happens and so the game design document is a small slimy and mean shapeshifter that has to be kept under control all the time. Now if you look at the “station docking” as a single feature you have to consider several factors: What kind of game am I doing? Simulation or action? Singleplayer or multiplayer? What are the technical possibilities? Which target group am I going for? How often will this feature be used? How did other developers solve this problem? Does it really benefit the game or is it just a nice to have?

For the “station docking” it would be most obvious to change the perspective and watch your ship flying into the hangar, landing and getting re-equipped in a pretty sequence. This was implemented before in this way and so can’t be that wrong. But if you consider all factors, problems suddenly appear. In an MMO, like Black Prophecy, players are mostly playing the game for more than 8 to 12 hours and it will sooner or later inevitably happen that the player doesn’t want to see the docking sequence over and over. But if you make the sequence cancelable, it will look strange to other players in the sector when they see a ship flying towards the hangar and then just jump ahead into it because the player skipped the docking sequence. The multiplayer component also displays another problem – assuming that 50 players decide to dock at the same time – all players would fly into a probably too small hangar, collide with each other and get stuck – in any case not a pretty sight. You could again work around this problem but if you consider the meaning of this feature, which is cosmetically in this case, and consider the problems it would create you will need to find a proper solution which would result in a drop of the feature in this case.

Nick:

The effort for the graphics department depends on the function a feature should have. In case of the “station docking” it would not be a notable effort as the assets already exist. Otherwise it would be necessary to build all required objects. The programmers then take what they need and work with the models until the feature is implemented.

A bit more lavish are special features which need to be discussed with the programmers first. Usually this requires an extra meeting in which the further proceeding has to be clarified. In this case it is definitely not sufficient to simply deliver the textured model. For the feature to modularly assemble your ship, the ship modules have to be created based on specific rules, like e.g. naming conventions, direction of the nodes (Editors note: Nodes are connection points between the single modules), the order of linking the nodes, etc. Thereby the way from the idea to the functioning feature is not always smooth and even. We had to adjust our graphical assets several times as they had negatively influenced parts of the game, like e.g. the performance.

Chris:

The community’s opinion about the death penalties is quite split. Certainly it is way too early to make a final statement as this feature requires intensive balancing but can you give our readers a first indication which way Black Prophecy will go in this matter?

Timo:

We have taxed our brains about several established systems and also developed some own systems like e.g. an insurance system. To explain all features would go beyond the scope of the discussion but generally we can say: We don’t want to seriously punish the player – this would not fit the general atmosphere and gameplay direction. Therefore you will not lose any ship parts or receive any other permanent losses.  
But a ship gets "disassembled" slowly during a fight, single ship parts can be destroyed and alter the overall values of the ship – a ship with only one engine will become slower – if you lose a wing the attached weapons won’t be available anymore, etc. Of course these damages will not be permanent.

Nick:

The impact and balancing are less dependent on the graphics. We have contributed to this system by providing a modular damage system that allows us to not just letting the ship disappear with an explosion. The ships still remain floating in space as a wreck for some time. With this we have kept the door open for any further possibilities.

Chris:

The most important components of a sleek space fighter are, without a doubt, its weapon systems. What kind of technical gimmickry can we expect with which you can turn your opposite into a bunch of space debris?   

Timo:

We have several terrific ideas for wicked weapon systems in the drawer but yet focused on rather conventional types. Generally we differentiate between projectile, energy and explosive weapon types. Explosive damage has a certain range; projectiles partially penetrate the ship’s shields and thus deal hull damage, but don’t damage the shield. Energy weapons diminish the shields and also deal hull damage once the shield is completely down. In addition we have weapons that just deal shield damage, short distance weapons and long distance weapons like a sniper cannon. Consorting these weapons we also have the classic dogfight weaponry like laser, particle beams or gatlings, as well as different kinds of rocket types which can also be homing. With this you can create an individual combat style by combining different weaponries in cooperation with a strategic set up of your player team.

Nick:

The weapon effects are quite sophisticated, combining simple geometry with lavish particle systems. The different effects don’t just have a color and other structures but emit most diverse particles that let an effect look like plasma or create small train of “sonic rings” on ballistic weapons. Weapons differentiate from each other by their projectiles, muzzle flashes and the impact effect and so give you always something new to discover.

Chris:

Will it be possible for low level players to engage high level players or is it the best choice to leg it if a large tub comes around the corner?

Timo:  

With our mission system we put very much emphasis on allowing players with larger level differences to meaningfully play against and with each other. The fact that only players of the same level or a very small level difference can play against or with each other like it is handled in many other MMOs was always the main factor that we felt as very annoying and we paid much attention to design this more flexibly in Black Prophecy. In a pure one-on-one the level of course has a higher meaning but in Black Prophecy many other factors like the individual weaponry, its orientation and the player skill come into play. A simple “Yes/No” answer to this question does not exist but I think that is a good thing.

Chris:  

To make your hobby your job is a dream for many players which can however become reality. What do you need to bring along to successfully set foot as a game designer or graphic artist in the games industry?

Timo:

Openness for all genres, the will to try out new things, the power to nerve and the skill to clothe your thoughts in words. As a game designer you of course need certain creativity – but it is not enough to simply be “creatively mad”. You need the previously mentioned technical understanding but shouldn’t be driven into your own ideals. It is also of advantage to have a long history with games to understand the origins and why some of these concepts still work nowadays. A general analytical understanding of the games market is also important to realize why specific concepts work out well at a specific time. Nobody is being paid, no matter how creative he/she is, if the ideas are impossible to implement technically, incomprehensible, economically apprehensive, too bigoted or depleted.  

Nick:

To set foot in the games industry as a graphics artist you should have intensive exercise in the creation of graphics. Terrific practice grounds for this are games that allow modification (modding). This shows the future employer that you are able to acquire knowledge proactively and most likely are able to work in a team. Creativity is not stringently necessary but of course of big advantage. If you can only model or texture already existing models like weapons or cars you probably won’t get a job in a studio that develops fantasy games but there are still enough companies that exactly need these kinds of assets.

The more diverse your portfolio turns out, the higher the chances are in general. Thereby it is not even important that your technical knowledge or the perfect implementation of your models is superior. Such details are obtained quite quickly in professional game development. Another thing that you need to bring along is the will to improve yourself further because stagnation only produces unsatisfying results as time goes by. 

Chris:

Which games do you play in your leisure time and what are your all-time-favorites?

Timo:

I am neither bound to platforms nor to specific genres – no matter if PC, console or handheld – But I rather play games more analytically instead of completing them. I just name some of my favorite titles that made a dent for specific reasons – without naming the reasons – this would be a bit too much.

Diablo 1, Soul Calibur 1, Metal Gear Solid 1, Final Fantasy VII, Jagged Alliance, Silent Hill 2, God of War, Strike Commander, Bubble Bobble, Resident Evil 4, Quake 1, Day of the Tentacle, Devil May Cry 1,  Sonic 1, Prince of Persia, DSA-Sternenschweif, Burnout 3, Ultima Online, Half Life 1, Dune 2, Wing Commander 3, Oblivion, Grandia 2, Beyond Good and Evil, Guitar Hero, Disciples II, Soul Reaver, System Shock 2

Nick:

My marked preferences are simulations. No matter if air combat, race simulations or weapon at the ready. The important thing is to have complex controls. Among these I count IL-2 Sturmovik, Lock On, Microsoft Flightsimulator (no, I don’t have a home cockpit! ;) ), Operation Flashpoint, Arma2, Test Drive Unlimited, Gran Tursimo series,  rFactor, GTR series etc.
Other games I also liked to play are e.g. Final Fantasy VII, Silent Hill 2, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Unreal Tournament, Mafia or Mirror’s Edge.

Chris:

And last but not least, the obligatory question: Pirate or Ninja?

Timo:

I squint my left eye, lay back my head slantingly, tremblingly raise my fist towards the sky, open my mouth like only Sly Stallone can, feel the spit drops gathering on my lips – behind me an at least two-headed monkey and I am screaming “ARRRRRRRR!!!!!“

Nick:

A ninja pirate. Elegantly jumping from the fore yard to the main yard with a double backflip, a dagger in my mouth, the saber in my hands, cutting the enemy rig with my throwing knifes and swiftly evading the pistol shots and saber strokes. Oh yes, loot is a safe bet.