Conker: Live and Reloaded TeamXbox Interview

Conker: Live and Reloaded has been one of the most anticipated Xbox titles since it made its E3 debut back in 2003 as Conker: Live and Uncut. Obviously a lot has changed since that Live enabled demo, but the premise has always remained the same…be fun.

During the recent Conker: Live and Reloaded launch party in New Orleans, we had a chance to sit down with three of the leads for the Conker development team to talk about their experience in bringing their signature squirrel to the Xbox in a revamped version of Bad Fur Day and the all new multiplayer team-based shooter modes.

Spending and afternoon with these talented folks, it is apparent why Rare is considered one of the world’s top development studios; because of their people. Passion for creating the best possible gaming experience is their creed and it shows in Live and Reloaded.

So take in this exclusive interview with Chris Marlow – Lead Software, Stephen McFarlane – Lead Graphics, and Louise Ridgeway – Lead Animator, as they take you behind the scenes of the Conker universe.

Was the concept for revisiting the Conker franchise for a new game something that was pitched prior to the Microsoft acquisition of Rare or afterward?

Louise: We were all on different teams at the time, so it was actually after the acquisition.

Chris: I believe it was actually right on the cusp of the Microsoft acquisition. Chris Seavor (Lead Designer) and I pitched that we wanted to do a new Conker game. We knew it from working on the previous game and so we felt “Conk” could do another crap of the whip and it was obvious it would suit the Xbox.

Louise: Conker: Live and Reloaded probably wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for a console like the Xbox because of the whole Xbox Live aspect of it. That is what we are really proud of. To create the game that we wanted, we simply couldn’t have done it on any other console.

Was the original pitch of the new Conker title as a multiplayer game or is that something that evolved after the concept?

Chris: The original pitch included bringing Bad Fur Day over, but then it was obvious we needed to push the Xbox Live side of things as well. At the time we really didn’t know anything about the Xbox, but Microsoft wanted a strong Live component. So we said, ok, we have this Conker Deathmatch, so let’s see what we can do with this. That’s how it started off.

At the first E3 we basically made a Live version of the N64 game and then took the feedback from everyone. From that we spun the E3 demo on its head and made that the thrust of the new game. Everyone knew it was fun, but then we added in the class system and ditched the less popular N64 multiplayer game types. Everyone loved the Beach and then there was Colors, which essentially became The Fortress in the new game. The Heist was really, really popular but it just didn’t fit in this game. We could have done a Heist, but it wouldn’t have sat in with the SHC (Squirrel High Command) vs. Tediz feel of Live and Reloaded.

How many people, in total, eventually worked on Conker: Live and Reloaded?

Chris: Well, it started off with only a few people, like four or five, and that slowly ramped up over a year and a half or two years until we maxed out at about 35 or so. We ramped it up pretty significantly. Anyone that thinks doing a port is an easy option, has never done it. It is just has hard, if not more so, than doing a completely new game.

Louise: Plus we changed things. We changed some of the cut-scenes in the single-player game. It’s pretty much the same, but there are a lot of new, funnier things to play through.

Chris: The audio was pretty much locked in because we obviously used a high sample rate, so it sounds a lot better. After that, we basically gave our cut-scene guys an idea of what the scene does, what they couldn’t change and then asked them to make it better. There was stuff that I looked at in these cut-scenes, that I knew very well from the N64, and was like…hey, I don’t remember it doing that. That was really cool!

Louise: Plus we could do a lot more with everything in the game, not just the cut-scenes. All the effects, all the speech, all the sounds; everything was just extra good.

Chris (laughing): Extra good? Everything is extra good!

Louise: Yes, everything in Conker single-player is EXTRA good!

Stephen: Everyone is saying it’s been a long time in the making, and yes, I know that it has been 5 years since the first one came out, but it’s only been two years and a few months since we started this. We’ve really worked so hard.

Chris: Yeah, everyone thinks we finished the N64 version and immediately started on this and that wasn’t the case. This is actually the quickest game I’ve worked on.

Louise: Honestly, we had some of the best and most talented people working on this game and it shows.

Chris: The team is passionate and that really is the key and I think it shows in the final product. People that worked on this did so because they wanted it to be absolutely the best thing they could produce.

Stephen: Nothing half fast is in there. We checked and then double checked the lights on the single-player, we went through every level to make sure the lighting on each character and environment was correct, the fogging was correct…man, that EVERYTHING was correct.

It must be fun to go back and look at the original Bad Fur Day and compare the N64 and Xbox version side-by-side now, right?

Chris: Yeah, you work on the new one for a bit and then you look at it and see the beachfront scene, thinking to yourself, “yeah, that’s pretty much how it looked on the N64.” Then you go back to the original game and you’re like, what the hell was that!? At the time (on the N64), that was cutting-edge; that was pushing the N64 as hard as it could really go. We are in the situation now, on the Xbox, where we have pushed it as hard as it will go. And the Xbox 360, we’re gonna kick its ass too!

Being this is essentially two games in one, what aspect did the team focus on first?

Chris: Well, it started on the Live play.

Stephen: Art wise, it was the single-player and then it swayed over to the multiplayer.

Chris: From a programming point of view, we had a small team working on the single-player because that was the part we foolishly thought wouldn’t have a lot of work involved. Most of our resources went toward the Live play, which was like a year to year and a half, focused just on that. Then we got to a point where that was doing basically what we wanted it to and then we said, let’s take a look at single-player.

By that time we had developed so many new techniques while working on multiplayer, that we were able to implement them into the single-player. It wasn’t until the last six months we got to the point where everything in the single-player was there, the multiplayer is pretty much done, that we could finally just tweak.

When the Microsoft acquisition transpired, what was the general feeling amongst the Rare employees to the new direction of the company and how has that changed since that time?

Louis: It’s Microsoft, so how can you not feel happy to work for such a huge company and work in such a stable atmosphere? We really have been given the opportunity to do what we want to do and I think we are given a lot more leeway it what we can do. Then to work on something like the Xbox and Xbox Live aspect, we’ve never had that before.

Chris: We had a really good working relationship with Nintendo and we didn’t know if the Microsoft thing was going to be good or bad, but we’ve dealt with it really well and it’s pretty much second nature now. It’s just different with a Japanese company compared with an American company.

Stephen: When it comes down to it, we have to get games out. As a team, that’s all you want to do. With Microsoft, they want to get games out so we are all going to help each other in doing that to get some good stuff out there.

In regards to the multiplayer aspect of Live and Reloaded, it’s obvious from day one that you had plans for it to be far more than just deathmatch. What was the concept from the beginning, how did it develop, and are you happy how it ended up?

Chris: Our designer, Chris Seavor, is really experienced and has played a lot of online games; he really knows his stuff. So he had quite a vision for what he wanted out of the game. Because it started from the N64, and because we made an Xbox Live version of that for the first E3, he took that and had a good little think about it. That’s when we decided it should be class based, have a bit more decision making in the front end, and he came back with a really strong vision. The good thing about it, he never changed his mind. He was 95% right from the very start.

Louise: That is what makes it such a good game, just to have such a strong designer behind it. All of us, we totally trusted every decision he made. I worked with him on the original game and he always knows exactly what he wants out of the game and he can pass that onto everyone involved. You just know it’s gonna work so you don’t even question him most of the time.
The game is already been touted as the best looking game on the Xbox, but you still had to work with the memory limitations and other restrictions of a console. What did you do to overcome this?

Stephen: We first went out and did all the textures. We did loads of 512 x 512 textures on the characters and things. They were really like 1024 x 1024 on the characters, so the great thing is (with the characters themselves) we could render them off in publicity and stuff, then for the game we just reduced the size slightly. So we started off sort of over-the-top and then just pulled them back down in order to fit them into memory. That way we ended up with really detailed characters. We have this crazy programmer that wanted the actual graphics to look rendered, so he came up with loads of ideas and things in order to get the lighting just right, shadows, things of that nature.

Chris: We had to fight against the memory limitations for a long time, but we always had it in mind. The worst thing you can do is go right until the end of the game and then go, we’re 64 meg over. So we chipped away and chipped away on it, and because we over-shot the graphics from the start it allowed us to pull back little by little until we got it right into memory.

Stephen: We had guys concentrating just on memory because it is so important. You need to have someone looking at them 6 months to a year before the game comes out so you can do this fine balancing act.

Chris: One of the great things about the Conker team is that the artists and the programmers talked and worked very, very closely together. So when it comes to something like this, we were able to work through it.

What about on the animation side of things, what type of software or processes did you use?

Louise: We specifically used Maya for it, because we think it is the best animation package out there. We actually used Maya on the original game as well, so we had to take all the old characters, after they were boned up, and redo them. By the end of Conker, just on the Conker character alone, we had over 2,500 animations in the game. Everything in the single-player game is specifically animated; we try not to reuse anything.

Chris: In multiplayer we have six classes, so we could have easily used the same animations on the whole lot, but we didn’t.

Louise: Every character needed to be unique and have its own personality, just because if the character models look so good, they need to be animated just as good.

Chris: We used no motion capture; everything is hand animated.

One thing that might get lost in this, due to the fantastic visuals, is the audio production. Tell us a bit about the work involved here.

Louise: Robin Beanland (Lead Musician) is the best!

Stephen: All the music in the single-player was basically redone, wasn’t it?

Chris: From day one, the Conker team has treated audio just as important as the graphics.

Louise: Especially when you have someone as talented as Robin. When you play the multiplayer game, listen to the music for the castle. It is just brilliant!

As good as you feel the game is, there has to be some aspects that you would have liked to spend more time on…

Chris: Obviously when you start out there are all kinds of things that you want to get done, and due to time constraints and various other things, you always have to pull back. There are a couple of really cool features we had to take out, right at the end. We can’t really say what they are, but unfortunately we wanted to get the game out. Honestly, we could have taken another 6 months, but I don’t think we really lost anything. You can really spend as much time as you like on a game, but at some point you have to say it is good enough.

Stephen: It’s definitely the best game I’ve ever worked on.

There hasn’t been much talk about downloadable content, so what’s the deal there?

Chris: Downloadable content was officially removed, but we do support the auto-update patch. If we would have done downloadable content, it would have just been new levels, but we definitely wanted to ship in June. So we said, let’s make sure we hit this day; we really didn’t want it to drag on and there were still some questions regarding the downloadable content. It’s still not completely out of the question, but if we sell a million or two, then perhaps we could do it.

Louise (laughing): So if you want downloadable content…BUY THE GAME!

Chris (laughing): It’s like a ransom. Seriously though, we still have the flexibility to do it, but downloadable content will be determined by the demand.

So what does the future hold for the Conker franchise going forward onto the next-generation?

Chris: All I can say is, we are prototyping a new, unnamed project, that is going to be great.

As far as a development team, you’ve now most certainly been able to spend some time seeing what the Xbox 360 is capable of, and you’ve seen the specs on the PS3. So what are your thoughts on the respective consoles as game makers?

Chris: On the PS3, I don’t believe anyone is close to final hardware so they can say “we think it is going to do this”, but for us, the Xbox 360 is going to be great. The graphics are going to go like shit off a stick, and we’ll make the CPU do whatever we need it to.

At the end of the day, what is key on a console is, whether it is fun. You don’t have to be producing the world’s most powerful console to make a fun game. You can do it on a handheld, you can do it on a phone; it’s whether it is fun or not. The top three things you want a game to be is fun, fun, and fun. We are very happy with what we can do as a team and we’ll take any console and push it has hard as we can.

Louise: Just working on the 360 prototypes, we can already see that we have something so far ahead of anyone else, it’s going to be amazing.