Draft:Atomic-city

atomic-city was Jason Wilson's personal website.

Design History
Of all the games I have worked on in recent years this is the most fondly remembered by the public and the press. In interviews for other projects I am often asked about my time on Medievil, it's a nice question as Medievil was of [sic] the most satisfying game that I have worked on.

The game has a lot of my energy in a number of different areas from the game play design, art and scripting. It was an honor to have worked with such a talented but fledgling team and when I look back on all the long hours we spent making this game it is with a big smile, the thought of this game cheers me on. I would have loved to worked on one last Medievil game (but only if I was involved as I was on the first). Maybe there will be another Medievil game in the future, it would be odd to think I would not be involved but it would be interesting to see how it might turn out.

Not only did I serve as Lead artist and Lead designer on Medievil but I also got to write the preliminary script for Sir Dan's bumbling journey across Gallowmere. This was great fun working with INSERT NAME [sic], coming up with as many innuendoes and camp moments as we could get away with. It's not surprising that the main bad guy Zarok turned out to be the campest video game villain (at least that I know of!) but people really liked this humor and it think it made us different from a lot of games. I got to direct the voice over actors (as I have experience in directing voice over work), I got to work with one of my childhood heroes 'Paul Darrow' of (BBC) Blakes 7 fame. He was a real joy to work with (and I believe he was used on another of the Cambridge Studios games 'Primal'), very friendly and extremely interesting in the game itself. It was a bit of buzz for my inner child and at the end of the recording session I politely asked Mr Darrow to sign his recording script, it's little things like this which make the job very worthwhile.

Medievil went on to be a big success for the fledgling Sony Cambridge Studio and soon the company was to specialize in 3rd person action adventures with Medievil as the original blue print. In the days of Medievil we were not as disciplined and structured as the projects that came later but you know what, some times 'structure' can lead to too much 'beuocracy.' As good as our later games are I think they do lack that certain pioneering enthusiastic spark of that original team that made Medievil the well regarded golden oldie it is now. I'm not saying you don't need things to be structured but you do need to harness peoples creative juices and Medievil did just that. Above is a photograph of the original Medievil team in all their motley glory, just hanging about in a graveyard in Cambridge. I think this picture was published in the 'Times business section' I cannot quite remember why it was published but it's funny to think of all those sharp suited business types catching a glimpse of these gothic geeks :) Oh in case you were wondering I am the one at the back with the long hair, we were all a bit hippy and Goth in those days but we did not take ourselves seriously and we liked to have a laugh - I am glad to say.

The above picture was created by Jason Riley who also designed the Pirate Ship level.

Concept Art
MEDIEVIL (1995-97/cartoon children fantasy)

"This is only a part of the concept work that was created for Medievil. Artwork drawn on paper."

All images and concepts are copyright Sony Computer Entertainment. All rights reserved.

Dan's Evolution
DANIEL FORTESQUE. The first concept designs for the hero of Medievil. Dan first started life as a large bulky (undead) knight with a rather small skull. As the designs evolved it was decided that Dan should have no lower jaw bone and his body became small in size and his skull more abstract. Dan was then bought to life by the animations of Mitch Phillips. The dragon character is a version of Dan after he drinks the Dragon potion. To the right is a Japanese Medievil book.

Visual Concepts
The above crayon drawings were the first conceptual visuals of how the game might appear on screen. At an early stage it was decided that the game would only have three on rail camera modes - a camera behind Dan, camera to the side of Dan (sideways scrolling) and a camera above Dan. As our technology grew we used all manner of camera angles to follow Dan throughout the game.