Atomic-city

atomic-city
[[Image: File:Atomic-city-jason-wilson-concept-art.png |250px]]
URL	atomic-city.co.uk/
Commercial	No
Language(s)	English
Registration	N/A
Owner(s)	Jason Wilson
Status	Defunct
Type	Personal
Launched	2004

atomic-city was Jason Wilson's personal website.

Content

MediEvil

Design History

File:Medievil-front.jpg

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 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.

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Medievil was the brain child of Chris Sorrell whom wanted to make a 3D version of the arcade classic 'Ghosts and Goblins', at the beginning I was involved only in an art capacity. We wanted the art to resemble the 'Tim Burton' movie 'The nightmare before Christmas' but for it to be more colorful. At a certain point in the projects development the game play was found to be lacking as it was just a simple run around hack and slash game, I was then charged with re-designing big elements of the game as I have a game design background. I wanted the game to resemble an adventure (of the type I love to play) with arcade elements like the SNES 'Zelda game.'

I love creating little worlds and one thing I strongly believe in from a design point of view is the power of revisiting levels to uncover secret areas and missions it also re-uses artwork and is labor saving when creating new levels and events. All the design in Medievil worked wonderfully, I was surrounded by a fantastic team and as it was our first game in total 3D there was a great feeling of pioneering, every new task we achieved on the humble Playstation was a real step for us - I still remember getting our first very basic textured landscape on the Dev-kit at about 6-00am and the excitement that caused was a magic moment that may never be repeated!

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When I think back to my working methods on Medievil they were very basic (around 1995/6)! I would rough out a level on a piece of paper, the concept artwork that I would design was very basic, kind of childlike, like playschool (no photoshop). These drawing were then built in a very low polygon form in a software package called 'Nichimen.' I would then draw most of the textures in Photoshop 2, I did not even have a Wacom pen then so they were all drawn with a mouse which seems incomprehensible now!

I would map out every single variation in the attack patterns of the enemies and events, everything was mapped out before the game was programmed which really helped the game come together like a well planned jigsaw. This is the only time this has happened on a project in recent years but the way I worked on Medievil was that I not only dressed the levels in terms of art but I designed the actual terrain, I think this really shows, as the level rise and fall and the ground level is never too flat. The level terrain had a lot of interesting variety. I love going over and under areas and some of the map design in Medievil is as quirky as the characters. It's a shame I never got to work like this again as I believe I have a good eye for level design but nowadays my art jobs take up a lot of my time.

Some people (with long memories) say that Medievil took a very long time to make and yes that is true BUT the team did have to learn how to build the technology from scratch having never made a game like this before and write the code a number of abortive platforms (Saturn, PC and then finally Playstation). When the game had to re-designed I did the job very quickly - I think it only took about four months and then a few months of implementation with everyone helping out.

• Medievilscreenshot1.jpg
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File:MediEvilScriptExample.jpg

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, 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.

File:Japanese cover.png

Above. The Japanese version of Medievil.

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.

File:TheTeam.jpg

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

• Med1 dan earlydesign small.jpg
• Med1 dan earlydesign2 small.jpg
• Med1 dan earlydesign3 small.jpg
• Dragondan small.png
• Med japanese book.jpg

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

• Med1 small.jpg
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• Med1 graveyard small.jpg
• Med4 small.jpg

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.