Draft:Chris Sorrell: Difference between revisions

{{Infobox personnel

|caption=[[Chris Sorrell]] in ''The Making of MediEvil'' video.

|medievil= Game Concept / Direction<br>Main Programming<br>Producer

'''Chris Sorrell''': ''[[MediEvil]]'' presented a real mountain of challenges. The game started life as a project of a small, cash-strapped independent developer – [[Millennium Interactive]]. In addition to bringing together a brand new team – none of whom had really made a 3D game of this scale before – we were in ‘sell’ mode almost from day one, with the future of the studio riding on our ability to attract a major publishing deal as quickly as possible.

Of course another layer of challenge came from the fact that, like most other developers at that time, we were still feeling our way with 3D. Things like camera and character control presented a lot of interesting new challenges and required us to try out a number of approaches before we settled on solutions that seemed to work.

'''Chris Sorrell''': I’d certainly love to work with Sir Dan one more time and I have lots of ideas that I think would make for a great new ''MediEvil ''game. Sadly I think it’s an unlikely prospect since I no longer work for Sony, not to mention how times have changed in the years since Dan first left his crypt.

===MediEvil Boards Q&A===

'''1) '''In one of the files of the prototype, there is an item called the "[[Trident]]". Was this intended to be a weapon in the game? If so, what would its use have been like (melee or ranged attack)?

'''CS''' - That was a little extra added by one of the level programmers (Matt Johnston). There's a rock jutting out of the pond in the village and the idea was that if you stood there for a moment or two the game would start to spawn ducks swimming across the pond that you could shoot with a ranged weapon. I don't recall exactly why it didn't make the final cut. Most likely there were just too many other things to finish and debug. Shame - I love little easter eggs like this!

{{clear}}

'''CS''' - That's really part of the grander notion that we originally had for the Asylum - that you'd complete the maze and then go inside, playing a side-viewed platform section as Morten. That platform section never materialized, and we ended up almost having to cut the Asylum interior altogether - until we realized that we could pretty easily create those 'Smash TV' style attack rooms that we finally shipped with. ...Sometimes you put a lot of effort into something and it doesn't pan out and other times something really simple to create totally pays off as those I think those rooms did.

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I think you guys have discussed the Jabberwocky level on the forum and got it pretty much right - it was a chase section where Dan was pursued by the Jabberwocky that ultimately we see only in [[FMV]]. I did do a little work on this sequence myself (which was unusual because it was the only actual level programming that I did), and it wasn't really working out either in terms of fun gameplay or our ability to make a convincing looking forest chase within our tiny geometry budget so cutting this one was an easy choice (I think I'd been playing too much Crash Bandicoot!). The Halls of Illusion were going to feature lots of mirror based puzzles and [[Doppelganger|doppelganger Dans]] that you'd have to fight. This was another one where the concept was a little more ambitious than our relatively humble tech could really accommodate without consuming way too much development time.

'''1) '''An English disk of ''MediEvil 1'' has been uploaded online in Spain, and this version is a full build of ''MediEvil 1'' but contains several minor differences from the game we're familiar with. A main difference is that the battle-axe is obtainable during the first visit to the Hall of Heroes. Do you know if this was a beta version of the game? If so, would you have an idea of how it got to be in Spain?

'''2)''' This question is just related to an image in ''MediEvil 1'', which is found in the "[[The Gallows Gauntlet|Gallows Gauntlet]]" stage; 

{{clear}}

CS - I don't think the image has any real significance - just a texture created by Jason to convey the feel of a worn away ancient mosaic. ...It seems to be a Roman centurion which doesn't make it an image that's especially 'true' to the ''MediEvil'' world, but then again we never really defined where (or when) the game is set... Since ''[[MediEvil 2]]'' was in Victorian London, its fair to say that Gallowmere must have been a 'Dark Ages' realm somewhere in Europe and hence somewhere most likely ruled by the Roman empire a good while before that? :)

'''1)''' In one of the early builds of ''MediEvil'', there is an item called the "[[Lake Key]]". What was this to be used for?

'''5) '''Also, I have question about a character called "[[Uncle Mad]]" who can be found in Sleeping Village in the prototype;

{{clear}}

#He was a character rooted on the spot who threw bottles at you - i.e. very easy and not very interesting for the player to take out!

'''1)''' There is a level called the "[[Programmer's Playground]]" listed among the other levels in the code. What exactly was the purpose of this zone?

I wouldn't say this was a problem so much with the ''MediEvil'' team, but quite often programmers really don't like having to actually 'play' a game in order to test out features that they're working on - having a test environment allows them to jump right to the content they need (quite a time saving when you need to try out something many many times as you're hooking stuff up or trying to recreate a bug).

'''1)''' Hey Mr. Sorrell, I have something that I've been hoping for some time to ask; it's about ''MediEvil 2'' and your involvement with the project. I read in the interview with RetroGamer that you had several ideas written down for the ''MediEvil ''sequel, one of which involved the game being set in [[London|Victorian London]].

I don't know if every one of those ideas would have stuck had I directed M2 myself, but I passed them all over to James Shepherd during a couple of meetings we had at the start of the project. After the first such meeting a couple of things we'd been discussing clicked together and I went into the second session with a sketch of Dan's head atop one of the severed hands - the basis for [[Dan-hand]].

On balance I was probably more in tune with what they did in M2 than the changes that were made in MPSP.

*[https://twitter.com/trepan Chris Sorrell] on Twitter

*[https://rawg.io/creators/chris-sorrell Chris Sorrell] at RAWG.io

[[Category:Interviews]]