Mike Diskett inglese

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Mike Diskett is one of the Bullfrog's designers that, after Molyneux' leaving, decided to try to found their own software house. Remebered for his work on Theme Park, Magic Carpet and Syndicate Wars, he showed great talent, and now it seems that he has found in Mucky Foot, his new company, the right enviroment to create important titles. Urban Chaos, the game that he is currently developing, will surely be one of the most interesting games of the year, but, strangely, the hype behind it isn't as high as the hype behind much less complex titles. So, Nextgame.it thought that it was a good idea to let you know better Urban Chaos, Mike Diskett and his emerging group with this interview.

Nextgame.it: Why did you leave Bullfrog?

Mike Diskett: Three of the four directors left Bullfrog at the same time, it was a combination of many things. The most primary was because Bullfrog had lost the small family feel it had in it's early days, it had grown into a big corporation with over 100 employees. When EA canned Creation (Guy Simmons underwater futuristic submarine game) it just seemed the right time to leave. Myself and Fin where just starting on a game called Indestructables so leaving then didn't do too much damage to that game.

Nextgame.it: How do you feel now at Mucky Foot? Could you present your new company to the public?

Mike Diskett: It feels like a small elite team of highly trained ninja's taking on the world. We treat the office like a home from home, (infact I currently spend more time at the office than at home). Messy desks are the norm, infact in contrast to Bullfrog we have made tidying your desk for important visitors a sackable offence, any desk with less than 12 items of crap is a written warning.

Nextgame.it: How are your new studios organized? How many PCs have you there and what is their standard configuration?

Mike Diskett: We have 2 teams of about 12 people each. There's around 30 PC's running Windows 98. The PC's vary from pII 300's to PIII 550's with every imaginable graphics card from ATI RAGE to VOODOO 3000 to Matrox G400. The office is split down the center with a long long long corridor so the teams are naturally split half one side and half the other. We also have a sound studio and an IT man to keep our server running.

Nextgame.it: Could you name the people involved in the development of Urban Chaos and their respective roles, please? On which projects have they worked before?

Mike Diskett: Mike Diskett - Project Leader/ Lead Programmer
Despite only being twenty nine, Mike Diskett can rightfully claim to be an industry veteran as he began writing computer games when he was just 13 with several being published on the VIC 20. Mike's interest in computers continued through his teens and he obtained a Computing Degree from Staffordshire Polytechnic, spending his
year out working for the Ministry of Defence on head up displays for fighter aircraft.
However, after leaving College Mike decided that he wanted to use his programming talents in the computer games industry and so spent most of his time writing Amiga Shareware programs. His big break came in a very  unconventional way as he won his first proper job in the games industry through a competition in a computer
games magazine which was sponsored by Bullfrog Productions.
After cutting his teeth by programming a five player Amiga game, IT, which was written especially for the computer games TV Show Gamesmaster, Mike worked on various projects at Bullfrog acting as project leader and lead programmer on the Amiga conversion of Syndicate and the Amiga and Jaguar conversions of Theme Park.
From there Mike was given his first original project at Bullfrog Syndicate Wars. The game was published in October 1996 and was critically acclaimed receiving 90% plus marks throughout the computer games press and also topping the PC CD chart. During the development of the PC version Mike also worked as the engine programmer
on the PlayStation version which is due for imminent release.
After the release of Syndicate Wars Mike decided to fulfil a long held dream to form his  own development group and so left Bullfrog in February 1997 in order to form Mucky Foot along with Guy Simmons and Fin McGechie.
Mike lists his favourite computer games as Oids on the ST and Street Fighter Alpha on the PSX. Other hobbies include manufacturing home dairy produce and being tight.
He is also notorious for wearing shorts all year round.

Fin McGechie
Fin is one of the computer games industries most talented graphics artists. Having always had an interest in art, Fin enjoyed expressing himself with Melbourne Draw- his favourite subjects being naked women. As technology improved Fin continued to experiment and finally discovered Hi-Res on the Amiga. It was the work he did with this
system which gave him his big break - a position with Bullfrog Productions as a computer graphics artist.
Initially he worked as a conversions artist on the Mac and Megadrive conversions of Populous II and also on the Mac conversion of Syndicate. Form there he graduated to artist on the Megadrive and SNES versions of Syndicate a
project on which he was also involved in level design. His next project was as joint lead artist and design team member of the hugely successful Theme Park. Bullfrog' s next release Magic Carpet was Fin's first as Lead Artist. Magic Carpet represented a hugely successful change of direction for Bullfrog Productions and the graphics on that project attracted a great deal of praise. After that Fin contributed to a number of other Bullfrog programs while acting as conceptual artist and lead designer on Indestructibles.
However Fin, disheartened by waiting for a Bullfrog team to be free to make his ideas a reality decided instead to leave Bullfrog and join forces with Mike and Guy at Mucky Foot. Fin is a mysterious individual who is wary of revealing too much of himself. He claims to have no time for hobbies as he spends his spare time looking for an appropriate hobby.

Nextgame.it: Urban Chaos is one of the most interesting games of the year, but its name isn't much known to the mass, and the hype behind it is not as big as the hype behind other titles. Does this strange phenomenon come from your choices? If not, what causes do you think are behind it?

Mike Diskett: It's always hard for original games to get themselves noticed. The press often complains about lack of originality and the current trend for sequels but give masses of coverage to sequels Quake3, Tomb 4, c&c 3, Dungeon Keeper 2, Theme park 2, FIFA 2000 but Urban Chaos should start to get more recognition in the coming months as the big push starts before launch. Part of the problem is that Urban Chaos is not a simple thing to sell to people, it's doesn't fit into any one catergory (having so many genres within it).

Nextgame.it: Could you briefly present Urban Chaos for the people that don't know it?

Mike Diskett: Urban Chaos is a fighting, shooting, platform, driving, action, adventure, set in a realistic city environment at the turn of the millenium. The player takes on the roll of a cop and has to keep law and order in the streets, during which she gets drawn into the mysterious plot based on a prediction for the end of the world by Nostrodamus. The gameplay is quite freeform, you are free in the city to complete your objectives how you want to, be it stealth, hand to hand, big guns, cars, whatever.

Nextgame.it: Which are, in your opinion, the aspects that will make of Urban Chaos a masterpiece? Which one do you think the players will love in particular?

Mike Diskett: The fact that you play a cop. It's really incredibly satisfying arresting people, or pointing your gun at innocent civilians and making them "get on the floor and spread em". This also adds a lot to the missions as sometimes you have to keep the crime rate below a certain level while carrying out your own personal investigations into the cities escalating crime.

Nextgame.it: What is you single favourite aspect of Urban Chaos? On the contrary, is there something that you don't like and that you hope to correct soon?

Mike Diskett: The hand to hand fighting against multiple opponents in a 3d city works particularily well. It's very satisfying to knock an opponent off a roof top with a triple kick combo then spin round knock someone out with a side kick allowing you to arrest them. We are so near the end that almost all niggles have been removed, I think the difficulty level is still a bit hard (not for me you understand, but all you weaker players out there) and this is being sorted in the final balancing

Nextgame.it: The great freedom that the players will have in Urban Chaos remebers us Digital Anvil's Loose Cannon. Any connection? What is your opinion about this Digital Anvil's title?

Mike Diskett: I don't know the game, infact nobody here has heard of it. I just looked it up on the net, and you're right, it sounds familiar. Although it looks like they are concentrating on the driving aspect which changes the whole scale of the game. We have very close buildings with intricate roof tops to allow lots of platform elements.

Nextgame.it: Has the appearance of the main character been influenced by Lara Croft? Why more and more games are introducing women as main characters?

Mike Diskett: Well you've only got two choices for the sex of your main character Male or Female, I suppose Tomb Raider proved that having a female lead character wasn't going to harm sales (of course it doesn't guarantee sales either, tomb raider sold primarily because it was a great game).

Nextgame.it: We know that urban Chaos' plot is still secret, but could you at least "let slip some indiscretions" to arouse our readers and our own curiosity? What connections has the title of the game with the plot itself?

Mike Diskett: The title simply reflects the cities turning into turmoil or chaos as you approach the end of the game. Crime rates soar, gangs are wandering the streets without fear of the police, even civilians turn nasty. There's someone behind this change, someone manipulating the inhabitants to their own purpose. And this is what the player must discover.

Nextgame.it: Mucky Foot promises to bring graphics to a new level with Urban Chaos. Which Api did you use? Direct3D or OpenGL? And what are the most faboulous things that it can do? Do you plan to include curved surfaces and mirrors, too?

Mike Diskett: We are using Direct3D as it is supported by the most cards, and will be compatible with most people's hardware. OpenGL is a little easier to program for but has less support from the card manufacturers. Urban Chaos runs on PC and PSX, the PC version scales quite well and will run quite happily on first generation 3D cards.

Some of our snazzy effects include true projected shadows that go up walls, steps, etc. and the most beautiful reflective puddles ever seen (the reflection ripples as rain drops hit the puddle)

Nextgame.it: What do you think about the future 3D technologies (3dfx's T-Buffer, nVIDIA's NV10, Bitboys Oy's Glaze3D)? Which one, in your opinion will win the battle? Will Urban Chaos take advantage of them? Is NV10's T&L on board a right approach?

Mike Diskett: On Board T & L looks very interesting, and is possibly the only way the PC is going to compete with the new consoles, and is something we definitely want to support. Other than that the only thing we are interested in is pure Speed, the other snazzy effects such as the T-Buffer are stuff you can do now with a bit of fiddling around. I really hope the BitBoys succeed they seem to be a small team going up against the big corporations something I can definitely relate too.

Nextgame.it: What about the audio? Will Urban Chaos feature 3D Positional audio? If yes, which Api will it use? Creative's EAX or Aureal's A3D 2.0? Have you contacted professional bands or singers for the sound track of the game?

Mike Diskett: We are using miles sound drivers (in 3D mode) which supports EAX and Aureal's A3D, the user can choose as an option which sound system to use. We have voice overs recorded by professional actors. And an Urban Chaos album is in the works (containing work by several famous bands which feature in the game)

Nextgame.it: What do you think about Linux? There will be a Linux version of Urban Chaos?

Mike Diskett: Linux seems to be making big inroads in the server markets. Other than that its mostly tech heads with a grudge against microsoft who seem to be using it exclusively. What I really want is for as many people to be able to play Urban Chaos as possible, adding Linux to the supported OS's isn't really going to add many more users, especially considering how much work it would be.

Nextgame.it: What softwares are you using to program Urban Chaos? Could you briefly describe to our readers the various development phases behind a complex title like Urban Chaos?

Mike Diskett: We are using Microsoft Dev Studio, and source safe (this is a piece of software that lets everyone share the source code between them, making changes to the same files, then source safe merges everyones changes together). We have 5 programmers working on the game (between 1 and 2 on the psx version). I believe very much in evolving game design. I hate following a pre define design spec and think the only way to create a great game is to try as many options out as possible and see how they work/feel. This is unfortunately the least efficient way of creating a game. We started Urban Chaos with a loose design based around freedom for the player in a city environment.. We started off creating the basic engine, and associated editors, then the gameplay steadily crept in as more aspects of the game were implemented. The engine has steadily been upgraded throughout the whole development time.

Nextgame.it: What do you think about the new AMD's Athlon? Have you tried it with Urban Chaos? How does it perform? And have you already saw beta versions of Intel's Coppermine?

Mike Diskett: AMD's Athlon looks very good, huge cache, incredible floating point support, 200Mhz bus, it looks like a real Intel beater. We don't have one but I know for a fact it will run Urban Chaos like a dream

Nextgame.it: When will Urban Chaos be released, and what will be the minimum requirements to run it? If you had to choose, will you buy a new processor or a new 3D card to play better your new game?

Mike Diskett: Urban Chaos is mostly processor bound (as are a lot of 3D games) so a faster processor would probably give the best performance boost. Urban Chaos is very scaleable and will run on anything from a 233Mhz PC upwards

Nextgame.it: Except Urban Chaos, which are the games you are looking forward for the end of the year?

Mike Diskett: I'm so blinkedly concentrating on Urban Chaos that I'm not even fully aware of what else is coming out this Christmas, I'm looking forward to Quake3 as I'm currently enjoying playing it death match.

Nextgame.it: Finally, have you already some ideas for the games after Urban Chaos? Could you reveal us something about them?

Mike Diskett: Mucky Foot's second title is a quirky space sim, working title "Space Station", where the player builds and manages a space station and has to keep all the different alien races on board happy.