Dev Diary #1: Bringing a cell phone game to the DS By Katherine Anna Kang
Introduction

My name is Katherine Anna Kang and I'm CEO and Producer at Fountainhead Entertainment -- developers of id Software's Orcs & Elves.

Past Projects:

2003 - In The Waiting Line (Co-Producer and Designer)

2004 - Game Over (Co-Producer and Designer)

2005 - DoomRPG mobile (Producer, Writer and Designer)

2006 - Orcs & Elves mobile (Producer, Writer and Designer)

2007 - Orcs & Elves DS, Orcs & Elves II mobile (Producer, Writer and

Designer)


From Cell Phones to the DS:

Our first foray into the mobile gaming sector was DoomRPG. It was a great
title to work on -- the known IP, the beloved characters, and just working
on a Doom game is cool. It took us 4 months to develop. We were able to
learn about cell phone game creation and take that knowledge several notches
higher with Orcs & Elves. Orcs & Elves on the cell phone was probably the
most difficult game we have created to date. We had to come up with a brand
new universe with complex characters all the while giving those characters
life (even if dead). Unlike DoomRPG, we didn't have the privilege of taking
existing media and we didn't have an existing fan base to back up the game.

The Orcs & Elves universe had to be created from ground zero, the story, the
characters, the media, the sounds, the music... the only thing that stayed
was the core technology. All of this had to be done within 6 months. At
about month 5, we had completed the high-end BREW version of Orcs & Elves,
and though we were disappointed at how many ideas we had to omit, we were
thrilled with the final product. Orcs & Elves was hell of a fun game, looked great,
and even after hundreds of hours of combined play time, we still enjoyed the game.

The original Orcs & Elves cell phone game won numerous awards, including
IGN's Best of E3 2006, Leipzig Game Con's Best Mobile Game of 2006, and
AIAS's Best Mobile Game of 2006. We were extremely happy that people
embraced this new universe and we were raring to take it to the next level.

When talk of a DS version of Orcs & Elves came around, we were thrilled
about the prospect of bringing back all of the game ideas we had to leave
out on the cell phone version due to limitations. We were liking the
bottom-up approach -- take all of the things that we wanted to include in
the original game, save it, then implement it on another platform. The
initial high of knowing that we were bringing Orcs & Elves to the DS wore
off fairly quickly. When we found out about the DS's limitations, we
realized that all of the things we wanted to bring back would not make it.

On the high-end BREW cell phone version of Orcs & Elves, we had about 1.3 MB
of main memory for texture usage. On the DS, we had a total of 512 KB
actual texture memory which broke down to:

a. 128 KB for the bottom screen.

b. 128 KB for static 3D textures on the top screen.

c. 128 KB for streaming in dynamic textures for the current frame on the top
screen.

d. 128 KB for streaming in dynamic textures for the next frame on the top
screen


About 1.2 MB of the DS's main memory was used to cache textures that would
be streamed in as needed into the 128 KB of current frame dynamic texture
memory. This is how we were able to use as many textures as the high-end
BREW phone version while having less than half the memory. The total
texture count for the DS version is 1348 different images. By contrast, the
BREW high-end phone game had 758 total images. We had 6 months to learn to
develop on a new platform, recreate the media, add more content, and fit
"some" of the ideas that could not make it into original game into the DS
version.

As a designer, the look and feel of the game was extremely important but
above all else, the game had to be fun. I wanted the player to get into the
game for several hours straight and later realize that they had been playing
much longer than originally intended. One of the first things that we did
to help make this possible was make the interface player-friendly. I had
been disappointed at how many DS games were out there that did not allow
players to use keys only or touch-screen only. Some games were such finger
twisters that they gave carpal tunnel a new meaning. The first rule in
developing our game was to give the player the freedom to choose. As a
player, you should be able to use the keys if and when you want, the screen
if and when you want, and if you so choose, do a combination of both. It
was a bit of work to make sure that everything worked this way but it was
well worth the effort.

The visuals were an interesting challenge. With the severely limited
texture memory we had at our disposal, we were worried that the DS game
would look horrible. It then dawned on us why so many of the other DS games
were side-scrollers and why the real 3D games looked so poor. Many of the
3D games had extremely simplistic bottom screens and the top screen had
basic colors for walls and ceilings. The one thing that many of these games
had were gorgeous pre-rendered cinematics. Unfortunately, with all the
media we had to cram in, this just wasn't an option for us since we had to
work within the constraints of a 16mb cartridge. Our tried-and-true
solution for creating cinematics within a tight memory budget was Machinima. We had to use all of the art assets created for the game to make cinematics.

I was extremely jealous of the games that could afford the luxury of
pre-rendered CGI cinematics because they looked damned cool but when the
actual in-game media came up, there was no doubt in my mind that our game
was one of the best looking 3D DS games out there. There were several
things we did to improve the in-game look but I think the one I'm most proud
of is what we were able to do with the lower touch screen. I hated the idea
of a simplistic or ugly lower screen -- that screen would be the place
players would go to for inventory management and spell casting; it had to look good.

Our idea was to stay with a first person perspective feel. We created an
inventory management system where if the player was to look down, he would
see his belt and all the items available at a touch. The visuals on the
bottom screen had to match the top screen for better immersion.

In the end, though we couldn't go hog-wild with new media, the game has an
immense amount of new content for fans of the original version and newbies
alike. Things like sheep that you can kill to make lamb chops for food, air
vents that boost you to another place or just up in the air, spiral
staircases that lead you up and down the layers of the mountain citadel,
ladders that take you to secrets, and spell casting are but a small handful
of new items we were able to bring to the DS.

At the end of our 6 month development cycle, and despite the limitations, we
were really glad that Orcs & Elves made it to the DS. We think the fans of
the cell phone version will really have a great time with all the new
content we added and hope newbies will love it also.

Labels: EA, Nintendo DS, Orcs and Elves