EA AND ID SOFTWARE ANNOUNCE ORCS & ELVES SHIPS TODAY FOR THE NINTENDO DS

Fantasy Role Playing Game is One of the First Titles

to Cross Over to the Nintendo DS from Mobile Phones

Redwood City, Calif. – November 13, 2007 – It’s time to answer the call of the Hero! Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) and id Software today announced that Orcs & Elves® has begun shipping to retail locations worldwide for the Nintendo DSTM. Orcs & Elves is an award winning first-person fantasy role playing game created by id Software and developed exclusively for EA by Fountainhead Entertainment. Orcs & Elves is one of the first games developed specifically for the mobile platform that has crossed over to another game-specific device.

A breathtaking dungeon-crawling fantasy RPG, Orcs & Elves casts gamers as a young half-elf exploring a massive Dwarven fortress riddled with ancient treasure, powerful weapons, and waves of ruthless enemies, on a quest to expel the ultimate evil from the mountain’s core.

“Orcs & Elves is captivating on the Nintendo DS,” said Katherine Anna Kang, founder and president of Fountainhead Entertainment. “We were able to expand on the award winning original game by adding hours of new content and using the unique Nintendo DS touch screen to immerse the player into a magical world where they are the hero.”

Enhanced from the original to take full advantage of the Nintendo DS, Orcs & Elves features a new 3D engine, full 3D sound, more levels, new monsters, and much more. Players can utilize the DS touch screen to cast spells, move and attack enemies, make use of magic potions, enchanted rings, and armor, and bargain for goods.

In addition, Orcs & Elves II™ for mobile phones is scheduled to be released in late November on most wireless carriers, just in time for the holiday season. Orcs & Elves II for mobile continues the epic story from the original game and expands the Orcs & Elves universe. Players will encounter new creatures, allies and villains as they explore seven huge interactive environments including towns, collapsing caverns and haunted forests. As a novice thief who has stolen the legendary wand Ellon, the player must return to his under siege town before it's too late.

Orcs & Elves is rated T (Teen) by the ESRB and has an MSRP of $29.95 for the Nintendo DS. Orcs & Elves II has an MSRP starting as low as $3.99 for all major North American carriers.

Labels: EA, iD, Nintendo DS, Orcs and Elves

ORCS & ELVES GOES GOLD!

Addictive Dungeon-Crawling RPG Hits Store Shelves on November 16th

It’s almost time to answer the call of the hero! id Software’s Orcs & Elves® has gone gold for the Nintendo DS!

The ultimate battle between good and evil will take place this holiday as Orcs & Elves will be available at stores around the world on November 16, 2007.

Orcs & Elves is a deep fantasy RPG from id Software and Fountainhead Entertainment, which has been enhanced from the award-winning original to take full advantage of the Nintendo DS. The game features a new 3D engine, full 3D sound, more levels, new monsters, and much more. Players can utilize the DS touch screen to cast spells, move and attack enemies, make use of magic potions, enchanted rings, and armor, and bargain for goods as they explore a massive Dwarven kingdom riddled with ancient treasures and fierce enemies.

"Orcs & Elves is an addictive, dungeon-crawling, hack-n-slash RPG that will keep players glued to the DS for hours," said Katherine Anna Kang, founder and president of Fountainhead Entertainment. “We're committed to bringing fun packed games to the DS and Orcs & Elves is definitely a great start."

Labels: EA, iD, Nintendo DS, Orcs and Elves

Dev Diary #2: What's new for Orcs & Elves on the DS By Katherine Anna Kang

What's New?

Let me count the ways...
1). New 3D engine with 3D levels and 3D world objects
2). Full 3D sound with environmental, directional, and ambient sounds
3). 3 new levels
4). 4 new spells
5). 5 new usable items
6). 6 new monsters
7). 12 new interactive world objects
8). New player inventory management system
9). New bartering interface
10). New puzzles
11). New elixirs
12). New effects
13). New difficulty levels
14). Newly enhanced Dragon's Lair
15). Newly enhanced dialogue boxes for game characters
16). Rumble Pack ready

If we had to choose just one difference from the cell phone to the DS as the most significant, it would be the 3D engine. The original cell phone game had a very limited, tile-based 2.5D engine that could only render constrained sets of horizontal and vertical polygons with aligned textures. The DS's new 3D engine allowed our artists to use arbitrary geometry, texturing, and lighting for the levels using Maya. Though we were very limited due to the polygon limits of the DS graphics core, the changes have been significant. This new engine allowed us to re-create the levels in 3D with 3D world objects allowing an effect that is subtle and unobtrusive.

The Prison level is a good example of the visual improvements we were able to bring -- compare the cell phone version of Orcs & Elves to the DS and you will notice the lighting, the vaulted ceilings, the swinging cages and chains, the cavernous openings in ceilings, and the various 3D artifacts floating and bobbing in the flooded level. The fierce battle with the formidable Sonya now begins with her spinning a web down from high above, descending down to where you are, rather than crawling out of a hole in the wall. Unfortunately, one thing we were not able to convert to 3D were monsters. The choice to continue using 2D sprites for most of the monsters was mainly due to memory issues. Going with 3D models would have resulted in a severe reduction of monster types in any given battle and the creatures would have been forced to be extremely crude. There are several areas in the game where a mass of monsters -- a large number of unique monsters -- confront the player and are in constant view. Within the limits of the DS specs we had to work with, to be able to achieve this feeling of being mobbed and assaulted by all sorts of creatures, using sprites was a reasonable option.

Gamers who are serious about sound should appreciate the full 3D sound that has been implemented. Compared to the mono sound of the cell phones, the new 3D sounds for the DS is quite a significant upgrade. The new sound system helps give the player a feeling of truly being in an underground citadel. Levels have unique ambient and environmental sounds that enhance the feeling of crawling down a mountain. When you enter a flooded area, you hear the dripping water -- when you near an Orc army, you hear the shuffling of feet and the movement of enemy soldiers -- as you traverse the down the mountain, you hear wind, crumbling rocks, creaking wood and a variety of other sounds. Whether you're a sound geek or not, we suggest that you put on your headphones and enjoy the ride.

Some of the fun in bringing new things to the game is when that fun happens by accident and turns out better than expected. One of the many things we had to change to make the game "work" on the DS was the intimidation effect on the monsters. The way the intimidation effect works on the cell phone goes something like this: If you have an intimidation ring on there will be a high likelihood that monsters will get frightened and run away from you. To visually cue the player that a monster has been intimidated, the only thing that worked on the mobile phone (from high end phones to the low end phones with 300KB of space) were fright lines over the heads of the monsters. This crude application for an intimidation effect just wouldn't work on the DS so we had to come up with something better. We tried a variety of ideas and for quite a while, we just couldn't find a solution that worked. All of the neat ideas would have taken up too much media space causing problems both in heap and actual package size. Towards the last month of development we even considered bringing back the crude fright lines over the heads of monsters -- even that didn't work. I'm not certain exactly how this idea came about or even why we hadn't thought about it earlier but one of our artists had finally found the answer. It was in the eyes! One of our artists created a set of bulging eyeballs that could be used for all of the monsters (from Wraith to Mimic). When we all first saw its application on a few of the monsters, we were afraid that it was too good to be true. It worked great on a couple of monsters, but would it work for ALL monsters? The answer is yes and its application is quite hilarious.

A side story that we didn't have room to flesh out on the cell phone will finally make it's way onto the DS. Occasionally, a few people will ask me about that lone Vaettir stuck in prison. He originated from the idea that even vicious enemies have cowardly sycophants who brown-nose to the top. We had grander plans for him in the original version of Orcs & Elves but we simply ran out of space. I thought it would be funny to leave him trapped in jail. Well, he finally makes a break for it on the DS. Though we still have not given that character as much face-time as I had hoped, his brown-nosing, back-stabbing, scheming ways find an apt and just end on the DS. Perhaps if we get to make a Wii version of Orcs & Elves, we'll get to see more of him and maybe even see how he slithered to a position of power and why his own kind chose to leave him in a jail to rot.

From sheep that you can kill to make lamb chops to the different ales that vary in potency, we added quite a bit to Orcs & Elves DS to bring more life to the game characters and their world. Though many things have been added, improved, tweaked, massaged, and squeezed into that 16mb DS cartridge, the most important element of the game has stayed the same -- the game is fun.

Labels: EA, iD, Nintendo DS, Orcs and Elves

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

EA sent over info and pictures of their upcoming DS title, Orcs & Elves - lean in and check out what the fuss is about!

Enter an ancient and magical world where good and evil collide in an epic adventure with Orcs & Elves™ for Nintendo DS™.

The award-winning fantasy RPG mobile game, created by id™ Software and developed by Fountainhead Entertainment comes to the Nintendo DS, with more levels, weapons and fierce foes.

Orcs & Elves offers a breathtaking dungeon-crawling experience for any fantasy RPG gamer, featuring an Award-winning storyline spanning twelve sprawling levels within an ancient Dwarven kingdom.

As a young half-elf, a player will explore the ancient mountain-citadel of Zharrharag, a massive Dwarven fortress riddled with ancient treasure, powerful weapons, and waves of ruthless enemies.

Gamers can use the DS touch screen to solve devious puzzles, overcome deadly traps and unleash magical powers with an arsenal of arcane items like magic potions, enchanted rings, dragon scale armor and an enchanted wand.

Gamers will find and master thirteen mystical weapons including magical swords, deadly crossbows, and a powerful war hammer as they fight through waves of legendary beasts each with their own tactics and powers. Along the way, players will also befriend unique characters such as an ancient dragon to help them fight their way into the deepest reaches of the mountain fortress on a quest to expel the ultimate evil from the mountain’s core.

Labels: EA, Orcs and Elves