CaesarZX：
对于RTS游戏《横扫千军》的制作，Geoffrey Keighley的文章已经不足以全面讲述那段历史，而加入一个亲自参与此游戏制作的人物的视角，我们就可以看到一个更完整的横扫千军诞生史。 这篇连载作者是《横扫千军》美工总监Clayton Kauzlaric，他从去年9月开始在他自己的Blog上连载自己在Cavedog参与制作《横扫千军》 的经历。本连载由我与游戏编年史的主人无声畅游合作翻译推出。
无声畅游 译
第六章:初次亮相
1997年版权所有
具有讽刺意味的是,刊登TA前瞻报道的那期PC Gamer封面,居然是我们制作人Ron Gilbert的成名巨作——<猴岛>系列的最新续作
一款RTS游戏要想在1997年引起新闻界的关注,可是一件不大容易的事情.因为这一年面世的RTS数量简直可以用过江之鲫形容.而一款来自未名工作室的未名新作,就更不可能入诸位编辑和记者的法眼了.为了赢得玩家的心,供过于求的RTS游戏展开了激烈的竞争.一些出版商为此绞尽了脑汁,钞票也不知烧去了多少.
许多即将上市的RTS游戏甚至卷入了一场决命式的群P混战.各类新闻媒体不惜篇幅对这些游戏的"神奇"特效与华丽画面大肆渲染,新兴的网上社区更是没完没了地争论着它们的优劣.每一周总少不了一些热心肠来我们的办公室建议说:"看到了,XX工作间的XX游戏有单位士气设定,动态馅饼式统计图呢…我们的作品有这些玩意吗?"事实上,其他人能够做到的东西,我们同样能做到.但我们完全不在意这些噱头,因为我们只关注游戏本身的品质.
我们的上市日期拖了约一年.我们的上市时间表更订了两次,但到1997年春时,无论如何也不能再拖了,于是我们终下决心要在9月送厂压盘.对于一家名不见经传的新丁来说,跳票并不算什么大事,但我们依然慌了神!美国游戏杂志通常会提前三,五个月对一款新作进行报道——尽管这样的时效性已遭到了网上游戏站点的严厉竞争. 现在已经三月了,我们却依然无法确定世人听到TA时会作何反应.E3迫在眉睫,我们至少还需要之作一篇看得过眼的宣传报道.否则,TA将在圣诞节期间被扔进廉价倾销柜台.
最终,我们在(美版)上刊登了一篇预览文.一位来自旧金山的职业写手造访了风景怡人的Woodinville市——Humongous与Cavedog的办公楼就座落于此.此人告诉我们:只会为我们的前瞻留一页纸的篇幅.为了能在如此狭小的方寸之地更好地展示游戏全貌,我们投入了更艰苦的努力,并制作了一大批高清晰的宣传图片,以备后用.
虽然比起其它RTS游戏来,我们有着更宏伟的蓝图,但这还远远不够.我们必须做出某些真正令人叹为观止的东西…或者说足以震惊世界的惊雷.为此,Ron,Chris和我联合构思了一张超巨型地图Boris,尺寸居然高达100×100屏幕(编注:详见下章).也许这样的面积对今天的第三方TA社区来说不算什么,但考虑到当时我们只拥有一台P100/64M的电脑,你就不难想象那是多么史无前例的挑战了.为了绘制,拼接这张地图,我简直连老命都搭进去了.可由于游戏引擎一直不稳定,我们都不敢保证会出什么岔子!
但岔子还是不可避免地发生了,当我第一次试图载入Boris时,我那台破电脑立马崩溃,且歇工了好几天.即使那段缺乏睡眠的紧张日子过去了好久,我一听到Boris这个名字时依然忍不住头皮发麻.看来,制作常规地图还是正途.
我们打算为杂志宣传文章配发一些华丽的概念宣传画.如果只是绘制一些类似汉堡包包装纸上的那种涂鸦,那还不如不做.要做就要向“天行者牧场”Skywalker Ranch(乔治卢卡斯的住所和电影制作园区),或是名导Ridley Scott的大作看齐. 以今天的技术来说,绘制出概念图式的游戏画面并不是难事,但在那个时候却不是一件容易事情,连设计一辆由40个多边形构成的坦克都难上加难.
于是,我们采用了一种欺骗性的制作方式.我们拥有一大批最具才干的美工师,无不对绘制这样的图画轻车熟路.我们只是太忙,没有过多精力纠缠于此.不过,这种配图登载杂志上的效果非常突出.因此,Kevin Pun（也来自史克威尔）在单位设计已完工的情况下,又对它们进行了精彩的重绘,下面就选登几张被他打扮得花枝招展的TA单位概念图.
并没有在那篇预览文章中采用这些配图,不过,它们却被留给了之后采写的一系列相关报道及访谈.而我们在随后几个月里,又为GT的市场营销与公关机器准备了一系列高清晰的彩色设计图与概念图.
我们的单位设计当然比汉堡纸上的那些涂鸦漂亮.下图便是Mike Fisher(Core方的主单位美工)第一个真正的单位设计,这是一个Core的空军单位,我会经常要求他们为我提供这样的铅笔设计草图,然后由我定夺取舍之后,再交付单位美工师具体搞定!Mike在这方面干得实在出色,展现出了十足的价值.
1997年4月的一天,的Michael Wolf给我们带来了一个电话.此人原是一名评论员,后来做了的光盘编辑,现在任微软"视窗"游戏部门的公关经理. 他于某天早晨抵达,刚开始,他以为这不过又是一款C&C克隆作而已,但这不能怪他.随着采访的进一步深入,他似乎改变了对我们游戏的看法,变得兴奋认真起来,还提出了不少颇有价值的问题.
采访结束后,Ron,Chris,Michael和我一同转入了Chris那辆Mazda 626马自达626里,前往当地一家中餐馆共进午餐.我之所以至今还记得那家馆子,是因为正是在那顿午餐上,我即兴想出了以Core指挥官的名义开办一则征友谈心专栏的点子,以致于连我的馄饨汤都忘了喝.这个专栏后来果真成了Cavedog网页上一个半固定的特色栏目.
本文谈到这里,你也许会注意到:Ron Gilbert这个名字的出现频率,比Chris Taylor还多.这是可以理解的,因为当时世人还压根没有听说过Chris,Cavedog和我们的游戏,可Ron却早已是业界的一位重量级人物.他在LucasArts就已被封为"设计之神".而即将推出的猴岛续作尽管已与他没有任何瓜葛,却仍使他成为众多前来Cavedog参观TA的记者们所包围的焦点.但Ron却显得极有风度,他总是要记者们多采访采访Chris.因为他坚定认为:只有设计师,才对他自己的游戏最有发言权.
1997年版权所有
细观察杂志前瞻上的截图,看看左边操纵界面中的按钮设计布局,像不像一个骷髅头? 哦哟……真吓人.
当这篇预览文章最早出现在的7月号时(实际上6月就已出刊),我们简直都不敢相信自己的眼睛,诸如"TA很可能成为自Dune 2 沙丘 2以来,最具革命性的一款RTS"之类的溢美之词,让我们猛掐自己的大腿,好确认这不是在梦里.时机再好不过了,因为这期刚好赶上了那年的E3(注:97年E3于6月中下旬在亚特兰举办),这起到了不可估量的宣传效果.我们的广告随后又不断出现在当月其它主要游戏杂志上.
我们对即将到来的E3充满了热情.现在我们要做的是,将游戏进一步打磨锃亮,好让它在展会上有一个完美的初演.
待续
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Part 6: First Ink
Getting the press interested in yet another real time strategy game in 1997 was no easy feat. Approximately 24,000 RTS games came out that year. A new game From an untried studio wasn’t exactly catching the eye of editors and journalists. The glut of RTS games created intense competition for the hearts and minds of gamers. Some publishers were putting big money behind promoting their entries.
Many upcoming games engaged in what I call bullet point warfare. Lists of features and visual gimmicks were dutifully recited in prepress coverage and endlessly compared and debated by the nascent Internet community. A week didn’t passed that some helpful person would come into our office and say “Gosh, this game XXX From XXX has unit morale, cyborg pez dispensers and dancing pie charts showing alfalfa comsumption… Do we have morale, cyborg pez and pie graphs?” We did what any good developer does when asked about stuff like that. We completely ignored it and concentrated on making the game.
Our ship date had floated around for about a year. We changed it twice, but by the spring of '97 we were finally pretty sure we would RTM (route to manufacture) in September. Ship dates don’t seem as stressful when nobody knows you exist. We were getting a little anxious, though. US game magazines had a lead time for stories of three to five months — some still do in spite of competition From gaming websites. That’s pretty simple math. It was already March and we still weren’t sure how the world would ever hear about Total Annihilation. We had that spiffy print ad figured out, but E3 was just around the corner. We needed to make at least a decent splash or Total Annihilation would be in the bargain bin before Christmas.
Word finally came down that we would get a preview story in PC Gamer (US version). A staff writer From San Francisco would come to the Humongous/Cavedog offices in glorious Woodinville, Washington. We were told the plan was for a one page write-up in their preview section. We geared up by pushing even harder to make the game presentable (old multiplayer UI below) and to create high resolution assets for our future marketing needs.
It wasn’t enough that we already had maps bigger than any other RTS game. We had to do something truly awe-inspiring… something that would astound and amaze. Ron, Chris and I jointly conceived of Boris, a 100×100 screen behemoth (Editors note: See next post). Maps that size are no biggie to the TA 3rd party community these days, but we attempted this with a mere P200 with 64 megs of RAM. I stayed up for days rendering and assembling pieces of Boris. The stability of the engine was still fluctuating From day to day. We didn’t really know what would happen.
It’s pretty obvious what happened: My PC went into shock and curled up whimpering in the corner for days after my first attempt to load Boris. After those days of sleep deprivation and stress, I still shudder when I hear that name. We had to make do with our regular maps, which served us perfectly well.
There is an expectation that games are built using piles of slick concept art. It won’t do to give magazines some doodles on a stained burger wrapper. Nope. Concept art has to look like it came From the halls of Skywalker Ranch or Ridley Scott’s wet dream. The visual standard for games today makes walls of concept art a common sight. We didn’t have much stuff like that for Total Annihilation. The design for a 40 polygon tank isn’t much to look at.
So, we faked it. We had some great artists who were fully capable of making froo froo art like that. We were just too busy to make it most of the time. But it looks swell in a magazine article, so Kevin Pun (another Square alum) whipped up some nice juicy marker comps of units after they were already finished and in the game. Here are his wonderful, tarted up takes on some TA units.
PC Gamer never used these for that piece, but they were handy for other articles and interviews that came along later. We fed the marketing and PR machine at GT a steady stream of high resolution renders and more concept art for months to come.
Our real unit designs were certainly nicer than something on a burger wrapper. Below is a real first design pass for a Core aerial unit by Mike Fisher, the artist responsible for the bulk of the Core units. I usually asked for a quick pencil treatment so I could sign off on a unit design before the unit artists waded into 3D land. Mike always worked with wonderfully clear schematics, worthy of an engineer.
It would have been about April of 1997 when Michael Wolf From PC Gamer paid us a call. Michael was a reviewer who later became the disk editor of PC Gamer. Michael is now a PR manager over at Microsoft’s Windows game division. He arrived late in the morning. My impression was that he may have expected yet another C&C clone and I can’t blame him. As we showed off our game he seemed to grow more impressed and excited as the interview progressed, asking lots of good questions.
Ron, Chris, Michael and I piled into Chris’s Mazda 626 and went to lunch at a local Chinese place. I only remember that because I have a strong recollection of ignoring my wonton soup while riffing on the notion of the Core Commander writing a lonely hearts advice column. That later made its way onto the Cavedog website as a semi-regular feature.
If you read this early coverage, you’ll notice Ron’s name sometimes comes up more than Chris’s. His name is the only one mentioned in the table of contents above. The industry at large hadn’t really heard of Chris, Cavedog or our game yet. Ron was an acknowledged industry heavyweight. His background as a design god at LucasArts and the upcoming Monkey Island sequel (though unrelated to Ron) sometimes made him a focus for journalists who came to look at TA. Ron was always gracious and pointed reporters right back to Chris. He really believed that a designer should speak for his own game.
When the preview finally hit magazine stands in their July issue (on the street in June) we were amazed. It was as nice as a preview gets. Phrases like, “…it could very well be the most revolutionary real-time strategy since Dune II” had us pinching ourselves (we did that to stay awake anyway). The timing couldn’t have been better. This was the edition of PC Gamer that was circulated at E3 that year. Our ad was in other major game publications that month as well.
We had plenty of good buzz going into E3. Now we just had to get the game halfway polished for it’s big debut on the show floor.
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