Myth Alumni Q&A Interview: Richard Cowgill "iggy popped"!

[GodzFire]

For the first in what I hope to be a recurring thing, I got in touch with Myth alumni Richard Cowgill better known as 'iggy popped' for some Q&A regarding his time with MJ, MythDev, and beyond. Enjoy!

NOTE: Comments and Feedback are appreciated! Have some additional questions for Iggy? Want to request someone to interview? Reply in this thread!

1- What was your job duty/function with MJ?
Level designer/Environment artist

2- What was the overall atmosphere? Was it close knit with there being so few people?
Definitely. We were rebellious and small. The studio was about 15ish people. Mumbo Jumbo was not a studio name that we were happy with or proud of, when it was announced to us by the owners there was a distinct sense on the team that the name was no good. It was very disappointing to everyone.

Remember we weren't initially MJ. We were "United Developers" and there was some talk that we might be called "Ritual West". So our studio was formed primarily from 3 sources: ex-Ritual people, ex-Contraband Entertainment people and new hires unrelated to either company. Most of the new hires had backgrounds in the community, although some of them were professionals who came in with their own background and experience.

So up until the point at which we got the name MJ, several other names and ideas had been thrown around. The owners never spent much time with us in Irvine, CA where we were located. They spent most of their time, I believe, running their 'main office' in the same building where Ritual was out in TX. They had other, parallel developments to manage, mostly unrelated to our work on M3, although I believe later in the project we got some help from them to finish out the game.

So although we were owned by MJ and had this other office in TX, we were very independent of them and from my vantage point the interactions between CA and TX were minimal. When M3 was done, our office was shut down, but MJ as a company kept going. It was sometime after that, that MJ TX became the casual games developer that it is today.

3- What did the MJ team do to have fun and take a break?
Oh goodness. Just about everything except drivebys? There was one night when a bunch of us were in a programmer's car, and we got pulled over by the local PD. I think we were leaving work about 1AM, we all looked like hooligans, and the cops were pretty suspicious of us. We were a bunch of kids driving around upscale Irvine in the middle of the night. They detained us for a bit, asked alot of questions, couldn't find anything wrong and let us go. We were right back to work the next day, bright and early. There were months at a time when we were working 6 or 7 day weeks and 12+ hour days.

4- Did you get to see and even touch the legendary Myth pizza box?
Oh geez, this sounds familiar and I should know what this is. =) Unfortunately my mind has not been in the Myth world for some time.

5- How do you feel about the technology they used at the time to create the game? Computer specs would be nice.
The technology at the time was great and arguably ahead of the curve. The new 3d renderer was very capable for its day and scaled very nicely with polygons and hardware.

I believe we were using P3's in the office for development. Probably around 3-400mhz, but my memory is fuzzy on that. We had active Mac development, the coders had Macs and I can specifically remember when we got in one of Apple's latest low-end iMacs to test the game on minspec hardware. It ran ok, but not impressively so, but that hardware was pretty low end compared to what we have today or even what the typical PC gamer had at the time. It was something like a rage II with maybe 4 or 6MB of vram. It was probably impressive that it ran at all.

The earliest example of the technology behind the game (before any real development started) was a demo of randomly generated trees on a terrain being pushed apart by the physics of explosions in the scene. The trees were fully 3d and could bend and sway, reacting in a believable manner. We were used to the Myth 2 engine at the time where trees were sprites. They had no physics or geometry of any kind. With that demo you immediately begin to see the potential if the explosion were a dwarf's satchel blast, or a wight blowing up. It made sense that this was going to be the foundation for the new game.

6- What feature/addition of M3 were you most proud of?
Graphically M3 was a leap ahead of M2. It was still being done at a time when an artist/designer could do amazing work with tricks and hackery, moreso than I think with today's hardware/software. Everything is so standardized now relative to then.

The thing I was most proud of was the fact that we did ship a finished title by the deadline. But it did need more time. 1 more month of development at the rate we were going would've made for a polished and bug free project.

7- What feature/addition of M3 were you most disappointed in?
I don't think we cut much that didn't make it in. The tools were incomplete and difficult, that was always hard. I think there were plans early on to make the cinematics more robust than they were.

More than anything it needed more polish time. I felt that immediately as we were wrapping up that we were too beholden to the past.. there was a distinct impression during most of development that we had to stick to the feel and pacing people were used to. We were carrying on the Myth franchise and the feeling was it boxed us in. In hindsight I think this was a mistake, we should've sped the game up. Increased character movement, added running or other evolutionary changes, we should've done more that was new. In the end I think making a graphically updated M2 wasn't enough.

8- Was there anything you regretted leaving out of the game?
My main regret was not finding a way at the time to make use of the community that wanted us to succeed so badly. I think if we were creative and objective about this we could have tapped some community resources that would have made the project more doable in the timeframe. Maybe this wouldn't have been possible for business or legal reasons, but I'm somebody who tends to think outside the box for solutions to problems. So I think there were missed opportunities there.

9- The pressure of the deadline. When did you feel it and did it seem like a real pinch getting closer to it?
I think we felt it from the beginning. We were indoctrinated into the project with the understanding that we had to go from basically nothing to finished in 11 months. We all knew this would be tough but it was either we try to make it happen or there's no project at all.

From the start we knew we had to do a minimum of 30 maps, 25 SP and 5 MP. 5 MP was the bare minimum, we weren't happy with that number but we would try to do more if we could. We had 3 level designers, our lead (Patrick Hook), Fisj and myself.

So that meant 10 maps each, if distributed equitably, and 11 months to make them, which is basically 1 map a month (20 working days per level, but as I said we did many late nights and weekends) and 1 month for general polish. No room for errors, no second chances. Most of the project we built these maps without tools, using the M2 level editor, placing dummy sprites where 3D objects would be in the engine.

Fisj and I were still committed to releasing our M2 mod Jinn, much to the chagrin of our leads and producer. And somewhere during the middle-beginning of M3 development we managed to do this as well.

10- Why did you decide to join MythDev to continue work on the series after being 'released' by Take2?
I think my contributions there were pretty small, if any. I did some work on the first patch to M3, which fixed a bunch of known issues we had to ship with and some balancing stuff that didn't feel right. I did that work for no pay in an office that was basically shut down with few others still there. I did it because I felt personally invested in the project and I couldn't let it go without some minimum of support.

11- How different was being part of MJ to your time in MythDev?
Well as I said before, I don't think I had much in the way of contributions to MythDev. But if I did and I forgot, please correct the record.

12- Do you think of M3 or do you play the game anymore? If so, what reactions do you get from it?
I haven't played it in some time, for the most part my career has kept me busy since that time. I've been involved with alot of different projects since then, it seems like a long time ago.

(Personal)

1- How did the project help your career?
It was the start of my career! It was the break I needed to do this thing professionally. More specifically, making Myth maps gave me some unique training: I became adept at making large terrain style levels at a time when most level designers were probably more used to quake-style level editing. These skillsets translated well into making Battlefield maps, where I went on to help make the DesertCombat mod and Battlefield 2. That in turn gave me unique perspective for Unreal 3 development at 2 different UE3 licensed studios (Kaos and Gearbox).

2- What are your favorite game to play these days?
I get pickier as I get older, to be honest there's very little that grabs my attention personally today. Alot to look at professionally, alot that is interesting and well done, but personally I'm old and codgy and I just like what I like.

That said, the last game to truly grab my attention was probably Shadow of the Colossus. I really enjoy minimalist design that tells a great story with depth and atmosphere, rather than excessive features and hand holding. This I think is in some ways like Myth... aside from the chapter screens (which are word heavy) its about the adventure and the experience. It's also probably why I like games like Half-Life 2 so much, you feel like the story is the experience and the atmosphere. It is implied rather than explicitly told.

But more recently, I really liked Limbo. It's my kind of game. It was one of those vapor projects that you hoped might actually see the light of day someday. I admired what they did ever since they put up that old prototype website a few years ago.

3- From your perspective how do you see storylines in games today versus 10 years ago?
I don't know if it's really any different. Another game that is my favorite is Deus Ex. It told it's story through alot of dialogue trees and optional encounters. It's functionally no different than Mass Effect. I think then as now there's a range of games that have different means to tell a story, some more successful than others. Things have gotten more detailed, possibly more complex since then, but I'm not sure how story is done differently (in general) today than it was 10 years ago.

4- Caffeine is a long celebrated antidote to programming down time. What was your beverage of choice then and now?
It's always been Coke, but I actually quit soda. Today my beverages of choice are juice and water. Booooorrrrrring!!! (But I'll live longer...) =)

5- With the many different genres of games you have developed for, how do you feel about the one Myth created and would you want to see it on the market again(a myth style RTT/S game)?
I don't know if one could. I feel like it's been done. I think even at the time people thought we were stretching it just a bit by making a prequel. But I'm not without some imagination... if there's a way to do it and bring it to market, especially if it had the right feeling and atmosphere, I would be all over that.

6- Do you feel like technology is still advancing so rapidly that you have to revisit code during a project to make changes for the release?
It happens, but I'm fundamentally opposed to feature creep. I think there are dangers rushing a project out too quickly just as there are a different set of dangers if a project takes too long. Usually though its important to try and make the right tech choices up front, stick to your guns, and adjust when its necessary. When is it necessary? As little as possible. Always try to deliver your project in a timely way, at the end of the day I don't think the vast majority of gamers care about technology.

7- When you come back and play a game you developed can you just play it or do you analyze things that could or should have been done differently?
Yes. But I also honestly try to enjoy it. If I'm really enjoying it, then I think it might be successful. If I'm not, I tend to believe it probably won't be a hit. I believe very much in eating your own dogfood.

8- Now a question every Myther is dying to know the answer about: Jessica Alba or Halle Berry?
Allison Stokke - http://www.mademan.com/chickipedia/allison-stokke/

[punkUser]

Lots of interesting stuff. Thanks for posting!

[WazzaMouse]

Awesome to see this come full circle. Loved the response to the questions I posed. Looking forward to more.

[Mukha]

This was great to read. Even after the disappointing release, there was still a feeling of exciting potential when people like Iggy would log on and playtest the latest balance changes. I also remember him once uploading a fix so that trow would stomp on small critters in the time it took me to choose the next map.

What is the status of m3 development now anyway? It's probably been asked here before but does Project Magma have access to the source for m3? There are lots of really annoying non-balance issues like having to limit the number of plugins in the plugins folder because maps won't show up otherwise.

[Jon God]

This was great to read. Even after the disappointing release, there was still a feeling of exciting potential when people like Iggy would log on and playtest the latest balance changes. I also remember him once uploading a fix so that trow would stomp on small critters in the time it took me to choose the next map.

What is the status of m3 development now anyway? It's probably been asked here before but does Project Magma have access to the source for m3? There are lots of really annoying non-balance issues like having to limit the number of plugins in the plugins folder because maps won't show up otherwise.

If I am remembering right, ProjectMagma only has access to Myth 3 version 1.0, which is really, really different from the later versions (There was a major internal rewrite.), so to just get it to a point of being able to fix issues from where it is in 1.3.1, it would be a lot of work.

Blades and a few others have access to the source of 1.3.1, though Blades retired, I think Amadaues is the one working on the code these days.