Interview: Prometheus designer chats about latest UDK-based game

Posted Nov 10th 2009 12:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Features, Interviews, FPS

Last week's release by Epic Games of the Unreal Developer Kit opened up the power of their Unreal Engine 3 game development tools to, well, anyone who wanted to use it. The release of the UDK was especially welcomed by mod teams who have previously created mods for Unreal Tournament 3 who now can convert them into stand alone game titles to release for free or as a commercial game title.

One of those UT3 mod projects that was turned into a free stand alone game was Prometheus, an unusual first person game that gives the player a chance to solve puzzles via the game's version of time travel and quantum physics. Big Download got a chance to ask some questions to the designer of the mod Rachel Cordone (with some assistance from their PR head Mark Chandler) to find out more about Prometheus and their future plans for the now stand alone game.

First, you have been a working level designer for some time. Can you briefly give us a quick run through of your career?

I started out with the Half Life 1 editor in 1999, then moved to UnrealEd when Unreal Tournament came out later that year. I've been working with the Unreal Engine ever since. When Unreal Tournament 2003 came out I got into programming for it, and shortly after that I got my first job in the industry working at Secret Level. Since then I've worked for several different companies doing either level design or UnrealScript programming. Right now I'm working from home full time on Prometheus.

How did the idea for the Prometheus mod come about?

When Unreal Tournament 3 came out I knew Epic Games was going to be running another Make Something Unreal contest sometime in the future, and by that point I was confident that I could create and lead a team to make a successful mod for it. I had played a some Flash based games that used the same game mechanic that we have in Prometheus like Cursor*10 and Chronotron, but I'd never seen it done in an FPS before. I wanted to see where we could take the idea, and what we came up with is a game that is part puzzle and part action.

How were you able to design a game that requires so much thought into having players control their past and future characters in addition to the present?

We needed to make the gameplay as simple as possible, which is why there are only a few keyboard buttons the player needs to use and very simple interactions with the objects in the world. We wanted the player to be able to focus on using their other selves instead of getting bogged down with complicated interactions and interfaces. The tutorial level was also very important to introduce the player to playing the game and properly utilizing your other Quantum States to accomplish your goals.

What were some of the other challenges that you faced in making the mod?

One of the problems we've been facing since the first release last October is the inaccuracy of the Quantum States. It's a lot better than it was in past releases, but it's something we're constantly working on. But we think we have fully solved this issue for the Grand Finals, fingers crossed.

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Tags: epic-games, featured, prometheus, udk, unreal-development-kit

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