Game: Red Faction

Red Faction for the N-gage is a very loose derivative of the FPS PS2/PC game made by Volition. While the original was a really solid title, sadly the N-gage version was rife with a lot of development issues associated with being an ambitious design slated for the N-gage launch window. It was the very first FPS to be designed for the phone, which in itself is something of an accomplishment, but in the end the platform as a whole just hadn't come along far enough to do justice to the game or genre.

My Contributions

Levels, characters, GUI design, weapon sprites, and particle FX. ?As with all Monkeystone titles, this was made by a very small team of developers so I had the opportunity to wear many hats. ?While I don’t have any of the original source material any longer, the levels where a combination of mines, base facilities, or a combination thereof. The characters were rebuilt low-poly versions of the original PS2 characters, the main menu graphics were my own creation, the weapon sprites were renders from the console version, and the particle FX were custom-made.

The World’s Smallest Post-Mortem

What went right

  • It shipped!
  • I got credit for my first levels
  • Multi-player mode was pretty enjoyable

What went wrong

  • We, at times, were killing ourselves to produce a mediocre game
  • The development tools didn’t allow artists and level designers to debug major errors on the phone. ?It was often quicker to rebuild levels from scratch than diagnose the problem
  • Some features were sorely needed in the graphics engine that didn’t (or couldn’t) exist at the time such as a z-buffer. ?This resulted in severe limitations on how levels could be built to reduce sorting errors
  • We never could get above 30fps which is a death-blow to most action games
  • The N-gage controls were really never well-suited for FPSes

Upon Further Review…

Red Faction, as was warranted, was received poorly by most critics. ?I can’t say that I disagree with the consensus because the game just wasn’t fun (except for multi-player). ?It was a bit of a technical achievement given the constraints of the platform, but that is a hollow victory when any lasting memories players take away aren’t positive. Fortunately, there are a lot of lessons I took away from making this game.

  • Launch titles are tough and full of development risk – being first and being the best are often opposed. Schedule a lot more time than you think you need because the chance your team will encounter problems no one else has seen yet is high
  • I really like level design
  • Good tools make good games. There is nothing more deflating than losing work to bad tools
  • Some genres shouldn’t appear on some platforms. Due to the tiny screen, lack of memory and processor power, and a control interface not ideal for FPSes, the N-gage just isn’t an ideal platform for the genre. ?Even so, Nokia seemed to be wanting best looking games to showcase the hardware for launch not necessarily the most fun. All of the early 3d games on the platform suffered similar performance-related problems.
  • The initial launch phone did look like a taco – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzPvLXG7jOY

Additional References

For more information on Red Faction, please check out the following links: