DCUO Art panel pt. 2

How often do you talk with the SOE folks?

Jim: I come down every three or four months?

Jared: We get out to San Diego fairly often.

Jim: Jason and I both work late, so a lot of the stuff we do with the characters are done at 1, 3, 4 in the morning. We work on different jpegs, different layers on a Photoshop file, working back and forth.

Jason: He's not in Austin all the time, but we work together just all the time.

You mentioned Gotham and Metropolis, but are any of the other cities in the DC world represented in game?

Jens: We're saving that right now, but there will be some other environments to play around in.

Release date?

Jens: When it's ready, when it's done ... we want an awesome game coming out of Austin. Definitely not something we're ready to talk about now.

With a license, with an IP, have you considered that you're getting too wrapped up in getting the IP right and short shrifting the players?

Jared: We haven't shown the player system yet. They're really robust.

Jim: Not only do you want costumes that want awesome, but you want them to look like they'll fit in the DC Universe. You want to understand whether you'll guide the hand of the player or allow them to do whatever they want. There are so many looks you could have ... DC also has a history of having distinct 'ages' to their costume styles, incorporating that has been an issue.

Jens: On the gameplay side things are as wide open as possible. We want you to make a character that is inspired by something. You can create a character that says "inspired by" Flash or "inspired by" Green Lantern. Or you can go totally freeform, picking whatever you want to make your totally new look. Then you have powers, a long list of superpowers. Then you have style; does your power come from your eyes, from a ring, from a pair of swords? Then you pick a movement mode and an origin. You level up, you specialize in very different ways, and so you might be totally different than the other 'ice guy' that's right next to you.

Jim: "You want to make a kick-ass magician, you pick a tophat."

How do the comics and the game interrelated?

Jim: It's definitely a flow back and forth. We might have to design something for the game that won't be revealed in a comic for half a year. Once we have that it's great for the comics too, because we have something we can pass around internally.

Jim, were you involved in the animation part? That's obviously a big part of the look of the character.

Jim: I'm involved in almost all aspects of the game. We've talked about how charcters move and run, how their bodies move ... we were just taking about female character hips, to see if they were good looking when they twisted. There are demands that the animators had, but then the silhouettes were getting muddied. There's a lot of dialogue that goes back and forth between parts of the teams on issues like this.

Jens: Jim is involved with animation, too, because he's created 'movement templates' for us. "This is how a big guy will rip a lamppost out of a ground and hit someone." Then we base our animations off of that.

Jim: I keep trying to find the right skin-tight uniform and lighting to make animation movies for these guys. As long as it doesn't end up on YouTube I'll totally do that.

In other MMOs instanced missions end up with nonsensical tiles and art. How are you dealing with that?

Jared: With the size of this game that's definitely a production issue. We want as much of a handcrafted feel as possible, but we need modularity as well. There are custom locations, obviously; the Bat Cave is one. But there are other areas, like the sewers of Metropolis, that don't need to be completely fleshed out and can be just colored in.

Jens: We also have a budget of resources to use on the PS3. We want to make sure that the fidelity of spaces remains consistent across large and small spaces. We are looking to use tiles, to be sure, but it's all about how you put them together. Even if it's 'the same room' it can look really different and interesting.

Jared: A lot of the city images we've put out so far are kind of generic, but there are specific areas in the cities that will be really unique.

Will we see Vertigo or Wildstorm characters in the game at some point?

Jim: Not yet, but I'd love to see that. That would kickass.

What are the challenges of all those special effects in an online space?

Jared: We started really big, really broad, and that was just too much. The key is to do something that looks cool but still allows players to see what's going on. That comes through playtesting.

Jens: I'll talk about the PS3 again - you just have fewer assets. You have to be clever about a special effect vocabulary to stand in for tooltips and little UI things - you need really good messaging and tight resource management to deal with it. It's challenging.

Destructible environments, are those in the plan? Throw a car through a building?

Jim: Throw a building through a car is what I'd like.

Jens: Well, if all the buildings were destructible Metropolis would be a smoking crater. "There's a building, smash it!" There are things you can smash, but we also need stability and normalcy in some areas to make sure players have a place to play. There's an incredible amount of asset reuse, but it's almost impossible to see that because of all the customization the art team and Jarred do.

Is there any forethought on stopping other IPs from entering via your character customization?

Jens: "You can't put a web pattern on your costume."

Jim: "Four claws on each hand, two claws on each hand, but not three!"

Jens: Yes, definitely.

You talked about the character origins - will secret identities figure into art at all?

Jens: I'd love to talk about that. We can't right now. But the first time we started talking to Jim we were talking about civilian clothes and secret identities. It's going to be really interesting.

Multiple costumes?

Jens: ehh... I don't see why not? But if a system is all about fashion you need multiple looks. You need to not get bored. If your system is all about function, you have no control. We're trying to blend that by offering tweaks and changes to your look while maintaining your own personal theme.

Will vehicles play a part in the game?

Jens: The batmobile will play a part in the game, and we'll have traffic in the city. We don't know about letting players have their own vehicles yet, but right now we're looking at players 'being' the vehicle. We want players to have fun and exciting ways to move around the space: running up the sides of buildings, running across the water, walltapping to get to rooftops. Compared to that we don't know if vehicles are all that important.

Are sidekicks or child characters at all in the plans?

Jim: One of the first things we did was think about what makes DC unique, and sidekicks are definitely one of them.

Jens: It's totally in the works, we just don't know how it will manifest yet.

What about humor? There's a lot of weird stuff in DC?

Jens: Jim really helped me get over myself. He said to me at one point, "the whole thing is ridiculous". That really helped.

Jim: Batman has a giant penny and a robot dinosaur in his "bat cave". The DC universe is fun, you can do the serious and the silly, it's charming. It's the DC universe.

Jens: For vintage silliness check out the showcase comics.

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