Third Law Interactive are a relatively new developer to the scene, but they are definitely causing a stir with there debut FPS – KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child. Yes that is KISS as in the band 🙂 The game is actually based on the KISS comics from Todd McFarlane Productions. The team is comprises of a handfull of known talent who’s work include – Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon, Daikatana, and Redneck Rampage, amongst others. Amongst that talent are Sverre “Lapp” Kvernmo (level designer) and Jonathan “Nelno” Wright (coder), both of which I just happened to have an interview with. Lets get on with it:

KungFu: A few people are disinterested in Psycho Circus mainly because its based on a band, but having looked around myself and read up on it, basically you could swap all the KISS characters over for other characters and the game would still rock. Psycho Circus looks almost like it could be a Blood sequel. What do you wanna say to these ‘non believers’? 🙂

SVERRE: If you’ve heard of Todd McFarlane and realize we’re working off one of his creations then that might make it worth a second look. To us, it was TMP that tipped the scales and convinced us KISS was Y2K compliant. A KISS game without the TMP license would surely have been doable, but would probably have been done by another team. As with the comic books, the game’s KISS references will be unobtrusive and largely invisible if you don’t know the story of the band. As for Caleb, I played both games through and yes there are similarities, but that’s mostly down to the dark theme and wet red walls that both titles share. KPC’s gameplay experience will be very different from the Bloods. For one, the body count should end up in our favor by a couple of zeroes.

KungFu: How’s the Lithtech engine been to work with? Has the team made any additions to the engine?

NELNO: LithTech has been great to work with. The engine is pretty solid all around, and neither Shogo or Blood 2 exploited everything it has to offer. We’ve made a number of changes, the first being that we started from scratch with the game code, only using Shogo and Blood 2 code as reference, so the only thing we share with those two games is the LithTech engine itself. As far as the engine is concerned, we’ve added a lot of stuff — mirrors/portals, per-vertex model lighting, beam systems (Half-Life made the most notable use of this effect to date), physics changes, etc. I tend to lose track of the changes we made. At this point we’re kind of a bastard son of LithTech 1.5 and LithTech 2.0, integrating parts of both. Monolith’s lead programmer on LithTech, Mike Dussault, has been exceedingly generous is helping us out with any problems and additions.

KungFu: Its common knowledge that one of Lithtechs weak points is net play. Do you plan on revamping it alittle and get it into shape?

NELNO: Actually, I’d say it’s not really accurate to say that networking is one of LithTech’s weak points. LithTech actually has some very cool networking capabilities built in andit’s architectured from the ground up to support the client-server model of networking.However, there certainly were complaints about net play for Shogo and Blood 2.Shogo’s problems were completely fixed in the 2.0 patches by rewriting the player movement and by moving to it’s own TCP/IP code rather than using Microsoft’s DirectPlay. The 2.0 patch of Shogo plays very, very well on a 56k modem. In fact,its stellar performance was one of the things that help convince us that LithTechwas the engine for our game. Blood 2’s performance was more problematic becauseit took a lot longer to get the multiplayer patch out. Suffice to say, Psycho Circusis using the improved networking and player movement code for deathmatch, so itshouldn’t exhibit any of the problems that Shogo or Blood 2 had when they shipped.

KungFu: You’ve gone on record saying that Psycho Circus will be going back downto the maniac blasting action roots of Doom with hoardes of badguys wantingto kick your ass. Isn’t one of the main reason why FPS that are currentlyaround now don’t do that is because the 3D engines can’t really cope withthat amount of action? On average how many badguys is Psycho Circus gonnathrow at you?

NELNO: Well, 3D engines since Doom haven’t been able to cope with that amount of action, butthat is changing. When Quake 1 was released, it was simply impossible to put the samenumber of monsters on the screen that Doom had because both the world and the models had become more complex. Hardware acceleration was the first step in changing that. LithTech also had some unique, out-of-the-box features that helped, most notablylevel of detail (LOD) on models. In one of the initial tests I did with LithTech while wewere looking at technology, I had about 45 models on screen. Without LOD this wouldhave been drawing about 56,000 triangles. With LOD it was drawing around 12,000to 15,000 triangles, and you had to look hard to tell the difference. On top of that Idesigned the creature AI, movement and physics from the start to support large numbersof creatures while still allowing them to appear as smart as the player would expect.Our goal was about 20-30 creatures on screen at once. We have some demo levels that run at very playable frame rates with 80 monsters on the screen. I won’t lie and say that the player should expect to see 80 monsters on the screen at once, but 20-30 will be the norm, with maybe twice that in some locations.

KungFu: With psycho circus having such an intense single player game, will thesame be said for the multiplayer side of things too? Got anything specialplanned on that front?

NELNO: The multiplayer game’s uniqueness will be an extension of the singleplayer game. Thereare a LOT of artifacts in the singleplayer game, and they’ve all been designed to lendthemselves to the multiplayer experience. One of the cooler features in multiplayer isthe different player classes, each based on an Elder, and the armor pieces that can bepicked up to enhance the player’s abilities while they play. There should also be a fewdifferent game types, too, though we’re not planning anything as elaborate as capturethe flag for our initial release.

KungFu: How have you found using McFarlanes comics as a base for the game? Has itgiven you plenty of scope to play with?

SVERRE: It saved us a bunch of work on the preparation end, which was a blessing during the hectic period of setting up shop. On top of that it just happens to be some of the best looking comics I’ve seen in my life (and I was obsessed with the stuff). Even though the books provide a lot of the building blocks, we still needed to convert the world to fit comfortably into the FPS environment (the Elder don’t go around picking up health and ammo too much during the story lines). Its typically easy to get chained down creatively by a license but for us it has honestly been more of a springboard. The killer clown theme is great for going over the top, so we didn’t exactly hold back on anything. Regardless of KISS, McFarlane or anyone else we’re all (except Pam) gamers with a long history of sore thumbs, red eyes and/or early morning frag-fests where only the adrenaline kept you awake. We have a game or two we want to make and if KISS helps us do it, then more power to them.

KungFu: I hear there maybe a comic prequel to the game by Todd McFarlaneProductions, whats the deal now? Anyword on if it is going to happen or not?

SVERRE: We’re currently trying to make this happen, but TMP is a big beast with very thick skin. They will at the very least do box-art and some other art materials for us.

KungFu:Any time frame on when we can expect a taster of Psycho Circus in theform of a demo? I personally am itching to play it 🙂

SVERRE: The earliest possible date for any kind of demo would be around New Year’s, but don’t hold me to that. It would probably come in the form of an OEM deal, or something similar. We’ve got a few playable portions of the game right now but we’re trying to keep them under wraps as long as possible.

KungFu:Is there anything you wanna get off your chest before we wrap this up?

SVERRE: Uhm… There won’t be a “Lovegun” in the game?

KungFu:Awwww…dammit! Anyhow, thanks alot guys.

Related Links
   • Third Law – The developers of Psycho Circus.
   • The Psycho News – Our own Psycho Circus fan site.
   • The Gathering of Developers – The publishers site.