Today is the day Prototype 2 for Xbox 360 and PS3 hits store shelves for most of the world. I am so proud and honoured to have worked on this game for Radical Entertainment. After a few disappointing jobs on games where I wasn’t really excited about my role on the team, Radical bestowed me the satisfaction of working on important game play features on Prototype 2. Work became fun and relevant for me again.
I helped the mission designers make their missions more fun, challenging, and entertaining. Sometime it meant writing new features or fixing existing features that were broken along the way (like the cages of locked up citizens that wouldn’t show up). In the game, the main character, Heller, answers the phone throughout the storyline. Though that seems like a simple feat, it required quite a bit of effort. I helped get the animations into the game (which came from the talented animators). Initially this caused us to run out of memory on PS3 which caused me some alarm. Once I scraped together enough free memory on the PS3, we figured out Heller couldn’t just answer a call anywhere in the game. It would look stupid if he was fighting some dudes and then stopped all of a sudden to take a call. So we had to write some fairly complicated logic to determine when a video game character could safely answer a phone call given all the outrageous things that could happen to Heller. I also helped implement the various weapon racks in the game. So, if you’re playing Prototype 2 and you happen to grab a gun or a rocket launcher from a rack, think of me. I also wrote most of the achievement/trophy system for the game. When you get a trophy or achievement, you’re running a bit of code I wrote. I was fortunate enough to work on a number of other different things on the game but I won’t go into more detail.
I’ve written this before but I’ll write it again, I thank Radical Entertainment and everyone there for letting me work on Prototype 2. The people I worked with on that team were some of the most talented and awesome individuals I have ever met. I feel extremely fortunate to have spent most of 2011 with them. I am going to the wrap party tonight and I hope to see many of my former colleagues there.
Check out Prototype 2 if you have the chance!