XBLA Exclusive Asks You to Face your Fears, Hydrophobia interview

Hydrophobia is the abnormal and irrational fear, of being in or drinking water. Like going into the ocean but freaking out because a stick touched your foot, and you were sure you heard the violins playing as that infamous great white shark was about to devour you so you run out of the 2 feet of water you were standing in, screaming.

Dark Energy Digital asks you to face that fear, and come play in their water, they guarantee it will be different this time. With E3 over and pictures flying over the net, this was a title that caught my eye. Not because it looked great, but because it was a DL game that looked great, and it was a company that developed their own tech with the HydroEngine. We here at the Farm were very interested and we wanted to know more, so we tracked them down to bring you, the readers the answers. We got in touch with Rob Hewson, Senior Creative Designer at Dark Energy Digital, and he was more than happy to explain the game and tech to us and you, the consumers. So, without further adieu here the questions we had for Rob. Please read and enjoy.

SFG: First off we at Southern Fried Gamer truly appreciate your time. Will you tell us about about Dark Energy Digital?

Rob: We’re a small company, about 40 people, but we have big ambitions. Dark Energy was set up to focus on digital distribution, we believe that is where the future lies and we’ve developed our tech to push ahead in that area. We want to show the world that we can create big titles that compete with the best at retail and deliver them as download only.

SFG:  From the press release your title has an interesting story, would you share what Hydrophobia is about to the readers?

Rob: We wanted to create a wholly original storyline, but we also set ourselves a remit of making what we call a ‘tangible future’. We wanted to completely avoid the clichés of space marines or nazi zombies and create something grounded in reality, but still set in the near future to provide some elbow room for creativity.

There’s a huge elephant in the room in world politics at the moment; the UN itself is projecting well over 9 billion people on the planet by the middle of this century, and we’re already running out of resources. We’re headed for some serious problems; mass poverty and global conflict over the earth’s precious resouces – in particular water. Climate change only intensifies the issue; rising sea levels will reduce fertile land and desserts around the equator will expand massively.

There are two political factions which exist today (try Googling it) which will rise to the fore in this scenario; the Malthusians and the Cornucopians.

Malthusians follow the theories of Thomas Malthus, a very famous political economist who wrote an infamous paper in 1798, which was very influential in the thinking of people like Darwin and Marx. His central argument was that human population always rises above the resource capacity, and controlling or limiting population growth is the only way to prevent what he called a population crash.

A cornucopian would argue that continued technological and scientific progress allows mankind to raise the resource level to feed the population. Since Malthus death they have been winning the argument; pesticides and other modern agricultural methods have massively increased food supply and world population has exploded as a result. However the pendulum in beginning to swing back to the Malthusians, and they would argue that the problem has merely been delayed and the explosion in the population means the crash will be far worse when it finally does hit.

Hydrophobia is set onboard the Queen of the World, the largest ship ever built, a city at sea where the wealthy elite live in exile from the chaos of the outside world. It is a cornucopian society created by the Five Founding Fathers – mega corporations dedicated to research and progress who can carry out their work free from regulation on this stateless vessel.

The contempt of the outside world for the Queen of the World is counter balanced by NanoCell; one of the Five Founding Fathers. NanoCell is a nanotechnology company dedicated to purifying water at the molecular level (again if you look into nanotechnology this is a genuine area of research which is expected to be targeted in future). The promise of NanoCell is to ‘make the desserts bloom with the food of the world’.

On the 10th anniversary of the Queen of the World the whole world is watching the so called ‘party of the century’ because NanoCell is expected to make a breakthrough announcement.

A group of Neo Malthusian fanatic choose this time to attack, they see Malthus as a prophet and have a rather chilling creed; Save the World, Kill Yourself.

SFG: Your title Hydrophobia looks tremendous, why did you decide to go to the digital route, instead of the traditional brick and mortar retail?

Rob: Dark Energy believes that downloads are the future, and as such we have developed our technology around them. Our InfiniteWorlds game engine uses bespoke procedural technology which allows us to produce a full scale AAA action adventure which you’d normally expect to see on a disk via XBLA. To turn the question around another way, why do traditional retail when you have technology like InfiniteWorlds which allows you to deliver the same game faster, greener and cheaper as a global download?

SFG:  This is going to be released on XBL in episodes. How many episodes will there be ,and will we see incremental improvements in the tech as it moves forward?

Rob: Initially Hydrophobia will be a trilogy, but there are plans beyond that depending on how well it performs. I think InfiniteWorlds and HydroEngine show we are a technology driven company, and you can expect to see some big leaps technologically as the series progresses. We can give many specifics now but we have tech in development which is going to be just as revolutionary as InfiniteWorld 1.0 and HydroEngine 1.0 are set to be.

SFG: Will there be a pre-order discount if you purchase all the episodes up front?

Rob: We will be releasing the first three instalments as stand alone games; there is currently no mechanism for doing a bulk discount. However later down the line perhaps we will look at doing the equivalent of the box set.

SFG:  With Microsoft publishing this for XBL and it being a timed exclusive, is your plan at the end of the exclusivity, to self publish on other platforms, and are you going to stay with the episodic digital releases or release them all together into retail?

Rob: The plan is to release on other platforms later, but for contractual reason we can give any details unfortunately.

SFG:  What made your team chase one of the holy grails in gaming with your HydroEngine, which is realistic water effects?

Rob: We know that there are far bigger, far more famous developers who are pursuing this and failing despite having far more money than us! Luckily our R&D Director is a PhD Astro Physicist who has spent years perfecting the equations. To our knowledge he is the only person in the world who knows the secrets of how to do true fluid dynamics in games.

SFG: Your team spent a few years developing your HydroEngine, and it took a game like Little Big Planet over a year to get water, why is realistic water so hard to create?

Rob: I’m not a tech guy, but essentially the equations are very CPU intensive and very, very hard to get stable so they don’t crash every two seconds. Fortunately we are way, way ahead of the curve on this.

SFG:  The HydroEngine allows dynamic actions with flowing fluids and it’s surroundings. How does it effect objects such as bullets flying into the water or things exploding?

Rob: It affects them in the way you would expect it to. Explosions will part the water and send out radial waves from the source, and bullets will be slowed down by the water leaving a bubbly trail behind them. It’s all modelled on accurate equations, and bullets in particular are a lot of fun because you end up with a kind of bullet-time effect in underwater combat.

SFG:  How natural will your character react and move through the water , and will you be able to transverse on, in, and under the water?

Rob: The characters are using a procedural animation system to ensure they react realistically to the water, however we’ve had to balance this for gameplay purposes. Earlier in development we had characters reacting completely realistically by this meant that movement was incredibly frustrating and they would constantly get swept off their feet. So we’ve taken a little bit of artistic license by to ensure the game remains fun, while maintaining realistic (if understated) character reactions to the water.

SFG:  Will Hydrophobia have multi-player , and be supported by DLC after the episodes are completed?

Rob: The first instalment is single player, and unfortunately I can’t comment on DLC just yet, but as you’d expect we are exploring a lot of options behind the scenes.

SFG: What will the the native resolution be and how many frames per second are you shooting for?

Rob: 720p, 30fps. Considering no other developer can even get real water running that’s pretty much miraculous!

SFG: I read that your team used bespoke procedural technology to allow greatly reduced file sizes. Please explain to us non-techies, what that means?

Rob: Essentially, InfiniteWorlds defines environments mathematically, and builds them up from components according to procedural algorithms. Our bespoke method of doing this saves huge amounts in terms of file footprint, which is why we can deliver a game of this scale as a download. However we’re not done yet, were going to be pushing further and further with this technology and you can expect more mind blowing revelations in the future.

SFG:  With the hot button topic of Blu-ray vs. Dvd space, is this a technology that other companies can use to fit more on to a Dvd?

Rob: It could be used that way, but with Hydrophobia we are going further and fitting a AAA quality game on XBLA. This is a full scale action adventure, there have been zero compromises made.

SFG: How long will each episode be and how far apart will they be released?

Rob: The first instalment will be 6-7 hours on your first playthrough, then there is a challenge room unlocked at the end of that with it’s own leaderboard, over 200 collectables to go back and find and characters you may not have saved the first time which you can go back and rescue. Add to that the leaderboards for each act of the game and the fact that HydroEngine means gameplay is never the same twice and you’ve got tonnes of replayability.

SFG:  Last but not least. How much per episode and when will the first one be released?

Rob: We’re not quite ready to announce a release date and price point yet, but we are aiming for the end of the summer/beginning of fall and a price point which will probably surprise you – in a good way.

After his answers to my questions and very enthusiastic communications, he tells me he is very excited and proud of his title, that goes a long way for me. I try very hard to stand behind anything I do or say, and I love it when the developer does the same thing. We want to thank Rob for his time and effort delivering to you well though out answers.This is a title that will be earning my hard earned dollar, and when this comes out we will be sure to review this for you folks. If you like it or not, Indie gaming is on the rise, and I can’t be happier. We will watch this title moving forward and bring you any news that comes down the wire, so check it out and tell US what YOU think.

Here is the link to their site www.darkenergydigital.com check them out, and please support Indie Gaming. You can also view more screens here.

*****UPDATE*****

For the readers we asked Rob how far apart will the episodes be delivered and here is his response.

Rob said,”We don’t really like to use the term ‘episode’ when talking about Hydrophobia, ‘trilogy’ is a much better fit given that each installment is a full length AAA quality action adventure. We can’t confirm how long it will be before the next installment (we haven’t quite announced the precise release date for this one yet!) but given that we have already built many of the assets we will be looking to turn it around fairly quickly.”

We want to thank Rob for getting back to us so quickly, so please let us know if you have any other questions. I am sure we can get the answers you request.

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