Building Cold Fear

I am the lead programmer on Cold Fear. At the beginning of the project I worked on the ship's movements and the impact it had on Tom Hansen. We have a very good development team of 10 programmers, all experienced and dedicated.

Rendering Ship Movement

With the Darkwave editor, the game designers have full control of the ship's movement to manage the rhythm of the game.

We had two main objectives. The first was to create a stormy environment out at sea. The second was to make sure that the player was equipped to fight in this specific environment. Therefore, the challenge was to build a better control scheme than what is usually the norm in horror games.

Creating a Stormy Environment

We were quickly able to make the ship move. But to achieve a more realistic movement we had to develop a complete roll editor. When out at sea, a ship moves both on a vertical axis (roll) and a horizontal one (pitch). Our Darkwave editor allows us to separately generate the pitch and roll following two different curves, and it is the combination of both that creates a realistic movement.

Monitoring Movement

Creating the ship's movement alone was not enough. From a gameplay point of view, it was important to control it step-by-step in order to manage the rhythm of the action and give the game an element of surprise. In the end, the Darkwave system allows us to control everything that happens, just as if we were directing a movie like Titanic or The Perfect Storm. That means that each event falls in place at the right moment at the right place, delivering the best so that the best experience is possible.

New Camera Angles

Once the ship-movement scheme was built, the second challenge was the camera system. We had to efficiently render the movement of the scenery while making sure that the cameras were focused on the character, who is also behaving to compensate at that very movement. For instance, in the early stages of development the camera was constantly going through the walls because of the roll movement. So we had to develop an inertia-control system for the camera, just as if a cameraman is using a steady cam behind the hero.

The whaler offers very different and complex situations, including vast exteriors, like on the main deck, and confined interiors, like in most corridors. Each of these configurations means a specific constraint in terms of the camera.

For a horror game, another innovation is that we have a directing-oriented camera system combined with autonomous cameras that follow the actions of the player. Depending on the action, our directors have 12 camera modes at their disposal to let the tension grow, highlight the atmosphere of a room, or lead the player toward the next event or combat. And of course the player also has the opportunity to switch to the over-the-shoulder view at any moment.

Over-the-Shoulder View

The level designers have access to multiple camera systems. For this interior setting, the level builders focused on creating a dark, movielike atmosphere.

Most horror games put the emphasis on hand-to-hand or close-quarter combat. In Cold Fear, we wanted to create the possibility that the enemy will shoot at you. We wanted to enrich the action gameplay and not have only creatures or mutants to shoot at.

We quickly developed an "over-the-shoulder" view to allow for shooting action and long-range combat. We opted for an autolock-free targeting system so that the player would have total control of his actions and not be frustrated by strong assistance. When compared to other horror games, this OTS camera really unleashes the action and makes it even more immersive. The player can strafe and move back while firing until the very last moment before being caught, which makes the combat more interesting and more tactical. It also makes contact with the creatures even more impressive and stressful. The camera systems and the OTS view prevent the player from being frustrated by the view of his game. This improvement gives the player the ability to fight the way he likes and creates a very immersive experience.

Managing Character Interactions With the Environment

In Cold Fear the characters spontaneously shift with the movements of the ship until the deck reaches a certain angle. At that point, they fall and begin to slide. While sliding, Tom can still turn back, stop himself from falling by catching hold of the hull, and continue shooting.

To achieve the best possible visual quality, the characters' animations had to perfectly match the movements of the ship. The characters must shift and compensate in all directions: forward, backward, left, right, and in all intermediary directions. Once you add them up, this gives us a total of nine animations that have to be mixed together to create a movement that constantly follows the deck's angle variations. This required us to implement nine times the animations that you'd find in the average third-person game. Even if we managed to use some techniques like Inverse Kinematics, we still have 250 animations for Tom and 150 for some enemies, not including compensation animations. Our animators did a tremendous job to achieve such a result.

The game engine manages the impact of the moving environment on all entities: compensation, fall, and slide. It's incredibly dynamic. Everything is rendered in real time, and even the corpses are still affected by roll movements.

Action

Intense action will be a key component in the Cold Fear experience.

Having good animations was a key issue in Cold Fear, but we also wanted the game to be able to show many enemies on the same screen. So we optimized the game again and again to reduce the size of the animations in the memory, with good results. In some scenes, we have a dozen enemies, including mercenaries, mutants, and exocels, all interacting with each other and with the environment. This allows for really intense action sequences.

What I Like in Cold Fear

Cold Fear offers a never-before-seen visual experience in terms of animation richness. The interaction between the storm and the characters that are on the deck sometimes creates some really breathtaking moments. And on top of that, we managed to offer some really intense action sequences featuring far more enemies than in most horror games.

The player has no time for relief in Cold Fear; it is this mix of strong atmosphere and intense action I am the most proud of.