-
PSN-Name: Crash Bandicoot
-
Spielt gerade: Crash Bandicoot
Kung Fu Factory isn't exactly a huge name in the world of videogame developers. They've worked with a long list of companies including EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Radical, Treyarch, and Sony to name just a few. Their portfolio of work includes a few Mortal Kombat titles, the original UFC game on Dreamcast and a largely unheralded role in making THQ's UFC Undisputed 2009 into the game that so many people enjoyed (the team did thousands of the animations that you see in the game).
Now, for the very first time in its history, Kung Fu Factory is creating a wholly original fighting game in the uber-popular Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) realm in the form of something called Supremacy MMA.
The little studio based out of Los Angeles has only a few designers and a couple of producers, but that isn't stopping Kung Fu Factory (KFF) from taking on the likes of THQ and EA Sports. But Supremacy MMA has something that UFC and EA Sports MMA are sorely lacking: the freedom to deliver the most sadistic and gruesome action ever seen inside a cage. See, Supremacy isn't held back by Strikeforce or UFC, which are organizations concerned about protecting the image of their precious big-name fighters. That means Supremacy has the freedom to do things like snap forearms in half, dislocate shoulders and break necks in the ring. Other games take submissions to the edge, but Supremacy MMA hopes to push them right off the cliff.
How can they hope to compete with the mega-publishers of the world? Well, in this early stage, even the simplest deviation to cut down on the time it takes to fine tune things like a control scheme make a world of difference. Kung Fu Factory has developed something called RICE (Realtime Interactive Combat Engine) that allows them to input control scheme changes and then play with the remapped buttons without having to wait for things to compile in a system that could take upwards of five minutes. So their production time goes from several minutes to try out new mappings on the controller to only a few seconds. When you're talking about hundreds upon hundreds of control renditions to ensure that an MMA game controls properly, that frees up a lot of time.
That will hopefully free them up to develop a fully-featured career mode and other features. In the time I spent at Kung Fu Factory, the developers were totally mum when asked about specifics, except to say that Supremacy isn't trying to present a high production value TV-style presentation. Instead it's going to be much more underground with a definite nod to the seedy fight clubs of the world. The presentation is designed to exude the culture of MMA, even going as far to include popular tattoo designs and, of course, plenty of different fighting styles.
Concept art of an environment.
Of course, none of that means that KFF is neglecting the fact that their brand of MMA needs to be effectively presented with the requisite amount of energy when fighting in the ring. To do this, they've created an engine specifically designed to render members of the crowd. It's called the Million Monkey Engine and it basically lets the developers uniquely render members of the crowd so there shouldn't be noticeable patterns when it comes to shirt color or fist-pumping animations. It's small, but the difference in-game is pretty huge.
The early version of the game (it was around 25% complete) I saw had two fighters pummeling each other on the ground as they struggled to gain an advantageous position. One character got the other in an arm bar and proceeded to snap his arm in half. Needless to say, that was the end of the fight as one character stood victorious and the other rolled around in agony as his arm flopped around, totally split at the forearm with the bone popping through the skin. The visuals were early, but the potential was there for something pretty special. The crowd, as you'd expect, went completely berserk.
Supremacy MMA is extremely early at this point, but Kung Fu Factory is set to break onto the stage at E3 and we'll be there to bring you all the details. Supremacy MMA is planned to hit Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sometime in the future, with no definite time frame set just yet.
http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/109/1096296p1.html
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 