Who were some of the original designers?
By
BackAlleyBrawler,
Posted on: 2009-07-10 12:06 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Hmm and something else I just noticed too.. All of the ex-designers have had their red name stripped and are now a green name. (You can see this by digging back in the developer forum) -- The only exception is Statesman, I wonder why that is?
If his posts got pruned, then how would we repeatedly drag him out to be beaten?
Actually, I believe there was a lead designer before Statesman. Early Alpha, things changed over and Jack was given charge of the project. (I could be wrong, however).
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Statesman and Positron started this game together, if I recall correctly.
Gilgamesh was a writer and Statesman wasn't the original head of CoH, he was given it after the original guy left (or was kicked, I'm a little hazy on that.)
From the wiki
Cryptic Studios was founded in 2000 and is based in Los Gatos, California. It was founded by Michael Lewis, Rick Dakan, Bruce Rogers, and Jack Emmert.
The latter 3 have further details on their wiki pages.
Those 4 are the original folks.
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Statesman and Positron started this game together, if I recall correctly.
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You don't. As the post above me states, Posi wasn't one of the founders. He was on pretty early on, though, but just as a designer. I remember him talking someplace about the original Winter event and making some calls when he saw how players were PLing off Winter Lords.
Now, going in the opposite direction: Castle didn't work on the game until I6 (if I remember correctly) and BABs didn't come on board until I7.
Positron: "There are no bugs [in City of Heroes], just varying degrees of features."
Posi however, was a dev even in beta. He played a Rikti commander during the closing event... indeed, he was the very person we were targeting in the Steel Canyon version whereupon we figured out targeting him and healing wasn't landing on whoever he had targeted.
Yep. Bug right there at the end of beta: if a Dev was in a toon, he was a player toon... thus, the defenders/controllers who were trying to heal whoever he was attacking were actually healing him.
We figured that out after a thirty-forty person wipe (I still have screenies somewhere). Anyway, each of the devs had a Rikti commander they ran, with derivations off their usual hero name. I think his was something like Commander Pozil'in or something.
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To all the devs, past, present, (and may there be) future: /salute
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Now, going in the opposite direction: Castle didn't work on the game until I6 (if I remember correctly) and BABs didn't come on board until I7.
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If you check the wiki, you'll see that Castle came on board in late 2004. No details for BaB, though.
...I forgot what experience means.
Here's an article about Rick Dakan.
He was originally the Lead Designer of CoH and we have him to thank for a lot of the lore and story. CoH wouldn't have existed without him.
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Castle is a former beta tester.
Rick Dakan was not just the original lead designer and creator of CoH lore, he also wrote the first series of the CoH comic.
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Now, going in the opposite direction: Castle didn't work on the game until I6 (if I remember correctly) and BABs didn't come on board until I7.
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If you check the wiki, you'll see that Castle came on board in late 2004. No details for BaB, though.
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If the post still exists, Castle mentioned that he came in around I6 when talking about the changes to Energy Melee. BABs' start date was said by the man himself during a conversation in the Beta Testers global channel during the I15 beta.
Positron: "There are no bugs [in City of Heroes], just varying degrees of features."
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If the post still exists, Castle mentioned that he came in around I6 when talking about the changes to Energy Melee. BABs' start date was said by the man himself during a conversation in the Beta Testers global channel during the I15 beta.
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I was in the process of moving to Cali to start working at Cryptic on CoH/CoV when my car's engine exploded in Wyoming. I spent about 4 or 5 days in a hotel room playing Issue 7, which had just been released.
That is the only way I know how long I've been working on this game...because of playing Issue 7 in a hotel room in Wyoming.
I've played the game since roughly 2 weeks after launch.
Ugh, Wyoming.
My sympathy.
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Here's an article about Rick Dakan.
He was originally the Lead Designer of CoH and we have him to thank for a lot of the lore and story. CoH wouldn't have existed without him.
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Yes. Rick Dakan is the "father" of City of Heroes. It was his idea, not Jack's, as so many people seem to think. Rick created Nemesis, the Rikti, the 5th Column, and who knows how much else. He was a writer for the game at least through Issue 2 (he claims to have had some writing involvement with the Shadow Shard, I don't know how much). There was a much more detailed article on warcry.com from just before Issue 3's release, but it seems to have been removed.
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I was in the process of moving to Cali to start working at Cryptic on CoH/CoV when my car's engine exploded in Wyoming. I spent about 4 or 5 days in a hotel room playing Issue 7, which had just been released.
That is the only way I know how long I've been working on this game...because of playing Issue 7 in a hotel room in Wyoming.
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Wait, you're saying that City of Heroes permitted you to survive 4 or 5 days of Wyoming's lethal Boredom?
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Yes. Rick Dakan is the "father" of City of Heroes. It was his idea, not Jack's, as so many people seem to think. Rick created Nemesis, the Rikti, the 5th Column, and who knows how much else. He was a writer for the game at least through Issue 2 (he claims to have had some writing involvement with the Shadow Shard, I don't know how much). There was a much more detailed article on warcry.com from just before Issue 3's release, but it seems to have been removed.
[/ QUOTE ]I think Jack gets credit because game media sucks and doesn't do any research or doesn't care. Everyone interviewed and chatted with Rick during the early days of development, but once they brought Jack in as Lead Designer suddenly it was Jack's creation. Most people interviewing Jack probably didn't interview Dakan or really know anything about previous developer interviews.
Then players read all that and don't know any better and ultimately you end up with Rick Dakan basically being entirely unknown except and virtually uncredited ("Special Thanks" in the manual, but game development credits are incredibly sketchy generally) with a few exceptions while Jack gets to tromp around Cryptic Studios as the father of City of Heroes.
My Going Rogue Trailer
Virtue (blue) - Wes The Mess
Virtue (red) - Jess The Best
@Razoras
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If the post still exists, Castle mentioned that he came in around I6 when talking about the changes to Energy Melee. BABs' start date was said by the man himself during a conversation in the Beta Testers global channel during the I15 beta.
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I was in the process of moving to Cali to start working at Cryptic on CoH/CoV when my car's engine exploded in Wyoming. I spent about 4 or 5 days in a hotel room playing Issue 7, which had just been released.
That is the only way I know how long I've been working on this game...because of playing Issue 7 in a hotel room in Wyoming.
I've played the game since roughly 2 weeks after launch.
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Sounds like a Nemesis plot.
I live in in central wyo. Been overseas, lived near, and in, big cities. I love it here, wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
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Yes. Rick Dakan is the "father" of City of Heroes. It was his idea, not Jack's, as so many people seem to think. Rick created Nemesis, the Rikti, the 5th Column, and who knows how much else. He was a writer for the game at least through Issue 2 (he claims to have had some writing involvement with the Shadow Shard, I don't know how much). There was a much more detailed article on warcry.com from just before Issue 3's release, but it seems to have been removed.
[/ QUOTE ]I think Jack gets credit because game media sucks and doesn't do any research or doesn't care. Everyone interviewed and chatted with Rick during the early days of development, but once they brought Jack in as Lead Designer suddenly it was Jack's creation. Most people interviewing Jack probably didn't interview Dakan or really know anything about previous developer interviews.
Then players read all that and don't know any better and ultimately you end up with Rick Dakan basically being entirely unknown except and virtually uncredited ("Special Thanks" in the manual, but game development credits are incredibly sketchy generally) with a few exceptions while Jack gets to tromp around Cryptic Studios as the father of City of Heroes.
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Wow, I've been playing the game and reading the forums for years and had no idea who Rick Dakan was or his involvement with the game. I really believed it was Jack's brainchild.
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I was in the process of moving to Cali to start working at Cryptic on CoH/CoV when my car's engine exploded in Wyoming. I spent about 4 or 5 days in a hotel room playing Issue 7, which had just been released.
That is the only way I know how long I've been working on this game...because of playing Issue 7 in a hotel room in Wyoming.
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Wait, you're saying that City of Heroes permitted you to survive 4 or 5 days of Wyoming's lethal Boredom?
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No, you misunderstand. The thought of getting to work on the game he had been playing for so long AND being able to play it while we was waiting out the repairs are what permitted him to survive it.
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I wonder where this game would've gone and how it would've evolved if Dakan had stayed on board. Would ED have happened? Would balancing issues have been sorted out?
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Now, going in the opposite direction: Castle didn't work on the game until I6 (if I remember correctly) and BABs didn't come on board until I7.
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I started in November 2004, between I2 and I3. Before geko, there was another person working on Powers, who actually set up many of the tools we use. Al 'geko' Rivera came on a few months before closed beta began, and it was his job to put together the powersets in time for Beta. If I recall correctly there was an animator and a particle FX artist who worked with him to get all of that done in time.
I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.
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I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.
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Jack stood over them yelling, "Git 'er done!"?
Edit, just because it's me: but Geko and The Guy Before Geko weren't always so hot at figuring out how powers would work together. Like ... giving a relatively squishie defender a 50' AoE repel with HUMUNGOUS end drain that mucks up AoEs and calling it "squishie defense".
But, since I am a nice person at heart ...
From what I've read about CoH's tortured development, what they did was a monumental achievement. And it's amazing how much of it they got close enough to right to make the game hugely entertaining.
After seeing this quote from Back Alley Brawler it made me think:
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The infamous knockout blow animation wasn't even something that I animated, so I have no attachment to it and don't feel any need to defend it's quality. I happen to like it, I know plenty of others do as well, and I know a great deal of people who don't.
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So if I recall correctly:
Geko = Original powers guy before Castle, or did Castle exist with him back then too?
Statesman = Original lead designer, passed mantle to Positron.
Original powers animator guy = ???
Gilgamesh = ??? Was he just NC Soft or a designer?