A short interview with Psych0Fred

Psyh0Fred was one of the developers of 'Star Wars: Battlefront', since the release of the game in 2004 he has often been quite charitable to the modding community by releasing guides and assets. I contacted him in order to ask some brief questions, though they aren't directly applicable to illustration, they reveal an interesting insight into the commercial design process.


Firstly, were you disappointed in the abandonment of some content such as extra classes and maps?

The first one didn't really have any extra classes I can think of. Stuff that I added or released in a lot of cases was just the fruits of developers getting a feel for the engine and how long things take. I would have liked the LAAT/C just because it looked really cool dropping off an ATTE, but it was an extra animation that ate p memory. We didn't have any playable maps that I can think of that we didn't produce, and they all underwent many and sometimes drastic revision. We had ideas for more and empty worlds, but again it comes back to starting with the 'must have's' and looking at the time a resources involved. We made each game in about a  year. I would have liked more detail on some of the maps, but the engine could only support so much. A more detailed Bespin would have been nice. I originaly wanted it to be like an outdoor shopping mall with lots of cover rather than have lots of wide open spaces.

Were there conflicting "visions" of the final product? Were these responsible for the late changes to the game between the initial trailers and the finished product?

When I first started working on it there was a different creative director and the proof of concept map was much more realistic looking -- that's kind of what I am expecting if the Battlefield team at EA work on it. But Lucasarts wanted it to be less realistic presumably so it gets rated for comic book violence. The only thing I can think of that changed was the maps just evolved. All of the designers worked on each of the maps at some point. Geonosis was mine but while I like the way but turned out the original idea was a king of the hill map. In the end the hill got flattened. I wanted it to be more like the film Hamburger Hill but with Clone Troopers.

Some of the concept art and the final HUD appears to insinuate that the game was meant to mimic a holographic simulation... is this the case?

No, the goal was always to re-create the battles from the films and expanded universe.

I would also like to know why you've been so wonderfully generous to the modding community by publicly releasing various assets?

I don't know, I used to enjoy modding so I know what it's like. You have all the tools we had to create the game so I'd like to see people do even better than we did with our tight schedule.