BUBBLEGUM CRISIS ONLINE
Design Document for The Bubblegum Crisis Center
Written by MadMax
Last Update: 11th February 2005

TABLE OF CONTENTS

0. Changes in This Update
1. What is Bubblegum Crisis Online?
2. Introduction to BGCO
3. Used Technology
4. Ideas
    4.1. What Do We Want?
    4.2. Story Ideas
    4.3. What Will the Game Setup be Like?
5. Gameplay
    5.1. Specific Gameplay Features
    5.2. Level Ideas
    5.3. Mission Walkthrough
6. Development Process
    6.1. Team Setup
    6.2. List and Details of Jobs
    6.3. Current Progress
    6.4. To-Do List

0. CHANGES IN THIS UPDATE

- updated "Team Setup" and "Current Progress"

1. WHAT IS BUBBLEGUM CRISIS ONLINE?

"Bubblegum Crisis Online" is the title of a total conversion for Unreal Tournament. It will be a mixture of single player missions and team play, completely played online by groups of people, that follows a storyline based on the anime series Bubblegum Crisis by Artmic/Youmex/AIC which was created from 1987 to 1991 and is considered one of the most popular classic cyberpunk animes to date. In the game, the player will enter the world of Bubblegum Crisis as one of the main or several side characters and experience the anime's story in form of first person shooter missions and levels, complete with the technology, graphics, artwork, music, locations and characters from the series. However, the story will take other turns than in the anime in various ways and conclude differently to make the game more interesting to BGC fans and compatible with the online gaming system. It is also planned that the player will have to control various characters throughout the game instead of just one, and that he will be able to do more than just run around and shoot, e.g. drive, fly, interact with characters, follow mission objectives etc.
The origin of the idea for Bubblegum Crisis Online is described below. I also played a Duke Nukem 3D modification called "Priss Nukem Special Edition" by UnagiArts which impressed me very much and gave me some concrete imagination of a full BGC game that could be realized by fans.

2. INTRODUCTION TO BGCO

Bubblegum Crisis does a great job of displaying graphical action scenes including weapons, martial arts and cyber technology. This tensing action is conveyed by a storyline involving a little team of four vigilant women, the Knight Sabers, fighting the Genom corporation who have been using advanced robotics and AI technology to rule the city of MegaTokyo with the help of "Boomers". These cyberdroids are capable of replacing humans in almost any work area, but also perfect for use as heavy weaponry to pursue Genom's secret interests.

Heavy fire fights in a city like MegaTokyo in the year 2032/33 create perfect atmosphere for a computer game based on the series. In many animes and cartoons in general, the story is pushed forward by several fights between good and evil, mostly resulting in a firework of action including weapons, robotics, vehicles, battle suits and martial arts. Many computer action games perform the same task by giving the player access to several weapons and abilities to destroy his enemies, ultimately going up to one final goal.

Bubblegum Crisis features a story reminding of several of these computer games. On their way through the episodes of the series, the Knight Sabers encounter the standard weapons used by Genom, the Boomers in any form and fashion, as well as three villains taking their chance to rule Genom under their hand. All these elements of the series can be added to a game based on Bubblegum Crisis.

The question is how to realize a game project based on a series which is five hours long, but features only about a half to one hour of climax scenes which have to be incorporated in the game to be true to the identity of BGC. There are several ways to create a transfer between these scenes: it is possible to give each character one task to perform in a level based on the series like the climax fights, e.g. Priss having to stop the Griffon in episode four or even Sylvie and Anri escaping from Genaros. In this case the game would almost offer a total conversion of the series to a playable version where the player can decide for himself what he wants and has to do. The disadvantage of this type of game is that fans of the series will know the outcome of each level since they know the scenes it is based on. Therefore, either a game featuring a mixture of original and new scenes or a completely new story would make for the ideal BGC game.

3. USED TECHNOLOGY

BGCO is based on Unreal Tournament 2004. Here's why:

Originally, the game was supposed to be based on the Unreal Warfare engine, part of Unreal Tournament 2003. I chose this engine because of two main reasons: power and Karma (hahaha).
Power means that the engine is one of the fastest 3D engines to date with a lot of features that let us easily create impressive content while maintaining a playable speed on today's standard computers, and since UT2003 is an online game, it's the perfect base for an online game modification.
Karma is the physics engine of UT2003 which is very useful when creating vehicles and animating characters since it can calculate animations and collision detection itself.

However, with passing development time, I found out several severe lacks in the Unreal Warfare engine that made editing simple effects in maps, like flashing lights, transparent textures and water either difficult or completely impossible. Since all these elements will be an important part of BGCO's design, I decided to discuss the idea of an engine change with the team, and together we decided to port the game to the Classic Unreal Tournament engine. This happened when the game was still at the demo stage, so it was also a kind of test to see how Classic UT would run the game. Mainly, the benefits of the engine change were easier design, faster speed on older computers, and graphics that fit our game's anime style (we wouldn't use all of the realistic elements in UT2003).
Since work has started on the full game, programming has become much more important than mapping or modelling at the moment because the code needs to be written before any content is created. At this point I ran into major problems with UnrealScript that would not let me do the things the game absolutely needs. However, this is not directly related to Classic UT, but the fact that we used several mods to improve the old engine in terms of graphics and modelling techniques (skeletal animation). The modding was what kept me from writing clean code for the full game and so I discussed this problem with our modeller who didn't even have a working computer at the time. He and I agreed that it poses such a problem for his modelling and my programming work that we couldn't continue using a mod that contradicts two design elements. My main point here is that the decision for the engine change was made one year ago and quite a few people (even in our forum) have upgraded their computers, so unless we find a hand-and-foot reason to keep Classic UT as our base, players now probably won't have a problem installing Unreal Tournament 2004, the most recent Unreal engine game, to play BGCO. UT2004 does not only natively feature all the mod components we included in Classic UT (why would we use an old engine if we mod it to be like a new one?), but it also has so many features we can make use of that were not even included in UT2003, like vehicles, a better menu system, voice chat and lots more. UT2004 has even surpassed Classic UT's online player count which would probably make BGCO look outdated if it came out on Classic UT's engine.

From now on, BGCO will be completely based on UT2004.

The rundown of the used technology:

- engine: Unreal Tournament 2004
- content creation tools:
    * UnrealED 3.0 (level design and importing of other content)
    * 3D Studio MAX (modelling)
    * Adobe Photoshop / Corel Graphics Suite / Adobe Illustrator & various imaging tools (textures, artwork, colouring)
    * Cool Edit 2000 & various sound tools (sound design)
- resources: Bubblegum Crisis, Bubblegum Crash!, the Internet, BGC soundtracks, UT2004 and other games

4. IDEAS

The following subsections contain information about the general ideas behind the game.

4.1. WHAT DO WE WANT?

- online game with missions and team play
- original BGC story material mixed with new elements to form a game story
- recognizable characters from the series
- key scenes from the series
- original or slightly abstracted weapons from the series
- vehicles
- RPG-style point system: upgrade your tech as you progress
- lots of Boomers
- Genom villains
- known locations of MegaTokyo
- multi-purpose game concept: shooting, driving, flying
- original BGC material (artwork, cinematics, music, sounds)

4.2. STORY IDEAS

Chris Turley, storywriter for BGCO, envisions this story draft for the final game:

"There are four factions of note: the Knight Sabers, AD Police, Genom and a fourth, as yet unnamed power behind the scenes. Call this faction the 'Rogue Boomers' for now. Rogue Boomers begin causing more mischief than necessary with one exception: these rogues are not sent out by Genom on deniable missions of terror and destruction. Despite this, Genom does nothing initially to stop them as they make great distractions for their other activities, including Boomers sent out on errands for the company bigwigs. The ADP and KS must deal with both. Genom soon learns that these 'other rogues' are starting to follow a pattern. The ADP, KS, and Genom all find out around the same time via their own forensics efforts that these Boomers have been infected by a highly sophisticated virus. Naturally the KS assume Genom is behind it and go off in search of proof. The ADP cannot do anything officially, but that won't stop enterprising officers from searching for proof anyway. It will be the players on the ADP or KS side that decide who finds out that Genom is not responsible first. (Smarter play means that side figures it out first.) During this time Genom is busy trying to both fend off the KS and 'over-zealous ADP officers' at the same time aggressively going after the rogue faction. It will be found that the rogues are going after different items city-wide, but to what end is anybody's guess. Except for Genom, they know, but will never share that information, not even with their operatives (players). As time and half goes on, the KS and ADP, even the Genom players realize what the rogues are after; they are trying to build what appears to be an OMS (OverMind Control System) to control all Boomers. A big battle ensues, but as it winds down, it is learned that the rogues are actually trying to prevent an OMS from being built by stealing the various parts of one, while trying to build a counter mechanism. Genom is the true enemy, and now that the players know this, they must be silenced. Enter hoards of Genom Boomers to quiet them up. The final battle will rage simultaneously in two parts. One must fight the hoards off while a second group must infiltrate and kill the Genom executive behind the OMS project."

While this is the very first draft, it is very likely that parts of this story will be used in the final game, combined with side missions and key points from the anime itself to make a nice mixture of series story and new elements. It is obvious that Chris has thought about the online playability of the game and fit the story to it. After all, the series' original story would be very hard to realize for online play.

Also to note is that BGC is not all about fighting. Like any anime, it develops characters along the main plot, resulting in private/personal things between characters or within one character. This can be related to the plot, but can also be totally unrelated. For example, giving Priss a tidbit of a love story with some guy (Leon?) or developing a friendship between one of the Sabers and a side character parallel to the actual game's storyline might enhance the story and bring the actual anime closer to the game.

The story should include the following:

Elements from the BGC series: locations, missions, characters.
New elements and a lead story arc which was basically incomplete in BGC.
Online playability: all playable characters must form teams and act out the story; limited use of computer-controlled opponents is possible.
Side missions: the story arc itself might prove too short for a full game that attempts to recreate BGC, so side missions without any direct connection to the main plot will be included as well, especially in the beginning.

The key point of BGCO is that the full story is acted out by the players online; like co-operative single player with predefined missions and events, but also with team facing team in deathmatch battles. This means that there will be missions where team fights team in order to complete/prevent an objective to complete the level (like UT's classic Assault game mode), and depending on who wins the fight, the story might develop non-linearly. It remains to be seen whether this will be solved to come to the same conclusion in any case, or if there will be several endings.
On other missions, the co-operative team part comes in with single player style objectives and levels: a team might split up and every member might be assigned a task to accomplish in a limited time, so that every player faces his own mission that is prescripted to challenge him the way a normal single player game would. Once the team comes back together, the gameplay changes again to team fights.

It is difficult to create a story that is completely playable online. Suggestions on the story by the whole team are always welcome.

4.3. WHAT WILL THE GAME SETUP BE LIKE?

> Characters:

The game will contain many recognizable characters from the series plus side characters for the various teams to play.

The Knight Sabers: Sylia, Priss, Linna and Nene. They form the first team, the Knight Sabers, who are the main characters of the series and the game. In a team vs. team battle, tasks are assigned according to the class of the character: Sylia is the team leader, Priss is the close-range combatant, Linna is the long-range fighter and Nene is supportive. In a single player mission, each character will be given optimized tasks - e.g. Nene needs to hack a computer system while Priss battles her way through the building the system operates in.

The AD Police: features lead characters Leon and Daley, but will also use character classes like officer, K-Suit, chopper pilot and heavy artillery. They are co-operative to the Knight Sabers, but might seek different goals as the story progresses.

Genom: the bad guys of the game. As the online game system suggests, it can also happen that team battles are won by Genom, which would result in the story taking a different route (see 4.2. for details). Genom is lead by chairman Quincy and Brian J. Mason, but those will probably not be playable characters due to missing activity in the series. Instead, character classes like Genom officers, security guards and various types of humanoid Boomers might be used to battle the Knight Sabers and the AD Police. Another possible concept for large scale Boomer attacks is tactical control of several Boomer "teams" by one Genom operative (player).

Additional characters: the people appearing in the series that give certain episodes the spice, like the Sexaroids, Vision, or Lisa Vanette. Some of them could be included to give the game recognizable story elements from the anime. Maybe some of these characters could be given a major role, unlike the episodic appearance in the series.
There are at least five significant characters that can operate alone: Anri, Sylvie, Leon, Daley and Vision (Reika Chang). While Leon and Daley are part of the ADP team and will therefore be included in teamplay, they do most of their day-to-day investigations alone. If we include all of these characters in the game, they could be played by stand-alone players who do not join a team. In this case, there are four fractions of players: KS, ADP, Genom and non-team players. This only makes sense with characters who appear for a longer time, though. Episodic characters could be acted by a team member as a second or third role.

> Missions:

In both team battles and single player missions, the game will feature objectives which must be completed to advance to the next map or mission. These objectives could include the destruction of Boomers, bodyguarding, spying, highway hunts, infiltration, battles against villains, support of another team and Knight Saber missions without a hardsuit. Story elements which are not playable could either be conveyed by in-game cinematics, pictures, text or original series animation.
Note: Most of the story will be conveyed using engine-rendered cutscenes.

> Locations:

The locations of the game will be a mixture of known and unknown places in MegaTokyo, so that fans will recognize areas they have seen in the anime, but they also get to see new terrain and new tasks. Generally outdoor and indoor combat should both be available.

> Weapons:

Weapons of the Knight Sabers depend on the functionality of the hardsuit. Based on official information from fan sites, I've collected the weapon types and their usage and effects for each hardsuit. These could be incorporated in the game, maybe plus one or two additional weapons. I've also noticed that several of the hardsuit weapons are similar to UT2004's standard weaponry, so I'll list comparable UT weapons along with the hardsuit tech.

Sylia:

- laser sword > UT: none
- laser cannon > UT: Link Gun
- knuckle bomber > UT: Shield Gun, Flak Cannon

Sylia's suit features both left-hand and right-hand combat with all of the weapons available on each hand. Thus it is possible to use two weapons at the same time or two of the same weapon at once. The suit is also capable of very limited flight using thrusters.

Priss:

before upgrade
- beam cannon > UT: Minigun
- 3x railgun > UT: Assault Rifle

after first upgrade
- beam cannon (enhanced) > UT: Minigun
- 2x railgun (enhanced) > UT: Assault Rifle
- knuckle bomber > UT: Shield Gun, Flak Cannon
- leg rocket motors (for enhanced kicks) > UT: none

after second upgrade
- beam cannon > UT: Minigun
- 2x railgun > UT: Assault Rifle
- knuckle bomber > UT: Shield Gun, Flak Cannon
- leg knuckle bombers (left and right) > UT: none
- 3x S-Mine > UT: none
- knuckle guard (left hand) > UT: none

Priss' suit has only one gauntlet at the right hand for shooting, but it makes up for that with five weapons in the second upgrade version and the legs support. The knuckle guard is a protection against the explosion resulting from a knuckle bomb (automatically controlled in the game).

Linna:

- knuckle bomber > UT: Shield Gun, Flak Cannon
- laser cannon > UT: Link Gun
- monomolecular ribbons > UT: none

The monomolecular ribbons enable Linna to cut through pratically everything and destroy Boomers with ease. Since they are comparable to two long ropes starting at the back of the helmet, they are more difficult to use than normal shooting weapons.

Nene:

- laser cannon > UT: Link Gun, Shock Rifle
- jammer > UT: none
- anti-missile ECM > UT: none
- 250 km range radar > UT: none
- target scanning system > UT: none
- laser scribble feature > UT: Link Gun

Since Nene is the computer specialist of the Knight Sabers, her hardsuit is not optimized for combat and features only one laser cannon. However, the suit's strength lies in the defensive computer equipment which enables Nene to analyze, hack and target practically any object. This data is transmittable to the other three suits to enhance combat. In missions where puzzles are involved, Nene will become the important character of the game.
The laser cannon's scribble feature is comparable to UT's alternate fire of the Pulse Gun (the beam) and can be used to burn small marks into stone and metal, which is used to leave the characteristic "Knight Sabers" signature after a mission.

Note 1: Sylia upgrades the hardsuits during the series, including their weapons.
Note 2: Cynthia's and Largo's orbital satellite strike activation system is comparable to UT2004's Ion Painter and could be an additional superweapon that the player might acquire.

Weapons for the ADP and Genom team plus additional characters will depend on what is used in the series. Boomers use built-in cannons (mouth cannon, laser cannon, machine guns) while the operatives of Genom and the ADP officers use standard 20th century firearms like pistols and assault rifles. Generally, unless specific weapons are to be used by a character, the ADP and Genom should have access to the standard 3D shooter weapon arsenal.

> Vehicles:

Vehicles include Priss' various bikes, the motorslaves, the SilkyWagon, the KnightWing and the Knight Saber Trailer.

> Interaction:

I think that character interaction, i.e. talking to persons or acquiring items from them, might be useful to enhance the story element. This adds a little role-playing atmosphere.

> Items:

Items like bombs, diskettes, keycards, cracking devices, cloakings etc. could be useful as well. For example, Nene might have to break into a computer system using a cracking device and various software disks while other players battle Boomers outside. Which role the player takes is up to him or the developer.
The RPG point system that was suggested by Rach could prove useful in terms of upgrading the player's equipment or skills. After a mission, the game reviews the performance of the player and assigns points to him he can use to unlock features/skills/upgrades (see 5.1. for details).

> Language:

Originally the following paragraph was valid for this document:

"The game will most probably feature Japanese language with English subtitles. This might be very difficult for plain UT game fans to get used to, but BGC fans (who are the main target group) are very sceptical about the dubbed version of the series as the dub has major weaknesses. Also, many BGC fans watched the series ten years ago or so when no dub was available, and to make everyone feel "at home", the Japanese dub is the right choice. Whoever is not an anime fan and even though sacrifices download time on this mod must be prepared for anime clichés, including the language. ;-)"

However, recent discussions have led to a different decision. Because Chris Turley needs to write the dialogue for the game, he stated that using plain speech samples from the series will not be the best idea because it does not allow for a truly free dialogue flow. Instead, he suggested voice acting, which would indeed give us the greatest freedom with the dialogue since we could fit it completely to the game. Thus the team decided that voice acting will be recorded and used in the game, kind of like a fan dub for BGC, only on a different medium. The language will therefore be English and there will be completely new voices for all characters. Because we know how important good voice acting is in anime and we are also aware of the many Japanese-dialogue fans, we will take great care in dubbing the characters. Only quality voices that fit each character will be recruited and recorded, and even though many of the team members are not from an English-speaking country, we will try to give the dub a clean English accent.

> Music:

The music in the game will include BGC's vocal songs, but since background music needs to be instrumental, either scene music from the series or newly programmed music must be included as well.

> Enemies:

Not only Boomers have to be killed in the BGC universe... :-)

> Game release:

BGCO will be released episodically. This was decided by the team a few months ago. Episodically means that not the full game will be released when it is done, but like the anime series, the game will consist of episodes that can be individually played online. This has distinct advantages: for one, playable game content will be released to the public while the rest is being worked on, pleasing gamers faster and involving them in the development process by including user feedback. Also, this will result in much better online playing conditions for teams since players of a team can meet online, play the episode in real-time and leave the game after about one hour (estimated length of an episode). See 5.1. for details.

5. GAMEPLAY

This section explains several ideas about the actual gameplay and the rundown of a mission.

5.1. SPECIFIC GAMEPLAY FEATURES

Training mission: before players enter the online game, they can play offline computer-controlled training missions for each team to check out what every character does and how the game lets him/her operate in the system. For the Knight Sabers, this could take place in the Silky Doll and involve simulations (like in BGC 2040). For the AD Police, a training facility at the headquarters with the typical tactics and shooting courses might do fine, and Genom can have their ultra-secret operative training lab. Non-team players who are not directly involved with one of the teams could be given special training modules just for them.

Character selection: it has not been exactly thought through how the character choice will work since a game server can only hold one unique character per game, meaning there cannot be two Prisses or two Leons. However, it's debatable that the ADP and Genom team might have a variable amount of their officers and operatives. Generally, once the maximum of players is reached, a game server will not accept any more players, so the player wishing to enter a game must either look for another server or choose to wait for a player to exit the game. If a player leaves a running game, the game must continue without him, so the character could be replaced by a waiting player. Alternatively, the teams might discuss a member change from one team to the other to balance the teams and keep the game running. However, how exactly this will work is yet to be seen.
The character selection menu will allow the player to look on the server's player list and see which characters/classes are still open. He may choose his character and join the game. A concept has been discussed that might limit/extend the character choice depending on training values: to balance the team better and to make sure that only "capable" players select high capability characters, the game could use values it has collected in the offline training program to define which character class the player is most suitable for. This would prevent beginners from selecting professional roles like Priss or Sylia for the Knight Sabers, a squad lead or pilot for the ADP, and lead operatives/Boomers for Genom, so that the game can run without too many difficulties. Plus, this will give aspiring players the possibility of developing their skills and replaying the game with a higher character.
Also, a recent idea I had involves clans for teams. Since the game will be real-time and episodic, teams that have formed out of capable players could create clans to stick together during an episode, thus ensuring that the team is always complete and balanced against the other teams. If a player leaves, the team will always be at a disadvantage because there will be no bots to support a team (BGCO is too complicated to support bot behaviour), so a well-organized team that plays complete episodes together will have advantages in terms of tactics and balancing. Players cannot simply join running games and take the spot another player left; this would ruin the team's organization. For a complete explantion on this idea, please see www.thecrisiscenter.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=341&st=390&#entry21195

Hardsuit functionality: as described in 4.3, the hardsuits mix shooting and melee combat, plus they have limited jumping and flight capabilities. What this means for gameplay is that the Knight Sabers team will probably have great advantages over the other teams as they can attack with greater force and speed. This means that the Genom team will need stronger health and armor values as they are made up of humanoid and mechanical Boomers while the ADP just should be a greater number of people than the KS and Genom.
The hardsuit functions should be easily controlled and overseen using the integrated heads-up display that could be recreated from the series (as seen in episode 6: Red Eyes).

Team battles versus single player missions: since the story cannot have the Knight Sabers and ADP battle Genom operative Boomers all the time, the ratio of team battles to single player missions will probably be at least around 50:50 if not even one third team battles and two thirds single player. This ensures that the game stays playable to everyone without getting boring after a while, and leaves more room for the story to develop, plus every player will have greater opportunities of completing their special tasks.

Cutscenes: as planned, cutscenes will consist of in-game cinematics. These cutscenes are imaginable at the start of a level as introduction, at the end of a level, and between missions to convey the story. Cutscenes will be shown to all players in real-time, meaning they run synchronized for all players at the same time. This is important to keep the game running at a constantly synchronous pace.

Team communication: like in UT, there could be a communication menu that is available to every player with the character's specific lines/commands/orders. Once activated, this menu allows the player to send out a line spoken by his character to all the other team members. This way, the Knight Sabers could give orders to each other and the ADP and Genom team could be commanded. Alternatively, there is always the possibility to write text to the team for non-character specific matters, or using UT2004's voice chat.

Further features will follow as this document is updated.

5.2. LEVEL IDEAS

The best place to check out MegaTokyo for level ideas is the MegaTokyo guided tour site: http://www.igarashi.burst.net/megatokyo/megatokyo.html
In the series, there are the following locations that might make for game levels:

Episode 1:
    - Aqua City
    - Timex City
Episode 2:
    - Boomer Factory
Episode 3:
    - Silky Doll
    - Construction Site
    - Genom Tower
Episode 4:
    - Highway
    - Survival Shot
Episode 5:
    - Genaros Space Station
    - GPCC
    - Fault Line
Episode 6:
    - Tinsel City Bank
    - Freeway
    - Genom Tower
Episode 7:
    - St. Regis Hotel
    - Genom Test Plateau
Episode 8:
    - AD Police HQ
    - Ebisu Shrine

However, it still remains to be seen which locations will be included and in what way as the story is yet to be written. Also, not all of the listed locations are perfect for conversion into a game.

5.3. MISSION WALKTHROUGH

The first mission draft has been written by Chris Turley. It looks like this, but it's far from finished:

[...]

Sylia: "There is a disturbance in (location). The ADP is mobilizing, but if we wait for them to deal with it, we may well lose the opportunity to find out what is really going on."

[...]

Mackie: "I'm picking up two sets of radio chatter. One is the ADP for sure. The other one is a bit harder to make out; all I'm getting is an intermittent signal."

>> mission objective added << Nene character must go to top of large tower and "hack the antenna" (must approach and press a button, throw a lever, whatever and remain in close proximity for ten seconds). For added drama, with five seconds to go, character hears "There's a target on the tower, intercept!" Unless someone went with her, she will have to fend off two Boomers (Bu-55C) which will arrive just as the time runs down. If character leaves early, the "hack process" must be started over, possibly under fire, and more Boomers will converge every five seconds until hack is complete; i.e. the best is to get it done in one try, that way you only have to fight two Boomers (trigger for encounter is when "hack starts" or after ten seconds of being up on tower dicking around). Message should be sent to Genom team that there are targets on tower, so those players can engage if they want to.
NOTE: antenna is "destroyable" - if Genom team wipes out antenna, the KS will lose a bit of advantage in the fight as they will be able to hear only some (not all) of what the enemy is doing.
Later in the game this frequency can be used to eavesdrop. If this objective is botched, another opportunity to get this frequency should be made available further down the line (if both hacks are successful, the clarity becomes clearer, less static, more is heard etc.).

Otherwise, the objectives for this mission are:

primary: defeat Boomers
primary: recover at least one black box (head of Bu-55C)
secondary: hack antenna
tertiary: protect ADP officers (gain or lose experience points for every trooper killed or saved); "save" equals a trooper under fire (taken damage and the assailant is destroyed)

Sound effects: battle chatter, explosions etc. ADP chatter: "I'm under fire here!", "I'm pinned down, need assistance!", "Where's our backup?!", "We need air units NOW!"

6. DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

This section gives the most up-to-date information about the team members and what they are working on.

6.1. TEAM SETUP

The following is a list of all Bubblegum Crisis Center Community Forum members that are involved in the project.

Team lead:
MadMax - level design, UnrealScript programming, video and sound editing, a little 3D design

Team members:
Maverick - modelling & basic animation
Rachel "Rach" Asakawa - character artwork, concept art
Lynk Former - promotion, web hosting, 2D design

Any members in brackets are temporarily away from the project or have not appeared lately and are therefore on stand-by.

New talents are always welcome, no matter from where they are. We especially need technical talents like programmers, level designers, modellers and animators! See the BGCO forum at www.thecrisiscenter.net/forums for details.

6.2. LIST AND DETAILS OF JOBS

The jobs in the team are as follows:

Concept art: refers to everything drawn by hand or on the PC that is a rough sketch of objects/items/technology planned to be used in the game.
Manga artwork: the artwork that will be used on the manga story pages.
2D design: HUD and menu design, user interface creation.
3D design: everything threedimensional generated on the computer that is static, e.g. CG backgrounds for artwork.
Artwork colouring: line artwork will be digitally coloured using graphics editing software.
Texture design: creation of new textures for use in the levels and for models.
Modelling: designing of characters, hardsuits, weapons, vehicles and other objects, including animating them unless an animator is specifically mentioned.
Level design: creation of architecture that makes up the world of the game.
Programming: writing the program code for the game that makes it work; in this case, the language we use is UnrealScript, a game-internal language designed to modify existing or creating totally new content within the engine.
Video and sound editing: everything related to the sampling and including of sound effects and music, as well as creation of trailer videos, introduction sequences and the like.
Story/scriptwriting: writing the story that the game bases on, including a script/storyboard.
Promotion: advertisement for the game, PR, and website design.
Hosting: providing webspace for the website and the downloadable files.

6.3. CURRENT PROGRESS

At the moment the game undergoes the first basic steps, however development has halted and the current progress is presented on a public domain where we openly seek new technical talents to help us with further work.

The following progress has been made so far:

- the first and only internal version of the demo has been released to the team, including:
    - a hardsuit model for Priss with UT animation and a blue skin
    - the finished beta of the demo level "Survival Street"
    - a new texture package
    - a BGCO game type package
- a few pieces of promotion and test artwork have been created
- the first story and mission drafts have been written (see 4.2. and 5.3. for details)
- the first steps of promotion have been made:
    - two websites: bgco.thecrisiscenter.net, www.ravensgarage.com
    - a small information webpage has been opened to spread the word about BGCO
- the design document has been written (this is what you are reading)
- an experimental map has been created in the UT2004 engine (Ladies 633 building)

6.4. TO-DO LIST

For the full game:

- the code has to be written
- the story must be completely written
- the complete game content rundown needs to be assembled
- the concept art must be drawn
- the levels have to be built
- the level textures have to be created
- the artwork needs to be drawn and coloured
- the models must be created, textured and animated
- voice acting has to be recorded
- sound and video editing need to be done
- the menus, user interface and HUD's have to be designed
- the website must be created and promotion needs to be put forward
- the files have to be hosted for download

WE ARE IN SEARCH OF NEW TEAM MEMBERS ALL THE TIME. IF YOU THINK YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING TO THE GAME THAT IS NOT BEING DONE YET, PLEASE CONTACT THE TEAM LEAD: MadMax at madmax1998@gmx.de. Also, see the BGCO forum at www.thecrisiscenter.net/forums for details.


End of the Design Document.

© 2005 MadMax / The Bubblegum Crisis Center