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Today we have Justin Mette President of 21-6 and Lead Developer for RocketBowl. Mr. Mette thank you for taking time to answer some questions for us.
Question: How did the idea for Rocket Bowl come about?
Justin Mette: Large Animal Games originally developed RocketBowl for the PC downloadable market a few years ago. From what I understand, their goal at the time was to create a game that mixed bowling and miniature golf concepts into a creative new experience. The game did well enough that D3 Publisher of America decided to have the game ported to Xbox Live Arcade.
21-6 Productions was hired to port the game from PC to XBLA because of our past experience with porting games based on the Torque Game Engine to the Xbox. Our first XBLA game was Orbz that released on the original Xbox shortly before the Xbox 360 came out.
Q: When in the process of deciding to make Rocket Bowl was it determined it should be for Xbox Live Arcade?
JM: I remember early discussions with Large Animal and D3 about how well suited RocketBowl was for XBLA. We knew the power of the Xbox 360 could be used to improve the physics and the look of the game over the original but the challenge was going to be online multiplayer.
Our experience with the Torque Game Engine for Xbox and Ageia's PhysX technology (now owned by Nvidia) put 21-6 in a unique position to help create a multiplayer bowling experience for XBLA.
Q: Was it difficult to develop for Xbox Live Arcade?
JM: Having some previous experience developing Orbz for the original Xbox Live Arcade helped the RocketBowl project go pretty smooth. That said, any team will be challenged to build a solid game capable of getting through Microsoft's Certification Team and our experience was no exception. We worked a lot of long hours especially during the Quality Assurance Testing and Certification phases of the project.
Q: Looking back on Rocket Bowl what are the things that you are most proud of?
JM: Our biggest challenge in developing RocketBowl for XBLA was the physics system. Not only did we want to improve the bowling ball and pin physics over the original game but we wanted to support high-resolution terrains and online multiplayer games.
We first integrated the PhysX API into the Torque Game Engine and soon after proved that we could achieve deterministic physics – meaning that the bowling simulation would run the same every time without variation. This meant it was theoretically possible to stream the physics simulation to other players so they could watch the same exact shot on their Xbox.
This was the hairiest point in the project. We knew that Microsoft would not accept the game without support for multiplayer, so the pressure was on to build a complex physics networking system. To complicate matters, we knew the physics simulation had to be streamed to other players as fast as voice communications was. Nobody wants to hear that a Strike happened before seeing it!
After a few months of grinding we finally achieved our goal. Having source code access to the Torque Game Engine allowed us to augment their award-winning network layer with physics simulation information. I'm not sure we could have made this game for the same price without Torque.
Microsoft, D3PA, and Large Animal Games were all depending on 21-6 to develop an online multiplayer bowling game. Our reputation was on the line and there was a huge technical hurdle in the way of success.
I am very proud of the RocketBowl team for not only pulling off a small technical marvel but also building a fun game and staying positive through such a long, challenging project.
Q: Is there anything you were hoping to get into Rocket Bowl that did not make the cut? If so, is there any chance we'll see it as DLC or in a future Rocket Bowl game?
JM: We had plans to do more than ten "courses" and one indoor alley for the initial release but they proved to be quite challenging to make. The realistic physics and high-resolution terrains give the player very interesting and fun shots to make but resulted in many hours of testing and tweaking to get each course "just right".
Support for downloadable courses was built into the game in anticipation of releasing Course Packs sometime in the future.
Q: Before making Rocket Bowl did the group involved in the development go bowling to get ideas for the game?
JM: Yes. Watching a bunch of geeks bowl is pretty entertaining. I'm not sure how much we learned about bowling physics during the trips (unless uncoordinated gutter balls count for anything) but we definitely had fun playing as a group and hopefully that translated to the multiplayer game experience.
Q: What is your favorite course to play? Why?
JM: I enjoy playing on the courses with a lot of water because they are very challenging. You have to be much more concise with the use of power-ups and boosts to get a great score.
Q: How enjoyable/challenging was it to design and implement the Achievements?
JM: We were actually given a list of achievements to implement so the design part was easy ;) Implementing the achievements was pretty straight forward but testing them was kind of tedious, especially the achievements that dealt with playing a large number of games.
Q: Can you give us a few tips and tricks for how to be a better Rocket Bowl player?
JM: Earn enough money to buy a decent bowling ball that has good nudging ability and some vertical boosts. Bowling ball stats do make a difference and improving your stats will improve your bowling scores. Also, learn the courses and take Wild Shots whenever you can afford to.
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