Rag Doll Kung Fu interview

Fighting games are abundant on the consoles. Ever since Capcom revolutionized the genre with the superb Street Fighter II from 1991 there have been no shortage of hard hitting fighters.

On the PC front things have looked relatively bleak though. There have been no real attempts to revitalize the genre during the last five or ten years, and it’s probably not too far out to proclaim fighting games dead on the PC, or is it?

Well if you ask Lionhead’s experienced graphics artist Mark Healey, this is a trend he's willing to change. In his spare time in between the huge projects that Lionhead is working on, Mark has developed his own personal game project Rag Doll Kung Fu (RDKF).

In this game you control your Kung Fu fighters using nothing but the mouse and the fighters are no ordinary athletic martial artists – no, these characters basically resemble rag dolls with strings attached to the back of their necks.

We got a hold of Mark to get a clearer picture of why he has sacrificed so much of his sleep to develop such an unorthodox game.

Boomtown: There are not too many fighting games on the PC. How did you come up with the idea of making a fighting game for the PC of all platforms?

Mark Healey: Well, the PC has something that most consoles don't - a mouse!

One of the things unique to RDKF are the controls. Please explain how they work.

Well, pretty simple really - most fighting games have all these mad combinations you have to learn, but with RDKF, you simply click on a limb, and move it to where you want, pretty intuitive really. To attack, you select a limb with the other mouse button, aim, and release your attack. Also, by striking certain poses, you can meditate, summon powers, and even have a pee.

The physics engine looks pretty cool. Will it be comparable to games like Max Payne 2 and Half-Life 2, or is it a completely different story?

No, the physics are incredibly simple! The rag doll physics are based on a simple technique called verlet integration - a bit like simulating a rope. Hopefully, it looks like I'm doing really clever things though!

What game modes will RDKF feature, and how will the core gameplay unfold?

There is a single player story mode, which teaches you the basics, and has 20 minutes worth of silly film footage (cut scenes) - in this mode, you find stars which unlock all the other game modes/features as follows:

Single player games:

Shaolin soccer - score goals with a huge soccer ball.
Ninja onslaught - fight ever increasing numbers of ai ninjas.
Chu Chu Wing Poo - get the giant egg to the nest to unleash a fire breathing buddy - and use your head cannon to shoot annoying wasps.
Athletics - sprinting,throwing, high jump, long jump, ball kicking.

Multiplayer games:

As above, except you can plug in multiple mice into on ecomputer, or connect via network to other computers, and play against each other.

Other multiplayer features include:

Movie maker - record you and your friends fighting/dancing/acting out a play/film, and edit the script.
Death match - what multiplayer game is complete without this?

Other features:

Character editor - make your own characters from combinations of different head/body parts, or put your own skins in.

World editor - for making your own backdrops (I still need to make this more presentable though!).

Mixer - throughout the world, you'll find stars that unlock mixer tracks, which allow you mess around with the in game music.

Mark's directing the cut scenes.

You write on your website that the player can create his or her own fighting style, how literally should we take that?

If I hand you a marionette, you will automatically have your own style, depending on how fast you move the limbs, what poses you create etc, so, I would take it very literally!

How many Kung Fu fighters do we get to choose from?

There are 12 preset ones, but you can make your own, so potentially, thousands!

RDKF will feature what sounds like some pretty hectic multiplayer modes. How can we expect to play with out friends - Online, LAN, on a single PC? And how many people can compete at a time?

You can play with up to eight people (this is too hectic though really!), either on a single PC (multiple USB mice in one machine), or via LAN, and in theory, over the internet (I haven't actually tried this yet, but in theory it works!).

(When this interview was conducted RDKF didn't include online functionality, but we're happy to announce that in the final game, the multiplayer modes can be played online as well as offline - ed.).

Will the AI give us a good and fair competition, or do you see RDKF like more of a multiplayer game?

Real people are always better than AI, but hopefully I can make it challenging enough - the AI works by simply controlling a mouse, so it looks pretty natural.

Personally I´m a big fan of 2D graphics, but how do you think the big mass market will respond to the graphics design, and why did you choose to make the game in 2D?

Well, I love sprites. I never really got over the demise of the C64 (although I hear it's still going strong in the demo scene), so you could see it as a homage - but sprites on a PC have a lot of advantages that would be difficult to do with 3d graphics - for example, all the sprites have nice anti aliased edges, so the game looks kind of 'smooth' (none of that card board cutout/hard edges look you get with most 3d games), and I can create a nice depth of field effect, by simply blurring textures in the background as you zoom in - this is almost a free effect - I simply force the graphics card to use the lower resolution mip maps.

All in all, I think it gives the game a pretty unique feel and look, and I am very pleased with the results.

The graphics look very detailed; please elaborate on the technical aspects about the graphics and the engine behind it.

It's all done with 2d textures, but the camera is in 3d space, so you get to rotate the camera within a fixed range, which gives the illusion of it being a 3d game - there is a rather cool option of using pixel shaded sprites, which means they can be lit as if they are 3d models - it's done by my friend and Co worker Alex Evans, it's a technique called circular harmonics, and looks very cool. Other than that, it's really a very simple engine.

How about the sound and music; will it be as whacky as the graphics or more realistic?

Well, the in game music is performed by myself and some friends, and includes a rap, a ragga rap, cello, guitars, drums, plus much more. Another friend of mine has an amazing talent for voices, and did an amazing job on the master - all spoken in made up Chinese - I still find it hilarious even after all this time. Expect madness.

Most games these days have very tough system requirements, will RDKF follow that path?

No. It should work on most PCs, remember, it's only drawing sprites - but it does run a lot smoother on a faster PC.

RDKF is pretty much a one-man-project; why is that, and have someone helped you throughout the development?

I have had a lot of help - Alex Evans has been a real godsend for me, dealing with a lot technical/maths things, I've also had help with graphics content, music, and network code, but mostly I pretty much did everything myself - mainly because I am a control freak, and I hate working in large teams (100+!), that seem to be the norm in the industry these days. This is a real labour of love for me, and I kind of proving to myself that it is still possible (oh how I hark back to the C64!).

Will RDKF be released for other platforms later on?

I hope so! I'd love to see it on the Nintendo DS, we've already had it working on an Xbox, and Alex plans to port it to the MAC.

Could you please tell a little secret about the game for your exited fans?

There will be secret pose that allows you to have a poo.

Will we see more Mark Healy Inc. games in the future? If so, can you reveal what you're working on?

Well, I have a day job at Lionhead, and I'm currently working a new project, which is amazingly exciting and cool.

As for making another game in my spare time, well, it's very hard work, so I think any moonlighting will be spent supporting RDKF - I've already got plans to make it Massively multiplayer online - quite how, I don't know, but where there is a will, there is a way!


We certainly expect that RDKF will provide a lot of fun multiplayer matches and a good deal of laughs too, when it's released the 12th of October. And a port for Nintendo Revolution would be nice as well, thank you very much.

Source: Boomtown DK
English version by: Julian Henlov (Progrock)