Madfinger Games has a strong track record of portable shooters that deliver console-quality gaming. The company's upcoming title, Dead Trigger 2, pits players against the undead once again in a free-to-play sequel that ups the ante, thanks in part to NVIDIA Tegra 4 technology. Petr Benysek, senior programmer at Madfinger Games, talks about what's in store for mobile gamers, including SHIELD owners, in this exclusive interview.
How are you improving upon the original game with this sequel?
We wanted to expand the game in every aspect. It's been a year since Dead Trigger, so there's been some development on the side of the devices. There's more power that we can utilize now. We learned a lot of lessons from the first Dead Trigger. We've expanded the gameplay, the graphical effects and almost everything that's in there.
What's an example of a lesson you learned from the first game that you're applying to the second?
The major change is that the game will be completely free-to-play, so there will be no premium content to buy. Everything is going to be for free. You're going to find everything in the game as you play it. Of course, you can speed up this process by paying some money if you want.
When it comes to the world itself, can you talk about some of the environments people will explore?
Dead Trigger was set in one city, so you were doing all the missions in several environments around that one city. With Dead Trigger 2, you will play around the whole globe. We have a campaign system, so you will start in America. For every campaign there is a storyline that you will play for several missions, and you'll explore the environments. There is a tutorial at the start of the American campaign, and as soon as you finish that, you will join a global war against zombies. You'll fight alongside players around the world to fulfill some goals or finish the tasks we've established. We want this to be a never-ending game. We want to provide players new content constantly. As soon as you finish the American campaign or after every month, we would like to release a new city or continent.
Free DLC will be part of this game?
Yes. After you finish the American one there will be Africa with new environments, new weapons, new zombies, new story and so on. After that month the American missions will stay there forever, so every new player will be able to join the game and play the tutorial and get familiar with the game. There are several characters that you will meet in the American campaign, and these NPCs will then stay in your hideout, which is a place where you can return to anytime, and they will help you. They will guide you through the story, and they will help you produce some items, weapons and gadgets you'll utilize in the mission. There will be an engineer, a medic and a smuggler, for example, that will help you finish something sooner. There's the campaign system, which will open new environments and new parts of the world every month. We will update the game constantly. Our main goal is to keep the players entertained for a long time by providing them with new content.
What is new from a gameplay perspective?
Apart from the new environments, new weapons and new gadgets, we paid more attention to our artificial intelligence. We are creating lots of zombie mini bosses, and every one has completely distinct abilities. There will be mini bosses that explode when you get too close to them, so you'll need to keep a distance and find their weak spots. Then there are radioactive scientists you need to keep your distance from, because otherwise they will hurt you with the radioactivity. You'll meet them once or twice a mission.
There are also campaigns with global goals, and all the players from around the world who play Dead Trigger 2 will participate. There might be a goal to clean out all the zombies from London, and Dead Trigger 2 will basically count down this number as players work together to clean out the city. As soon as they finish this goal, there will be nice rewards split by all the players who participated.
What has Tegra 4 opened up for you as a developer?
Tegra 4 is probably the only device which supports high dynamic range, which allows us to add a lot more details to a scene. We are using this technology with our moving objects and the characters. We have some moving gadgets that players will see in the game. There's also a lot of increased power. We've been making some tests, and the GPU is about eight times faster compared to Tegra 3, so there's a lot more that we can add. We added parallax mapping, so we have the plastic bricks on the walls, dynamic grass and nice lighting. We have realistic water reflections. We have advanced ragdolls and many subtle improvements with dynamic sky.
What do you think of Project Shield?
It's a handy little console. It has very comfortable controls and good battery life. For me as a player, it's a great device to just grab when I'm traveling.
How has your studio worked with NVIDIA over the course of this franchise?
We received dev kits for Shield, which allowed us to optimize our game for it. NVIDIA has very good tools for debugging and profiling, so when we are developing our games, we can really know what's slow, what's fast, find any bugs or issues pretty quickly. That's really a great thing with NVIDIA.
How are you improving upon the original game with this sequel?
We wanted to expand the game in every aspect. It's been a year since Dead Trigger, so there's been some development on the side of the devices. There's more power that we can utilize now. We learned a lot of lessons from the first Dead Trigger. We've expanded the gameplay, the graphical effects and almost everything that's in there.
What's an example of a lesson you learned from the first game that you're applying to the second?
The major change is that the game will be completely free-to-play, so there will be no premium content to buy. Everything is going to be for free. You're going to find everything in the game as you play it. Of course, you can speed up this process by paying some money if you want.
When it comes to the world itself, can you talk about some of the environments people will explore?
Dead Trigger was set in one city, so you were doing all the missions in several environments around that one city. With Dead Trigger 2, you will play around the whole globe. We have a campaign system, so you will start in America. For every campaign there is a storyline that you will play for several missions, and you'll explore the environments. There is a tutorial at the start of the American campaign, and as soon as you finish that, you will join a global war against zombies. You'll fight alongside players around the world to fulfill some goals or finish the tasks we've established. We want this to be a never-ending game. We want to provide players new content constantly. As soon as you finish the American campaign or after every month, we would like to release a new city or continent.
Free DLC will be part of this game?
Yes. After you finish the American one there will be Africa with new environments, new weapons, new zombies, new story and so on. After that month the American missions will stay there forever, so every new player will be able to join the game and play the tutorial and get familiar with the game. There are several characters that you will meet in the American campaign, and these NPCs will then stay in your hideout, which is a place where you can return to anytime, and they will help you. They will guide you through the story, and they will help you produce some items, weapons and gadgets you'll utilize in the mission. There will be an engineer, a medic and a smuggler, for example, that will help you finish something sooner. There's the campaign system, which will open new environments and new parts of the world every month. We will update the game constantly. Our main goal is to keep the players entertained for a long time by providing them with new content.
What is new from a gameplay perspective?
Apart from the new environments, new weapons and new gadgets, we paid more attention to our artificial intelligence. We are creating lots of zombie mini bosses, and every one has completely distinct abilities. There will be mini bosses that explode when you get too close to them, so you'll need to keep a distance and find their weak spots. Then there are radioactive scientists you need to keep your distance from, because otherwise they will hurt you with the radioactivity. You'll meet them once or twice a mission.
There are also campaigns with global goals, and all the players from around the world who play Dead Trigger 2 will participate. There might be a goal to clean out all the zombies from London, and Dead Trigger 2 will basically count down this number as players work together to clean out the city. As soon as they finish this goal, there will be nice rewards split by all the players who participated.
What has Tegra 4 opened up for you as a developer?
Tegra 4 is probably the only device which supports high dynamic range, which allows us to add a lot more details to a scene. We are using this technology with our moving objects and the characters. We have some moving gadgets that players will see in the game. There's also a lot of increased power. We've been making some tests, and the GPU is about eight times faster compared to Tegra 3, so there's a lot more that we can add. We added parallax mapping, so we have the plastic bricks on the walls, dynamic grass and nice lighting. We have realistic water reflections. We have advanced ragdolls and many subtle improvements with dynamic sky.
What do you think of Project Shield?
It's a handy little console. It has very comfortable controls and good battery life. For me as a player, it's a great device to just grab when I'm traveling.
How has your studio worked with NVIDIA over the course of this franchise?
We received dev kits for Shield, which allowed us to optimize our game for it. NVIDIA has very good tools for debugging and profiling, so when we are developing our games, we can really know what's slow, what's fast, find any bugs or issues pretty quickly. That's really a great thing with NVIDIA.
