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| <div style="float: left; margin-right:20px;">[[File:DavidMullich.png]]</div>[[wikipedia:David Mullich|David Mullich]] is the director of {{homm3}}.<div style="float: right;">__TOC__</div> | | __NOTOC__ |
| | <div style="float: left; margin-right:20px;">[[File:DavidMullich.png]]</div> |
| | The director of {{homm3}}. |
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| = Trivia = | | == Trivia == |
| His name and portrait are the inspiration for {{Hn|Sir Mullich|0=}}. | | His name and portrait are the inspiration for {{Hn|Sir Mullich|0=}}. |
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| = Interviews =
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| == Video Interviews == | | == Interviews/Memoirs == |
| * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1M5DqtSZ5Y Celestial Heavens interview] | | * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1M5DqtSZ5Y Celestial Heavens video interview] |
| | * [[David Mullich/The Tale of Heroes of Might & Magic III]] |
| | * [[David Mullich/Story of the Forge]] |
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| == Story of the [[Forge (NWC)|Forge]] (from Celestial Heavens) == | | == See also: == |
| Here's the story behind the [[Forge (NWC)|Forge]] Town.
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| HOMM exists in the Might and Magic universe, and over the past few years we made a conscious effort to intertwine the storylines of the two game franchises.
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| When we were thinking about possible storylines for the first Heroes 3 expansion, we were aware of Might and Magic IV's [[Heavenly Forge]], which produced artifacts utilizing the technology of the [[Ancients]].
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| We thought that it was time to allow Might and Magic's science fiction elements to appear in HOMM -- but only as an *expansion* of the game -- an offshoot of the game universe for those who would be interested in it, sort of like the various expansions in AD&D and other paper-based role-playing games. It would be there for those who liked the expansion, and not for those who just wanted to play the main game.
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| We did have some debate about what visual form this technology would take. I advocated more of a [[wikipedia:Jules Verne|Jules Verne]] glass-and-brass look; others wanted a WWII look. While we were still in the conceptual phase, our Marketing department said they needed whatever artwork we had.
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| Unfortunately, I rushed to fulfill their request and failed to ask what they wanted them for or to weed out concepts that we had rejected or were not fit for public viewing (such as bare-breasted Naga-tanks).
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| Well, all the concept art was posted on the Internet "as is," and the fan reaction was swift, negative, and passionate. Management quickly caved and ordered us to come up with a new idea for the expansion. Thus, the [[Forge (NWC)|Forge]] town was replaced with the [[Conflux]].
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| Sadly, some at [[NWC]] were sorely disappointed that the fans did not trust us, while some fans continued to vent their own disappointment at us for some time afterwards.
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| And even today, the effects of the [[Forge (NWC)|Forge]] Town incident linger on...
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| == Recollections on the [[Forge (NWC)|Forge]] to AcidDragon [https://www.forge.acidcave.net/listy_od_tworcow.html] ==
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| Work on the [[Forge (NWC)|Forge]] Town didn't progress very far. We started modeling the town and some of the creatures, but the pictures that were released (and caused all the furor) pretty much communicated where we were headed (although the pictures were more graphic than what we would have eventually ended up with). But the basic idea was a combination WWII/fantasy look.
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| == The Tale of Heroes of Might & Magic III [https://web.archive.org/web/20140226134007/http://might-and-magic.ubi.com/universe/en-GB/news/news/details-news.aspx?c=tcm%3A21-129528&ct=tcm%3A6-231-32] ==
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| The video game industry is a relatively small and tight-knit community, and most of the opportunities for the games I’ve developed came to me through someone I had previously known. Heroes of Might and Magic III was no exception.
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| I first met [[Jon Van Caneghem]], the founder of [[New World Computing]] and chief designer of most of its games, in 1994. We were both speakers on a panel about “The Art and Craft of Game Design” at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Jon was familiar with some of the games I had worked on in the past, such as Disney’s “DuckTales” and Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream”, and suggested that we should work together sometime.
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| That opportunity came three years later when [[New World Computing]] contacted me about becoming director for a new sequel in the Heroes of Might & Magic franchise. It was an exciting proposition but also a somewhat daunting one – Heroes of Might & Magic II, which was released the previous year, had just been named the sixth-best PC game of all time by PC Gamer magazine. What could I possibly do for an encore?
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| That is precisely the question I was asked by [[Trip Hawkins]], president of The [[3DO]] Company, which had recently purchased [[New World Computing]]. Trip made it the habit of personally interviewing every key employee joining the [[3DO]] family (in my case, it was a phone interview, since I lived in the Los Angeles area, where [[NWC|New World]] was located, whereas The [[3DO]] Company was based in the San Francisco area), and he wanted to know what I brought to the party.
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| Fortunately, I had an answer ready. I had spent about a week playing Heroes II and found it to be a remarkably addicting and well-designed game. However, my one qualm was with the art style. I thought the artwork looked about five years behind the times, and so my focus would be on bringing the graphics up to current standards. Trip seemed satisfied with my answer, and I could only hope that my bosses at [[NWC|New World]] agreed with me.
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| It turns out, they did. On my first day on the job, my manager told me that the company was unhappy with its current art direction and wanted me to “secretly” find a new art director among the art staff. So, on the pretense of introducing myself to everyone, I held one-to-one conversations with each artist. They were all capable artists, but one, [[Phelan Sykes]], used our discussion to talk about how unhappy she was with the status quo. “I have found my art director”, I told myself, and as I later discovered, she was also the most talented artist in the company.
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| Another person I was happy to meet was [[Greg Fulton]], a new employee [[NWC|New World]] had hired to be the lead designer the {{homm3}} team I was putting together. Greg was hired on the same day I was, and we had never met each other previously, but we quickly became fast friends. I told Greg about my plan for upgrading the franchise’s art style from its past cartoony look to one that I called “extreme fantasy.” Greg showed me some artwork from the Warhammer tabletop miniatures game, proving to me that he knew exactly what I meant.
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| Together we went through galleries of fantasy artwork created by such great artists as Boris Vallejo, Larry Elmore and Rowina Morill, picking out images of heroes, creatures and environments that captured the look we were going after. We then arranged our collection into eight themed factions, up from the six that were featured in Heroes II.
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| My attention then turned to programming. My team started with only one programmer, [[George Ruof]], who had worked on Heroes II. For the rest, I had to go outside the company, because the other staff programmers were dedicated to the studio’s other franchise, the Might & Magic role-playing game series. Luckily, my search didn’t take long as I was able to bring on two talented engineers who had programmed “I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream” for me at another company – [[John Bolton]], who I assigned to be lead programmer, and [[David Richey]], who I hired as level editor programmer.
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| Since we were on a very tight development timeframe – fourteen months altogether – we decided to re-use the game engine that had been created for {{homm2}} but added the new game features such as upgradeable fighting units, an underground level, a revamped magic system, and many more map objects to visit. However, [[David Richey]] completely revised the level editor so that the level designers had a very robust quest creation system they could use to create a wide variety of levels to explore and conduct warfare upon.
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| I soon found that each of my leads were so talented and got along with each other so well that I realized I was working with a dream team the likes of which I have never again experienced in my thirty-five years in game industry.
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| [[Greg Fulton]] worked very closely with [[Jon Van Caneghem]] on creating the stats for all the combat units and other game elements, modeling them first on Excel spreadsheets to test out whether verifying that everything was balanced before being programmed into the game. Greg also managed our assistant designer, [[Chris Vanover]], who under the name “Sir Christian”, was our community manager and did a terrific job keeping the fans updated on progress with the game. In addition, Greg supervised our six-person level design team lead by [[Jennifer Bullard]] (Jennifer would later become assistant designer on {{homm4}} and took over community management under the name “Maranthea”).
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| Systems programmer [[John Krause]], whom I worked with at my previous company; multiplayer programmer [[Jeff Leggett]]; and artificial intelligence programmer [[Gus Smedstad]] soon supplemented our three-person engineering team lead by [[John Bolton]]. (Gus would later become both lead programmer and lead designer on {{homm4}}). As the deadline fast approached and we got into “crunch time”, even General Manager [[Mark Caldwell]] came in to join the programming action.
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| I spent most of my time with lead artist [[Phelan Sykes]] and assistant lead artist [[Rebecca Riel]], helping them adapt the twenty-person art team to the new art style as they created over 10,000 pieces of artwork for the game. Thankfully, the art team was more than up to the challenge, including illustrator [[George Almond]], lead animator [[Adam McCarthy]], user interface designer [[Scott White]], and too many other talented artists to mention here. Phelan also oversaw the creation of the terrific cinematics created by our third-party vendors.
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| I would be remiss if I did not mention audio lead [[Rob King]], who with the assistance of [[Paul Romero]] and [[Steve Baca]], created the game’s dramatic music, sound effects and voice over.
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| I was lucky enough to be overseeing a very well oiled machine that actually required very little supervision on my part. I had few concerns when I left the project for a few days when my wife gave birth to our second son. When I returned to the office, my team surprised me by creating a new hero for the game, [[Sir Mullich]], whose in-game description was, “Generally stoic, [[Sir Mullich]] is prone to spasmodic fits of uncoordinated excitement believed to intimidate his troops into working faster.” I was both touched and amused by this in-joke, and allowed them to keep it in the game.
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| {{homm3}} launched on February 28, 1999, in precisely the fourteen months we estimated it would take to complete, a rarity in game development. Even more amazingly, many fans and critics heralded the game as being better than its predecessor. But most of all, I’m proudest of the wonderful team with whom I was privileged to work, many of whom I still remain in contact with fifteen years later. These incredible game developers are the real heroes of Might & Magic.
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| = See also: = | |
| * [[Credits]] | | * [[Credits]] |
| | * [[wikipedia:David Mullich|Wikipedia article]] |
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| [[Category:Development Team|Mullich, David]] | | [[Category:Development Team|Mullich, David]] |
