Meridian59 Interview with Brian Green (pt.1)

While at the GenCon game fair we ran into Brian Green of NearDeath Studios, the guys behind Meridian59: Resurrection, the venerable MMO game which made it’s return to the gaming community. While in town to hang out with Fans, some who travelled from the state we can’t spell, Mississippi, Brian had time to chat with Tiffany on the changes going into game with the new graphics overhaul.

Hello and thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions, Would you mind explaining who you are, and what role you have with Meridian 59?

My name is Brian Green, but I often go by “Psychochild” online. I started playing online games (text MUDs) in 1992 and started coding online games in 1993. I started my professional career as a game developer in 1998 at 3DO working on Meridian 59. I helped start Near Death Studios, Inc. in 2001. We bought Meridian 59 later that year and relaunched it.

Near Death Studios is a very small company, so I do a lot of things to keep things going smoothly. My primary roles are as programmer and designer on Meridian 59, but I also run many of the business aspects of the company such as tax paperwork as well. I, like most small business owners, wear many hats.

Psychochild is a prety unique name, does it have anything repressed childhood memories that make you psychotic? How did you come up with the handle?
Haha. Actually, I got it in college. I used to play Street Fighter II on the SNES quite often. I would play against this incredibly good player and eventually got to the point where I could beat him about half the time. Every time I would win, I’d give a little shout of victory to which he would reply, “You psycho child!” When I went to play text games, the name was original and interesting. The name stuck, even though it’s not the easiest name to type.

Currently, M59 is seeing a massive graphics overhaul to bring it on par with a majority of games today. I recently saw several before and after shots, the change is remarkable. Who is working on the art?
Thank you. We’re very excited by the new update because it really lets us show some of the game’s quality. The new client will show off a completely new hardware-accelerated rendering engine.

The art is actually mostly the same as in the old client. The old art was actually very high quality, but the software renderer didn’t let it shine, especially at higher resolutions. The only things we’ve added, art-wise, are the new skyboxes which show off high-quality images for the skies in the game and little bits of upgraded artwork. The skyboxes were done by my better half, Kathleen Foley, an aspiring fantasy artist.

But, we’re also adding other new things with the new client as well. Volumetric dynamic lighting is another big thing we’re adding that really adds to the new visual appeal game. Torches and braziers in the game will now give off actual light in the new rendering engine. Monsters can now glow eerily in the darkness. It’s really cool seeing the fey in the Vale of Sorrow give off their particular glow. We’re also adding a bunch of other features to improve the visual quality of the game as well. Things like antialiasing, higher resolution renderer, bilinear and anisotropic filtering, etc. The new renderer uses Direct3D, so we were able to really take advantage of hardware acceleration.

The visual aspect isn’t the only thing we’re changing, however. We’re also going to be introducing mouse look and re-bindable keys to the game. These are the first steps towards improving the user experience with the game. If the new client is well received, we hope to do a lot more upgrades to the client.

Will these improvements require users to upgrade their systems, as specs right now are on the pretty low end? What are the current, and proposed system requirements?

The new client will still support the older rendering engine. So, anyone that has a system that won’t run the new rendering engine can still play with the older engine. We’ve been working to make sure that neither renderer provides a significant advantage to a player. So, someone that uses the older rendering engine can still play the game with the same rules and on a level playing field.

Currently, the game requires a Pentium I (yes, ONE) 100 MHz or better machine with 48 MB of memory. Our estimated minimum requirements for the new rendering engine will be a GeForce 2 or equivalent video card, DirectX 8.1, a 500 MHz processor and 128 MB of memory. These new requirements are subject to change as we work out the last few kinks and problems. But, I think most people will be able to play the game without problems if they bought their computer within the last few years.

Has their been interest in your project from gamers of some of the other mmorpg’s on the market?
Oh, certainly! Many people tell me that they are coming back to Meridian 59 after playing other games. They just couldn’t find the same great gameplay in other games. Others tell me they decided to give Meridian 59 a try after being disappointed by other games, and absolutely fall in love with the game. The game offers real PvP to those that want it, and it offers a more interesting character development system than the traditional level-based xp-grind. The use-based skill system really makes the game more interesting. You have a lot more freedom to build the type of character you want, and we work hard on maintaining the balance in the game so that you don’t get the “super template du jour” as with other skill-based games. It’s really great to see people coming back because of their excitement about Meridian 59 and what it offers.

M59 is a classic in the online gaming field, that’s for sure. Do you feel that this designation hurts the game and turns off players to checking it out?
I think it makes people a bit more hesitant, unfortunately. I have heard some people, who haven’t played the game, mind you, complain that the game is “too old”, but what does the age of a game matter if it is fun? In fact, I think older online RPGs are better than newer ones. Meridian 59 has had many years to add a lot of depth to the game. We have also gotten rid of the worst of the bugs, and we’ve been able to focus on balancing the game to an extreme degree. How often do you hear people complain about how a new online RPG is filled with bugs and exploits, or that it has no content to keep people interested? Meridian 59 does not have these problems because it is a classic game that has been expanded and cared for, specially in the last two years as NDS has taken care of it.

Moreover, you will find things in Meridian 59 you just can’t find in other games. Meridian 59 has had an in-game mail system, a detailed guild interface, guild housing, guild insignias, and original setting with deep backstory, and many other “new” aspects when it launched in 1996! We’ve only been adding to the game, so it keeps on getting better and better. Meridian 59’s status as a “classic” game certainly does not mean it’s not interesting to explore or fun to play!

Once under 3DO games, they deemed it necessary to shut down such a precedent setting game such as M59. How difficult was it for Near Death Studios to gain the license?

It was not too difficult for us, since the company was founded by 2 former Meridian 59 developers. It took a while for us to negotiate the contract, and we had to dig deep to find the money to purchase the rights to the game. This all happened over two years ago, so most of the problems are distant memories.

But, honestly, 3DO didn’t know the value of the game. They shut down an online game which still had multiple thousands of dedicated customers. They alienated most of the developers that had knowledge of the game, and refused to give Meridian 59 the resources it needed to expand and grow. The new rendering engine like we are working on was a project that was talked about at 3DO, but never taken seriously. When they shut the game down, it became obvious that they didn’t know what they had.

One of the best things about owning Meridian 59 is that we can give a quality game the attention it deserves.

[There’s More: Check Out Part Two, “It’s all about the community!”]