IGNDC: Unreal Tournament is widely known as the game that made Epic famous, so obviously we're interested to hear how you guys managed to snag such a hefty project, as well as how it has been working with the UT team. How does an outside team manage to cram such a processor intensive engine onto the DC and keep up with CliffyB's fashion exploits. What's your story?

Joshn Adams: Most of the members of the Secret Level team have been involved in the industry for at least five years, so we have definitely made plenty of contacts. Some friends of ours recommended us toInfogrames, who is publishing the game. In this business, who you know can be as important as what you know!

Working with the UT team has been great. For me, frequent communication with Tim Sweeney has been amazing. I could ask him the most random question, and he'd usually fire back the very helpful answer that day. I've actually learned a lot about coding just from going through the code. I paid him back however, by "saving his ass" on a certain PS2 loading problem he was having! The other coders over there also helped me out quite a bit.

To "cram" UT onto the Dreamcast has certainly been a bit of a challenge. The biggest issue we had was, of course, memory. UT on the PC is stated as requiring 64 Megs of RAM, and the DC has only 16! The most obvious place where this hurt was Assault, since the maps for that game mode are simply huge. Because of this, we had to leave out that mode, along with the larger maps in the other modes. However, they were replaced with some great new maps that didn't require as much space.

As for CliffyB's fashion exploits, well... next question, please.

JA: The Dreamcast turned out to be incredibly easy to program -- especially compared to other consoles recently released. Once I actually got the basic code compiled and running on the DC, it was only a matter of a couple of weeks before I could play the game in a textured, minimal level and shoot a Nali cow! Adding the DC support was a much easier process than cutting down the code to allow for larger levels.

This is not our first DC project, but it is the first one that will go to market. While the DC is definitely not the fastest cat on the block, it does allow programmers to relatively easily make high quality titles. UT was obviously not designed and coded with consoles in mind. However, with the help of Epic, Sega, and the Sega developer community, I've been able to give it a good kick into the console world!

The 200MHz processor on the DC is definitely limiting. Imagine playing UT on a 200MHz PC, even with a smoking video card. So, it was a challenge, needless to say, to get to the performance point that stays true to the intense action of the original. But, there are some good things on the DC, especially in the PowerVR graphics subsystem. With 8 Megs of VRAM, I have about 5.5 Megs left for textures. With the PowerVR hardware texture compression, I am able to fit all the textures in VRAM, saving a lot of main RAM because I don't have to store a copy of every texture in main RAM and then upload the textures as I need them. This has been a lifesaver on this project.

IGNDC: Obviously, a big part of the transition from PC to console has been moving the online code over. How is that coming along, and as one of the first titles to support the Broadband adapter and eight-player support, what can we expect from the Dreamcast version?

JA: You'll be able to expect some serious fragging! Eight players is exponentially more fun than four players. Now, the modem is just as slow as a modem on the PC, so if you don't have that broadband adapter, it may get laggy from time to time. That's just an inherent problem in all modems. However, with DSL or a cable modem, getting head-shots on that guy in New York will never have been so sweet. LPBs all the way!

IGNDC: Speaking of nifty peripherals, we know we've got Mouse and Keyboard support. What about the Madcatz Panther XL? Any special plans for the VMU? Will Unreal Tournament cook us breakfast?

JA: We currently don't have support for the Panther XL or any amazing VMU support, unfortunately. I've always enjoyed the idea of being able to extend your gameplay by having mini-games on the VMU that interact with the main game somehow, but we really haven't thought of anything cool that fits in with UT that would work well on the small monochrome display.

IGNDC: Getting back to multiplayer support, what's the story with split screen? Is it looking like you guys will be able to squeeze in the four-player hook-up? Or will we be stuck with two-player?

JA: We are planning on four-player, that was one of the decisions made that pushed the ship date out a couple of months, so we had time to implement it.

IGNDC: What about maps? We noticed Raster cut waaay back on their split screen maps in Q3A for Dreamcast. Are you guys doing the same thing with split-screen UT, or are you trying to fit the maps in?

JA: We're definitely going to have to cut back on the maps. Split screen mode is basically two to four times slower, so the maps that have a lot of visibility (big outdoor levels -- think CTF-Face) are already pushing the framerate. With the split screen, these maps would slow down to unacceptable speeds. It's the same thing with Q3A. So if you want to play those big levels multi-player, you're going to have to do it online!

IGNDC: Since we're yacking about maps, we're told the Dreamcast version of Unreal Tournament will have a ton of levels, some new, some old, and some from the PS2 version. What is the breakdown looking like and how are they being worked into the game modes?

JA: There are about 40 Deathmatch maps, 15 CTF maps, and 15 Domination maps. Any one map will only be able to be played in its mode, even on-line. We took all the maps from the PS2 version that aren't too big (hey, they get 32 megs of memory, so they get a few bigger levels), we took a lot of maps from mod packs, and then we hired some experienced UT level designers to modify them to work optimally on the Dreamcast. There are also some maps that are in no other game.

IGNDC: Actually, game modes is one thing we're really curious about. The recently released PC Game of the Year edition offered some slick mods like Chaos, and Rocket Arena. Obviously, a mod like Chaos might take a bit more work, but will we see the likes of Rocket Arena in the Dreamcast version, or are CTF and Domination as good as it gets? You guys have some stiff competition with Sierra's 'Net specific Half-Life pack coming to Dreamcast in 2001, you know...

JA: We recently have added Team Deathmatch into the DC version, but again the memory limitations have dictated how much we can include. So we won't be able to include any new mods like Chaos or Rocket Arena. We do have some of their maps however!

IGNDC: Getting back to competition, a lot of readers want to know how the Dreamcast version stacks up to the Unreal Tournament on the PS2. From what we have seen, it is certainly living up to the visual end of the bargain. What about the game's control and framerate? Will Internet play give the game a big boost from a gameplay standpoint?

JA: Our biggest advantage over the PS2 version is the Internet play. They have some slight advantages with control since the PS2 standard controller is better set up to a play game like this. However, if you are using a keyboard and mouse, than that's not an issue. They also have a faster machine, a better graphics chip, and more memory. I think the DC holds its own pretty well, however.

IGNDC: Outside living up to the Unreal name, you've got some tough hurdles in the genre, as well. How do you guys feel about going toe-to-toe with Quake III Arena on Dreamcast?

JA: Q3A looks nice, and it has some flashy menus, but gameplay-wise, I think we definitely have it beat. With auto-aim in UT, using the controller is not such a disadvantage. Have you tried using the rail gun in Q3A? One of the best weapons, but it's basically useless if you can't aim precisely. Epic is responsible for making the gameplay more console-friendly, we can't take credit for everything. It really helped us that the original developers of the game made a console version. Unfortunately for Q3A, the Raster guys didn't have that sort of help from id. That's really helped cut down our development time.

IGNDC: Is there anything we didn't cover? The Secret Password? The Secret to Life? The Secret to Rent Controlled living in the Bay Area? Spill the beans!

JA: The Secret Password -- this week only -- is Hazuki. The Secret to Life is, naturally, videogames and lots of them. The Secret to Rent Control is that it's too late, you already missed it. The Secret to a great haircut rests with a man named Yosh. The Secret of Monkey Island was one of the best adventure games ever -- bested only by Monkey Island 2 and Maniac Mansion. The Secrets of Majora's Mask are many. The Secret Level? Well, that you may never find...

We'd like to thank the crew at Secret Level as well as the fine folks at Infogrames for making this interview possible.