We are pleased that Rich Geldreich took some time to answer our Q&A. He has had loads of previous experience producing graphics for games and his most recent release is getting rave review around the net, World Series Baseball. Previous work of his has included THQ's Matchbox Emergency Patrol, Shrek, Age of Empires and even Montezuma's Return. Onto the Q&A:

Q1: Thank you for your time in answering some of our questions. What games have you produced the graphics for?

A1: My first "real" rendering engine was for THQ's "Matchbox Emergency Patrol". I created the game's 3D Studio Max exporters, preprocessing tools, and software/D3D 7 rasterizers, almost entirely from scratch. The experience I gained while creating Matchbox's relatively simple renderers paved the way for the rendering engine used in Shrek Xbox.

I joined Blue Shift too late in production to contribute much to World Series Baseball.. My main contribution was an Xbox client/server GPU/CPU performance analyzer, used by the team while optimizing the game's rendering performance.

Q2: What is your favourite platform to produce graphics on and why?

A2: Definitely Xbox.. Mostly because MS has done a great job documenting the Xbox hardware, and the API's are well understood and very close to the metal.  Also, the XGPU kicks arse.

Q3: How disappointing is it for you as a graphics designer to produce lovely graphics for a game, only to see it not do well because of other aspects of the game?

A3: Yea, Shrek's gameplay really sucked. It was too difficult for its intended audience (kids), and way too boring and repetitive for adults. The gameplay was lame partially because TDK Mediactive, and MS to some extent, placed us under a lot of pressure to finish the game in time for the Xbox launch. If the game _didn't_ look as good as it did, we probably would have had more time to work on the gameplay.

Q4: What sort of time frame does it normally take to get a game from the conceptual stage to actually getting it out onto the shelves?

A4: It depends on the experience and motivation of the team, the scope of the game, etc. The production of Shrek took 10 months, and another 1 month or so for certification and manufacturing.

Q5: Are there certain types of games you enjoy working on, for example adventure more than sports etc. ?

A5: I enjoy working on the graphical side of games more than the actual gameplay, so I'm pretty open as far as genres go.

Given the choice, I would rather work on a game that takes place in a fantasy setting.

Q6: What do you use to get accurate models for games? For example in World Series Baseball, did it involve watching loads of baseball games to track the movement of the players or something different?

A6: I only joined Blue Shift a few months ago, so I can't really speak for how they do things on World Series Baseball.

The Shrek character modelers would typically start by studying pencil sketches. The models would then be iteratively improved, by factoring in the feedback from other team members, the publisher, etc. I lost count of how many models of the Shrek character where created during production.

Q7: How did you get started in the business? Was it something that you always wanted to do, or did you almost fall into it?

A7: At one time I created stuff like data compression codecs for a living. My first experience with the game business was licensing one of my Deflate codecs (a .ZIP compatible compressor/decompressor) to Ensemble Studios, for use in the "Age of Empires" series.

Q8: How many people do you have on your team to produce the graphics for the games you produce?

A8: For Shrek, we had a total of about 18 artists create content for the game, although only half worked on the title full time.

Q9: Any new and upcoming games in the pipeline that you are working on?

A9: I'm working on improving the character rendering in the Xbox version of World Series Baseball 2K4.

Q10: If you didn’t produce graphics for games, what do you think you would be doing?

A10: Probably hacking away on something like data compression, image processing, or 3D simulation.

Q11: With recent slumps in sales of the Xbox how do you see the Xbox progressing in the future?

A11: The battle is far from over. My hope is that by next year, people will see what the Xbox can _really_ do.

Q12: Do you think that the full potential of the Xbox has been reached yet or are there games still to be produced that will push the Xbox to the limits?

A12: The more talented developers will find ways of pushing the Xbox platform, and especially the XGPU, closer to its limits. We haven't seen the best yet.

Q13: What has been your favourite game working on so far?

A13: Definitely Shrek.. Working on an Xbox launch title was one of the most exciting times of my life, and the team behind Shrek was very talented.

It was also cool to work on one of the first (if not the first) Xbox games to use deferred shading, which is a rendering technique that completely decouples shading from scene rendering. Shrek always renders the scene a constant number of times, no matter how many lights are present. All lighting calculations are performed using 2D screenspace rendering passes, so the Shrek engine can (theoretically) shade a 10 million triangle scene as quickly as a 1,000,000 or 100,000 triangle scene. This is one of the reasons why Shrek looks so different from other Xbox games.
 

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