Another World (video Game) - Development

Development

The game's French designer Eric Chahi had previously worked as a game programmer and then as a graphic designer for video games since 1983. It was the success of his earlier work with Paul Cuisset as a graphic designer for the adventure game Future Wars for Delphine Software and its royalties that gave him the chance to develop Another World "without any constraint of any sort or any editorial pressure." After Future Wars was released in 1989, Chahi had the choice to either work on Cuisset's on his next game, Operation Stealth, or create his own game. As "there had been many books and tools released to develop easily on the Amiga at that time," he felt confident that he could go back to programming.

In August 1989, Chahi was impressed by the flat-color animations that the Amiga version of Dragon's Lair had and thought that it would be possible to use vector outlines to create a similar effect using much less computer storage. After first attempting to write the graphical routines in C, he turned to assembly language. He wrote a polygon routine for the Motorola 68000 on an Atari ST to test his theory, with much success. Later, he found that he could run the code on the Amiga platform and achieve a frame rate of about 20 frames per second, later recognizing this as "a major turning point in the creation of the game" and the point where he knew the polygon approach would work. He was able to take advantage of the Amiga's genlock capabilities to create rotoscoped animations with the polygons, using video recordings of himself performing various actions. Though he had tried to use smaller polygons (which Chahi called "pixigons") to construct the backgrounds for the scenes based on Deluxe Paint artwork, the process of creating them was excruciatingly slow, and he returned to using bitmapped images.

While Chahi had a clear idea of how to implement his game engine, he mostly improvised when creating the actual content of the game, allowing the game to develop "layer by layer without knowing where it was going." He planned on creating a science fiction game that was similar to Karateka and Impossible Mission. Because he wanted to create a dramatic, cinematic experience, the game features no HUD or dialog, giving the player only a representation of the surrounding game world during both gameplay elements and the cutscenes progressing the story. However, with no idea of the technical limitations he would face while building out the story, he focused more on creating ambiance, rhythmic pacing, and narrative tension to the game. Chahi resorted to developing his own tool with a new programming language through GFA Basic coupled with the game's engine in Devpac Assembler, to control and animate the game, interpreted in real-time by the game engine, effectively creating his own animation sequencer.

With the creation of the tools needed for building out the rest of the game by December 1989, Chahi began working on the introductory sequence as a means to validate the full capacities of his engine. The introduction sequence also gave Chahi the chance to explore the types of cinematics he could create through the engine. Chahi later considered this the "first step in the improvisation process" that he used throughout the rest of development. He finished the game's introduction sequence in early 1990 and started working on the first level. Chahi worked at the game at a linear pace, developing each section of the game in the chronological order and influenced by his own personal feelings and attitude at the time. For example, as Chahi recognized he was trying to create a game on his own, the first portions of the game evoke loneliness and isolation, reflecting Chahi's mood at the time. He did not have the original intention of the character meeting an ally, but again described the improvisation approach led him to include the alien friend, and had included specific cinematics that showed a close up of the alien to help the player imagine this world.

Chahi said: "Another World was influenced by everything I liked at that time of my life - mainly by pictorial art, movies and science fiction books, like Dune or Hyperion. Comics and fantasy art also inspired me; artists like Michael Whelan, Richard Corben, Frank Miller and Frank Frazetta." Later in the game's development, Chahi added laser pistols, including the one that Lester carries for several effects. The idea was influenced by the Star Wars franchise, but added depth to the gameplay giving the player more options. He also found that repeated laser fire by the enemies also helped to enunciate the rhythm of the game. Chahi would later add in the plasma ball that increased the available strategy to players. Several points in the game use elevators or teleporters to move Lester between levels; Chahi had used these instead of stairways as it was difficult to produce proper animation for these.

After 17 months of development, Chahi was only about one-third completed with the game, and realized that this rate would have been impractical. He began to take steps to simplify the development, including reusing background graphics and creating building blocks that allowed him to focus more on the game's puzzles. At the same time, he began to seek a publisher for the game. He first spoke to his former employer, Delphine Software, but also sought other distributors. One, Virgin Games, were favorable to Chahi's game but had suggested that he change it to a point-and-click adventure style game. Chahi had considered changing the game by this request but realized "the effort to do this would have been too huge, and some friends who played the game loved it. Ultimately, he accepted Delphine's offer in June 1991, and set a tentative release date in November. To meet this deadline, Chahi used storyboards to sketch out the rest of the game's plot, balancing the overall pacing of the game. One ending captured on these storyboards but abandoned was Lester becoming the leader of the alien world. The game was finished in 1991, which inspired the game's tagline: "It took six days to create the Earth. Another World took two years"; Chahi noted his own exhaustion at completing this project mirrors in the near-death of Lester at the end of the game.

Upon publishing, Delphine did not perform a playtest of the full game, only having previously tested the first portion of the game. Delphine's U.S. publisher Interplay undertook a full playtest and Chahi fixed a number of bugs that arose from this. Interplay had also requested additional changes in the game, including making the game longer and changing the game's introduction music. Chahi was adamant about retaining the game's opening music, and had attempted to change Interplay's minds by sending them an "infinite fax," a looped piece of paper, with the message "keep the original intro music" on it. Only until Delphine got involved and told Interplay they legally could not change the music did Interplay relax this change.