FLASH DESIGN IN ACTION: OUR EXPERIENCE WITH LUCASARTS

This section relates our general experience gained as we built the first Flash application for the Sony PlayStation 2. We used the 1^st Generation Flash Player and believe that a lot of what we learned will be useful to those of you who are reading this book to create Flash applications for the Internet or for game elements and interfaces.

When LucasArts first contacted us to discuss the user interface for their upcoming PlayStation 2 title Star Wars Starfighter™, we believed that we would be developing working design comps of the user interface in Flash before they committed their team to the task of building it out. We had a few meetings before it was revealed to us that we were actually going to be creating the interface itself, not simply designing it. We would be using a top-secret Flash Player that runs on the PlayStation 2.

A quote from the LucasArts Team from Game Developer Magazine:

"We had heard that a small San Francisco-based company named Secret Level was adapting Macromedia's Flash technology for us in Sony PlayStation 2 games…Macromedia content-authoring tools were far more elaborate than anything we could come up with in the same time frame. We also suspected that there was a wealth of Flash authoring expertise available from out-of-house contractors, which would help us smooth out the work load."

LucasArts obviously needed a well-designed user interface for its game. The interface had to be easy to use, beautiful, and bring something new and fresh to the genre. It also had to be inexpensive to develop and easy to modify and localize. LucasArts wanted a team that didn't take away resources from its core technology and design group who were busy building out the game itself.

We suppose LucasArts chose Orange Design to build the interface because of our technology experience. Our web site and game style at the time was not very sci-fi and we think that there was some worry about us pulling it off design-wise. We found the challenge to be perfect for us. We got to play with a new style and genre and bring our experience into the mix. We were very surprised by the open-mindedness and flexibility we had from the LucasArts team. It was a great experience working with a team of their caliber.

Overall the project was a success and our design team, Mark Del Lima and Keiko Chaffee, received kudos for their great work from the press and from the LucasArts team. We built on that success with the subsequent release of Star Wars Jedi Starfighter™, where the team included Mark Del Lima, Keiko Chaffee, Pamela Miller, and Fearghal O'Dea. (See Figure 12.2.)

Figure 12.2. Code screen from Star Wars Jedi Starfighter™.