An Intro to APB with Realtime Worlds' Chris "Ulric" Dye

Set for release in the first quarter of 2010, All Points Bulletin (APB) is a persistent world shooter that pits enforcers against criminals in a high octane urban playground. The game gained serious traction at E3 2009 last month thanks to an impressive demo featuring gorgeous graphics truly deserving of the HD distinction, novel gameplay, and a just-announced distribution deal with Electronic Arts. We sat down with Realtime Worlds’ Chris Dye to crack our enforcer knuckles for the first time, learning more about the unparalleled customization options and how the timeless battle between cops and robbers will play out in APB.

First and foremost, it’s hard to overstate the customization angle of APB. According to Chris, the only two decisions you’re stuck with are your choice of faction (criminal or enforcer) and gender. Everything else you can change “as your mood fits,” Chris noted. There's one caveat: enforcers must wear a badge somewhere on their person. But, according to Chris, criminals can and do try to disguise themselves as enforcers or civilians to make things interesting. The badge requirement keeps things from getting too interesting.

Extremely detailed character customization is a big part of APB, corset makes the game awesome.

Aside from body and facial appearance, clothing and vehicle styles, colors, and decals / tattoos are available to you. During the demo, vector graphics were stretched, layered, rotated, skewed, and otherwise positioned without a loss of graphic quality over clothing and vehicles, leading to some genuinely cool effects. Realtime Worlds decided against allowing players to upload their own graphics for copyright and other reasons, but Chris was quick to note that the game’s sizable library and toolset allows for some incredible design work. “The guys keep finding new ways of doing stuff. We had one guy a few weeks ago that came up with using a sunbird with effects to make a body tattoo. Another guy was using the tools for bruising, mustaches... we just don’t know what people are going to come up with.”

Fashion and music design will be a significant part of the gang experience, and these specialties will be their own niche. “Most gangs will have one guy that’s the tattoo guy, they’ll have a guy that designs the vehicle graphics. And if you design graphics that people like, you can sell them on the marketplace.” There’s no cost to the designer until you finalize your design for trade, Chris noted, so the only in-process cost is time to get the most out of APB’s impressive toolset and a player’s own artistic expertise. As of now, there’s no additional cost whether you customize one or one hundred shirts or cars.

Cars not only have paint and decal options, but players will be able to unlock new body parts, e.g. spoilers, scoops, and side-skirts. “A lot of it is cosmetic,” Chris explained, “as with the clothing options, we didn’t want to lock people in the situation where they felt they had to choose a set of clothes for stat bonuses or choose a certain setup for their vehicle because it gives them a speed boost or something like that.” Weapons, vehicles, and clothing with have “functional mods,” however, which improve performance in certain ways.

Vehicles also take visible damage and will explode if they sustain enough violence. Chris explained that they’re are two types of cars in APB - civilian cars which can be stolen by criminals (or “commandeered” by enforcers) and player-owned cars. But as part of the progression, you’ll unlock cars into your garage. These cars get all the paint, decal, and item goodness, and should you be unlucky enough to total a car you’ve unlocked, you’ll simply have to pay a fee to respawn the car.

The Chevy Lumina will be driveable, but you can do better.

Should you come out of your mission with your car flesh wounded but not dead yet, damage is easily repaired for a fee at what Chris called “Petrol Stations” (we think it’s British for “Gas Station” :). Some criminal missions might require you to get a car to a chop shop, and how much you’re paid depends largely on the condition of the car. So a criminal, with enforcers in hot pursuit, may have to decide, GTA-style, between risking a few precious moments to repair the damage sustained or taking the car in as-is.

Loot is another significant part of the mission experience, as you might expect. “Sometimes you’ll get a cash reward, sometimes you’ll get an item. And that [item] could be anything from a new set of tattoos to a weapon to an item that will help you in certain types of missions.” Players will always start with base weapons, vehicles, and clothing types, however, which must be unlocked by completing missions for your contact (both enforcers and criminals have contacts) or reaching certain achievements, e.g. 50 kills or killing every member of a gang you’re opposed to.

That raised another question. While its fairly easy to understand missions from a criminal point of view, say, a bank heist or stealing a car, what’s an example of an enforcer mission? “Escorting a VIP to a location, patrolling the streets, being on the lookout for crimes, escorting armored trucks to the banks... all the things that you’d expect a law enforcement person to do.” Enforcers might build notoriety (the game’s formal system for ranking players - APB has no levels) by witnessing a crime, but may or may not get the “APB” - the actual assignment to pursue the criminal. If your notoriety grows really high, the game will send more of the opposing faction to stop you on your next mission and even create “assassinate” type missions, where you are the target in a certain area. “So you could end up in a situation where you’ve got twenty enforcers after you,” Chris laughed.

But no need to fear a situation where you just log in to play a quick mission and all the sudden twenty players are coming for you. “Notoriety levels - the top tier - refresh every five minutes. So you really have to work to stay at the high levels.” In other words, notoriety is based largely on per-session performance. The character development that persists from session to session is based on the clothes, weapons, and vehicle options players have unlocked plus league rankings for various stats (kill ratio, cars stolen, how “dirty” an enforcer is based on the number of criminals they’ve arrested and subsequently shot, etc.). Everything is tracked on a personal and gang level, as well, but Chris hinted at systems designed around lone wolves who either elect not to gang up or simply don’t have fellow gang members online.

If this guy had theme music, what would it be? We're thinking Coldplay.

I asked Chris whether he thought the possibility of collusion between criminals and enforcers was a possibility - i.e. I’m a criminal, so you let me get away this time and I’ll let you catch me next time. But APB’s novel matchmaking system, which could pair like against like or might send one high level player after a low level group or vice versa, is in no way visible to players. “Even if you’re a criminal and your friend is an enforcer, the chance of getting paired up with them... it’s completely random,” Chris explained.

One aspect of the demo that definitely raised eyebrows was the built-in synthesizer / sequencer that allows players to design their own “bumper” music to broadcast to nearby players for game events such as kills and even their own character’s death. Additionally, RW is exploring ways to use a player’s own music library in creative ways. You may not hear exactly what the player in a passing vehicle (complete with doppler effect) is playing, but you’ll hear something from your own library that matches the genre of that music (or, if you haven’t imported your playlist, something from APB’s default library).

In closing, I asked Chris if there were any misconceptions about APB that he wanted to clear up. He raised the perennial split between a traditional MMORPG and what Realtime Worlds is hoping to accomplish. “We’re happy for people to keep saying “MMO”, but this is definitely a new style of online game. If people come expecting a traditional MMO, I don’t think they’re going to find what they’re expecting. But we definitely think that what we’re creating is something that MMO people are really going to like.”

So, flat out, what about APB would appeal to dyed-in-wool MMO players? “Obviously the persistence is there, which you wouldn’t have in other action-combat games. The ability to really show yourself off to a hundred other players in your immediate district, building up gangs that can drive around in cars - that’s something that we think appeals to everyone. Definitely the social element, and also a more real world setting.”

A big thank you to Realtime Worlds and Chris "Ulric" Dye, who graciously sat with us for an interview despite the cross-Atlantic jet lag.