Star Wars: KotOR II Interview

RPGCodex has conducted an interview with Obsidian’s Frank Kowalkowski, asking the senior programmer quite a few questions about his work on Star Wars: KotOR II and his previous experience at Interplay. Check it out:

Q: You’ve worked with the Snowblind engine on BGDA2 and now the Odyssey engine on KOTOR 2. Could you compare them? What some of the strengths and weaknesses of each.

A: There’s almost no comparing the two engines other than to say they both have pretty good toolsets for the designers. Danien Chee, one of the BIS programmers, further modified the Snowblind toolset into a massive project management front end. He saved us months of development time and made the whole build process accessible to anyone on the team. Graphically, both engines do the job and do it well.

As far a weaknesses, I can’t really say as there’s anything too drastic with either engine. What weaknesses people may perceive from playing the game are actually a result of some of the engine’s greatest strengths. Eliminating those weaknesses would create noticeable vacuums elsewhere.