Hey everyone,

Here is the finished fan interview straight from Rasmus. Enjoy!

It's getting close to release, but we might be able to fit another one in... keep an eye out.

Profile for Rasmus:

Rasmus Sigsgaard, programmer, have been with IO for 3 years. Before that I worked a variety of different jobs.

After I finished my education, I got a job with Nokia doing test/diagnostics software for their factories and this included traveling around the world setting up factories when new mobile phones
started production. I traveled mainly in Europe (Finland, Germany, Hungary) but was also in China setting up factories there.

After that I worked with a small .com startup called Networkleague, which was a big online ranking and matching system. I was responsible for programming the backend, and when we went into betatesting I handled all contact to the betatesters and the press. Unfortunately the company suffered the same fate as a lot of .com companies, namely bankruptcy.

So after that I moved into the consultancy world, and worked for a small database consultancy firm for some time. I soon found out that even though the money was good, it was quite boring work, and that was when I approached IO.

Ever since I got my first computer, a ZX Spectrum+ at the age of 7, I've been hooked to computer games and programming. And so it was with great joy that I started working at IO. I started working on internal tools within IO, but moved to the Hitman team when Hitman: Contracts was getting into high gear. I helped with the GUI for Hitman: Contracts, and was responsible for setting up the build process and making the final
versions of the game.

After Hitman: Contracts I sort of stuck to the Hitman team, and for Hitman Blood Money, I've been responsible for gameplay programming on a couple of levels, namely The Murder of Crows (Mardi Gras), and the Suburbia level. This includes setting up the character AI on those levels, and this has been a lot of work, since we basically created an entirely new AI system for Blood Money.

Furthermore I'm responsible for the implementation of the notoriety, rating and money system, and the statistics used in the calculation of these.

The notoriety and money systems are some of the great new additions to Hitman Blood Money, and it really creates some cool variety to the game, and also makes it more important how you handle the individual missions, as the result carries on over to later missions.

Finished Fan Interview With Rasmus Sigsgaard

Q: Were you a Hitman fan before working on Hitman: Contracts and Hitman: Blood Money?

A: I still remember the first time I saw the first Hitman – Codename 47 on a colleagues computer at the place I worked at, and I was blown away by the style, and it was the first time I saw ragdolls which added so much to the game. Since then I've played all the Hitman games, and so I guess you could call me a fan.
My problem is though, that I usually don't have the patience for the intricate stealth tactics that Hitman is most famous for, so I often ended up messing something up, and getting spotted, and then I just went full guns blazing. But I think that is one of the big strengths of Hitman, that even if you can't figure out (or can't be bothered) to sneak through a level, it is just as fun (if not more) to get out the big arsenal and just start shooting everyone that crosses your path, and you can still complete the game.

Q: What was the most challenging aspect of designing the game you had to deal with?

A: The problem, from a designer/programmer point of view, with the Hitman game is the fact that it is very open ended. So you have to take into account every possible way the player can move around in the level, and in which order he takes out the targets, or triggers other events.
So a large amount of the design and implementation time was spent on making sure nothing went terribly wrong, just because the player decided to take out what you had considered being the last target as the first.

Q: Did you have any main inspirations while working on the game?

A: I think most of the inspiration came from my colleagues. It is probably an occupational injury, but the majority of discussions over the lunch table has to do with strange and grizzly ways of killing people. So sometimes if there are visitors at IoI, and they overhear the talks going on, they begin looking a little uneasy...
We also get more or less every game that gets published, and we have a large dvd collection, so a lot of inspiration comes from games and movies, which is also the basis for many discussions.

Q: How do you feel about working on such a great game like Hitman, and how do you feel when you are done with the game?

A: It has been fantastic working on Hitman Blood Money. It has also been very tough. There have been many nights and weekends, where we've been working on the game, but all of the people at IoI are fantastic, and so it feels more like having fun than work at times.
I'm writing this, the day after the PC version has gone goldmaster, and shipped to the manufacturer, and I have to tell you it's a wonderful feeling.

It's funny how it gets when you work on a game for this long, because in the end I couldn't really figure out if it was a good game or not, because I more or less only saw my own levels everyday, and focused on the bugs. But when I saw the levels the other guys were working on, and they were sitting there pointing out which bugs they were fixing, the only thing I could think and say was, “Holy #¤%&! Your level is the coolest one ever. So much better than mine. The entire game is gonna rock”. And it was the exact same when people saw my levels. I guess it was something like couldn't see the forest for the trees.

Q: In relation to the Murder of Crows (Mardi Gras) level, and the fact that you have stated you handled the AI for this level (among others). I think it is safe to say that everyone has noticed that this particular level features a lot of NPC characters walking around the streets.

Was there any extra difficulty in programming the AI for NPC’s that move in large crowds, as opposed to smaller ones?

A: When I started working on the Murder of Crows level, there were no crowds at all. So it took quite some imagination to figure out how it would look and feel. But when the first iterations of the crowd system were done, and we put it into the level, everyone that saw it was blown away. This is the first game I've seen that have that many characters on screen at the same time, and it even runs nice on the Playstation 2.
Regarding the AI, they actually move fluently through the crowds, but one issue that came up was what happened in case of a firefight in the crowds. So we managed to make the crowd panic and cower and run away if something dangerous happens, but it is still possible to use the crowd as a kind of shield if you're trying to get away from danger.

Q: Which is your favorite game other than the Hitman series?

A: I still remember the first game I played on my own first computer (Zx Spectrum+) which was a helicopter simulator called Tomahawk. With my dads help I got the helicopter off the ground, and as with many first times flying a helicopter at the age of 7, I proceeded to crash it immediately. And the screen started to flicker wildly, and ended up looking like broken glass, after which I thought that I had broken our tv...
But one of the games that I still to this day think is one of the best is called Another World (or Out of this World). This game where you play as a physicist and gets transported to another world when an experiment goes wrong, just drew me in to a point where it was near impossible to put it down once I began.

Q: What game are you playing currently?

A: Hello, my name is Rasmus, and I'm a World of Warcraft addict... Ok, addict might be a strong word, but yes I play World of Warcraft when I go home from work, with friends and colleagues from work. Besides that I try out a lot of games at work.

Q: What aspect of Blood Money are you most proud of?

A: The fact that it's done... No, seriously I think there are a so many new features that just takes Hitman to a whole other level of interactivity with the surroundings. The variety of close combat moves like head butting, jumping over obstacles and balconies, disarming, using people as human shields makes it much more varied that before. And most importantly, it opens up the possibility for people to play through the levels in so many different ways.

Q: What proved the biggest technical challenge during the making of Blood Money?

A: I would probably have to say it's the AI. We've basically made an entirely new AI system, and so we had to implement all the basics again, and a lot of work went into getting the AI working perfectly.
Since the AI is also one of the key aspects of the Hitman game, it was important to us to try and get rid of all the situations that seemed unnatural.

But I must tell you that it has been difficult, and sometimes we call Hitman Blood Money a reality simulator, because the premise for the game is the player walking around in an environment where all the actors you see will act like they would in real life. So compared to a game where you see an enemy and you have to kill him before he kills you, Hitman Blood Money more or less tries to recreate realistic normal human behavior.

Q: Can you give a short description of the work process, example how to implement the notoriety system. (How did the idea came up and how do you carry it out.)

A: An idea like the notoriety system was thought out by the designers in the starting phase of Hitman Blood Money. After that it goes through a lot of iterations with the designer and programmer (me), of trying to figure out if it is too easy or too hard on the player, and basically this is a lot of number crunching.
After that I did the initial implementation, and we began to get some real life numbers from playing through the game.

After the numbers began to make sense it was then time to implement the notoriety rating to have an influence on the behavior of NPC’s, which was our AI programmers job. And so the civilians will first become suspicious of you, since your face is in the newspaper and on tv, and if they get a long enough look at you, they will recognize you, and run for the nearest policeman.
The policemen and guards on the other hand, will also become suspicious of you, and if you don't get out of their way fast enough, they will probably open fire, or call for backup.

Q: Is there anything about the game that you would have liked to have changed, or added, if you were to have more time to work on the game?

I think our biggest problem was actually that we more or less didn't cut any features out of the game at all. And since we wanted to make a superb game with that many new features, it also took time. But no, I can't think of anything that needs changing. There are so many new features, and they have all been tweaked a lot so they work perfectly.

I've been playing the more or less finished game for some time now, and it is truly amazing that more or less no playthrough is the same. There are always new ways of doing your job.

Q: It has been said that the AI in Hitman: Blood Money is much more advanced than in previous Hitman games. Did you encounter any difficulty while programming the enhanced AI. Veteran Hitman fans are more likely to notice and respect subtle differences in the AI, and it would be interesting to know of any specific features that took extensive amounts of work to implement.

A: Well, making computer games there are always difficulties, and we've had our fair share. Trying to implement the amount of features into an entirely new AI system has been tough, but we made it in the end.
In the beginning of development, it is all the obvious things you notice. For example on the Murder of Crows level, I programmed a chef in a kitchen who uses a knife for cutting some meat and vegetables. And a problem that came up was the fact that when he put down the knife to go somewhere else, he would notice the knife, and since it was implemented as being a weapon he would freak out and run to a policeman to tell him that he found a weapon in his kitchen!

Some new improvements to the AI include NPC’s picking up guns if they feel threatened, and one is lying around. Policemen and guards will follow blood trails. NPC’s will notice if Hitman is acting suspicious, like crouching around too much somewhere.

Also something that took some time was making policemen, guards and other armed NPC’s aware of Hitman barricading himself in a room with no exits. Instead of just running in the door, they will try to wait out Hitman, and look in the door and shoot if they see him.