Category Archives: General

Headless Bunny

One key rule we’ve learned while building assets for Grimm is to push for more interesting transformations. People playing the game tell us “greater contrast between light and dark = more interesting.” Early on, “light/dark” was communicated with distinctly different textures, but somewhat similar geometry. These days we’re trying to build assets that reflect equal changes in geometry… and in behavior. This rabbit is a good example:

Headless Rabbit

When this guy is converted, not only does his texture change, but his geometry as well. AND with a character like this you’ll see his behavior change – from a hopping movement to a jet-powered rocketing movement.

Take that silly rabbit!

Rainy Taxi Ride

My friends gave me a Canon TX1 video camera for my birthday. So nice of them! And maybe for you… because now I can record and post videos. My hope is to capture some of what’s going on inside the studio, in Shanghai, and with my adventures around China. Here’s the first (crappy) test:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR5IOqt1lkE 400 400]

Me taking a taxi ride to work this morning. Extremely interesting huh? Usually I ride my bike to work, but not on cold and rainy days. And today was especially cold! Winter has definitely come to Shanghai.

I’ll mount this thing to my bike one morning. Then you’ll have something interesting to watch!

Sad Cat

Concept art is awesome. Over the past few months the Spicy Horse concept artists have generated nearly a thousand unique bits of artwork to drive asset production for Grimm. As a general rule, nothing in Grimm gets built without first being represented in concept. Up until today we were unable to show much of this amazing work to the world, but now all that’s changed.

Grimm Cat


Here you see a sad cat. Like all assets in Grimm the cat has both a light and a dark version. That means that each object in our world actually has to be built twice.

I’ll try to post an image a day from now on. Enjoy!

Fast Fiber!

Since moving to our new offices back in September Spicy Horse has been limping along on a REALLY SLOW Internet connection. It’s felt sorta like a tin can connected to a guy in Mongolia who’s using smoke signals to relay packets to a shoddy Russian satellite. That’s on the days that it worked.

But those days are nearly at an end. Behold, the fiber line:

Fiber - Sweet, sweet fiber.

Ok, maybe not that exciting to the rest of you. But in our eyes this jackhammer trench across our parking lot shines like the Holy Grail.

Grimm on GameSpot UK

Emma Boyes over at GameSpot UK has put together a nice interview piece where we talk about Grimm, digital distribution, and life in Shanghai. From the article:

In 2006, McGee moved lock, stock, and barrel to Hong Kong and then on to Shanghai, where he set up his development studio Spicy Horse. From there, he and his team have been working on Grimm, a retelling of some of the best-known children’s fairy tales. Action adventure Grimm will be coming in 24 episodes, initially released for the PC on the GameTap digital distribution service and follow an episodic, TV-style format, complete with cliffhangers to keep gamers downloading. Fairy tales getting the McGee treatment will include Rapunzel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White. The first episode is due in spring 2008.

To read the full article and see a bit of exclusive Grimm art, head over to GameSpot UK.

One Year On…

My head spins to think about everything that’s happened in the last year. On this date 1 year ago I left Lamma Island, Hong Kong and moved to Shanghai. The intent was to help my buddy Xin start his outsourcing company Vykarian, and to launch a new game studio of my own called Spicy Horse.

Both goals have been achieved, and many more. Looking back, I’m impressed by how much has been accomplished in such little time. Spicy’s core development team is now at 26 people, being supported by 19 artists from Vykarian. The Grimm project has gone from fuzzy concept to solid reality at an amazing rate – thanks to a great team and good technology. And most importantly, the people involved in these ventures and projects are happy and full of excitement for the future. It is truly a good time to be in China.

For this next year it’s my hope that the studio will pick up another production. Ideally, we’ll continue using UE3. And this time around, I wouldn’t mind working on a larger-scale console project. Episodic production is challenging and uniquely satisfying, but playing titles like Bioshock gets me excited about the possibilities for a large-scale dark fairy tale action/adventure on 360. We have some concepts out there, and I’m hopeful… besides, it’s a beautiful morning in Shanghai…

Shanghai Morning, November 8th 2007