Editing Starship Titanic (section)

== Development ==

[[File:Douglas adams portrait.jpg|thumb|right|''Starship Titanic'' creator [[Douglas Adams]]]]

=== Background ===

[[Douglas Adams]] first imagined the ''Starship Titanic'' in ''[[Life, the Universe and Everything]]'', the third entry in ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' series, where it is briefly mentioned in the book's 10th chapter. Adams describes the ship—named after the [[Titanic|famous ocean liner]]—as a "majestic and luxurious cruise-liner" that "did not even manage to complete its very first radio message—an [[SOS]]—before undergoing a sudden and gratuitous total existence failure".<ref name="Kotaku">{{cite web
|last1=Packwood
|first1=Lewis
|title=The Secret Douglas Adams RPG People Have Been Playing for 15 Years
|url=https://kotaku.com/the-secret-douglas-adams-rpg-people-have-been-playing-f-1681986562
|work=[[Kotaku]]
|access-date=20 September 2017
|date=27 January 2015
|archive-date=1 October 2017
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171001030937/https://kotaku.com/the-secret-douglas-adams-rpg-people-have-been-playing-f-1681986562
|url-status=live
}}</ref><ref>
{{cite book
|last1=Adams
|first1=Douglas
|title=Life, the Universe and Everything
|date=2005
|publisher=[[Del Rey Books]]
|isbn=0-345-39182-9
|pages=92–93
|chapter=10
|title-link=Life, the Universe and Everything
}}
</ref>

Before making ''Starship Titanic'', Adams had previously served as a designer for [[Infocom]]'s 1984 [[text-based game]] ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game)|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'', which was based on his successful science fiction series of the same name,<ref name="CT">
{{cite news
|last=Lynch
|first=Dennis
|date=30 April 1998
|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1998/04/30/hitchhiker-douglas-adams-back-in-space/
|title='Hitchhiker' Douglas Adams Back in Space
|access-date=27 September 2017
|work=[[Chicago Tribune]]
}}
</ref><ref>{{cite web
|url=https://www.engadget.com/2014/03/11/infocoms-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-playable-for-free-onl
|title=Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy playable for free online
|date=11 March 2014
|access-date=27 September 2017
|work=[[Engadget]]
|archive-date=1 October 2017
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171001031034/https://www.engadget.com/2014/03/11/infocoms-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-playable-for-free-onl/
|url-status=live
}}</ref> and had been an advocate for "[[new media]]".<ref name="Ind">
{{cite news
|url=https://independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/network-the-starship-titanic-its-only-mission-is-to-make-you-think-1294706.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220524/https://independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/network-the-starship-titanic-its-only-mission-is-to-make-you-think-1294706.html |archive-date=24 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live
|title=Network: The Starship Titanic? Its only mission is to make you think
|date=18 November 1997
|access-date=27 September 2017
|newspaper=[[The Independent]]
}}</ref> Since working with Infocom, Adams had expressed interest in returning to game design, and feared that he was spending too much time by himself writing.<ref name="Sydney">
{{cite news
|last=Harper
|first=Charlotte
|date=25 April 1998
|title=The intergalactic Adams family
|work=Icon
|issue=41
|publisher=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]
|pages=6–7
}}
</ref><ref name="Newsweek" />
He turned to game design again after playing ''[[Myst]]'', which is when he said "the medium had gotten interesting again".<ref name="Sydney" /> However, he thought ''Myst'' was lacking in story and characters.<ref name="LADN">
{{cite news
|last1=Sherry
|first1=Kevin F.
|title=Busy writer gets Pythons to help
|work=[[Los Angeles Daily News]]
|date=18 January 1998
|page=V5
}}
</ref> Commenting on the gameplay of ''Myst'' and its sequel ''[[Riven]]'', Adams said that "nothing really happens, and nobody is there. I thought, let's do something similar but populate the environment with characters you can interact with",<ref name="Newsweek" /> and hoped to combine graphics and a text-based system that allowed for players to converse with characters in the game.<ref name="ST">
{{cite news
|last1=Covert
|first1=Colin
|title=Hitchhiker' takes another galactic trip; Science-fiction author Douglas Adams, in town today, has created an interactive CD-ROM
|work=[[Star Tribune]]
|date=24 April 1998
|page=23E
}}
</ref>

In 1996 Adams co-founded [[The Digital Village]], a company intended to handle his future endeavours in film, print and new media.<ref name="Guardian">
{{cite news
|last=Daoust
|first=Phil
|date=15 January 1998
|title=Take me to your viewer
|department=G2
|work=[[The Guardian]]
|pages=8–9
}}
</ref> Adams first discussed founding the company with [[Robbie Stamp]], a producer at [[Central Independent Television]] in the early 1990s, and they did so along with Stamp's boss at Central, Richard Creasey; literary agent [[Ed Victor]] was also one of the company's founders. [[Ian Charles Stewart]], one of the founders of ''[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]]'', joined the enterprise shortly thereafter.{{sfn
|Webb
|2005
|p=290}} In December 1995, The Digital Village arranged a deal to raise [[seed money|seed capital]] from venture capitalist Alex Catto, who bought 10% of the company's shares for £400,000.{{sfn
|Webb
|2005
|p=291
}} In 1996 [[Simon & Schuster Interactive]] reached a deal with the company to finance ''Starship Titanic'', whose budget was estimated at $2 million.{{sfn
|Webb
|2005
|p=293
}}

Development of the game began Summer 1996.{{sfn
|Webb
|2005
|p=298
}} Around 40 people worked on the game's development.<ref name="Sydney"/>

===Writing===
The story was created by Adams, who wrote the game's script with [[Michael Bywater]]<ref name="Sydney" /> and Neil Richards.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=7
}}<ref name=Credits>
''Starship Titanic'' final credits
</ref> Additional dialogue was written by [[D. A. Barham]].<ref name=Credits /> Adams's inspiration for the game—particularly the objective of upgrading from third to first-class—came from an experience with airline ticketing personnel, where he was told he would be given an upgrade from economy-class tickets upon checking in for his flight, but found out upon arrival that the upgrade had not been arranged; he said the idea is based on the premise that "everyone wants a free upgrade in life".<ref name="Ind" /><ref>
{{cite news
|title=Games Evolve From Shoot-'Em-Ups; Computer and Media Giants Zap Away Over the $17 Billion Industry
|work=[[International Herald Tribune]]
|date=16 February 1998
|page=11
}}
</ref> Adams had devised a story concept to add an additional gameplay element where players would be able to enter the ship's data system as a "full realtime, flyable environment" and control how information flows through the vessel, but the idea was abandoned because, according to Adams, it was "a bridge too far".<ref name="Edge">
{{cite magazine
|title=Interview with Douglas Adams
|magazine=[[Edge (magazine)|Edge]]
|date=April 1998
|issue=57
|pages=24–26
}}
</ref>

Adams aimed to develop a text parser-based [[dialogue system]] as opposed to the drop-down conversation menus of contemporary adventure games, in which player have limited dialogue options.<ref name="Edge" /><ref name="Wired98" /> The text parser includes over 30,000 words and 16 hours of dialogue recorded by voice actors.<ref name="Newsweek" /> According to Adams, over 10,000 lines of dialogue were recorded for the game.<ref name="Sydney" /> In order to make conversations with characters convincing, The Digital Village's Jason Williams and Richard Millican created a language processor called SpookiTalk, which was based on VelociText, a software developed by Linda Watson of Virtus Corporation.<ref name=Credits />{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=71
}} Producer Emma Westecott thought the processor was preferable as common [[text-to-speech]] programs "made the voices sound cold and distant". Douglas Adams claimed that they made "all of your characters sound like semi-concussed Norwegians".<ref>{{cite news
|url=https://avclub.com/douglas-adams-1798207882
|title=Douglas Adams
|last=Phipps
|first=Keith
|work=The A.V. Club
|access-date=2018-05-08
|language=en-US
|archive-date=23 June 2020
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200623065447/https://www.avclub.com/douglas-adams-1798207882
|url-status=live
}}</ref> The bots in the game understood around 500 words of vocabulary and were capable of conversing with the player as well as each other. According to Westecott, the developers' intention was "getting into characters" and cited games such as ''Myst'' and ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' as contemporary games that lacked "proper interaction" with human characters.<ref name="CrRv">
{{cite magazine
|last1=Faber
|first1=Liz
|title=Starship enterprise
|magazine=[[Creative Review]]
|date=December 1997
|volume=17
|pages=46–47
}}
</ref> Williams and Millican modified VelociText into SpookiTalk in order to improve recognition of complicated sentence forms from players, as well as reducing repeated responses, and retaining a character's memory of an object or topic as a conversation progresses.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=71
}}{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=72}}{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=73
}} Additional dialogue support was done by linguist Renata Henkes.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=101
}}<ref name=Credits />

===Design===
The futuristic, [[Art Deco]] visuals were designed by [[Oscar Chichoni]] and Isabel Molina, who also worked on the 1995 [[Academy Award|Oscar]]-winning film ''[[Restoration (1995 film)|Restoration]]''.<ref name="LATimes">
{{cite news
|last=Glaser
|first=Mark
|date=4 May 1998
|title=A Flight to Remember
|work=[[Los Angeles Times]]
|pages=F1, F13
}}
</ref><ref name="EW">{{cite magazine
|url=https://ew.com/article/1998/05/08/starship-titanic
|last=Harlan
|first=Megan
|title=Starship Titanic
|magazine=[[Entertainment Weekly]]
|date=8 May 1998
|access-date=23 September 2017
|archive-date=30 September 2017
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170930222655/http://ew.com/article/1998/05/08/starship-titanic/
|url-status=live
}}</ref> Chichoni drew the initial sketches of the ship on a flight to Los Angeles on the day he and Molina joined the project.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=61
}} Adams described the ship's interior design as a mixture of the [[The Ritz Hotel, London|Ritz Hotel]], the [[Chrysler Building]], [[KV62|Tutankhamun's tomb]] and [[Venice]].<ref name="Newsweek">
{{cite magazine
|last1=Stone
|first1=Brad
|title=The unsinkable starship
|magazine=[[Newsweek]]
|date=13 April 1998
|volume=131
|issue=15
|pages=78–79}}
</ref> In order to make the design of the ship similar to Art Deco, Molina and Chichoni drew inspiration from 1950s American electrical appliances and [[modern architecture]]; to design the ship's external shape, they also drew from bones and dinosaur skeletons.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=77
}}

Adams, Chichoni and Molina gave detailed briefings for the animators for each environment and character in the game.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=60
}} Modeling and animation for the 30 environments and 10 characters was done on [[Softimage 3D]], version 3.5. Most environments were done separately. However, the center of the ship in particular also included other environments as it connects the first and second class canals, the top of the well and the central well; Darren Blencowe was responsible for modeling the ship's center.<ref name="Graphics">
{{cite magazine
|last1=Coco
|first1=Donna
|title=Starship Titanic
|magazine=Computer Graphics World
|date=October 1997
|volume=20
|issue=10
|pages=17–18
}}
</ref> A total of six 3D artists worked on the game.<ref name="CrRv" /> Rendering was done on [[Mental Ray]]; in order to complete the rendering in time, the team's systems administrator wrote a [[Perl]]-based software to control all rendering jobs for up to 20 processors working 24 hours a day.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=61
}} In order to animate the parrot, Philip Dubree, one of the team's animators, visited pet shops and studied macaws for inspiration. Dubree created a skeleton and modeled the wings and feathers, later adjoining the body. He also scanned photos of macaw features and used [[Photoshop]] to incorporate those in the parrot's textures.<ref name="Graphics"/> In order to create Titania's statue at the Top of the Well, animator John Attard built the 3D model as a refractive metallic structure and texturized it with streaks of oxidation on her face; Attard used the [[Statue of Liberty]] as a visual reference.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=60
}}

Programming was done on The Digital Village's own developed engine, Lifeboat.<ref name="CrRv" /> The engine was developed by programmers Sean Solle and Rik Heywood, who joined the company in January 1997.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=100
}} Their intention when developing Lifeboat was allowing simultaneous work on different parts of the game, facilitating game test runs and unifying the work of coders and 3D animators. The engine went live on 14 February 1997. To keep within a data budget of 1.8 gigabytes, the team used the [[MP3]] sound format to compress the 16 hours of speech and dialogue, and compressed movies and cutscenes with [[Indeo]]. The final set of the game CDs were burned 400 days after the first build of Lifeboat.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=101
}}

===Sound===

[[File:Terry Jones.jpg|thumb|[[Terry Jones]] voiced the parrot and wrote the tie-in novel]]

Sound designer John Whitehall, who was in charge of the company's sound studio during the recording process, worked with Adams on creating the sound for the game. Whitehall and Adams had previously collaborated in the radio version of ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' for the [[BBC]], where Whitehall was a studio manager. The voice cast included actors Laurel Lefkow, Quint Boa, [[Dermot Crowley]] and [[Jonathan Kydd (actor)|Jonathan Kydd]], who voiced the bot characters in the game.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=88
}} [[Monty Python]] members [[Terry Jones]] and [[John Cleese]] also lent their voices to characters in the game. Jones, a longtime friend of Adams, provided the voice of the parrot,<ref name="NYT">
{{cite news
|last1=Herz
|first1=J.C.
|title=GAME THEORY; From Hitchhiker Spoofs to Starship Titanic
|url=https://nytimes.com/1998/04/09/technology/game-theory-from-hitchhiker-spoofs-to-starship-titanic.html
|access-date=21 September 2017
|work=[[The New York Times]]
|date=9 April 1998}}
</ref> while Cleese (who is credited as "Kim Bread")<ref name=Credits /> voiced the bomb.<ref name="PCMag">
{{cite magazine
|last1=Cruickshank
|first1=Alex
|title=Starship Titanic: a Douglas Adams oddity
|magazine=[[PC Magazine (British magazine)|PC Magazine UK]]
|date=July 1998
|issue=7
|page=403
}}
</ref> Actor [[Philip Pope]] was also involved, having voiced the Mâitre d'Bot.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=88
}} Adams himself also did voice acting for the game,<ref name="Kotaku" /> voicing the Succ-U-Bus<ref name="Edge" /> and Leovinus.<ref name=Credits />

The ambient music for the game was composed by [[Paul Wickens]], who is also a member of [[Paul McCartney]]'s touring band.<ref name="Newsweek" /> Adams and Wickens were acquainted from school, but lost touch until Adams saw him performing with McCartney.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=88
}} Adams also wrote additional soundtrack himself, including the music in the Music Room puzzle, which was based on a tune he had written on the guitar years earlier.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=89
}}