MDK: Жерді құтқару миссиясы

MDK is a 1997 third person shooter video game developed by Shiny Entertainment for Microsoft Windows and subsequently ported to Mac OS by Shokwave, and to the PlayStation by Neversoft. The game was published on all systems by PIE in North America, while Shiny Entertainment handled the European release. It initially debuted in March 1997 for Windows and in November of the same year for PlayStation. Later on, MDK became available on GOG. com in September 2008 and on Steam in September 2009. The game tells the story of Kurt Hectic, a janitor who reluctantly attempts to save Earth from an alien invasion of gigantic strip mining city sized vehicles named "Minecrawlers". The Minecrawlers are ruthlessly harvesting Earth's natural resources and crushing any people and cities that get in their way. Assisted by his somewhat eccentric boss, Dr. Fluke Hawkins, an inventive scientist, and an unusual robotic companion named Bones, Kurt embarks on a quest to infiltrate each Minecrawler and eliminate its pilot. After accomplishing this dangerous task, he must return to Dr. Hawkins' in orbit space station, the Jim Dandy. Conceived and co designed by Nick Bruty, MDK was Shiny's first PC game, and was notable for using software rendering, requiring a Pentium or equivalent microprocessor, rather than necessitating any GPU enhancements, despite its large 3D levels and complex polygonal enemies. As the developers were attempting very ambitious things, they wrote their own programming language. Additionally, when in sniper mode, the player has the ability to zoom up to 100x, but the developers chose not to employ any of the standard solutions to pop up, such as clipping or fogging. They also worked to ensure the game ran at a minimum of 30 fps at all times on all machines. The game's original system requirements were a 60 MHz Pentium, 16MB of RAM, 17MB of hard drive storage, an SVGA compatible video card, and a Sound Blaster or equivalent sound card. MDK received generally positive reviews, with critics praising the gameplay, the level design, the sardonic sense of humor, the game's technical accomplishments, and the use of sniper mode. The most often repeated criticisms included that the game was too short, and the story was weak. The game was a commercial success, and Interplay approached Bruty to work on a sequel immediately. However, he was already developing Giants: Citizen Kabuto, so BioWare was hired to develop the game. MDK2 was published for Windows and the Dreamcast in 2000, and for the PlayStation 2 (as MDK 2: Armageddon) in 2001. In 2007, Interplay announced a third game was planned, but it was never made.

For the most part, MDK is a run and gun third person shooter. It also features several minigames, and allows the player to enter first person mode at any time they wish to use their sniper weapon. The basic design of the game involves distinct levels in which the player character, Kurt Hectic, must infiltrate a "Minecrawler", fight his way through an array of enemies, tackle some rudimentary puzzles, and reach the control center, where he must then eliminate the pilot in a boss fight. Every level is completely different; enemies, level design, aesthetic, and control center layout, with a different strategy required to eliminate each pilot. During the run and gun gameplay, the player must frequently use Kurt's "ribbon chute", a parachute contained within his outfit that can be used indefinitely. The chute allows Kurt to make long jumps, survive long falls, and utilize updrafts. It deploys immediately and retracts automatically when not being used. Kurt also has access to a smart bomb feature, where he can call Max to fly a bomber over the battle area and drop bombs on the enemies. To call Max, Kurt must have collected an airstrike pickup within the game. He must enter sniper mode to select the area he wants Max to target. Additionally, the airstrike can only be used in exterior locations on the Minecrawler. Other weaponry in the game includes grenades, "The World's Most Interesting Bomb" (when Kurt throws the bomb, all enemies within the vicinity will approach it, at which point Kurt can detonate it), "The Very Large Hamster Hammer" (a giant hammer that causes the ground to vibrate violently, damaging any nearby enemies), and "The World's Smallest Nuclear Explosion" (used for opening locked doors). In addition to the run and gun/sniper modes, there are several additional gameplay modes in MDK. All levels start out with an "atmospheric entry" in which Kurt jumps from his base ship, the Jim Dandy space station, which is in orbit around Earth, to the Minecrawler on the planet's surface. As he descends, the Minecrawler activates its radar, which, if touched, triggers the launch of anti air missiles, which must be dodged. Some levels feature Kurt taking over an enemy bombing ship and performing bombing runs, some feature a glider which Kurt must ride to a specific location. One level features several snowboarding sequences, where Kurt must navigate obstacles while destroying enemies. Additionally, once a level has been completed, the Minecrawler disintegrates, and is sucked back into the energy stream from which it emerged, taking Kurt with it. Kurt then has a set period of time in the energy stream, during which he pursues a health power up, which, if collected, grants 150% health for the start of the next level. If he touches the walls of the stream, he loses health and decelerates. At the end of the set period, Max will enter the stream on a tether and pull Kurt back to the Jim Dandy. Kurt's main defense against his enemies is his "Coil Suit", a skin tight armor made of a Kevlar like material, and created on a "nuclear blast proof sewing machine". The other major weapon in the game is a sniper gun. This is created when Kurt detaches his chain gun from his arm and mounts it onto his helmet. The sniper weapon can zoom up to 100x, and has the capability of supporting five different types of ammunition, including homing missiles and mortar shells. Kurt does not actually see out of the helmet, rather, he sees out of a HUD, which he uses to aim. There are also three "Bullet Cams" that track each projectile and linger briefly after impact, showing any damage done. However, when Kurt is in sniper mode, he is unable to move, and can thus be easily targeted by enemies. The enemies in MDK are a collective of aliens called "Streamriders" under the command of Gunter Glut. Each Minecrawler is manned primarily by various types of soldiers named "Grunts." Some areas contain "Grunt generators" which create an infinite number of enemies until destroyed. However, after a week, Hawkins realizes Flange Orbits do not actually exist, but rather than return to Earth in shame, he decides to remain on the Dandy to try to discover something, anticipating another week in space. Kurt is extremely unhappy with this development, but once Hawkins shows him how to program the VCR, he calms down. A year later, having made no discoveries, Hawkins begins work building a genetically engineered robotic dog, which he plans to call "Bones". After a year, Bones is fully operational, although both Bones and Kurt prefer the name Max. Despite having four arms and two legs, and being full of energy, Max proves more than a little reluctant to help Hawkins with the chores on the Dandy, proving more interested in tending to his vegetable garden. Another year passes without Hawkins making a breakthrough until he notices streams of energy moving through the Solar System towards Earth. He sends a warning down to Earth (along with some of Max's oranges), but it is ignored. Upon reaching Earth, the streams disgorge gigantic "Minecrawlers", city sized vehicles designed to strip mine the natural resources from a planet, crushing anything and everything in their path. The aliens, known as "Streamriders", and under the command of Gunter Glut, easily demolish all of Earth's military forces, and so Hawkins decides to take action to save the planet. Hawkins reasons the only way to fight the aliens is with his newly invented "Coil Suit", but due to his advancing years and Max's extra pair of legs, Kurt is the only one who can wear it, and, thus, becomes the very reluctant hero. As such, Kurt is dispatched on "Mission: Deliver Kindness". This involves Kurt entering the Minecrawlers from above, and destroying them from the inside out, shooting his way through to the pilot, whom he then kills, before being extracted back to the Jim Dandy. Kurt fights his way through a number of Minecrawlers, destroying them one by one, until he reaches the Crawler piloted by Gunter Glut himself. Kurt destroys the final Minecrawler, but Glut captures Max, and escapes into an energy stream leading to his base ship. Kurt gives chase and frees Max, who tricks Glut into eating him. Max then kills Glut by exploding him from within. The two then escape and destroy Glut's ship. The ending sequence is a monochrome mix of a French music video ("Non Non Rien N'a Changé" by Billy Ze Kick) and clips from the MDK promotional video.

MDKs writer, co designer and co artist Nick Bruty has said the initial impetus for the game was his desire to move away from the type of game on which he had previously been working; family friendly games such as Aladdin (1993), The Jungle Book (1993), Earthworm Jim (1994) and Earthworm Jim 2 (1995), all of which Bruty had worked on for the Sega Genesis. According to Bruty,

blockquote|MDK was a reaction, or outburst, from having worked back to back on cartoon games such as Aladdin, Jungle Book and Earthworm Jim. Don't get me wrong, I loved working on those games and learning new styles; but my heart is in fantasy and science fiction. I knew straight away that this was what I wanted to do next. Developing for the PC brought a number of advantages, not the least of which was it allowed the team to make the game using 3D computer graphics. As Bruty explains, "I wanted to work on PC because the game was 3D, which wasn't an option on consoles at that point." Tim Williams explains another advantage of working on PC was "it meant I wouldn't have to tone the game down to deal with the Sega and Nintendo's ratings boards. I loved [the concept]. I could see the game immediately would have a unique look and plenty of design opportunities. We were all big fans of the Alien movies and H. R. Giger, so that probably had some influence." Once the decision was made to develop for the PC, the team quickly decided they wanted to make a game that would push the boundaries of PC gaming beyond anything seen up to that point. Unlike previous motion capture implementations, they broke down the motion scripts for individual limbs, enabling them to mix and match animations, leading to a broader range of movements. Creating Kurt's character involved a critical consideration: ensuring a seamless transition between third person and sniper modes. To tackle this challenge, the developers ingeniously designed Kurt's sniper rifle to be the same as his machine gun, allowing him to attach the gun to his helmet effortlessly. This decision aligned well with the game's theme, making Kurt's Coil Suit a self contained and versatile offensive/defensive ensemble. When designing the suit, Bruty drew inspiration from elegant and ornate Spanish armor, seeking to bring more flair to the character's appearance. The process of designing enemies involved sketching each type on paper before constructing a 3D wire frame model, which was then integrated into the gaming environment. Subsequently, these models were transformed into texture mapped polygons and animated using data gathered from the motion capture system. The attention to detail extended to larger enemies, whose polygon structures allowed players to target specific body parts, such as legs, arms, and even the eyes of certain adversaries.

MDK attempted things never before seen in a PC game, so the team decided to write their own programming language. Rather than having the programmers write the language, the designers and artists also worked on it, allowing a more collaboratively creative atmosphere than is usual, and facilitating the language to work specifically to accommodate the elements of the game which the designers and artists wished to achieve. Sniper mode was a major part of the game, with the ability to zoom up to 100x. The team decided not to employ any of the usual techniques to limit pop up, such as clipping and fogging. A major technical issue was the frame rate. Shiny felt most PC games maintained frame rate by using big pixels in low resolution, which works as long as the game is not running SVGA mode. According to Bruty, "We had no idea how fast we could get the engine when we started. The game would run too slow if we textured everything, so some parts were just flat shaded for speed. We did our best to make that look like a design choice, or shadows, but it was a tricky balance." MDK was designed at a time when 3D gaming was becoming popular, but GPUs hadn't had much impact on game development, and as such, "graphics would be designed to operate in software." However, patches were later released that added support for then popular 3D APIs. This version was bundled with the original iMac.

In December 1996, it was revealed the game was being ported to the PlayStation by Neversoft. According to developer Mick West, the sheer size of the PC version presented problems for the port, but in some respects, the PlayStation version would improve on the PC version;

blockquote|The PC version keeps a lot of data resident whilst you go between areas. We're going to spool a lot more between the areas. And we're also compressing the data, which leads to a little bit of degradation on things like animations but it's hardly noticeable at all. It looks almost identical, in terms of the amount of animations and the amount of graphics in the game. But we have a lot more colors on screen. On the PC, they're limited to using one 256 color palette. We're not limited at all, we can use as many palettes as we like. Each texture in the game has its own palette, which means effectively we've got 32,000 colors on screen at once, which gives a lot more vibrancy to the look of the game. We're also using proper transparency. We're going to be doing some lighting effects that they don't have the power to do on the PC. which was coined as a neologism in the 1993 film Demolition Man. Another possibility is documented in the game manual, where Kurt's mission is named "Mission: Deliver Kindness". In the README for the PC version of the game, it is stated "It stands for whatever we say it stands for on any given day; i. e., today it stands for Mother's Day Kisses " In the European PC release, the background images during installation present many possible meanings for the letters; one of which is "Murder, Death, Kill". In the Japanese release, on the back cover it says in bold yellow letters: "My Dear Knight". During the installation of MDK2, various meanings are shown, again including "Murder, Death, Kill". The original meaning of "MDK" from the company's initial promo video was in fact "Murder Death Kill". In a 2009 interview with NowGamer, David Perry revealed that because the North American publisher PIE was supposed to make toys based on the game, they did not like the title, so the words were removed and simply replaced with "MDK". In 2011 on the official GOG. com forum for the game, Nick Bruty (creator of MDK) posted that the letters do indeed stand for "Murder Death Kill".

It received generally positive reviews on both PC and PlayStation. The Windows version holds an aggregate score of 89% on GameRankings, based on five reviews. GamePro gave it a perfect 5.0 out of 5 in all four categories (graphics, sound, control, and funfactor), saying it "easily lives up to all its rampant hype, delivering one of the year's most creative, engrossing, and just plain fun games." The reviewer particularly applauded the "floating third person view", Kurt's arsenal of abilities, the effective realization of the setting, and the varied gameplay experiences. Game Revolution's Johnny Lee called the game "Non stop 3D shooting, killing, exploding, dodging, parachuting, running, ambushing, assassinating, jumping, mind blowing action!" He commented that it stands out from other games with its requisite parachuting skills, sniping mode, bombing minigame, and acerbic sense of humor. He concluded "MDK combines sweet graphics and 'revolutionary' gameplay and design concepts to put it in a class by itself." EGM and GameSpot were not as convinced, citing polygon breakup, control issues, excessively low difficulty, and the brevity of the game. Its sales had reached 500,000 copies by early 2000. Interplay approached Bruty for ideas, but he did not want to go straight into another MDK game; "I hadn't liked rushing from Earthworm Jim to its sequel without a creative break, and I felt the game suffered because of that." In any case, his new development studio, Planet Moon Studios, was already working on Giants: Citizen Kabuto. Bruty asked Interplay if they would consider waiting until he was finished on Giants before beginning on MDK2, but they chose to press on with the game without him, handing development over to BioWare. but was ultimately never aired.