The first concepts of
Sudeki were proposed by a small team within Climax Solent, a branch of
Climax Studios. At this time, it was titled
Symphony of Light and was being planned for the
Dreamcast. By April 2000, it had changed platform to the
PlayStation 2. At some point after this, it changed platform again to become a high-end title for
Microsoft Windows. After its first year of production, the title attracted the attention of
Microsoft, which was preparing to enter the console market with the
Xbox. Describing the company's choice, Microsoft manager Peter Connelly said that Japanese developers were failing to deliver RPGs for the Xbox, so Climax Studio's project gave them an entry in an under-represented genre. The current form of
Sudeki began development in September 2000, at the time as a console exclusive overseen and published by
Microsoft Game Studios. Under Microsoft, the title was changed due to potential confusion with a similarly-titled series. The final game was planned to be called "
Suteki", which roughly translates from Japanese as both "beautiful" and "great". Due to confusion during communication between Climax Studios and Microsoft, the title became
Sudeki. The production team consisted of between 50 and 70 people, over half the staff at Climax Solent. At the time,
Sudeki was described by Climax managing director Joe Cavalla as the largest project ever handled by the company, and it was their first RPG project. The game was directed by Jason Avent, produced by Mark Simmons, and the programming team was led by Stewart Lynch. Designer Tuomas Pirinen described the entire design process as very hard, as they wanted to create both functioning gameplay and extravagant graphics to show off the Xbox hardware's capacities. The most challenging element was setting the difficulty so casual and experienced RPG players could enjoy the game. The game design was strongly influenced by
Secret of Mana and
Star Ocean: The Second Story. Its combat drew additional inspiration from
Devil May Cry, the
Dynasty Warriors series and ''
Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny. Real-time combat was chosen as the team felt turn-based combat was overused in the genre. There was also a noted rarity of real-time combat systems with any depth and care in RPGs. The first-person combat was a relatively late inclusion, with the team needing to alter enemy AI so it would approach differently and allow players to see and fight them with the altered perspective. An early problem was the special moves and quick menu, as if kept in real-time enemies would have an advantage of either attacking a vulnerable character or moving out of range. Drawing inspiration from the slow-motion action sequences in The Matrix'', the team implemented a slowing of time, allowing players to maintain an advantage and strategise without the combat losing its real-time style. It was designed from the beginning as a single-player experience, as multiplayer would have significantly delayed its release. The storyline and
cutscene concepts were created once the gameplay ideas were solidified. Sound designer Eamon Murtagh also acted as scenario writer. He wanted the cast to respond like real people rather than comic book stereotypes, and with that aim in mind the actors recorded together in the same studio, with their performances playing off each other. The overall aim was for the story to appear clear-cut and standard for players, then ask questions about the morality of different factions. So as not to dilute the plot, the narrative was kept linear and fixed. The storyline changed several times during production, with there being so much background lore that the opening cinematic was a compromise to communicate it to the player as concisely as possible. The plot's "creative energy" was fuelled by multiple sessions of
Dungeons & Dragons. Each character was created with a character flaw that needed to be overcome, such as Ailish's sheltered mannerisms and Elco's over-questioning nature. The game's engine was designed from scratch for
Sudeki based on the Xbox hardware. To ensure minimal load times, the developers directly streamed data through the Xbox's hard drive, cutting down on memory usage. The team wanted to push the Xbox to its known limits, but also used techniques such as rendering static geometry with pre-established push buffers to take workload off the console's CPU and GPU. The lighting system had dedicated lighting and shadow effects for different body and character types, and dedicated software protocols were created for animating faces and expressing emotions;
player characters had fifteen facial shapes, while NPCs had eight. Finding and addressing bugs was a key job for both Climax and Microsoft, who play tested the game in tandem in Britain and America. Notable bugs that were found included graphical glitches with character models, and Ailish's tutorial sequence where her healing spell killed her.
Art and graphics The game's art director was James Brace. The lead character artist was Kevin Martin. Another concept artist and character designer was Niki Broughton (also known as Niki Hunter), a UK-based artist noted for her Japanese-inspired illustrations. She stayed on the project throughout production, producing hundreds of hand-drawn and CGI artworks. The designs were influenced by the work of
Yoshitaka Amano, along with Western artists including
Simon Bisley. Other influences included manga artist
Nobuteru Yūki and Korean artist Hyung-tae Kim. The art team included Western and Eastern artists; one had experience with the comic series
2000 AD, while another was a former artist at
Square Enix. During early production, the artistic design was aimed at fans of Japanese games, with "cutesy and quite clearly Japanese-inspired" designs for characters. A combination of focus testing and requests from Microsoft resulted in more Western artistic influence being incorporated, resulting in several changes. The environments went through the same process as the character art, with real-world elements incorporated into some locations; the Anthropomorph village of Shadani-Mo drew stylistic inspiration from the Nevada desert and Native American
tipis, while Transentia was designed around its "
Orwellian" machinery and steampunk-inspired aesthetic. The cultures and locations of
Sudeki were created early in production after extensive study of real-world cultures. Rather than directly copying the aesthetic of
Dungeons & Dragons as many other RPGs did, the team wanted a unique cultural identity. The opening cinematic was directly inspired by Asian
shadow plays. The team also created plants and animals with fantastical twists rather than carrying anything directly from reality. Tal's original design was more in line with traditions for anime protagonists, with long hair and an oversized sword, but was made more realistic while retaining some basic characteristics from the earlier designs. Ailish was designed around a cute anime princess archetype, a concept which survived despite her design changing to become more adult. Of all the characters, Elco went through the most changes; starting out as an Arabic-themed archer, he went through multiple redesigns until the idea of his injury solidified his design into its final technology-infused version. Buki's design, while it was also altered, went through the fewest changes as her concept remained consistent throughout development. For all characters, the redesigns brought them more in line with Western artistic traditions, creating a hybrid style. The final artwork drew influence from anime design, but rooted within the Western artists working on the game at Climax. Each character's weapon was based on real-life weapons such as
katanas and pistols from the Wild West era with setting-specific twists. Once the character designs were finalised, the characters were modelled in
Maya based on those designs. Out of the game's three locations, the light world of Haskilia was designed first, using a varied and saturated colour palette. The dark world of Akloria was built using the Haskilia map, with its buildings marred or destroyed and the environment using washed out and darkened lighting and colours. The character actions were hand-animated, with special software created to manage different character poses and expressions, including a dedicated tool to lip-synch the characters' mouths to dialogue. The monster designs were created with each of the game's theme locations in mind. Each character skeleton had between 90 and 100 bones, allowing fluid animation and high flexibility. By July 2003, around 90% of character models were completed, with the environments being in a basic state where details could be added. The environments were again designed using Maya, with the designers finding it easy to add in objects and adjust the scenery, while also being able to port directly over to the Xbox for tests.
Music The music was composed by Tom Colvin. As he wanted the music to stand out from other RPGs, Colvin drew inspiration from
electronic dance music, using
breakbeats and electronic sounds in combination with traditional acoustic instruments such as
guitars,
keyboards and
strings. At the same time, he wanted to maintain a classical feeling, so players would not feel like they were in an "RPG dance club", balancing the music between classical and contemporary. The musical score, rather than having a single looping track playing in different areas, had up to ten different layers of music which faded in and out depending on location and situation. This also applied to combat, with local themes growing more intense and instruments being added when the player character was in danger. Colvin attributed the music's adaptability to its dance music influences. A soundtrack CD was released by
Sumthing Else Music Works on 8 June 2004. ==Release==