Imagine illustrating a book at about the same time the author's sitting down to write it, many details still unclear, the characters somewhat sketchy, the setting takmng shape one page at a time.
Hal Rushton and Alan Tew of Saffire, a video game production company in American Fork, don't have to imagine what that feels like. They've been there, done that, the fruits of their efforts released Friday in the form of "Van Helsing," available on PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameBoy.
The game was created specifically to coincide with the release of the much-anticipated movie by the same name, starring Hugh Jackman as the legendary vampire hunter. He's been hired by the Vatican to track down monsters. For the game, the Utah crew arm him with a variety of weapons, including a grappling hook and a crossbow.
It wasn't what the American Fork company had in mind when it approached publisher Vivendi Universal with the idea for a game Saffire wanted to make.
"They liked the look of what we had, but they wanted somebody to make a game based on an upcoming movie," said Rushton, president of Saffire. "The movie was produced at the same time as the game."
They got a copy of the script and watched "dailies" throughout the process. But dailies aren't edited down, so they had to guess to some degree what would actually make it into the movie, said Tew, lead designer on the game.
A year ago, they found out what the protagonist, Van Helsing (Jackman) looked like. Last week at the movie's red-carpet premiere, after the game had shipped, they saw what Castle Frankenstein — one of the game's playable areas — looked like.
The art director thought Saffire's guesswork missed a bit on the castle. The producer thought they captured the castle perfectly. Tew was surprised at how close they came.
"When we watched the movie, I was frequently happy with all the places that look the same, even parts of the movie that look a little game-like," Tew said. "Our guessing went well. We would occasionally take what we had to California and show one of the film editors the progress on the game, and he would always be very happy about it, excited about the process. He'd commend us on how close we got. We were always really scared."
They also got really creative. While some movie critics have noted that the movie is long on action and short on explanation or character development, the video game actually has a more developed story line, according to Rushton.
"I described the movie like it was made by a 13-year-old with a camera and a $200 million budget," Tew joked. So Saffire, with permission from the movie folks, filled in some of the blanks.
"When we read the script, not a lot was revealed about the back story," Tew said. "Van Helsing and Dracula share some history in the movie, but Van Helsing has amnesia and can't remember his past, so not much is said. We worked with them and got the plot approved by them for the game."
The background story of Van Helsing and Dracula is an "unlockable" feature, meaning that the player earns the right to access it.
As Tew was watching the movie premiere, he understood where the characters had been and how they'd become who they'd become, he said. "It was cool. Even though I made it up, I knew more of what their deal was."
Saffire also hired the movie's actors, including Jackman, to provide the voices for most of the game's characters.
The result of the 18-month collaboration is a T-rated (for teen) game that has more than a dozen familiar monsters and a lack of actual gore, though there's plenty of fighting and even dying going on. But they're monsters. And some of them are already dead before they get killed, Rushton said.
"The toughest part," said Tew, "was so many of the monsters shots were computer-generated (for the movie) and they were not finished until our game was done."
Even terrain was tricky, Rushton said. "When we started getting dailies, we noticed they filmed a lot in the snow. We had to go back through and put snow in all our textures. You have to make small worlds that end up being connected together. They're flat shaded, then someone has to go in and paint textures. An artist walking down the street in Provo may see bricks he likes and take a picture of it so we can use it in a game."
For characters like Van Helsing, "someone makes a model and someone else would have to paint the model."
And the project did create a few hard feelings, Rushton said. Jackman gave Tew a hug. Rushton's daughter is jealous.
E-mail: lois@desnews.com