kill.switch

Kill.switch was one of those games that changed that way I think about games. Simply, the Offensive Cover System (OCS), which allowed players to "take cover" and "blind fire," proved to me that third person movement could be taken to an all new level. Players could finally fluidly interact with their environment. Other studios have obviously thought this as well. For example the next Epic title, Gears of War, has been noted to have a similar system (kill.switch has recently come up in articles about Gears of War as well).

I jumped onto team kill.switch towards the end of pre-production. Within the first two days on the job I had already completely redesigned a level and was on my way to making what was one of the worst levels into one of the best.

As the project went on, I began to play with the effects system for the game and not long after found myself officially redoing the entire effects system (fires, foot dust, explosions, rain, wind, etc.). I ended up discovering many horrible misuses of the particle system (that went undiscovered for months) and was able to save many precious frames per second. In the end our particles went from a state where they hurt the game to a state where they helped! If you don't believe me, check out the exploding submarine. It rocked!