The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 27

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER Sunday, Februaiy 16, 1997 B-7 A union ul llie Sail fund. Sunday Euininn and Chmnick PULSE from The beat sold 500,000 copies after it came out in 1993. "Iron Helix" put players in the role of a peaceful star ship captain who must stop a warship that has run amok after an accident alters the crew's DNA. "It took about 15 people 13 months to create it," Huffman said. "Sweat, timing and passion made it work." 1 goes on In the early "90s, Paracomp and Macromind merged with yet a third multimedia company, Au thorware, led by Bud Colligan.

In an act of financial fusion, these three once-separate firms merged in 1992 to create Macromedia Inc. Colligan, who ended up running the show, made Macromedia the world's leading vendor of tools for creating multimedia. 175,000 copies sold Under Huffman's creative direction, Pulse last year brought out a game called "Bad Mojo." It turns players into a cockroach, which must undergo a Kafkaesque journey through a San Francisco bar to regain human shape. Since its release last February it has racked awards and sold 175,000 copies. But despite its Buccess with Separate ways After Macromedia's public offering in 1993, many of the newly-enriched founders of multimedia went their separate ways.

Woodward returned to Southern California and made two 8 rr "Bad Mojo," Pulse's future hinges on its next games, now under de- TV movies. Huffman started a company, Drew Pictures, which velopment and slated for release later this year. "Bad Mojo" was did animation for hire if you watched CNN during the Gulf War you saw his work and created created using current multimedia tools. The new games will be the first to use Harvill's 3D software, which Pulse has named Digi. At Pulse's First Street offices in i ouii rrtuiuiacu, a uuzeu ttriiuis are i working on "Space Bunnies Must EXAMINERKURT ROGERS Pulse's Brad Schiff builds models that will be digitized, and transformed into 3 characters.

Evolution of the Space Bunny Die." The premise of the game is that a race of space bunnies has taken over a dusty rural town. The invaders are "bunnifying" the local domestic animals, and turning these mutated beasts against their human masters. The player must blast the invaders and their allies before they "bunnify" the world. Less important than the premise, from a business view, will be whether players find "Space Bunnies" more challenging than cur Tongue-in-cheek tale of good, evil CD-ROM games. Harvill stayed with Macromedia, where he continued working on 3D software.

It was Harvill's passion for 3D software that ultimately brought these three together again at Pulse. By 1994, Macromedia had grown too large for Harvill. In a telephone interview from the San Bruno offices where he works with his brother Demian Harvill and fellow-programmer Righ Bean, he explained why they all left Macromedia for Pulse. "For a company like Macromedia to justify its stock price, it has to grow 30 percent a year," Harvill said. "To do that, there's a lot of pressure to come out with a pew version of the current program every six months, and it's harder to get engineering support for a new thing.

"With a startup, you have a year or two that's open, creative time," he said. What Harvjll wanted to create were software tools that made it easy to fashion realistic, animated characters using a Mac or Windows-based PC. Of course, Hollywood animators have long created cartoon characters, and filmmakers like George Lucas have fashioned life-like creatures in movies such as "Jurassic Park." rent computer games. In most of today games, bad guys always ap pear at the same place at the same time. By dint of repetition, players pelling action and more than a little bit of fun.

All well and good, but after surveying Pulse's zany production process, the naive observer is forced to ask why, if most computer games are bought by adolescent boys, did the game's creators expect them to identify with a buxom red-head. Carrella put on the sort of kindly smile reserved for innocent children and clueless adults. "She's not meant to be identified he said. "She's meant to be lusted after." Tom Abate framed, digital image of the physical original. Animators Aaron Malmsheimer and Dann Tarmy used these digital images to build 3-D characters.

Art director Jonny Belt painted in the skin tones, cbthing and surface characterises giving our heroine, for instance, flaming red hair, a wasp-waist and a big bust With 3-D technical director Dan endowing these digital creatures with the gift of motion, and producer Phill Simon riding herd on the project, "Space Bun-, nies" hopes to deliver a winning blend of realistic animations, com- memorize where their opponents will pop up and blow them away the instant they appear. But Huffman said the Digi soft ware makes, it relatively easy to create characters that can pop up unexpectedly. Today's best-selling games already have that surprise element, but to give games this at the computer keyboard, Allison blasts the bunny hordes, looking for the Pueblo amulet that can render them, once again, harmless little furballs. Welcome to San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch, where people actually get paid to turn such fantasies into CD-ROMs, Internet games and other forms of interactive entertainment. "Space Bunnies" won't even appear as a Windows and Macintosh CD-ROM game until this spring, but game enthusiasts are already talking about its tongue-in-ceek storyline.

"First-person shooter games are hot these days, and (Pulse is) taking that format and turning it on its ear, so to speak," said Steve Klett, editor of San Mateo-based PC Games Magazine. He was so impressed with the game he ran an October cover story on Space Bunnies. During a recent visit to Pulse's First Street office in San Francisco, artistp were working against a deadline to bring the game to life. Model-maker Brad Schiff sat on the floor, molding clay figures of creatures altered by the bunnification ray. The models are then scanned using a device that creates a wire- startle quality requires program' ming skills that only a few game CREATIVE DIRECTOR Vinny Carrella gave a toss of his crazy, curly black hair and began to explain the premise behind Pulse Entertainment's forthcoming computer game, Space Bunnies Must Die.

Hundreds of years ago, alien bunnies landed in New Mexico to conquer Earth, but were stymied by the powerful magic of the ancient Pueblo, who turned the invaders into burrowing field animals. In modern times, however, the Pueblo magic weakened, allowing the dormant evil in New Mexico to reawaken. As the game opens, the space bunnies have mounted a new offensive, using a "bunnification ray" that turns domestic animals into floppy-eared mutants with a thirst for human blood. Standing alone between humanity and alien domination is Allison, a waitress at the roadside diner that bears the brunt of the bunny assault. Fortunately, Allison, like all good roadside attendants, has had martial arts and small-arms training.

Controlled by the player design firms have. wm Keith Boesky, president of Ei- dos Interactive Inc. in San Francis m(Dm mmmlm W35 mmmimm Interest compounded yiwilTSPECIAL Certificate of Deposit a finnmi Vi Porrimtnoe $5,000 Minimum Balance 0 Yield (APY) OTHER TERMS AVAILABLE Worth changing banks to get. co, creator of the best-selling "Tomb Raider" game, called Digi a breakthrough tool. "Great games depend on three things: game design (premise), art and technology," he said.

Many game companies have the first two qualities but lack the third. Boesky said Digi offered creative game makers the technological skills they lacked, in the same way that desktop publishing software enabled graphic artists to create point and click designs. Pulse plans to license Digi to other game makers. The privately held firm is vague on details, but hopes to find several clients willing to pay $50,000 to $250,000 for a Digi tool kit, Steve Klett, editor of PC Games Magazine in San Mateo, said Pulse will have competition from other game makers who are also trying to sell their own tool kits. The makers of the best-selling Quake, for instance, are licensing their game creation technology.

And Maryland-based Epic Mega Games is about ready to release a program that will allow home game players to create their own realistic games. "Digi seems like a real strong technology, but what seems interesting about Pulse is their creativity," he said. "What Digi allows them to do is focus their energy into creativity instead of Power-packed tools But those animations cost millions and required expensive Silicon Graphics workstations. Harvill wanted to pack as much power as possible into tools for Macs or PCs, to bring down the cost of animation so it could be used by game designers and Internet content creators. "The thing that carries entertainment is character," Harvill' said.

"You don't go to the movies to watch scenery. You go to watch characters. "Our whole thrust is building tools that let the artists create characters that have facial motions, gestures, surprise behaviors," he said. "We wanted to create a Mickey Mouse that would interact with you." For the financial backing to pursue his software vision, Harvill turned to Woodward, his business partner at Paracomp, In December 1994 they founded Pulse with a two-pronged business plan: to create a software tool they would sell to other game developers, and to use the tool themselves to create CD-ROMs. In 1995, Woodward and Harvill brought in their third former collaborator by merging Huffman's Drew Pictures into Pulse.

Huffman had already made a name for himself by creating a game called "Iron Helix," which (MmmnMHmmmBi WML AffntnMonev Market Checking rr5 hmdtoSMML triirtH'u" lmww i Six Month CD Monev Market 6.00 4.75 A.P.Y, I A.RY. 1 Open Presidents' Day! $SBSw $2,500 2.00apy rhtvKti in rtm am account. Annua! percentage yields effective as of 102196 and are subject to change anthoutnotq, WFF ATM Access (3 Per month) Available lor ne accounts only. Penalty tor early wlMrami U). jaw pnmum oar- artce required on imrey market accounts, and statement lees may reduce fr) earnings it minimum is not maintained 0 1997 Sterling i lwsj.

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