X-COM: UFO Defense - Developing the Distinctive Look
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David L. Craddock, an individual you might know for his Diablo-focused “Stay Awhile and Listen” books, is currently Kickstarting “Monsters in the Dark: The Making of X-COM: UFO Defense.” The book’s self-explanatory title should tell you all you need to know about it, really. And if you’d like a sample, this Ars Technica article provides just that.
Here’s a few paragraphs to get you started:
Julian and Nick Gollop signed a contract with MicroProse UK in 1991. The agreement granted them approximately £3,000 per month (roughly $2,224 in 1991 US dollars) to tide them over while they developed UFO: Enemy Unknown, which the publisher estimated should take 18 months.
"They didn't really have any sophistication about planning a development release schedule for a game," says Julian. "It was 18 months: That's how long these games take, so that's how long it will be. Of course, it took a lot longer, almost twice as long as that, which got us quite worried, actually."
Nick was content with the arrangement. "To have proper funding made a huge difference to us. Before, we didn't really have money."
At the start of the project, MicroProse UK's Pete Moreland asked Julian to provide Mike Brunton and Stephen Hand, the designers assisting with UFO, a design document. Julian was as confused by this request as he was by MicroProse's earlier appeal for a storyboard. "When I produced an initial game design document for them, which was about twelve pages long—I'd never written a design document before, by the way—it was a very high-level thing. It didn't go into a lot of detail," Julian admits.
