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The screenings room at Edinburgh Interactive 09 is packed out, standing room only. APB is probably one of the most eagerly awaited games of 2010 and most people are clamouring to get even a morsel of a look at what Realtime Worlds’ next title looks like.

APB is certainly an ambitious project – a pitched battle between gangs and heavily armed enforcers set against the backdrop of a bustling city bristling with AI controlled inhabitants.

The screening begins with another, equally important part of the game. One aspect of the game that Realtime Worlds have put a huge amount of effort into is that character, logo and vehicle customisation tools. As Assistant Live Producer on APB, Ben Abbott, begins the presentation it is clear that these are no ordinary creation tools. “ APB is all about the three Cs – creativity, conflict and celebrity,” begins Abbott.

“APB has one of the most advanced character creation tools ever seen in a game.” The video Abbott is speaking over confirms this bold statement. APB has a massive range of variables that can be altered to allow the player to create any avatar they can imagine. Height, body shape, facial features, skin colour, hair length, style, shape and colour can all be modified to suit the player’s desires. All of these attributes are modified by sliders, allowing for an almost limitless range of possible avatars.

This can allow players the flexibility to create any character that they see fit whether that be the toughest-looking badass or even a staggeringly lifelike digital gangland version of themselves.

Player’s avatars aren’t the only items in the game to get this treatment though. Also included is a logo editor that appears to be as powerful as Adobe Photoshop. The video shows some of the game’s designers fooling around with a huge array of fully malleable graphical elements that can be morphed and combined in any way imaginable.

The really cool touch is what can be done with these logos once they have been created. Another inclusion is a clothing editor that can allow players to create a unique fashion statement for their criminal mastermind of enforcer. There is also a vehicle editor which allows modding fans to pimp out their cars to their heart’s content once they have opened up modifications through playing the game. These all link up with the logo editor as well as the avatar editor to allow players to create gang logos and then apply them as tattoos, artwork on clothing and vinyls on their modded cars.

Most games that have allowed this in the past have been very inflexible and applied logos in a flat layer over bodies, clothing and curves of a vehicle without taking into account the dynamics of the material they are being applied to. With APB this all changes and the effects are impressive. When a logo is applied to an item of clothing, a car or even skin as a tattoo the creation tools take into account the curves, malleability and colour of the surface that it is being applied to. Tattoos hug musculature realistically and their colour is affected very naturally by the pigment of the skin to which they are being applied to.

All the characters in the footage shown have been created in this way. They have even created a fully digital version of their development podcast presenter for him to use as his avatar in the game, tattoos and all.

It is hard not to be impressed by all this creativity at the players’ disposal. The claims of Realtime Worlds that these tools are the most advanced ever created for a game cannot be denied especially when this segment of the presentation is rounded off by a slide of an exceedingly accurate re-creation of US President Barack Obama.

In part two of this in depth look at APB we will look at the equally impressive gameplay.