Archive for June, 2005

Yesterday the alsoran visited the local hospital to try out the motion-capture equipment they have installed to research abnormal walk gaits such as limps etc. It’s no Giant Studios, but after some time to setup the ball positions the results are looking positive so far.

His technical animator colleague pushed the equipment much further than the hospital technicians had ever done previously, and it got the alsoran thinking: In a situation such as this, where the game development requirements are far in excess of those required for medicine, surely our industry can only improve the quality of the research in a collaborative effort.

For those animators in smaller studios, perhaps the medical institution is an avenue worthy of pursuing when requiring only a small amount of mocap for testing/pre-production purposes, especially if you can give something back to the hospital.

One point of note: For the required actions the alsoran had to leave behind the rifle prop used for reference in the studio, due to the non-violent nature of hospitals, though a compromise was found in an old wooden squash raquette.

For the last two days the alsoran has been fortunate enough to have been atending lectures and a workshop by Ed Hooks, author of Acting For Animators. Invited into the studio for the second time to give the animators a greater insight into acting as we move into a period where a deeper level of acting and subtlety can be achieved with our characters.

Unfortunately, much of the content of the lectures were identical to the material used several years previous. However, while much of what Mr Hooks discussed we are already looking into, it is more reassuring than anything else that we are headed in the right direction with regards to details on eyes and facial expressions. The alsoran would recommend the lectures to animators looking to get more of a performance from their characters.

Another interesting aspect of the SAG greed issue is that besides monetary compensation, SAG members also want greater recognition for their contribution. This is an extension of the misappropriation of credit that somehow still pervades in this industry, as in the film industry, to this day. Publishers, not developers are often wrongly credited for making the games they simply pay for, just as a film director will often be credited for the cinematography, rather than the cinematographer.

Besides credit not going where credit’s due, an unfortunate offshoot of this for the uneducated gamesplayer is that it is extremely difficult to follow a talented videogame director or team in the same way that a favourite film director or even sports team can be followed.

The alsoran remembers the surprise of the media to the less than excellent Devil May Cry sequel, but it was publicly known before release that the project was headed up by a completely different team and director. When that happens in the film world, alarms tend to ring and expectations are kept low by all but only the most foolish fanboy.

In discussion with his current project director on this subject, the alsoran disagreed with the director’s belief that it is ridiculous for any one person to assume credit for the work of a team comprised of 100+ members. Instead, the alsoran believes that the game industry needs more characters to follow. Where film has actors, our industry has only digital creations that cease to exist once the power has been turned off.

What pioneering game developers currently come to mind? Mizuguchi? Yes. Not the derivative, Mario hawking, Miyamoto. Kojima continues to churn out Metal Gear sequels. Spector and Molyneux have both failed to deliver on recent projects. Even Itagaki’s E3 showing of DOA4 looked unchanged from his previous efforts.

Perhaps the alsoran’s director is right. A director is only as good as his team…

One item that’s been getting a lot of press recently is the reluctance of the Screen Actors’ Guild to accept the already-generous pay-rise proposal regarding actors’ hourly voice-over wage. Put simply, for those that have not been following this, Hollywood has seen the large revenues generated by some of the recent blockbuster videogames, and wants a piece of the pie. Only their greed extends beyond basic pay incentives, instead demanding residuals on that revenue.

Well, far be it from the alsoran to disrespect the ancient art of PRETENDING TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE for a few hours in a 2-3 year development cycle, but surely he wasn’t the only person in the game development community to notice that when representatives of such an insignificant role in the development cycle threatened (only threatened) to strike, the publishers get scared enough to offer an almost instant pay rise of over 30%?

Can you imagine the effect of a simultaneous strike by all videogame artists, or programmers, or animators? Now the alsoran is perfectly happy with his current working conditions, but he’s heard some horror stories - the kind that make you want to unionise just for those guys. Of course publishers are aware of this, so there is no way in hell that 4-hour contractors will be seeing any kind of residual pay before “real” developers, but then, that’s the largest unbalance of reward right there isn’t it…

In the past, animations on videogame characters have played sequentially. When one ends, another begins, regardless of whether the action is fire-and-forget or cyclic, as the cycle ends before playing through again.

Seen abstractly, 3D animation is just a series of numbers or values applied to virtual bones within the characters we see on-screen, (actually just 3D co-ordinates around which solid objects or skinned vertices pivot). For years, videogames required the realtime manipulation of numbers in order to simulate lighting, AI, rulesets and other procedural elements within our games, but until now the numbers that comprise animations have remained relatively untouched.

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Developed by the late French developer Delphine Software, this spiritual successor (not a sequel) to their 1991 hit Out of This World (Another World in PAL territories) was initially released on the Commodore Amiga in 1992, and for DOS and the 16-Bit era consoles a year later.

You guide amnesiac Conrad B. Hart in his quest to escape the planet Titan, and later foil the plans of an alien race plotting the destruction of humanity. Like Out of This World, this is achieved by navigating obstacles and puzzles via some very realistic and fluid rotoscoped animation, using polygons rather than the sprite method of the day for memory efficiency due to the sheer number of frames required for the fluid motion.

The reason the alsoran would like to concentrate on this decade+ old game is that a lot of the design related to the animation is still relevant today when creating games using 3D assets. For an example, just play any of the Tomb Raider series to see how similar the animation and level-design mechanics are to Flashback, with its standardized jump distances and set points for animation interruptibility.

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Traditionally, videogames have three character archetypes around which all modern character selections are based. Slow but strong, fast but weak, and an average of the two. These basics can be deepened by additional attributes, but this basic model of advantages/disadvantages holds true to this day.

It should be the animator’s task to bear these characteristics in mind when balancing the gameplay-specific movement of any given character, as speed attributes are directly affected by the animation. Similarly, the responsiveness of the PC greatly affects the overall feel of the game, so an overview of the general pacing of the game should be at the forefront of the animators mind when designing motions and how they fit together.

As a rule of thumb, the “feel” of the PC should always take precedence over the aesthetics of the animations, so editing and 2nd passes should always be performed with this in mind.

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