Latest revision as of 00:45, 14 April 2017

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About

Published: May 2004
Host: Oddworld.com
Author: Alf
Game: Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
Format: Publised Online

The Designer Diary

Alf's Inhabitants Anonymous - April 2004

Up 'til now, we've done a pretty good job of keeping quiet about the next game. (Well, except for that one loose-lipped Inhabitant, but we stitched him up right! We sho' did!) But we're all still dying to blab about this project! So we racked our brains and came up with this safe haven for our Inhabitants to spill their proverbial guts. This is the dirt, straight from the source about what production is working on now. This isn't news or gossip; it's what we're doing and how we feel about it. We're going to keep you updated on a regular basis, so check back for fresh info!

For your convenience: The Geek-to-English Dictionary
CG: Computer Graphics
TD: Technical Director
PDD: Production Design Department
R & D: Research and Development
RT: Real Time
GDC: Game Developer's Conference
Cert: Certification
Hero: The "final" or the best out of a long series of iterations.
Region: A placeholder name for an area of gameplay.

Computer Graphics:
The pressure is on in the CG department! They're on to the end movie for the most part now, except for poor Iain, who's stuck rendering shots from a movie that was finished last month! It seems PDD has changed the design for the Minions again (dang artists!). Rich is working hard on a scene where Stranger witnesses a death. "You want to show how anybody would feel in that situation, but if Stranger is this Clint Eastwood tough guy type, how much do you show without breaking character? He's not going to babble like an idiot but he's got to show some sort of emotion." The dam scene is another big challenge. Water is one of the hardest things to do in CG and there isn't really time to R & D it. On top of all that, the hero shot for the box cover has to be rendered. Action, something that says action. Nah, that looks too "posed". Something with more action. Never enough time in the day!

Design:
In the Game Design Department, things are wrapping up quickly. Every space of the game has been built and they are going through both RT and Design 2nd passes. Quite a bit of time is being spent working with the audio department on implementing the hundreds and hundreds of sound cues they've been creating, in addition to working on several of the bounty battles. They should be at the end of the new feature phase of the production cycle, but the programmers always find ways to sneak in cool new additions! They're also ramping up to the balance/polish phase, which will continue until the game is pried loose from the collective cold, dead hands of the department.

Production Design:
With most of the real design work done, realizing the fine details and peripherals of the game are the lion's share of the work in Production Design. Raymond just nailed down a decent pass at the packaging art, but he'll probably be polishing that for a while. The last handful of character texture maps for real time are well on their way to finish, but the current priority is to create a number of highly detailed matte paintings for the end movie. The scope of the environments in these matte paintings represent a return to the expansive style that was developed in the course of building the opening movie. Ideally the look and artistry of the opening and ending movies will create a sense of "bookends" for the gameplay and storytelling that come between.

Meanwhile, Silvio is going between a series of normal and texture maps for the last Boss character, and sketching industrial props. These props give the player a more lived in feel when he/she experiences the game. The props are actually used by a certain type of species, revealing how their physical makeup would influence the design, and how their behavior towards office work would reflect in the use or misuse of a particular object. So for example a drinking fountain by itself it's an ok prop, but it should tell a little more about the guys working there. Maybe there is an empty case of brew bottles stacked against it and on top. They actually replaced the water with brew, and that in a water bottling plant... what could that mean? Things like that can convey little fun information about a place and its characters. Unfortunately, many of these unique props never make it to the end product due to time and polygon count, but they still help provide depth for the story and characters.

Real-Time:
Whoa! This week has been crazy in Real time. Lots of artwork is flying around as the levels get wrapped up. The last region has been coming along nicely. The guys are doing a good job making the main facility look huge and menacing. Ryan is working on some more weapon effects this week. Brad is squashing some early level bugs and making sure that region three runs smooth, hooking up portals and general fixes. The animators are hard at work doing cinematics and also working on the final boss and his minions. Should be pretty cool. Raj is finishing up the crossbow upgrades and starting on more weapon upgrades. Marke and Rob are working hard on the last level and should be done soon.

Producers:
Josh just picked up the final bronze cast sculptures of the main character Monday. They turned out great! This was the end of a long process, but it was worth it. Now what's he up to? "Hmmm just working away trying to wrap up the final movie along with a bunch-O-stuff." Scot is working on trying to close out the tasks for the next milestone. Making adjustments to the schedule based on task difficulty and the amount of time that is left.

Programming:
The last phases of developing a game are always very difficult but also very rewarding. There's lots of pressure from art and design to finish all the features they need, and everything has to be ready for cert, running from a real DVD, optimizing the frame rate, and all that internal stuff that makes a game done.On the plus side, lots of cool features finally come to completion, and you get to see them actually working in the game. Mark is putting the finishing touches on the automatic lip sync stuff; all the characters in the games will talk along with the audio, and there's just tons of audio content so there's no way the animators could hand-animate all that speech. Aaron is putting some polish on our weapons and adding some new upgrade ammo types. A lot of our work is going towards memory use and our paging system. We've got a ton of content, and we continuously stream it as you run around the world. So, the paging system needs to pack the data up tightly and everything needs to be very small in memory.

Sound Design:
They've been working on music for one of the CG movies. Also making a bunch of sound cues, playing the didgeridoo for fun, and tripping' out on Michael's screen saver.

Marketing:
There's been a steady stream of requests from all over the world. Right now a presentation for Lorne at the 3D festival is being facilitated. Also, work has been submitted to onedotzero, the 3D International Festival, Spectrum, Expose 2 ... the list goes on! The Outlaw trading cards created for GDC went over great and now new ways to use those are being considered, as well as possibly creating more. That was a fun project with a positive outcome, so it'd be cool to take it a step further. Creative Services is working night and day on a project the fans are going to "flip" over ... sorry that's all we can tell you this week! Also, there was some recent press in Animation Magazine, and in a racy UK magazine called "Streetfighters" where one of the fans, Bob, showcases a bike with OWI images all over it. Smokin'!!!! Anything else? Just keeping our noses to the grindstone, and holding ourselves back from the marketing maelstrom we are secretly dying to release on the world!!!! - The End

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 * Author: Alf
 * Game: Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath
-* Format: [http://oddworldlibrary.net/archives/web/oddworld.com/firsttenyears/oddworld/company/ow_update0604.shtml Publised Online]
+* Format: [http://oddworldlibrary.net/archives/web/oddworld.com/firsttenyears/oddworld/company/ow_update0504.shtml Publised Online]
 = The Designer Diary=
 <br>
-Alf's Inhabitants Anonymous - May 2004
+Alf's Inhabitants Anonymous - April 2004
 Up 'til now, we've done a pretty good job of keeping quiet about the next game. (Well, except for that one loose-lipped Inhabitant, but we stitched him up right! We sho' did!) But we're all still dying to blab about this project! So we racked our brains and came up with this safe haven for our Inhabitants to spill their proverbial guts. This is the dirt, straight from the source about what production is working on now. This isn't news or gossip; it's what we're doing and how we feel about it. We're going to keep you updated on a regular basis, so check back for fresh info!
 '''For your convenience: The Geek-to-English Dictionary'''<br>
-'''CG:'''  Computer Graphics<br>
+'''CG:''' Computer Graphics<br>
-'''TD:'''  Technical Director<br>
+'''TD:''' Technical Director<br>
-'''PDD:'''  Production Design Department<br>
+'''PDD:''' Production Design Department<br>
-'''RT:'''  Real-Time<br>
+'''R & D:''' Research and Development<br>
-'''GUI:'''   Graphical User Interface. This is the loading screen and menu system for the game.<br>
+'''RT:''' Real Time<br>
-'''Bug:'''  Code that does not do what a programmer thinks it does<br>
+'''GDC:''' Game Developer's Conference<br>
-'''AI:'''  Artificial Intelligence. The code and data that control what the non-player characters in the game do.<br>
+'''Cert:''' Certification<br>
-'''Region:'''  A placeholder name for an area of gameplay.<br>
+'''Hero:''' The "final" or the best out of a long series of iterations.<br>
-'''E3:'''  Electronic Entertainment Expo held in Los Angeles every May.<br>
+'''Region:''' A placeholder name for an area of gameplay.
-'''PA:'''  Production Assistant<br>
-'''Combustion:'''  Software by Discreet
-'''Programming:'''<br>
-Aaron says the coders are working like madmen to hit their next deadline. All the cool features they've written over the last couple years are getting straightened out, streamlined, and 'made good'. One of the best parts is when a feature that has great potential is suddenly pounced on by the artists, who make it look incredible. This is also the part of the game where complex interactions between the objects in the game become apparent, and all kinds of unusual behavioral combinations arise. Mostly these are a good thing. There's a lot of work to be done, and everyone is tired, but happy that the completion of the game is in sight.
-One big task has been finishing the many crazy weapon types in this game. They are strange and wonderful, and as a group they're something that gamers have probably not seen before. Dave and Thatcher have been smashing on many of the grungy utility bits, like making sure the game runs nice off the DVD, keeping the art pipeline humming, and making it possible for the GUI to do wild and crazy things. These seem to be going really smoothly so far. It's nice to not have to panic about those at this point in the project.
+'''Computer Graphics:'''<br>
+The pressure is on in the CG department! They're on to the end movie for the most part now, except for poor Iain, who's stuck rendering shots from a movie that was finished last month! It seems PDD has changed the design for the Minions again (dang artists!). Rich is working hard on a scene where Stranger witnesses a death. "You want to show how anybody would feel in that situation, but if Stranger is this Clint Eastwood tough guy type, how much do you show without breaking character? He's not going to babble like an idiot but he's got to show some sort of emotion." The dam scene is another big challenge. Water is one of the hardest things to do in CG and there isn't really time to R & D it. On top of all that, the hero shot for the box cover has to be rendered. Action, something that says action. Nah, that looks too "posed". Something with more action. Never enough time in the day!
-Charles is generally stomping on bugs and fixing problems all over the place, and massaging some of the boss characters to ensure they are suitably awesome. Every once in a while he gets that wild look in his eyes, and an hour later, a cool new feature is ready to go. Lately, Marc has been smoothing out some of the more complex AI systems, and keeping everything looking smart. The new guy Andy has ramped up really quickly, and has done a bunch of new rendering work. Thanks to Mark's persistence, the audio system continues to get more robust and feature rich. 'Wait till you see this game. It's pretty wild what we've done,' says Aaron.
 '''Design:'''<br>
-It's been an extra busy month for the Designers. More polishing and bug fixing, not to mention the latest addition to the design department: Kian Durall was born to Sarah and Jameson a few weeks back. Congratulations to the Duralls! Erik expects to see Kian at work building levels by Monday! Additionally they have been spending time on some weapons upgrades, music, and save/load scripting. The last few cinematics are almost done and the boys claim to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
+In the Game Design Department, things are wrapping up quickly. Every space of the game has been built and they are going through both RT and Design 2nd passes. Quite a bit of time is being spent working with the audio department on implementing the hundreds and hundreds of sound cues they've been creating, in addition to working on several of the bounty battles. They should be at the end of the new feature phase of the production cycle, but the programmers always find ways to sneak in cool new additions! They're also ramping up to the balance/polish phase, which will continue until the game is pried loose from the collective cold, dead hands of the department.
 '''Production Design:'''<br>
-Silvio's been busy on fun paintings of the characters in this game, for use in magazines, game booklets, PR etc. They give him a chance to exaggerate individual characteristics, facial expressions, details and props, lending to a deeper back-story. Those will also evolve into some 'Wanted' posters and icons for the menu and Bounty store. This stage of the production design doesn't involve to much new idea searching, so you keep it fun, by lovingly abusing the characters; food stains on shirts, underwear shows a little, bad dental hygiene, drooling mouth. This stuff works well on the rude and obnoxious types of characters.
+With most of the real design work done, realizing the fine details and peripherals of the game are the lion's share of the work in Production Design. Raymond just nailed down a decent pass at the packaging art, but he'll probably be polishing that for a while. The last handful of character texture maps for real time are well on their way to finish, but the current priority is to create a number of highly detailed matte paintings for the end movie. The scope of the environments in these matte paintings represent a return to the expansive style that was developed in the course of building the opening movie. Ideally the look and artistry of the opening and ending movies will create a sense of "bookends" for the gameplay and storytelling that come between.
-As the game levels are polished and honed to produce the maximum dramatic effect for the player, the time comes for us to squeeze in the last little threads to tie all the story elements together. In order to communicate a subtle sense of history for the inhabitants of the river, Raymond is designing rock art that is scrawled on the walls of catacombs and canyons. This seemingly prehistoric graffiti describes the dark forces that, long ago, descended on the life of the river as perceived by the presumably superstitious natives. Cryptic depictions of the struggle for survival read like riddles that seem to bring up more questions than they answer. Ultimately, these clues are merely pieces of the overall puzzle and represent one more tool for deepening our storytelling experience. And they look kinda' cool.
+Meanwhile, Silvio is going between a series of normal and texture maps for the last Boss character, and sketching industrial props. These props give the player a more lived in feel when he/she experiences the game. The props are actually used by a certain type of species, revealing how their physical makeup would influence the design, and how their behavior towards office work would reflect in the use or misuse of a particular object. So for example a drinking fountain by itself it's an ok prop, but it should tell a little more about the guys working there. Maybe there is an empty case of brew bottles stacked against it and on top. They actually replaced the water with brew, and that in a water bottling plant... what could that mean? Things like that can convey little fun information about a place and its characters. Unfortunately, many of these unique props never make it to the end product due to time and polygon count, but they still help provide depth for the story and characters.
 '''Real-Time:'''<br>
-Well things are still crazy around the Real-time dept. They are currently in the process of doing a 'polish' pass on all the game regions. Region 2 is done and we are cranking on region 4 currently. It takes a little while to add all the detail maps! Marke is adding a few more details to the cave, such as greenery and torches, plus lots of webs in the catacombs. Raj is cleaning up some of the boss characters and doing a few prop odds and ends. Animators John and Matt areworking hard on finishing up the cinematics while Ryan is doing some particle effect things and working on some in-game foliage. Brad is polishing up the docks and animating a wolvark vehicle while Jeremy and Loc continue cranking out some props and collectibles. Rob is finishing up the docks interior and 'oddifying' by adding flies around all the lamps.
+Whoa! This week has been crazy in Real time. Lots of artwork is flying around as the levels get wrapped up. The last region has been coming along nicely. The guys are doing a good job making the main facility look huge and menacing. Ryan is working on some more weapon effects this week. Brad is squashing some early level bugs and making sure that region three runs smooth, hooking up portals and general fixes. The animators are hard at work doing cinematics and also working on the final boss and his minions. Should be pretty cool. Raj is finishing up the crossbow upgrades and starting on more weapon upgrades. Marke and Rob are working hard on the last level and should be done soon.
-'''Computer Graphics:'''<br>
+'''Producers:'''<br>
-Da boys got their final schedules today and it's going to be tight getting everything done in the next month or two. They got 61 seconds of animation signed off yesterday, but still have another two and a half minutes to go! The water effects Iain is working on are really cool. "Combustion" is turning out to be a good tool but it's pretty buggy and has been crashing a lot lately. Rich is busy animating Townsfolk and the Natives enjoying their newly formed river. Rich is a die-hard Calgary Flames fan and is thrilled that they are in the Stanley Cup Finals.
+Josh just picked up the final bronze cast sculptures of the main character Monday. They turned out great! This was the end of a long process, but it was worth it. Now what's he up to? "Hmmm just working away trying to wrap up the final movie along with a bunch-O-stuff."
+Scot is working on trying to close out the tasks for the next milestone. Making adjustments to the schedule based on task difficulty and the amount of time that is left.
-'''Producers:''' <br>
+'''Programming:'''<br>
-Besides eating a lot of sushi, Josh has the CG team working hard to wrap up the final movie for Stranger. It has a bunch of FX that make it challenging to work on. It is looking good, but has quite a bit of work to do before it is complete. He's also been working on capturing real-time cinematics for Michael, so he can do the sound design for them. Scot stays on top of the production schedule and working with our in-studio testers.
+The last phases of developing a game are always very difficult but also very rewarding. There's lots of pressure from art and design to finish all the features they need, and everything has to be ready for cert, running from a real DVD, optimizing the frame rate, and all that internal stuff that makes a game done.On the plus side, lots of cool features finally come to completion, and you get to see them actually working in the game. Mark is putting the finishing touches on the automatic lip sync stuff; all the characters in the games will talk along with the audio, and there's just tons of audio content so there's no way the animators could hand-animate all that speech. Aaron is putting some polish on our weapons and adding some new upgrade ammo types. A lot of our work is going towards memory use and our paging system. We've got a ton of content, and we continuously stream it as you run around the world. So, the paging system needs to pack the data up tightly and everything needs to be very small in memory.
 '''Sound Design:'''<br>
-Michael is working on in-game music for a number of battle sequences and also many of the RT cinematics. Also trying to lock down one of the CG movies and finish it. Jamie is knocking out sfx for environments for a few of the regions.
+They've been working on music for one of the CG movies. Also making a bunch of sound cues, playing the didgeridoo for fun, and tripping' out on Michael's screen saver.
-'''Support:'''<br>
-The studio is buzzing with activity and the Administration department is working in overdrive to keep the office running smoothly so the team can concentrate on the game. Amy reports that caffeine consumption has skyrocketed, as expected during crunch, but the hot coffee is always in supply! They keep the hard working inhabitants fed during the late nights of work so they can keep up their energy and reach the finish line.
-Besides the food and coffee, Cat and Jennie are busy with all of the normal studio activities such as front desk management, ordering supplies, managing the cleaning company, and keeping the facilities running smoothly. 'Our aim is to keep our inhabitants happy and focused so we keep our activities low key and out of the way' says Amy. The monthly birthday party is a time where the studio can get together and celebrate over appetizers, cold beverages, and music. It's good to have a little fun in between the crazy work schedule. In the spirit of 'all hands on deck' our ever multitasking PA Nick is helping out on the production side of the building with audio tasks.
-Systems is busy trying to get some light mapping rack mount servers setup . They're also trying to get CG's use of Discreet's "Combustion" usable in a render farm situation using Windows. And of course finding the best local service for the executive gadgets. Just last week, instead of going to E3, Eli went to Network+Interop in Las Vegas to check out the latest networking gear and gadgets first hand. Other than that, just trying to support the staff with friendly smiles and quick service.
-Well Mike reports that Human Resources has finally dug themselves out from all the submissions received at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose and boy did they see some cool work! The Outlaw trading cards were a hit and quite a crowd gathered for the OWI jacket giveaway on Thursday. Although it's impossible to interview even a fraction of the people we meet, we make it a point to send every candidate a letter. This takes a little while so if anyone reading this received one of our letters, thank you for your patience.
-Now HR is in the throws of crunch time so the focus has turned from staffing to help address any issues that might get in the way of making a great game. These can range from health insurance concerns to questions about how to reply to a jury duty summons. At this point in production it's often the little things that make a big difference.
 '''Marketing:'''<br>
-This was a fun year for marketing at E3, as the main objective was to enjoy the show and nothing else! Kristin was KO-ed in the Kentia Hall by Cathy in a fierce Kung-fu battle. Despite massive amounts of carbs and fountain soda foam, both survived the convention center food with no problems. Back at marketing central, Jenny tended her inbox like a meticulously manicured garden.
+There's been a steady stream of requests from all over the world. Right now a presentation for Lorne at the 3D festival is being facilitated. Also, work has been submitted to onedotzero, the 3D International Festival, Spectrum, Expose 2 ... the list goes on! The Outlaw trading cards created for GDC went over great and now new ways to use those are being considered, as well as possibly creating more. That was a fun project with a positive outcome, so it'd be cool to take it a step further. Creative Services is working night and day on a project the fans are going to "flip" over ... sorry that's all we can tell you this week! Also, there was some recent press in Animation Magazine, and in a racy UK magazine called "Streetfighters" where one of the fans, Bob, showcases a bike with OWI images all over it. Smokin'!!!! Anything else? Just keeping our noses to the grindstone, and holding ourselves back from the marketing maelstrom we are secretly dying to release on the world!!!! - The End
-Later in the week, 'Abe Babe,' (fansite-webmistress extraordinaire) stopped by the studio for a visit. She was able to hang out with the Inhabitants and view our most top-secret oddities! Don't even try and break her, people, she's bound by a high moral code (and a legally binding non-disclosure agreement!) Some of you may have seen her on Odd chat with Alf and his wiley assistant. These days the marketeers are churning out a new production art shirt. The shirts are used for promotional use only, but dream of one day being bid on at a popular auction website! - The End.
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