Dodo Blog

I just got an article published on Gamasutra!

Just came back from the excellent Annecy 09 animation festival, and a short stop in Paris for the AIgamedev conference, the latter marking my first attempt at public speaking as a game developer.

I was invited to participate in a panel on how animation combines with AI to create interesting character behaviour, which has been a pet-subject of mine for a long time…

I think it went well.

At Annecy, I saw Coraline (which was amazing) and a loooot of short films. Also met a bunch of cool people, both there and in Paris.

There seems to be this notion in some circles that videogames are descended exclusively from traditional board- and card games and any influence from other sources is diluting the medium at best, or frustrated novel/movie-making at worst…

If you ask me, no one source is inherently more worthy than any other to serve as inspiration for this new medium. We should draw from whatever merits exploration, whether it be the mechanics of Monopoly, or the visual spectacle and character empathy of cinema, the introspection of literature, or the spatial exploration of architecture…

Certainly interactivity is the ingredient that makes games what they are, but the conclusion that any other medium that is interactive should therefore be our one guiding light is as flawed as assuming that any medium that is also visual must be our sole inspiration.

Surely there is room for more than one school of thought?

From the Experimental Gameplay Sessions: I couldn’t make it out to GDC but I wish I could’ve seen this:

Spy Party: This game, developed by Chris Hecker (”Spore“) has a character doing suave and subtle things in a cocktail party, trying not to get spotted. One player is the spy, whose animations are a little different from everyone else’s, and who has to complete a few stealthy missions like bugging an ambassador. The other player just watches, looking for subtle animation tip-offs. They are the sniper. Their one move: to shoot the spy. The game looked like a cocktail part of characters from “The Sims.” (from MTV Multiplayer)

This is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing more of…

Some sites worth stopping by:

Victor Navone has a great post on expressive eyebrows,

Jesse Harlin thinks song in games can do better than fake Latin

… and Dinosaur Comics is still hilarious.

Speaking of hilarity, I’ve recently started listening to the Idle Thumbs podcast. Interesting and often funny discussion on the ever varied subject of games…

For the next couple weeks I’ll be doing a series of posts on the use of interactive animation in a number of notable games…

Now, The Act…

This is an unusual example in that it’s a game I have not played, as it’s not exactly widely available. It was created as a prototype coin-op that sadly did not meet with commercial success and was not developed any further. Still, it may be worth looking at what they were trying to do and why it was interesting.

The game uses analog control to either push forward or back off in your interactions with other characters. The trick is to know when to do which…

Quite linear of course, but unlike the dreaded Quick Time Events it’s organic and invisible and there’s a certain nuance to your actions. It’s an interesting approach to interacting with NPCs without resorting to dialogue trees, or violence…

Cecropia has since moved on to making short advergames, but you can get an idea of how The Act might have worked from a cute demo on their frontpage. It shows pretty clearly how emotion and personality can make even the simplest of interactions entertaining…

Next up: don’t know yet

For the next couple weeks I’ll be doing a series of posts on the use of interactive animation in a number of notable games…

A bit of Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 this time…

One thing Valve does very well is make it feel like you’re present in the world by having characters react to you. Subtle things make all the difference…

In Half Life 2, people look you in the eyes. They don’t stare… they look and look away, their eyes darting from place to place. If you shine your flashlight in Alyx’ face she squints and covers her eyes.

The most elaborate animation is reserved for scripted sequences: intricate, often spectacular scenes that break up the action. You are free to move around within certain boundaries and characters respond to your location by glancing sideways or turning to face you, but… they remain essentially linear cutscenes. The overall sequence of events does not change based on your actions.

The line though, between the scripted and dynamic, is slowly fading and it will be interesting to see where this goes…

There’s a clever mechanic that began life with Alyx in Episode One and was further refined in The Orange Box and Left 4 Dead: Based on context, characters will say short lines of dialogue in reaction to what is going on around them, sometimes very specific things…

It would not be a stretch to imagine using the same AI that picks appropriate dialogue to pick gestures and other actions to make NPCs respond to the world not just in words, but in movement…

A different beast, Team Fortress 2 is interesting in its use of silhouette to distinguish characters. Each member of its ensemble is instantly recognizable at great distance through shape and style of movement. Just as well, as you’ll want to adjust tactics accordingly, or suffer an untimely demise…

The characters’ appearance matches their gameplay function.

Personality is all too rarely explored in game animation. Clearly it can serve both as icing on the entertainment cake and as core gameplay information.

Worth a mention too are the dynamic facial expressions in TF2. They seem to reflect player health and success with excited and fearful expressions, though, perhaps more significantly, they make screenshots completely hilarious.

Next up: Cecropia’s The Act

There’s a great post at Temple of the Seven Golden Camels on how posture can be used to say different things, and how effects can lead the eye… I don’t have to tell you how this could apply as much to games as it does to drawing.

There was something else I wanted to talk about in Shadow of the Colossus.

There are many things that set apart this game, but there is one that’s rarely mentioned: This game has anticipation, one of the key principles of animation so often deliberately ignored in games.

It is interesting that Ueda chooses not to sacrifice a sense of weight and realism for the sake of responsiveness – his team specifically makes a point of this in a 2006 GDC lecture. When you press “jump”, your avatar anticipates, crouching down, then leaping into the air. When you attack, he lifts his sword before he brings it down upon his enemies…

Most game designers will tell you all control must be instantaneous, a press of a button sending your avatar flying into the air as if pulled by invisible hands, anticipation non-existent… often this is fine, but I would argue *sometimes* this immediacy can be provided just as strongly by anticipation before action. Seeing the character prepare the movement is enough response for the player to know his command has been obeyed. It changes timing, yes, but if we can get our heads around this in reality, we can in games.

Mario doesn’t need to obey the laws of physics, but when you have a game that purports to be ‘realistic’, movement should be believable, lest it shatter the illusion.

Again I find it interesting that Colossus dares go against this conventional wisdom, yet never feels unresponsive…

[edit: reposted and discussed in greater depth here]

For the next couple weeks I’ll be doing a series of posts on the use of interactive animation in a number of notable games…

Two this time…

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus: Not the most recent, but still remarkable both, for their daring use of animation in making you feel connected to the world and the beings in it.

Touch is a common theme throughout the games of Fumito Ueda and his team. From holding hands with princess Yorda to climbing the towering bodies of the Colossi. It’s, unsurprisingly, also the focus of Team Ico’s upcoming PS3 title.

Games do not traditionally deal very well with touch as it’s a difficult problem to tackle even in pre-rendered 3D, let alone real-time…

Still, given the importance of touch in our human lives it should be worth the trouble.

Ico, then.

If there is one image that sums up this game, it is he and Yorda holding hands.

The tactile marriage of animation and interaction in this visually arresting mechanic creates a very real bond between our two protagonists, and you, the player.

Similarly, a well-judged combination of hand-animation and procedural movement (physics and IK) creates a real sense of contact to the climactic battles between Wander and his prey in Shadow of the Colossus.

It’s no coincidence Ueda’s background is in animation.

If the creatures in this game are the levels, then animation too is level design. The movement of these lumbering giants defines your interaction with them, running and climbing up limbs, holding on for dear life as they try to shake you off, gravity and momentum both friend and enemy.

It seems a missed opportunity that so few games have attempted such depth and complexity… Boss-battles in other games feel pedestrian by comparison.

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It’s worth noting such elaborate interactions need not be violent. Imagine character interaction this intricate in a social (RPG?) context…

Certainly, if we are ever to tackle more complex themes than killing everything that moves, physical contact will be a major part of the puzzle.

Next up: Valve