"Punching Above Your Weight" - and other GDC presentations

(Dormamu) #21

Is the slide 69 form Brink? Witch map/level?
What’s the story with those white ghost’s that i see all over the Resistance territory? (slide 20)
Thank you in advance! :smiley:

(tokamak) #22

It’s not that the slides raise much questions (though 70 and 71 are quite mysterious), it would just be a shame to miss anything that hasn’t been conveyed through the slides, which might be quite a lot.

(Exedore) #23

Slide 69 is from the Be More Objective Challenge, 3 Star.

We do eat cod. Everything in Brink tries to have a distinct style, even the graffiti ghosts. For that reason, a lot of the graffiti from my previous Container City presentation is no longer in the game.

70 and 71 are just the kind of entity set up that the Level Designers have to deal with… it can get very complex very quickly.

I’d like to do a full transcript type thing, but that will have to wait until the game is on the shelves. I’m thinking about re-tooling it with shipping content rather than demoed stuff for another talk post-ship as well.

(JeP) #24

One question then : is the slide 17 for real ?
Does this mean at some level we will be able to customize the experience on the maps quite easily ?
Are the “importance” variables used for the AI ?

Seeing parts of maps with possible ways is nice to get a good idea of the usage of SMART movements !

(Joe999) #25

awesome, thanks for sharing! looks like brink is locked at 30 fps by default? seems like you can unlock fps on pc, since one slides shows 121 fps. makes me wonder about the fps lock on consoles.

(Exedore) #26

[QUOTE=JeP;272954]One question then : is the slide 17 for real ?
Does this mean at some level we will be able to customize the experience on the maps quite easily ?
Are the “importance” variables used for the AI ?

Seeing parts of maps with possible ways is nice to get a good idea of the usage of SMART movements ![/QUOTE]

  1. Yes, it’s fo real.

  2. Not really, those are there mostly so we could iterate the bot behaviour very quickly.

  3. Yes, see above. It’s used for the AI and the Objective Wheel.

  4. True, but it only shows SMART, not manual reachabilities… so it won’t show any crazy Light wall-hopping stuff, you just have to fire the game up and try to find those ones.

(Seyu) #27

Haha, ‘We eat CoD’ graffiti for the win.

(JeP) #28

Exedore : ok thanks !

(Humate) #29

lol x 10

that should be an emoticon

(3Suns) #30

Exedore, this is awesome! Thank you!

Questions/Comments

Slide 17 - “Updateable via title update” for the 360 - you mean, “Title Managed Storage”, right? Microsoft sits on Title Updates for months, but the Title Managed Storage can be updated by the dev at anytime, as far as I know.

Slide 25 “Original E£ demo, was never planned to work this way” What way? What did you change?

Slide 27 to 29 - totally awesome. I love the thought (and testing) you and SD have put into the gameplay and level design.

Slide 36 - please tell us about the “live experiments”.

Slide 42 - is this Exedore’s Gameplay Fundamentals graph? And to that, I just want to comment that the ultimate RUSH map for BF:BC2 Vietnam is Hill 137 because it gets progressively easier to defend and progressively harder to capture. The battle gets more and more intense as the gamers approach the end of the level. While it may not be everyone’s favorite, from a level design perspective, it should be the template for all RUSH gametype maps.

Slides 47 and 48 - those were movies, weren’t they?

Slide 49 - AAS - This looks like a “visual comments/properties” system for level design. How many different colored arrows (i.e., reach abilities/moves) do you have? (I would imagine that each arrow represents a whole group of possible movements.)

Slide 53 - what is an FoM path? (Freedom of Movement?) I came across the Parkourpedia Movement Terminology page - do you have a list of terms you used to make dialog more efficient?

Slide 54 - the red and green outline reminds me of the single biggest critical game design flaw in BF:BC2 RUSH gametype - the “B” button is used to arm and disarm stations AND to change kits. The problem arises when a lot of people have died around the station and you try to disarm but instead keep changing kits. DICE either has to change widen the “no-kit fall” zone, or change the controls. (Please, and by all means, let your friend at DICE know this - it breaks my heart every time we lose a match because we kept picking up kits when we wanted to disarm the station. It happens quite frequently.)

Slide 55 - again with the attention and love via extensive game testing and iteration. Scaling back, holding back on the reins - In the same way that Valve has done with L4D and L4D2 (adding realism etc.). SD is training the gamer with new gameplay. For Brink 2, you will be able to build on the new knowledge that gamers acquire by playing the original. Also, speaking of Brink 2, there is a counter-intuitive trend in the game industry: sequels are consistently outselling the originals. Just sayin’. :wink:

Slide 57 - If I may humbly submit, while resource constraints didn’t allow for this in Brink, for Brink 2, use water for the natural map boundaries. Let the gamer swim around the map to select few ladders, or out to an endless sea. As Ken Levine did with his games, use the environment to provide natural boundaries and invisible collisions can be almost completely eliminated.

Slide 58 - LMAO. Go bots!

Slide 61 and 62 - LOL excellent example of surface customization and lol at that gun

Great presentation! Would have loved to have been there. Just as an aside, I teach basic computer literacy and one of the things I have my students do is create Power Point presentations using as few words as possible - if they include full sentences, I deduct marks. lol

Finally, if you do a post-mortem, please publish it with a site that doesn’t charge for it. I would love to read more about SD’s development process for Brink.

(Bezzy) #31

[QUOTE=3Suns;273227]Exedore, this is awesome! Thank you!

Questions/Comments

Slide 49 - AAS - This looks like a “visual comments/properties” system for level design. How many different colored arrows (i.e., reach abilities/moves) do you have? (I would imagine that each arrow represents a whole group of possible movements.)
[/quote]

Off the top of my head, there are jump reachabilities (i.e. jumpable gaps), vaults (vertical increases lower than min mantle height - i.e. Heavy can navigate these) mantles (straight mantles, without a jump or wallhop - average can reach straight from the ground) and dynamic mantles (things you can mantle, but not necessary from the ground beneath - i.e. high cliffs or overhangs - typically jumping a gap into a ledge grab, or from the floor, plus wall hop into mantle. Technically applicable to any body type in the right circumstances).

There’s also crouch transitions which will force a slide if you sprint into them, or just crouch you if you move into them.

Slide 53 - what is an FoM path? (Freedom of Movement?) I came across the Parkourpedia Movement Terminology page - do you have a list of terms you used to make dialog more efficient?

Yep. Freedom of Movement. SMART wasn’t the original name for the system.

Slide 54 - the red and green outline reminds me of the single biggest critical game design flaw in BF:BC2 RUSH gametype - the “B” button is used to arm and disarm stations AND to change kits. The problem arises when a lot of people have died around the station and you try to disarm but instead keep changing kits. DICE either has to change widen the “no-kit fall” zone, or change the controls. (Please, and by all means, let your friend at DICE know this - it breaks my heart every time we lose a match because we kept picking up kits when we wanted to disarm the station. It happens quite frequently.)

Most of our objective interactions are chest high, and it’s your view angle which determines your interaction choice (i.e. deus ex style), not just lateral distance to object, so when there’s interaction noise issues, we don’t have as big of a problem. You don’t have to aim exactly at the thing you’re choosing - the closest to your crosshair is picked (within a cone, obviously).

Slide 57 - If I may humbly submit, while resource constraints didn’t allow for this in Brink, for Brink 2, use water for the natural map boundaries. Let the gamer swim around the map to select few ladders, or out to an endless sea. As Ken Levine did with his games, use the environment to provide natural boundaries and invisible collisions can be almost completely eliminated.

Irrational use the term “edge metaphor” for this. I coined that phrase :smiley: </boastin> but obviously, the looking glass dudes understood it long before anyone put a label on it. Doug Church’s article on Perceivable Consequence essentially already covers it. Or even more generically, Donald Norman talks about the concept of “agency” in his book “The Design of Everyday Things”: everything you design implies a use. In the real world, you can use an object for things it wasn’t intended for. In a video game you have the power to only allow the object to be used as intended, but you risk cognitive dissonance if the object you create doesn’t allow for actions the player has been conditioned to believe are applicable, i.e. if you allow players the ability to “pick up” objects, they’ll initially be jilted if they can’t pick up everything which they perceive as vaguely pick-uppable. This is why you start to get halos or brackets around “gameplay objects” to distinguish them from ancillary physics junk.

(Exedore) #32

17- Yes.

25- That’s the E3 2009 demo, with the cinematic happening on the dock of Container City. We have separate sets for cinematics in the actual game.

36- I manipulated the bot difficulty on the server while the level designers were playing, without telling them. I was able to do what I wanted with the flow of the match surprisingly effectively right off the bat.

42- Standard cinematic 3 act structure, the source is referenced in the notes.

47/48- Yes, unfortunately the site doesn’t do movies, and I don’t want to publish those until the game is out.

49- Only the two arrows pictured.

53- Yes, I forget… Freedom of Movement is a term we’ve used a lot internally, moreso than SMART.

57- NO LADDERS!!1one!

(Kabarka) #33

So 17 means that if something is overpowered or getting abused, you have variables that you can change on the fly no need to wait for an long update process. ? Do you have variables for everything? Guns and gun attachments, abilities and stuff?

(3Suns) #34

Thanks, Bezzy and Exedore! :stroggtapir: :stroggtapir:

I forgot about the NO LADDERS rule! ha ha ha

[QUOTE=Bezzy;273266]
Irrational use the term “edge metaphor” for this. I coined that phrase :smiley: </boastin> but obviously, the looking glass dudes understood it long before anyone put a label on it. [/QUOTE]

I think I may have to write another song. :smiley: :cool:

(JeP) #35

I hardly imagine a game not having that.

What is the “no ladder” rule ?
Has Bethesda became a specialist in publishing “no ladder games” :smiley: ?

(Mustkunstn1k) #36

I am feeling kind of iffy on the clothes thing. Do you just unlock them with each level? Because overall the 20 levels doesn’t seem a lot.

There could be specific challenges etc for clothing. The clothing is more “valuable” to the player if he worked for it. And it is just keeps more people hooked if they have stuff to unlock.

(Bezzy) #37

[QUOTE=3Suns;273282]Thanks, Bezzy and Exedore! :stroggtapir: :stroggtapir:

I forgot about the NO LADDERS rule! ha ha ha

I think I may have to write another song. :smiley: :cool:[/QUOTE]

Don’t make me write up another restraining order :confused:

(Bezzy) #38

[QUOTE=JeP;273302]I hardly imagine a game not having that.

What is the “no ladder” rule ?
Has Bethesda became a specialist in publishing “no ladder games” :smiley: ?[/QUOTE]

I pushed this early on, so you can blame me if it’s a problem. It’s a feel vs. fidelity issue.

We wanted to keep movement flowing. Ladders tend to clamp you down to really predictable paths (and slow you down a lot when you try to make the animations for them all next gen). This makes you an easy target with very little fight back. Perhaps there’s a skill to choosing when to safely mount a ladder, but it’s not really a very interesting one.

When you have a freedom of movement system, there’s always a more interesting way to let players gain height than a ladder. Plus, you tend to want to reduce the amount of straight up/straight down game play in an FPS because of how “yaw” effectively turns into “roll” around the poles. Ladders kind of ask players to start aiming straight up and straight down, highlighting that issue.

Other reasons too, but yeah, we got reasons.

(Herandar) #39

I swear the page numbers on my slides don’t match everyone elses… :confused:

(Schwarzeis) #40

[QUOTE=Mustkunstn1k;273306]I am feeling kind of iffy on the clothes thing. Do you just unlock them with each level? Because overall the 20 levels doesn’t seem a lot.

There could be specific challenges etc for clothing. The clothing is more “valuable” to the player if he worked for it. And it is just keeps more people hooked if they have stuff to unlock.[/QUOTE]

Exactly

And I wonder if this is true - It makes more sense to unlock CLOTHING than GUNS from CHALLENGES :l

Guns should come to you through leveling, clothes? Sure, some items might, but seriously, didn’t they want us to look for ‘‘exotic’’ guys? After a few days there wont be any since you and everyone else can unlock them easy as snip and snap