EA: Unlike Miyamoto, who had a firm idea of what he wanted to make based on his experiences developing 3d games in the past, I was working on a 3d game for the first time. Since there weren’t any similar games to emulate, I groped around in the dark for quite some time. In the end, when I heard the testers’ response, I heaved a sigh of relief.

Since there was nothing to copy, we were forced to be original. I believe that is why we were able to create a game that inspired a fresh sense of wonder in its players….

Mr. Aonuma also lets us in the the secret of how Epona came to be…

EA: If I said we included Epona because Miyamoto likes horses, that would be oversimplifying it, but that was actually the biggest factor. He wanted Ocarina to be unique, and realized that there weren’t any other games that involved riding a horse….

Finally, for those of you that think Aonuma should be busy making the next Zelda game instead of doing interviews, this should make you happy.

Anouma took a break from crafting his next Zelda adventure (still top secret) to look back at the game that shaped his career.

Thanks to Daniel for the heads up!

Link

The idea for DAH3 was to continue the approach set in DAH1 and DAH2 as though I was a film composer writing in that period. Of course wah wah guitar is slathered throughout because it was so ubiquitous and influential. Personally this is my favorite of the three DAH scores. I love this style of music!

• Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon dated for December
• Destroy all Humans! Path of the Furon blog: Hi-Fi Destruction
  

During the Montreal International Game Summit, Far Cry 2 technical director Dominic Guay painted procedural content generation as an increasingly important game development technique, not just to control costs as games get bigger and bigger, but also to retain the crucial ability to make changes throughout the production process.

"This talk is not about Far Cry 2 the game," began Guay, who populated his talk with development examples from Far Cry 2's creation rather than descriptions of the end-user goals of the game's features.

Guay defined "procedural data generation" as "techniques and algorithms of runtime or highly automated offline data generation," but noted the term refers not just the algorithms and code that comprise systems, but also the surrounding tools that enable designers to make use of them.

The Evolution Of Proceduralism

Procedural generation is "nothing new," Guay pointed out, citing Bethesda's 1996 game The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, which boasts a "land mass twice the size of Great Britain."

Going back further to 1984, he praised "the granddaddy of space trading games," Ian Bell and David Braben's influential Elite. It consists of eight galaxies of 256 planets each, generated procedurally using data tables and "pseudo-random sequences" -- the code for which can today be downloaded via Bell's website.

Moving to the modern day, Guay noted that particle systems, now widely used, are really a form of procedural generation. "It's a procedural approach to creating content that has become pretty common," he said.

However, "the industry in general tends to favor brute force approaches," he said. The Far Cry 2 team found itself butting up against that tendency, due to the vast size of the game's world.

"The first big draw of generating procedural content is to save on cost and time," said Guay.

"When we started conceiving Far Cry 2, we didn't have a senior animator on board, so we didn't really have an idea of what would be possible for an animation team," he recalled, and noted that the number of discrete animations required turned out to be unfeasible, "so we moved many of those animations up into a procedural animation system."

That approach allowed the team to blend animations that change based on the player's influence on the world -- early in the game, a character might perform certain acts in a way that demonstrates contempt of the player, but later on, when the player has gained notoriety, that same character could perform those same actions while "tainted" with visual cues of fear or intimidation.

Opening Up Innovation Fields

"Another big benefit [of procedural content creation] is that you end up being able to do stuff you simply couldn't do otherwise," Guay continued. "It opens up innovation fields. If you're creating things through code, you have a deeper understanding of what you're doing, and you can bake in some limitations."

"Our artists needed to be able to build not a random tree, but a type of tree," he said by way of example. "It's actually much closer to building a particle system than building traditional art assets. Artists play with parameters more than they play with vertices."

Creating those tools allowed artists to define trees based on characteristics gleaned from extensive photo reference, more than to create a number of discrete tree variants based on those references.

That approach led to a huge amount of control and unique systems -- Guay showed an internal video of trees in Far Cry 2 growing from sapling to their full adult state. Those systems are not available to the player in the game, but they allowed the team to convincingly populate the world and deal with realistically regenerating trees that have, for example, been destroyed by fire.

"Another benefit of procedurally-generated content is the time you gain on turnaround for changes," he said, distinguishing that advantage from the more straightforward time saved in initially creating content.

"Level designers love to move roads around," he said as an example. "Typically, this would drive artists crazy. But [here], what will happen is that the terrain will actually smooth in according to how the rules were designed, and the vegetation will move and regrow." The designer can then drill down and more explicitly tweak the positioning of elements that have been adjusted dynamically.

Retaining Artistry

Procedural content isn't perfect, Guay admitted. One difficulty associated with the practice is retaining artistic control alongside the dynamic processes.

Initially, the team created a procedural sky rendering approached based on algorithms -- which led to a totally unconvincing skybox that was clearly inferior to what a hand-authored skybox would be. "We considered it to be a total failure," he said.

He explained that a great deal of focus must be put on the tools that surround the algorithms, to allow the systems to be properly harnessed. In the end, the game shipped with a revamped procedural sky system that ended up much more effective than the first attempt. It takes into account myriad weather patterns, atmospheric conditions, and other variables.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach, Guay showed an image made up of rows of in-game screenshots essentially forming a color palette, with time of day on one axis, and "storminess" on another axis, representing the full spectrum of skyboxes that the player will see with all the combinations of time and weather.

Unfamiliar Complexity

Another drawback is simply the complexity of the pipeline and tools. Putting the focus so much on systems and rules can be shocking to artists, who are accustomed to much more straightforward, linear art tools.

"It's not always clear what the parameters actually do in the simulation," he said.

On that same note, "the guy with the great idea for procedural data not necessarily the guy with the right mindset to make the tools," Guay added. The Far Cry 2 team dealt with this by setting up teams that paired those "idea people" with technical staff capable of executing on the ideas.

Still, despite the improvements over early development, he said there is still a lot of room to improve the tools.

With most elements of the game, the amount of time spent on developing and refining tools was vastly greater than the amount of time spent on actually developing and refining the underlying engine. In the case of the environmental tools, 15 times more time was spent on the tools rather than the engine. The only exception was the skybox tools and engine -- which points to the team's difficulties in that area.

Another hurdle was that "everything depended on programmers," since such a great deal of the game's assets depended on underlying algorithmic systems that had to be programmed.

In the end, it took about three years for the asset pipeline for the vegetation system to reach a state where it was considerd "mature and flexible," after an eight-month prototype period.

A Testing Nightmater

Procedural content can also be "a testing nightmare," Guay noted.

When a team member made a seemingly minor after-hours change to the ecosystem, it ended up increasing the asset density of the game world by 25 percent -- resulting in more than a few headaches.

"If I'm tweaking a jungle procedurally, maybe I'll just tweak it in my test map," Guay said. "But when I integrate it into the game, somewhere in the 50 square kilometer game world, maybe in just three small areas, it might cause problems, and we won't find those problems until QA uncovers them."

Still, there are ways to mitigate those problems, such as automated information gathering that searches for discrepancies in performance, memory validity, and other areas. Towards the end of the project, the team also locked generation to stabilize the world.

Looking Forwards

Though he said he was loathe to delve too deep into predicting the future, Guay did try to extrapolate some general development trends that will affect procedural content.

Amount of content in games, he said, is increasing at an exponential rate, just as team sizes are increasing more linearly. Complexity of tasks, he said, are fortunately increasing more linearly.

"I still have some long-term fears," he said. He painted a picture of a potential future where these kinds of procedural systems have improved to the point where games can run essentially complete physical simulations, where items must actually be built according to real-world physics and architectual principles.

This would then begin to make it harder and harder to "significantly, or usefully, change the game content during production," he said, particularly if it means teams must start working with trained architectural engineers.

"Processes sound like the silver bullet," he said, referring to the idea of "failing early and failing often," with the aim that more and more mistakes can be pushed into pre-production so that by the time production begins, very few mistakes and changes are made. This idea comes from film, Guay said, where the production process is much more quantified and defined than it is in game development.

"But I think we need to preserve the idea of making changes during game production," he said, claiming there is a fundamental difference between a linear medium like film and an interactive one like games, noting that the role of creative leads during production depends on the ability to keep making changes.

"The bottom line here is that I'm not trying to say creating content procedurally is... the [only] solution, but it's an interesting avenue," Guay summarized, noting that a highly systemic attitude to asset creation can preserve the important game development property of allowing for important creative changes throughout the whole production process. In conclusion, he added, "After working on Far Cry 2 I'm interested in taking it further."

Over at MTVNews.com I ran a piece about “Gears of War 2″ for our more mainstream audience. There are nuts and bolts covered in the piece that Multiplayer readers certainly know about already.

But there are a few things that may be new to you.

For example, Cliff Bleszinski’s comments about cinematic inspirations for the big Xbox 360 game.

I had been asking him if any big second installments of games or movies proved influential. He said:

“['The Empire Strikes Back'] is the obvious one that everyone goes to, because it’s darker,” he said. ” ‘Dark Knight’ as well — doing what the first one did but also having a darker twist on it and going places the first one wouldn’t have had the ba–s to go and also doing everything on a larger scale. I think ‘Aliens’ is also a great one. Seeing dozens or hundreds of Locust pouring out of a hole, whereas in the first ‘Alien,’ it was just an alien, basically. … I wouldn’t say ‘Predator 2′ or ‘Robocop 2′ or any of those. Although we do have our share of ’80s Stallone and Schwarzenegger winks and homages and whatnot.”

Related Posts:
‘Gears of War 2′ Creator Carefully Discusses Video Game Romance
A ‘Gears of War 2′ Appreciation - If Miyamoto Made A Bloody Shooter
Despite MetaCritic Fix, Gamers Still Panning ‘Gears of War 2′

Even though it hasn’t been announced yet, and no one outside of EA knows anything about it aside from the title, the game “Dante’s Inferno” has already been optioned for a movie tie-in (via Variety). Several studios entered into a bidding war over the film rights to the game last week, but now Universal Studios has come out as the victor. Part of the reason Universal won the bid — beating out Paramount, New Regency, Warner Bros., and MGM — may be attributed to another recent deal with EA to give Army of the Two the movie treatment. EA has made past deals to make movies based on some of their popular games (like The Sims and Mass Effect), but this is the first time a company has begun selling the rights to a game before its existence was even announced. At this time, all that’s known about the game is that it will involve a journey through Hell, and that the title is taken from most well-known section of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy.

Wait, let me see if I’ve got this right: they’re taking one of the most influential works of Western literature ever and turning it into a video game, followed by a movie? You hear that loud slapping noise? That’s the sound of every English teacher you ever had simultaneously doing a facepalm.

---
Related Articles at Gaming Today:

• Ubisoft Bringing Prince of Persia Movie Tie-in Next Summer
• New Movie Tie-ins Target Teen Girls of All Ages
• The Last (And First) Starfighter Arcade Game
• Thunder…Thunder…Thundercats! Movie!
• Guitar Heroes Looking to Save Seattle Kittens

From the article:

I remember teaching my cousin how to play Wii Tennis, and when he went to serve the ball, he lifted his left hand, the one not holding the Wii remote, to toss. At that moment, he didn’t understand how the Wii worked.

All he knew was that it was some sort of magical machine that mimicked your real life movements. It was a joyous occasion and a incredible exploratory experience.

But the innocence did not last long. Upon further experimentation, he learned how the controller worked, discovering that a quick snap of the wrist gave the same forehand as a loopy swing of his whole upper body. As the initial amazement wore off, Wii Tennis became simply another video game.

When the public imagined what was possible with the Wii, we imagined complete, full-on physical experiences akin to backyard football. Perhaps, we thought, you may even get a little bruised up in a game on the Wii, playing with competitive friends.

The article should be of interest to any readers looking for a designer’s point of view on the most influential games console in some time.

Source: GameSetWatch

Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos also said that it’s not just a “Rock Band” song expansion pack; it will be “a new, full-grown, custom game built from the ground up.”

The game is slated for release in Holiday 2009.

Full press release:

THE BEATLES INSPIRE NEW MUSIC VIDEO GAME; APPLE CORPS LTD., MTV AND HARMONIX COME TOGETHER FOR UNPRECEDENTED DEAL

Exclusive Agreement Set to Bring The Beatles Music to Fans for the First Time in Interactive Form Here, There and Everywhere in 2009

New York, NY – October 30, 2008 – The Beatles’ extraordinary music and phenomenal legacy is set to rock across the universe in the form of a video game through an exclusive partnership between Apple Corps Ltd., Harmonix and MTV Games, a part of Viacom’s MTV Networks.

This partnership marks the first time that Apple Corps, along with EMI Music, Harrisongs Ltd, and Sony/ATV Music Publishing, has agreed to present The Beatles music in an interactive video game format. Published by MTV Games and developed by Harmonix, the world’s premier music video game company and creators of the best-selling Rock Band®, the game will be an unprecedented, experiential progression through and celebration of the music and artistry of The Beatles. The game was creatively conceived with input from Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison, and enjoys their full blessing. In addition, Giles Martin, co-producer of The Beatles innovative LOVE project, will provide his expertise and serve as Music Producer for this groundbreaking Beatles project.

“The project is a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles and their music. I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out,” Sir Paul McCartney said.

“It gives me great pleasure to be part of The Beatles / Apple and Harmonix / Rock Band partnership,” said Ringo Starr. “The Beatles continue to evolve with the passing of time and how wonderful that The Beatles’ legacy will find its natural progression into the 21st century through the computerized world we live in. Let the games commence.”

“It’s cool. I love it and hope it will keep inspiring and encouraging the young generation for many decades,” said Yoko Ono Lennon.

“People are having so much fun playing Rock Band. Combined with The Beatles tracks, it is a great way to either listen or participate,” said Olivia Harrison. “If you like the music, it doesn’t take much persuasion to get you to play.”

“Introducing the genius of The Beatles to a whole new generation of music lovers through original and inspired ways is extremely exciting to us at Apple Corps,” stated Jeff Jones, CEO, Apple Corps. “We are truly pleased to be working with the innovative forces at MTV and Harmonix as they embody our mutual passions for music and creativity.”

“Many of us have been part of a generation that has long enjoyed an enduring love affair with The Beatles and now we’re looking to extend that love affair for future generations to enjoy,” said Van Toffler.” “Our inspiration for this project comes from a keen sense of history and a place of utmost reverence and respect for the band, their music and their heritage.”

“The impact of The Beatles is forever ingrained in the hearts, minds and souls of millions the world over,” said Judy McGrath, Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks. “The Beatles are the reason many of us are WHERE we are, and some of us are WHO we are.”

“We are honored to be part of this new way for people to discover the timeless music and art of The Beatles - the most creatively and commercially successful, critically acclaimed, and influential band in the history of popular music,” stated Paul DeGooyer, MTV’s Senior Vice President of Electronic Games & Music.

“By presenting their music and artistry through the creative filter of a groundbreaking video game, we are giving legions of fans and music lovers all over the world a profound, new way to experience The Beatles,” said Alex Rigopulos, CEO and Co-Founder, Harmonix. “This game will be a celebration of the Beatles undeniable legacy.”

Related Posts:
News Alert Has People Expecting ‘Rock Band: Beatles’ Announcement
Why ‘AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack’ Is Wal-Mart Only And Not DLC (For Now)