GDC Wrap up

Sunday 14 March 2010 - 04:00
Peter Rizkalla

This year’s GDC was a great show. The event brought together experienced game developers, publishers, artists and an all-time record of 18,250 attendees for its 2010 event. More than 400 lectures, panels, summits, tutorials and roundtable discussions. Many of the panels were actually quite good but there was a fifty-fifty chance of getting one of the bad ones during the first couple of days. Things started picking up significantly when the show floor opened on Thursday. The Fable III panel with Peter Molyneux and Josh Atkins was one of the highlights of the entire event revealing a lot of new information about Fable III.

The show floor itself had a ton of great things to show off; namely CryTek’s CryENGINE 3 and Sony’s new controller the PlayStation Move. Many developers were on hand in an HR capacity to receive mountains of resumes and business cards from thousands of aspiring game students and developers just itching to get hired. Among the hiring game companies were big names like CCP of EVE Online fame, Blizzard and WB Games.

One of the highlights was our exclusive interview with Valve’s Gabe Newell which can be seen below. Stereoscopic 3D gaming seemed to be on a heavy rise at GDC. Companies like Intel and Sony were both showing off stereoscopic 3D gameplay. Intel showed off Dirt 2 which ran on a PC equipped with a supporting NVIDIA graphics card and used basic 3D glasses. Sony displayed one of their PSN download titles, Super Stardust HD, in 3D using powered 3D shutter glasses. Both looked great but both also require a TV which supports the standard for 3D, HDMI 1.4. Not sure if anyone is willing to shell out $5,000 for a TV that will support this technology just yet.

The IGD Awards and Game Developer’s Choice Awards were a riot. They were helped along by the Mega64 videos, the reactions of winning developers and the atrocious acting from the hosts as they awkwardly read from the gigantic, and very visible, teleprompter. In the Game Developer’s Choice Award, Uncharted 2 won nearly everything with only one other title, Scribblenauts, winning multiple awards for Innovation and Best Handheld.

Lastly, Sid Meier’s keynote proved to be not only an enlightening piece on the art of game development but was also an enchanting event with star struck developers filling the halls and gushing as they observed the master revealing his secrets; I’m not exaggerating one bit. What went through a sluggish start turned out to be a fantastic show for all at GDC 2010. Next stop, E3!

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco

2K @ GDC

Sunday 14 March 2010 - 03:46
Peter Rizkalla

2K gave us some hands on time with their most recent build of Mafia 2. I was first introduced to a little back story; a cinematic hosted by a 2K developer revealed that it was February 1945 in the city of Empire Bay. “Home sweet home” was the title. The main character Vito is just coming home from the war due to an injury and his friend Joe shows up to take him home. Vito then gets immersed into the underworld lifestyle that his friend Joe is involved in; that’s when I got to pick up the controller.

Scripted moments occur as you travel through the city which gives the city a feeling like its living and active. The cinematics are gorgeous although I noticed a slight screen tearing issue during the cinematics and during gameplay. Mafia II uses a cover system for gun fights; the analog aiming control feels a little too slippery but after all, this is still an early build. Controlling a car when driving also feels a little slippery and the camera gets a little crazy in tight areas. Again, this is still an early build. Mafia II will be released on PS3, 360 and PC although only the 360 version was playable at this demonstration.

2K could not afford us any hands on time with Civilization V but we did get to see a hands-off demo with some of the developers from Firaxis. Civ V was built from the ground up with a brand new game engine designed specifically for this title aptly called “The Civ V Engine”. The first and most welcome addition to Civ is the hexagonal grid system which now replaces the square grid system from before. Players can now move diagonally without using more moves than necessary.

Notifications of events automatically taking place will now appear for the player as they happen so as to eliminate the mystery, which players endured in previous versions. Every bit of content from previous Civ games is present, and in even better shape, for Civ V. “Civ V is also just as moddable as Civ IV” said the Firaxis spokesman. National leaders will now speak using their real languages instead of the pseudo languages found in Civilization Revolution. Another step towards being less tedious is that in order to gain a conquest victory, players only have to take over the Capital cities of a nation instead of every single city. Lastly, a fantastic new addition is the ability for cities to be able to defend themselves; cities now have hit points which need to be depleted before taking them over. Civilization V will be available on PC this Fall.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
2K Marin
Firaxis

Spawn HD-720

Sunday 14 March 2010 - 00:09
Peter Rizkalla

Probably one of my absolute favorite things on the show floor of GDC in 2010 was the Spawn Labs HD-720. This peripheral allows you to play your console games anywhere you want as long as you are near a computer with internet and have a USB game controller.

Basically, players buy the $200 HD-720, connect their consoles to it as well as an internet connection, sign up for the free service that Spawn Labs offers and fire up a laptop to play. The peripheral can also power on your game systems from the road. How this works is that, from your internet enabled computer, you download and install their client and register your HD-720. Then, you register your game systems. Once that’s done you select your game system within the client and a video player will appear showing you what your game system is outputting. Even a Mac client is in the works.

The big plug is that it also works with Multiplayer. Players who own the HD-720 can start up a game at home and allow their friends to join their game at anytime. All the friend has to do is fire up the client on their computer and plug in a controller. It’s totally free for friends; they are not required to buy any hardware or software. Say you are at home and you have a friend with you and there is a third friend on the road and you all want to play a three-player game together. That works too although you would have to purchase an adapter to let the second friend play. The adapter to allow the second player to play costs US$40. $40 seems kind of pricey for controller adapters but the Spawn Labs agent that I spoke with said “We’re working to get the price lowered.”

The very same agent also claimed that the HD-720 supports up to four players at the same time. Players playing through a computer will find that it looks gorgeous but the frame rate is not as smooth as playing it on a direct source. However, it was good enough to play demanding games like Street Fighter IV which is what was available for play at the show. Unfortunately, the highest input the HD-720 supports is Component; no HDMI. The official site says that the HD-720 is compatible with the 360, PS3, PS2, GameCube and original Xbox.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
Spawn

CryENGINE on display

Saturday 13 March 2010 - 22:43
Peter Rizkalla

On the show floor I got to take a glimpse at CryTech’s new game development tool and game engine CryENGINE 3.

Before the demonstration even began, CryTech had a trailer going on four large LCD monitors of the various features of CryENGINE 3 such as dynamic time of day, deferred lighting, color grading, procedural destruction, integrated physics, procedural deformations and many other features. Of these features, the one that interested me the most was character hit reactions which automatically assigned animation rules to characters as they were impacted by things like bullets and explosions. Instead of just 'ragdolling,' characters now react to impacts in a believable manner without going in and animating the reactions one by one.

As the demo started, these features were explained much more in depth. Terrain editing and vegetation creation was very impressive as massive amounts of the green stuff could be created at once and each individual piece could then be fine-tuned. A console toolbar has also been added to help create features specifically designed to work for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The most impressive feature though was 'LIVE CREATE' which allowed gameplay and graphical elements to be edited in real-time such as in the creation of Killzone 2.

In the presentation, changes happened instantaneously on the playable 360 and PS3 demos. The CryENGINE 3 creation tool will be included on the retail copy of Crysis 2 when it is released later this year.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
CryENGINE 3

Will Wright

Saturday 13 March 2010 - 21:22
Paul Hellard

The hot topic of this GDC were the activities inside the head of the players of games. What endorphins were reacting with which neurotransmitter. Most of the sessions talked deeply and psychologically about the perceived direction of games, and the players themselves.

Will Wright was the mystery guest for GDC's final panel. The creator of the SIMs franchise, Spore and too many other games, Wright now plays in his Stupid Fun Club studio. His was an astounding rant that followed the job of moulding a totally engrossing game playing experience. The Game makers mixing the creation of the virtual life character, and all it's traits, into the lives of those who play the game. He called this the 'Metaphysics of Game Development.'

The relationship between players and game makers was perhaps the largest theme in Wright's session. "In Sims, players are inherently narcissistic. We'd see that players would spend hours creating themselves in The Sims," said Wright. Several times he referred to himself as a drug dealer, dealing out "hormones and endorphins, and trying to hit those neurotransmitters".

When Sim City was being developed, the drive was to create a world for the player to become involved in. Now, with Wii Fit, it is improving the player. Social gaming is another area of gaming that Wright is watching closely. Although there is a rush of interest right now, there will be a settling back "and this will become probably a quarter of the market," he said.

"The interesting part of all these kinds of games is the cross over points," Wright said. "The intersections is where the exciting stuff is. Real science."

Wright mentioned he had secret projects happening at his new Stupid Fun Club studio, of course, none which he could talk about.

Some audience reaction: "Will Wright just delivered the equivalent of ten good TED talks in a single GDC session." Others said it was "like a top-level Michael Bay movie, but with 'ideas'."

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
Classic Will Wright TED Talk
Stupid Fun Club

PlayStation Move

Saturday 13 March 2010 - 15:49
Peter Rizkalla

I spent some hands-on time playing around with Sony’s new PS3 wireless controller which is now called the PlayStation Move. As expected, it’s amazingly accurate… from what I saw there.

Unfortunately, the “sub-controller” attachment that Sony also announced was not on the show floor to test out. There were only two playable tech demos on the Sony show floor; the first was a timed-mini-game based title that also used the PlayStation Eye to portray the players image on the screen.

The mini games I played there had me swat bugs out of the air as they flew by and pop bubbles. For the bug swatting game, I saw myself on the screen with a tennis racket super imposed over the Move controller in my hand. Same thing with the bubble popping game except it was a harpoon instead of a tennis racket. 

The second demo seemed more unfinished much like the tech demo that was shown at last year’s E3. It displayed capabilities for many different kinds of game genres such as shooting, boxing and painting. The PlayStation Move will require the PlayStation Eye in order to work and will be released as a bundle with the Eye for a promised price range of less than US$100.

However, it remains to be seen if that price tag also includes the 'sub-controller' attachment. Don’t call it a nunchuk.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
PlayStation Move

Sid Meier's GDC Keynote

Friday 12 March 2010 - 21:58
Peter Rizkalla

Sid Meier began his speech by naming it 'Psychology of Game Design: Everything You Know Is Wrong.' He touched on many game design aspects that affect the experience for players and what keeps a player hooked on a game.

Meier used Civilization as an example touching in the development of Civilization Revolution. “Coming from a background in science, math and programming, I like to think of myself as a logical person.” Players that play-tested CivRev however seemed a little illogical based on his example. When coming across a three to one odds battle in the player’s favor and yet the player still loses, Meier found that players believed the game to be cheating because 'three is big and one is small.' But when the player wins in a battle that is three to one odds against them they don’t feel like the game is broken or cheating at all! Meier surprisingly did not comment on the lunacy of the player but rather addressed the challenge of creating a believable experience for the player.

Meier also touched on the idea of immediacy that Randy Smith from Tiger Style also talked about. “The first 15 minutes have to be really compelling and really fun,” says Meier, referring to any given game. Meier also mentioned that a while back he stated that four difficulty levels were the perfect amount to have in a game. “Apparently we need nine difficulty levels,” says Meier, talking about the importance of giving players the feeling that there is always another challenge out there.

Meier then went on to talk about his previous mistakes in video game development which he entitled 'My Bad.' He mentions mistakes such as making the first Civ a real-time game and also mentioning a Dinosaur themed game that he attempted a while back which never took off for reasons he still cannot figure out. Of the mistakes he mentioned, the most hilarious was his story about development of the upcoming Civilization Network in which he added the ability for players to give gold to other players for various reasons. It turns out that no one decided to give any of their gold to anyone else!

Meier went on to talk about making games on a budget. One of the tips he gave was to, “tap into what the player already knows. If the player sees a swordsman with a black curly moustache they already assume that he is the bad guy.” They don’t need any backstory to tell them that. Meier also touched a bit on “protecting the player from themselves”. “How do you handle the idea of Load and Save?” he says. Giving the player a very lenient Load/Save system often causes the player to play the game, win a battle, save, play some more, lose a battle, turn off the game and reload his previous save and try again to win the battle he just lost. “If you provide the player with too easy access to loading and saving you diminish the experience of the game,” says Meier.

Towards the end of Meier’s address, he mentioned the idea of The Epic Journey where he encourages developers to ask themselves “How can we make our Journey more epic-like or our epic more journey-like?” “Learning and progress” is what he suggested. “This is fundamental to the journey,” says Meier. The point is that when a player is constantly at a better place than they were before, it keeps them heavily interested. “I think World of Warcraft does a good job of conveying this.” Meier then ends his speech by jokingly telling the crowd “Now you know everything.”

I got to ask Sid Meier a post keynote question. I asked how he normally conveys his ideas and vision to his artists when developing a new title? He replied “I build a visual prototype of what I want and present it to the artists. This is something they can always go back to. Then, I let the artists just be artists. I let them be creative and see what turns out”

Related links:
Firaxis

GDC Pioneer Award

Friday 12 March 2010 - 16:25
Peter Rizkalla

On the heels of the Game Developers Choice Awards, I got to spend a little time talking to Managing Director of Valve, Gabe Newell after receiving the Pioneer Award at the show. Being in the position that Newell is in, I assumed that there were a lot of difficult things that needed to be dealt with at Valve but, quite to the contrary, Newell doesn’t find anything about his position hard. “It’s a lot of fun,” were his exact words. “For me, what I enjoy is the people that I work with. I get to be the #1 fan of Valve.”

Talking about the individual projects going on at Valve, Newell stated, “I get to see what everyone does and I get to see everything sooner and I get to see all the different versions. At our company you can walk down the halls and stick your head into somebody’s office to see what they are doing and it’s incredible. Whether it’s monster design or game code or some new engine feature, it’s awesome!” Being as passionate as he can possibly be, Newell goes on to say that “If I could do anything in the world, I’d work at Valve.”

Again, I assumed that it would be hard for him to decide what particular Valve project would be his absolute favorite and again I was wrong. Before I could even finish my question he replied “Portal 2”. Outstanding! Portal 2 is still in development and yet it has been chosen as Gabe Newell’s favorite project over legendary titles like Half-Life and Left 4 Dead! “I think it’s the best work we’ve done,” says Newell. “We’re really excited.”

It seemed as though nothing could bring down this man who absolutely adores his work and rightfully so, after all he just won a major award. But Gabe Newell did not obtain the victory that he has received tonight without challenges. “Usually our disasters have been pretty painful,” says Newell. “When you’re being sued by your publisher when you have the source code of your next big title released on the internet, it’s hard to find the funny part of that story.” Speaking of funny, Gabe Newell was also featured in one of Mega64’s videos that was shown just before he received his award, where he volunteering to stand in as Ringo during a Beatles Rock Band stunt.

Photo courtesy of the GDC.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
Valve Software

GDC Choice Awards

Thursday 11 March 2010 - 20:35
Paul Hellard

Hosted by Warren Spector who came on to the stage wearing Micky Mouse ears, this looks like a great night to be involved in. I shall update as I see it.

The Best Debut Game Award is won by 'Torchlight'. The Best Debut Game Award recognizes the best game from any development studio which released its first publicly available title in the year 2009.

The Best Audio Award goes to 'Uncharted 2'. Best Audio recognises the overall excellence of audio in a game - including, but not limited to, sound effects, musical composition, sound design, orchestration, etc.

The Best Game Design Award goes to 'Batman: Arkham Asylum'. This award recognizes the overall excellence of design in a game - including, but not limited to, gameplay mechanics, playability, play balancing, and level design.

The Best Writing Award goes to 'Uncharted 2'. The Best Writing Award recognises the overall excellence of storytelling in a game - including, but not limited to, scenario, plot construction, story, dialogue, and other major factors.

The Best New Social Online Game goes to 'Farmville'. Best New Social Online Game recognises the newest category, which is online, meaning it is the biggest audience, immediately.

Best Handheld Game award goes to Scribblenauts. Best Handheld Game Award recognizes the overall best game commercially released on any handheld platform during 2009.

The Best Technology Award goes to 'Uncharted 2' The Best Technology Award recognizes the overall excellence of technology in a game - including, but not limited to, graphics programming, artificial intelligence, networking, and physics.

Best Downloadable Game Award goes to 'Flower'. This award recognises the overall best game released on console or PC platforms specifically and solely for digital download - with an emphasis on smaller, more 'casual'-friendly titles.

The Best Visual Arts Award is picked up by 'Uncharted 2'. The Best Visual Arts Award recognises the overall excellence of visual art in a game - including, but not limited to, art direction, animation, modeling, character design, texture creation, etc.

The Innovation Award is won by 'Scribblenaut'. This Award recognises the single game that demonstrates true innovation, advances the state of the art, and pushes the boundaries of games as an expressive medium.

The Ambassador Award was given out by John Smedley. The Penny Arcade won the honour for helping the game industry advance to a better place, either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for video games and help further our art.

Chris Hecker came out to present The Pioneer Award (formerly known as the First Penguin Award). This award to Gabe Newell celebrates those individuals who developed a breakthrough technology, game concept, or gameplay design at a crucial juncture in video game history. Chris talked a mile a minute and told us of when Gabe wanted Warren Spector to name his new company Valve South, and tons of stuff. He hasn't taken a breath yet. I'm worried. ;-)

The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to John Carmack, by StupidFunGame company and game-god, Will Wright. Will took us through yet another of his slide presentations to introduce John. I love his slide presentations. This major award recognizes the career and achievements of a developer who has made an indelible impact on the craft of game development and games as a whole.

The Game of the Year Award goes to Uncharted 2'. It just couldn't get any better than this.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
Live Stream

IGF Awards

Thursday 11 March 2010 - 19:55
Paul Hellard

After a bit of a wooden start, the IGF Awards began, right on time. This is, I believe, very much a required area of awards systems. It's like the Sundance to the Oscars. If you know what I mean. Sometimes the best developers are sourced out of this crowd. Giving the independents a good showing, gives great talent a chance to be acknowledged without them having to be high end producers. It also makes them into better behemoths in the long run. ;-) Here are the awards and the winners as they were read out.

Best Student Game Award : Continuity, from the Chalmers University of Technology & University of Gothenburg (Flash)

Award for Technical Excellence
   •   Limbo,' developed by PlayDead.

'Direct2Drive' Vision Award
   •   'Max and the Magic Marker'

Excellence in Design:
   •   'Monaco', developed by Pocketwatch games.

Nuovo Award:
   •   'Tuning'

Now an Audience Award for 2010, goes to 'Heroes of Newerth'

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:
   •   'Monaco', developed by Pocketwatch games.

Excellence in Visual Art:
   •   'Limbo', Developed by PlayDead.


Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco

Fable III @ GDC

Thursday 11 March 2010 - 19:21
Peter Rizkalla

Peter Molyneux opened his keynote by letting us know that this whole session was actually called Complex Challenges of Intuitive Design. “I had to call it this complex name to get my talk accepted” he jokes. He then states “What is core to Fable? We sat down and created a list of the big, big changes we are doing in Fable III.” Indeed! Of the changes announced, all of the 2D elements in Fable will now be gone in Fable III which means no more health bar and no more 2D interface for the pause menu.

The pause menu has now been replaced with a fully modeled mansion environment where all of the typical menu options can be executed. The mansion also has a butler who assists you. A bomb was dropped on us when Molyneux stated that voice acting for the butler would be performed by John Cleese!

A new mechanic called 'Touch' has now also been added to Fable. Touch allows you to physically interact with other characters. Another mechanic called 'Judgement' was mentioned but nothing was shown in regards to it. The entire experience system has also been removed in favor of a Followers system. The more people in the game following you, the more powerful you are and every little thing you do affects how much more or less people follow you. “Followers is a currency that can be applied to the whole game,” says Molyneux, who then hints at something deeper within the 'followers' system.

Character morphing now includes good or evil wings which are displayed on your character during combat. The more followers you have, the larger and more menacing your wings become. Weapons also morph in Fable III. Molyneux then added that Xbox LIVE Gamescores will also have an effect on how weapons morph.

Josh Atkins chimes in about the combat. “We really admire guys like Team Ninja for Ninja Gaiden and Sony Santa Monica for God of War.” He touched on how Fable III’s combat will be more simplified with a “one button combat system”

Molyneux then returns to put the finishing touches on the session. We learned that defeating the final boss of the game will only be the halfway point in Fable III. Players then continue the story as king which then adds a couple extra distinct gameplay abilities only available to you as a king which involves the Judgment feature referred to earlier.

Even the dog in Fable has been given new personality traits such as a hatred for rabbits; the dog will actually dart off to chase a rabbit and totally ignore your commands if a rabbit is nearby. Fable III will be releasing for Xbox 360. When asked if it would be released on PC Molyneux stated that he liked the PC, he would like to see it released on PC but can’t promise anything for fear of nearby sniper-rifle-toting PR guys.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
Lionhead Studios
CGSociety article on Fable franchise.

Sixense True Motion at GDC

Wednesday 10 March 2010 - 22:06
Peter Rizkalla

Originally seen at CES last January, the Sixense True Motion Dev kit magnetic motion sensing controllers are on display at GDC.

I got some hands on time with the controllers to see how they feel playing on a dev copy of Left 4 Dead 2 for PC. Unlike the Wii where a main controller is used with an attachment plugged in, the Sixense used two main controllers which were identical. Each wireless controller has various face buttons, an analog nub and a trigger button. In the version of Left 4 Dead 2 that I played, moving was performed with the analog nub on the left handed controller while aiming was performed by physically moving the right handed controller.

At first this felt great but I instantly ran into a problem; What if I wanted to aim behind me? I asked the rep. After all, I can only bend my arm back so far. It turns out that using the analog nub on the right handed controller aims as well and allows the dead-zone to be repositioned.

The accuracy of these controllers blows away the accuracy of Nintendo’s controllers. The motion sensitivity is precise to one millimeter of positioning and to one degree of orientation. The only issue is that you have to be within three meters of the transponder, no further. Valve is already looking to possibly use this technology in future Steam games. The Sixense True Motion controllers will be produced by Razer. No price point has been announced yet.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
Razer Sixense True Motion

IGF category winners

Wednesday 10 March 2010 - 21:28
Peter Rizkalla

The Mobile/Handheld Summit closed out here on the second day of GDC with a panel featuring multiple game developers who had won IGF Awards in their category.

The first to talk about their title was Randy Smith from Tiger Style whose game, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, won Best iPhone Game award. Although Spider is a small, indie game it actually has a very distinct artistic feel with a very lonely and forlorn atmosphere. Spider was celebrated for it’s outstanding control, it’s visuals and it’s story.

Of the developers who received awards, the most interesting were, of course, Spider as well as a game developed by indie developer Capy Games called Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. The president of Capy, Nathan Vella was on hand to display the game.

Sword & Sworcery won Best Art In Mobile Games; the art style is basically a pixelated, Atari 2600 style but with a much broader color palette and very smooth animations of a character venturing through a world of forests and castles who fights off enemies like bears who wield swords.

Lastly, another of the more outstanding titles that received an award was a puzzle title by Powerhead Games called Glow Artisan. Glow is a DSi download title which received an award for Best Mobile Game Design. CEO/Creative Director Jason Schreiber showed off the very simple game. Glow exhibits a very simple ‘discover the picture’ gameplay mechanic as well as the ability to have user created content. Powerhead games has been a developer for years but has only been a publisher for the last few months; Glow Artisan being their first self-published game.

Photo courtesy of the GDC, Photographer: Vincent Diamante.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
Independent Games Festival
Tiger Style
Capy Games
Powerhead Games

Autodesk Softimage 2011

Wednesday 10 March 2010 - 14:48
Paul Hellard

Autodesk has also announced the imminent release of Softimage 2011. In fact, Autodesk overdid their announcements yesterday and released a new version of just about everything they own. Just kidding. New versions of Kynapse and HumanIK game development middleware were also unveiled, as well as 3ds Max 2011 and Maya 2011.

Key New Features in Autodesk Softimage 2011 Software:
• Rendering Sandbox — Automatically hosts external shaders and renderers without the need to build a custom shader user interface (UI) or other tools.
• ICE Kinematics — Aids creation of advanced rigging elements with custom inverse kinematics, spines, constraints and dynamics tails. The visual graph-based structure of ICE helps remove trial and error and enables easier examination of rig construction, facilitating troubleshooting and rig debugging.
• Automated Lip-Synching in Face Robot — Allows for quicker generation of facial animation based on an audio file. Features a new dedicated view for controlling the visemes and phonemes with function curves to help modify their contribution.
• Rendering Enhancements — The new mental ray 2011 renderer offers increased stability and faster renders. Up to one hundred new mental ray shaders enable easier simulation of a wider range of materials. Helps save time rendering multiple cameras for each pass, and the new Camera and Render Slate functionality shows useful information in the viewport or renders.
• 100 New ICE Compounds — Provides predefined compounds covering several areas: Kinematics, Arrays, Curves, Debugging, Deformation Effects, Hull Deformers, Skinning, Verlet Integration, Geometry Queries, Math, Particle Emissions, Particle Getters and Setters, Testers, Strands and Strand Dynamics.
• PhysX 2.83 — Helps artists create meshless deformations in ICE with the latest NVIDIA PhysX rigid body library. Provides new support for springs and dampers. New library also offers accelerated performance when using the optional addition of an NVIDIA CUDA enabled graphics processing unit (GPU).

From March 11–13, 2010, visit the Virtual GDC event on the AREA community site to watch new Softimage 2011 product demonstrations and customer presentations live from the Autodesk Game Developers Conference booth. More information is also available on Mark Schoennagel’s Planet Softimage AREA blog.

Autodesk anticipates that Softimage 2011 will be available in English and Japanese in April 2010.

Autodesk Softimage
Autodesk YouTube Channel

Share This

Indie Games Summit

Tuesday 09 March 2010 - 22:38
Peter Rizkalla

“Hi I’m Randy” is the first thing that we saw on the screen when entering room 135 in North Hall. Independent game designer and owner of indie game company Tiger Style Randy Smith opens with 'Increasing Our Reach: Designing To Grab and Retain Players." It actually didn’t turn out to be a clear guide as I suppose they originally wanted, but rather turned out to be an informative discussion on gameplay design.

The theme of the dialogue could be summed up in what Randy called “Immediacy with Depth” which basically explained the balancing act of how good game design immediately grabs the player’s interest while introducing depth in the gameplay.

Many independent games like Canabalt, Flight Control for the iPhone and Scribblenauts were used as examples as well as Tiger Style’s own game Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. Learning powerful affordances in game development was emphasized as key. For example; a game where shooting a wall and having the bullets bounce off is much weaker when compared to a game where the bullets would cause damage to the wall through actual model deformations.

iPhone game Gomi featured weak and dry affordances such as limited gameplay where the player could just basically hold their iPhone at an angle for an extended period of time and complete the game. Although Scribblenauts was used as a good example of “depth” with it’s ability to have players create and use any implement they can think of, it was also used as a bad example of “immediacy” which when started, forced the player to play through almost 20 minutes of tutorials.

Basically, the idea being communicated by Randy Smith was that good game design equals lots and lots of detail in the design, plus it allows the player to enjoy each detail, as it is revealed, immediately.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
Independent Game Festival

Autodesk Maya 2011

Tuesday 09 March 2010 - 21:45
Paul Hellard

Autodesk has announced Maya 2011, the latest version of their 3D animation software. The new Maya has a high performance Core, an enhanced skinning workflow and 3D customisable User Interface, among many other things.

Key New Features in Autodesk Maya 2011 software
o Redesigned User Interface - Based on Nokia Qt, the new Maya 2011 UI is simpler to customize, featuring dockable UI elements and improved editors.
o High Performance Core - Maya 2011 features a completely redesigned graphics pipeline that helps deliver new levels of performance for complex scenes while improving the quality of the viewport feedback.
o Mac OS X 64-Bit Availability - Mac OS X users can access considerably more memory to handle larger and more complex scenes with the new 64-bit executable.
o Accelerated 3D Editorial - The software's new Camera Sequencer adds powerful multicamera editorial capabilities to help facilitate pre-visualization and virtual moviemaking production using a Maya timeline.
o Developed on-site in production to meet the needs of large-scale CG animations, the Camera Sequencer supports import of both AAF and Final Cut Pro EDLs.
o Enhanced Skinning Workflow - Creating believable CG characters is also made easier with a new, dual quaternion option for smooth skinning, interactive volume binding, enhancements to the Paint Skin Weights tool, deformer weight mirroring and surface falloff mode for the Wrap deformer.
o Improved Maya Composite - A new Vector Paint feature in Maya Composite dramatically improves its paint and rotoscoping capabilities. Now, animatable and trackable paint strokes can be used to paint colors and reveal or clone data across a sequence or on a per-frame basis.

Autodesk's GDC presence (on the show floor) includes some pretty impressive case studies, as well Cory Mogk's Mayalicious, Steven Roselle's My Oh Maya! and Duncan Brinsmead's Duncan's Corner.

Autodesk anticipates that Maya 2011 will be available in English and Japanese in April 2010. The Autodesk suggested retail price (SRP) for an Autodesk Maya 2011 stand-alone license is US$3,495.* The SRP to upgrade from Maya 2010 stand-alone to Maya 2011 stand-alone is US$1,745.* Autodesk Subscription is available for purchase simultaneously with the product or upgrade purchase for US$595 SRP per year.

Autodesk Maya 2011
Autodesk YouTube Channel

Share This

UE3 to iPhone

Tuesday 09 March 2010 - 18:48
Peter Rizkalla

Typically, games for phones have never really been taken seriously among the gaming public and among game developers.

This is undoubtedly an insult to developers of cell phone games who do, in fact, take their jobs quite seriously. However, Epic games has taken a giant leap into getting cell phone games to make a much bigger impact on the game world than it already has. Epic has now introduced their gargantuan game creation tool, Unreal Engine 3, into Apple’s iPhone.

Considering that many games such as Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, both of the BioShock games and many, many others are built around the UE3 engine, this can very well open the door for numerous game developers to begin creating serious games for the iPhone platform. How this is done is actually amazing because the Unreal Engine 3 itself is actually completely C++ and is totally developed for a PC engine. In order to get it to work on the Mac based iPhone Senior Console Programmer Josh Adams explains that porting the UE3 to iPhone involved compiling it in Xcode and creating hand written shaders specifically for the iPhone.

What all this basically means is that Epic has gotten the Mac based iPhone and the PC based Unreal Engine 3 to play nice together. So far, Josh Admas tells us that games are already being developed with frame rates going up as high as 20 to 30 frames per second. No UE3 based iPhone games have been announced yet. Also, no support for the iPad has been announced either.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco

GDC Start!

Tuesday 09 March 2010 - 18:26
Peter Rizkalla

It’s the first day of GDC and actually… it’s quite slow. The main show floor doesn’t open until Thursday and most of the media guys that are scouring the Moscone Center are not really expecting anything heavy until then. Even Sid Meier’s keynote will not be held until Friday.

Mind you, there are still very interesting things floating around out here. Things like the motion controllers for PC by Sixense that are on display being used on Left 4 Dead 2 are pretty amazing as well as outstandingly accurate. Towards the middle of the day, however, the summits started getting much fuller. Nintendo posters advertising Wario Ware D.I.Y. decorate almost every hall. It might be a little slow now but things are looking to pick up speed even now.

Photo courtesy of the GDC..

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco

Autodesk 3ds Max 2011

Tuesday 09 March 2010 - 15:50
Paul Hellard

Autodesk has announced the latest version of 3ds Max in an early morning press meeting from San Rafael, CA. It is geared up with a new node-based material editor, a hardware renderer and a fully-featured compositor, all onboard to help users create better content.

Key New Features in Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 software.
Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 has the following new and enhanced features:
o Slate, a new node-based material editor that enables artists to more easily visualize and edit material component relationships.
o Quicksilver hardware renderer, a new multithreaded rendering engine that uses both the CPU and the GPU and can achieve up to 10 times faster rendering than traditional techniques on common graphics cards.
o Ability to view many 3ds Max texture maps and materials in the viewport to help develop and refine scenes in a higher-fidelity interactive display environment - without the constant need to re-render.
o Extended Graphite modeling and Viewport Canvas toolsets for 3D and 2D painting of textures directly in the viewport, along with the ability to paint with object brushes to help create geometry within a scene.
o Ability to non-destructively layer local edits on top of referenced content, helping artists to collaborate more efficiently.
o 3ds Max Composite, a full-featured, high dynamic range (HDR)-capable compositor, based on technology from Autodesk Toxik software.

The Virtual GDC event on the-area.com are being shown live direct from the Autodesk booth. This involves live demonstrations from Autodesk's cool team of demonstrators and presentations from customers using 3ds Max.

Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 will be available in English in April 2010. Autodesk expects to announce Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software in late-March 2010. The Autodesk suggested retail price (SRP) for an Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 stand-alone license is US$3,495.* The SRP to upgrade from either 3ds Max 2010 or 3ds Max Design 2010 stand-alone to 3ds Max 2011 stand-alone is $1,745.* Autodesk Subscription is available for purchase simultaneously with the product or upgrade purchase for $495* SRP per year.

Related links:
Autodesk 3ds Max 2011
Autodesk YouTube Channel

CryENGINE in S3D

Tuesday 02 March 2010 - 18:34
Paul Hellard

Crytek has just announced some very interesting news. It seems that the company is planning to show their CryENGINE 3 in stereoscopic 3D (S-3D) at this year’s GDC expo in San Francisco (11–13 March). It is interesting to note that this actually appears to be the first announcement about something S-3D to be showcased during GDC this year, as I was beginning to wonder if suddenly everyone forgot about Stereoscopic 3D. Lets hope that there will be much more to be seen during GDC in terms of Stereo 3D support, after all the developers need to be aware of the advantages that S-3D can bring into gaming along with how to properly implement game graphics and effects.

But back to the CryENGINE 3, one of the key features of the new engine is the “LiveCreate” feature, which will also be showcased at GDC, and what it does is to allow designers to work with a single editor, but see and play the results in real-time on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. With CryENGINE 3, scalability across multiple platforms is a revolutionary development to enable the creation of truly great-looking games – regardless of the target platform. Hopefully this will help a lot to stop seeing some crappy port of a game for one or another platform, especially if other developers adopt similar approach to their game engines.

“After the successful introduction of CryENGINE 3 at last year’s GDC, we are really excited to show the latest version of our all-in-one game development solution this year in stereoscopic 3D. Over the past few years, S-3D technology has emerged as one of the key trends both in movies and games. With CryENGINE 3, developers will have the ability to create their content in 3D on all platforms. There are basically no longer any limits to a designer’s creativity. CryENGINE 3 features many innovations to accelerate development, cut production costs and ensure teams are able to maximize their own creativity without delays,” says Carl Jones, Director of Global Business Development CryENGINE.

It is worth to note that CryENGINE 3 seems to support Stereoscopic 3D natively and does not require additional drivers, or at least that is what Crytek demonstrated during Siggraph 2009 with the engine. And then again even before Siggraph, during GDC 2009, Cytek has also demonstrated working Stereoscopic 3D support with CryENGINE 2 on iZ3D display. Maybe it is about time for Crytek to become a bit more serious and active about S-3D and join an organization like The S3DGA, as there are still not a lot of game engines designed to support stereo 3D gaming. And while the Stereoscopic 3D support in CryENGINE 3 seems to be for PC only at the moment, with PS3 going to be 3D-ready soon and because of the LiveCreate feature of the engine we might see console S3D support too, and not only limited to PS3, but on Xbox 360 too. Still nothing official about stereoscopic 3D support for consoles coming from Crytek.

Related links:
Crytek

Sid Meier

Tuesday 02 March 2010 - 08:30
Paul Hellard

Sid Meier has been selected to deliver the GDC 2010 keynote. Director of Creative Development and Co-Founder of Firaxis Games, Meier is celebrating 26 years as a game designer. His career is one that places him among the great creative visionaries of our time. Sid began his legendary career as a founding partner of MicroProse Software, and it's from his computer that a billion-dollar industry emerged.

In his keynote, Meier will discuss the finer definitions of designing a game, using the results of years of player study in his own games. Human psychology has more direct influence in design than does any collection of physics, math or engineering. Studying what the player wants to do and then why, gives the game designer more direction to how he should then allow the player to get what they want.

As Director of Creative Development at Firaxis, Sid delivers the most celebrated gameplay available anywhere. He is even known by industry experts as one of the industry's 'Game Gods.' With the support of the large team at Firaxis, big name games are released through his company, like Gettysburg!, Alpha Centauri, the Civilization series and Pirates!

In 1999, Sid was the second person ever to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Science's Hall of Fame, also inducted into the Computer Museum of America's Hall of Fame in 2002, and recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2008 GDC Choice Awards.

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco
Firaxis

GDC Diary

Monday 01 March 2010 - 23:07
Paul Hellard

CGSociety will be at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Follow us along as we check out the what's new on the gaming ground. We will be on the Show floor, in some of the Sessions, at the Choice Awards and the Keynotes. We'll also play some of the games and go to a few parties.

There's a pretty impressive lineup at the show, with six separate tracks of sessions which traverse Design, Programming, Visual Arts, Business of games, Social Games and Audio.

Many of the industry's leaders and artists are ready to show off the latest technologies as well as glimpses of games in the five day show, set up underground at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco.

GDC organizers are highlighting talks on Borderlands, Mass Effect 2, and Unreal Engine 3's iPhone port, among others. In 'Where Did My Inventory Go? Refining Gameplay in Mass Effect 2, BioWare's lead gameplay designer Christina Norman will discuss "how a small vision shift lead to radical design changes in Mass Effect 2’s combat gameplay and RPG systems. Lessons learned will be presented, including the challenge of communicating gameplay changes to the existing player community."

We'll also be twittering, from @ballisticmedia

Related links:
GDC 2010 San Francisco