Big News x 2

It's only Tuesday and so far it's been a pretty exciting week. First of all, we had a seminar last night featuring Jean-François Dugas (Lead Game Designer) and Mary DeMarle (Lead Narrative Designer) of Eidos Montreal. They worked on one of last year's big titles, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. 

Despite dragging my feet to the auditorium (sorry professors) to what I thought would be another Look-How-Awesome-I-Am presentations by someone I could never even touch in terms of talent, it ended up being extremely interesting.

I haven't been to an enormous amount of talks like this, but what I have been to have been less learning experiences and more... intimidating presentations on the amount of talent the people can hold in their bodies. Blech.

But "J.F." (as they called him) and Mary were very normal, down-to-earth people -- people that I could see myself working beside (if I were ever lucky enough to). They realized not only their successes, but their flaws and regrets in making the new Deus Ex. And they made it very clear that it is not through magic of their own that the game came to be, but from the talent and hard work of their entire team.

The Powerpoint presentation itself was very short. It started with a personal timeline of each of the designers starting from 1997 -- showing what games they worked on for how long. It ended with a Deus Ex: Human Revolution cinematic trailer, which I had actually never seen before.

It was so cool.

Right off the bat, J.F. reiterated a point that's been personally bugging me since last semester. He talked about an unannounced game he worked on for a few years that was apparently "awesome" as he put it. What happened to it? It got cut.

After years of production... production just... stops.

This happened with a game cut earlier this year nicknamed Project Copernicus that was being developed by 38 Studios. Before it was nixed, I was more excited for it than I was for Twisted Metal 2012 (this is a big deal). 

It's just a shame, you know? It's a damn shame. And it's not that rare for this to happen. I mean, these are not even close to the only two times a game has been cut while in production.

J.F. also lightheartedly talked about a game he worked on that was, as he put it, the worst game ever. Which only reinforces what our professors have been telling us senior year, I think. Our senior team game is the last creative thing we get to do, at least for a long, looong time. Rather, this is the last project we work on in which we have any choice. Sometimes, even if we won't like it at all, we'll have to work on a stupid, bad project. Them's the ropes.

I also learned a lot about the conceptual process and meshing as a team. For the first few months the Deus Ex team sat in a room and used sticky notes for their design ideas -- not even touching a computer. Interesting. And a complete contrast to what we're doing at Champlain. 

Mary talked about the story of Deus Ex, and how everything tells a story: game design, mechanics, art, etc. So everyone is telling the story: the designers, the artists, etc. In other words, not just the narrative designers and not just the cutscenes. This is something that matters a lot to me. Sometimes teams are so divided. Sometimes it's like they have nothing to do with each other, except all of their work is being Frankenstein mashed together into the same game. What are the chances of something like that being cohesive and good?

The lead designers at Eidos Montreal seem to understand this concept. It's not just one person's game. It's everyone's and everyone has their input. Everyone works together, and so every element of the game will work together. 

My game team in Production II last semester was pretty much the opposite of this. All the designers and I (I was the only artist on my team) worked as separately as possible in most cases. Part of the problem was that we didn't have a solid narrative design until three months in, and part of it was just not coming together as a team. In the end our game was not nearly as good as we wanted.

This year I have infinitely more hope for my team. Mageball is important to all of us, so we've all been working together constantly to get the outcome that we want from all elements. We also all happen to be friends and will be spending more time working together on everything.

I know I've talked a lot already, but there's more big news. Today Shadowpuppet Studios passed Stage One in production! Wooo! Thank you, thank you.

My team managed to whip up a new spell system, goal system, and 4-player prototype, which pushed us through. 

This new goal is a ring on a stand. It has a defense system that deactivates

if shot by the opposing team's attack, and regenerates over time. There is no goalie.

  
The new spell system, instead of being separated by a class of element (fire, ice, earth, air, etc.), is just free-to-pick. So, instead of picking the element Earth to get rock wall, rock armour, and slow time, a player would just pick individually, rock wall and whatever other spells they want. 

We also changed the spells to cater toward cooperative play. Some spells aid your team, and some hinder the other team. They also no longer "kill" a player, but make them fumble or slow down when their health is too low.

So the new unsorted/unclassified spells are that way to hint at a sports class system. Since some spells are offensive and some defensive, players may choose to play offense and pick all offensive spells, defense with defensive, or a mix.

You can also slam dunk if you run through the goal with the help of a teammate!

So while Chris, Alex and Bryan were working on all of that, I've been working on character modeling. Right now I'm sculpting in ZBrush.

 

I just want to make this clear: this is my first character model. So I'm... chuggin' along.

Thanks for reading Long Post: Extended Edition. Until next time! 

EDIT:

Long Post: Extended Edition Extra Content

I just wanted to update on what I've done on the character since I posted this evening.

This picture also shows the base character model from Maya (right) that I brought into ZBrush to start the sculpt. On the left is the "finished" sculpt (in quotes because I'll probably touch it up tomorrow).