Monthly Archives: January 2009

The Trials and Tribulations of Being a Level Designer, p2

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Part 2 of 2, by Cori Nicole May

I’ve made cutscenes, too. I discovered, in so doing, that I also have a terrible cinematic eye, and dramatic effect is not my forte. Fortunately, by some grace, in the meantime an entire department of cinematic designers has been created, and no one will ever be forced to watch my amateurish efforts again. I marvel at those who can do it, though; I love playing through the game and seeing the new cutscenes and staging that have been put in, the close-ups and pull-backs for special effects. I try to remember to tell the cinematics people how wonderful their work is, because I know how mediocre my previous attempts had been, in comparison. And the level artist and character artists too, for that matter. I just hope that makes up for the many times I have to go and whine about bugs and different interpretations of how something should look.

I occasionally get to have some input into voice acting as well, even if my pleas to have Russell Wong in the game fell on deaf ears. Well, ears who couldn’t afford Russell Wong, at any rate. And some times I pay for that. It took me a few weeks, but I eventually began to realize that my officemate was actually turning up the volume on his computer whenever Nathan Fillion was speaking, just to watch me swoon all over again. (Yes, I was the only female technical designer for a very long time. Yes, this did occasionally result in hijinx of this sort. But it also meant I got to read the Dragon Age novel before almost anyone else, as Mr. Gaider wanted to know if it was swoon-worthy.)

Swooning is my forte, actually. We have a particular voice actor on Dragon Age, whom I suppose must go unnamed, who makes me melt every time. Even though the character is a crazy psychopath who kidnaps you and all your friends in an attempt to… well, I won’t go on. This is a PG blog, after all, and Dragon Age is a mature game.

“Oh V******, take me, don’t take the others,” I’ll plead with the computer, “let it be just you and me.”

And he never does. This is my tragedy. I do, however, save his life at the end, just in hopes that some day we can live together forever and ever. Somehow this never happens, either. But in my version of the game, it does.

I script a lot of followers, too; romance followers are the best. Because then you get to scream at the computer, “Why won’t you have sex with me!” when a particular line refuses to show up in game. (One can get a little wiggy during the late-night hours.) And then everyone stares. I once found a bug in follower code, only through my determination to watch the sex scenes one night. Another evening, I found a similar bug, just because I wanted to make a … Um, maybe I shouldn’t talk about that? This is a PG blog, after all. I certainly shouldn’t talk about the … Nope, not going to talk about it. Have I mentioned that Dragon Age is the best game ever?

But the best part of being a technical designer is getting to watch all the pieces come together, into the amazing, beautiful final creature it comes to be. From blank walls and T-poses, you get gorgeous, soaring worlds and creatures both lovely and grotesque (just wait ‘til you get slimed by the B*********, blech), and a story that will make you weep and laugh, and weep until you laugh. I wouldn’t trade my job for anyone’s in the world.

Except occasionally a florist, on those days when the tools won’t run, or the build is broken, or you’re on your 80th hour of work that week and it’s 1 am on a Friday night, and you have no clean clothes, a filthy house and an empty fridge. But mostly, it’s the best job anyone could ever have.

Try it some day. You’ll like it.

Cori Nicole May sometimes feels barely qualified for the work she loves to do, but they keep letting her do it anyways. Perhaps because she goes ‘squee’ a lot, and the only videogames she likes to play anymore are Bioware’s. Also, they had to make a special cheat code on KOTOR, just for her, so she could get through the space fighting part, and she had to get a friend to come over to kill thresher maws in Mass Effect. In what remains of her spare time, she plays Dragon Age, just because she can.

The Trials and Tribulations of Being a Level Designer, p1

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Part 1 of 2, by Cori Nicole May

For one, it’s nearly impossible to explain to people outside the business, including my friends and family, what it is exactly that I do. When I say ‘I make video-games’, I mean that quite literally, but no one seems to believe me.

“But what do you do?” they will inevitably ask.
“I’m a level designer.”
“So you’re an artist?’
*deep sigh* “No, I’m a technical designer – we take the writer’s story and implement it, using the art and programming code. So, in short, I make video games.”
“Oh,” they’ll usually say, pretending they understand. “So it’s like programming?”
Defeated, I’ll say, “Yeah, it’s like that.” (Sorry, programmers; I don’t mean to claim your title because providence knows I don’t deserve it, but there’s no other way.)

There are other trials – the tools not working or slow, the builds that break everything, the oxen that refuse, no matter what you do, to walk across the damnable swamp. (It turned out – EVENTUALLY – that the particular ox in question did not actually HAVE the walking animation I was trying to script. But how’s a poor girl to know that oxen only walk in a particular manner? No trotting for oxen, it seems.)

But the real joy of my job is that, if I wait long enough, I get to do everything, at least a little bit. Level designers are at the hub of every part of the game, and thus they get feedback on all those parts, and sometimes even get to dig in and get their hands dirty in them.

Don’t like the way a particular character looks? Back in the old days, it was just a matter of pleading with an artist until they changed it. (When I tried to get C**** to be a little prettier, the artist looked so hurt I thought perhaps he’d modeled the character on himself). But now, I can go in and make my own head to show them what I was thinking of. Sometimes they’ll even accept it! (And then make it much, much better. It has become very clear that while I may have far-too pronounced opinions on art, I sure am not an artist.) And I swear, I did not go in and change any heads when the last call for lockdown came in, not even to fix a certain henchman’s skin problems. Honest. But I was very, very tempted. I love creating the way a creature looks, actually; head passes and clothing passes are very fun, changing little things here and there just to achieve a certain nuance. It’s probably lost on most people, but I know it’s there, and I can point it out to my friends later.

I’ve also made areas – infinite areas, actually, as the dungeons in Infinite Dungeons were under my purview. By the end of my time on ID, I knew every tile in Neverwinter Nights in painfully intimate detail. And I had completely forgotten how to script. Thankfully, it comes back quickly.

One of the pitfalls of this job, and I fall into it every time, is that occasionally you get giant tasks that have nothing to do with scripting – treasure passes, head passes, clothing passes, encounter passes – and by the end of it you’re trying to remember how ‘if’ statements work. And then there’s the end-run before release, where only a chosen few are even allowed access to the toolset, and all you can do is playtest for weeks on end, sending bugs and, if you’re lucky, finding bugs that only you can fix. Actually, that’s a lot of fun – you get to play with the near-completed version of the game. I think I played Jade Empire more than anyone who wasn’t QA.

(Apparently I’ve talked too long already. Stay tuned next week for the juicy finale.)

Cori Nicole May sometimes feels barely qualified for the work she loves to do, but they keep letting her do it anyways. Perhaps because she goes ‘squee’ a lot, and the only videogames she likes to play anymore are BioWare’s. Also, they had to make a special cheat code on KOTOR, just for her, so she could get through the space fighting part, and she had to get a friend to come over to kill thresher maws in Mass Effect. In what remains of her spare time, she plays Dragon Age, just because she can.

Making an Emotional Investment

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Part 1 of 1, by Jos Hendriks

Perhaps this only grew on me recently, or perhaps it has been present ever since I started playing videogames. Quite possibly this is different for each and every person out there who enjoys to pick up the occasional game, but I recently became consciously aware that games have slowly become harder for me to enjoy.

Part of this is because I make games for a living. Being busy working on stuff at the various companies I’ve worked at made me go from playing a game to analyzing it more than anything. Instead of seeing that huge spaceship disintegrate with an awesome explosion I see particle effects, interpolation (better known as keyframing), and animation tracks come together well*. But with good games that immerse me and that I want to play that is not the main reason for me to find real enjoyment in games.

The main reason I play games these days is to establish some sort of emotional connection with them. Games have evolved a lot over the years and simply sitting down with an arcade shooter is something that I did a lot about 10 years ago, but is gradually fading from my gaming pattern. I have asked myself why this is, and time and time again I refer to the games that I do very much enjoy these days and compare them to the games that I should be liking, but somehow cannot find a connection with. What I discovered from these comparisons is that my personal taste for games is shifting. This is true for any gamer if they play games long enough, but I found the most singular and powerful reason for this shift to be that I want to be part of the games I played and I want to be able to care about what happens in the game.

Making an emotional investment has become an important part of why I play games, instead of analyze them. Sure, I still enjoy the occasional pickup game of Guitar Hero, or XBLA games like Braid and 1942, but when I want to sit down for a proper session of being curled up on the couch, drink and snacks within arm’s reach and just lose track of time I have to defer to something more immersive, and something more emotional.

For instance, this last weekend I finally wrapped up playing through Fable 2, a game that kept me hooked for the last few weeks. I found it amazing how I found myself caring when my lovable little dog (Brutus) got himself hurt in combat and I had to heal him. I was shocked when at the end of the game I had to make that awful, awful choice. I just love it when games make me feel emotional in some way over the choices I make. For that same reason I picked up Mass Effect again over the holidays. I really wanted to see the renegade part of the game and since I’m usually some sort of freakishly unholy paragon of justice in this type of game I found myself aghasted at some of the terrible things I ended up doing to become a complete renegade (and get that achievement!).

At the end of my thought process I really hope that I won’t get tired of the smaller pick-up and play games, but at the same time I do hope that the future will be seeing a lot more games that I can curl up on the couch with and play well into the night.

*In essence, Interpolation actors are objects that interpolate, or keyframe, on an animation track. For example, a spaceship flies into a hangar bay. The spaceship would be the interpolation actor, and its movement would be on an animation track. Interpolation actor is a specific term, I’m only familiar with it because Unreal Engine uses it. Here is a link to the animation track editor called Matinee, which is part of Unreal… I think it would not be a good read for people who aren’t into this sort of thing though.

Jos Hendriks first learned about video games at age 5 and it has been impossible for anyone to keep him away from them since. Although his early university English studies have led him in the complete opposite direction of videogames, a longtime passion for spare time level design has led Jos to eventually sneak into the industry when nobody was looking. He was last seen having fun designing levels for BioWare’s Mass Effect franchise.

Medieval Fantasy Gaming, p2

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Part 2 of 2, by Ferret Baudoin

God or Gods. First off I radically changed my game world’s religious landscape because I just couldn’t imagine the medieval world as I was discovering it without one of its core pillars – the Church. Previously, my games had almost a shopping mall of temples where you could find any of the hundred gods that were about. There was so many gods that it was hard to give more than a couple of them the TLC they merited. Had I seen the HBO miniseries Rome perhaps I would’ve given polytheism a more concerted go, but at the time I couldn’t see it or really grok it.

But more importantly faith is a matter of belief. If you know there’s a God(s), after-life, and that all clergy can perform miracles – then enter the alien society again. I made a rule in my game to never give any definitive evidence that the divine exists. That’s not to say there can’t be miracles – it’s just that God can’t come down and lecture people directly about the importance of dental hygiene. Not every priest should have an array of spells at his command, instead I modeled it after history. Those rare blessed souls that seemed to have a special connection to God. And their miracles were often subdued, and a skeptic could argue it was entirely bunk or outright lies. I wanted room in the game world for an atheist, and for him not to sound like a chump.

So miracles were incredibly rare, as was magic in general. But it’s all out there. And the PCs were going to see a heck of a lot more of it than almost anybody else – because that’s what heroes do. Explore past the boundaries of the civilized world and experience true adventure.

After all that (and more) I found that the world held together. That you could have noble intrigue living side-by-side with ancient ruins filled with mythological monsters. That farmers could till their fields and on the sly give sacraments of milk to the fae and there would still be room for the rare and powerful mages. It gave the world, from my perspective, an authenticity it was missing before. It was a labor of love and I’ve enjoyed continuing to refine and world-build ever since. I think the players appreciated it more, too, but you’d have to ask them to know that for sure.

If any of this is striking any chords there’s a wealth of information out there. Ars Magica and Vampire: The
Dark Ages and its related source material give a high level view of the time period in an adventuring context. Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) is also quite knowledgeable about history and has hilarious shows about it like Medieval Lives and The Crusades. Daniel J. Boorstin has written a series of books which talk about the history of man’s knowledge and belief. The Discoverers especially really blew me away because it made me realize what medieval people knew – but also what they didn’t. Imagining a world where people did math with roman numerals, for example, and without the concept of a zero. Mind-blowing to me. Ask around in many forums and I have no doubt you’ll get other excellent leads.

And if suspending your disbelief isn’t a problem, I recommend savoring it. One day you may be a jaded old coot like me where disblief can agitate you like beach sand in your tennis shoe. Ultimately it’s about what’s fun – and for me as a GM I find it a lot more fun if I can close my eyes and the whole world is there and it makes sense. But your mileage may vary. :)

Ferret Baudoin is a lead designer at BioWare. He’s worked as a designer at Cyberlore, Black Isle, and Obsidian. His plan is not to take over the world. So don’t pay attention to the silently encroaching mustelid army.

Bwahaha.

Medieval Fantasy Gaming, p1

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Part 1 of 2, by Ferret Baudoin

There is one time period that fascinates me like no other – the Middle Ages. Knights in armor, kings and queens, and Crusades… what’s not to like? When I was a young kid and played my first game – I had no idea what medieval times were like. Honestly, I didn’t care. I got to kick goblin’s teeth in – wee! But as I got older I found that my suspension of disbelief was harder to swallow. So I thought quite a bit and wondered – what the heck was that time period actually like? On a summer vacation I picked up several books of medieval history and read them voraciously. That’s something I still do on occasion. I realized that the sort of Tolkien-esque worlds I’ve played in or had run, although fascinating, really paled to bits of real history. It also made me realize that the best way to smooth over the disbelief issue is to inject a lot of historical realism into things.

So I’ll tell you a little of my gamemastering journey. Hopefully it’ll make you think of a thing or two or be vaguely entertaining or interesting.

First off, I started thinking about the people. What they believed, why they believed it, and what were their lives like on a typical summer day. High magic worlds like I’d been running really would destroy everything the medieval people believed in. You can embrace high magic and it can make a rich setting that’s fascinating – those to me feel almost quasi-steam punk. But I wanted to take the players into a mythical, fantasy version of medieval Europe – so that didn’t work. So I decided to try and make it that the medieval peasant wouldn’t have to change his whole world view in my game. If magic were uncommon enough I think it would actually reinforce some of their views instead of upending their world.

A lot of my thoughts were about how to inject the fantastical to a player’s perspective – yet keeping it plausible that the peasants, nobles, and clergy wouldn’t seem like dimwits. Humanoids really weren’t a problem because they’re very analogous to barbarians, something parts of medieval Europe were entirely too familiar with. But spells really threw me for a loop. I’d always taken for granted that people could be resurrected in fantasy pen-and-paper games – but as I thought through the consequences I was appalled. If resurrection existed to powerful clerical types – those clerics would be enormously powerful politically, kings and high nobles that could afford their services would be guaranteed a natural lifespan to achieve things. I imagine people would start reacting like the denizens of Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld Saga – where strategic suicide could be a legitimate tactic. Any element that started making the society seem alien to me had to go – so no resurrection.

Every spell in the book (and I used two systems over the life of the game setting – Rolemaster and Dungeons and Dragons) I went through with some thought. Some spells got nixed or heavily modified for other reasons. A pet peeve of mine are spells that reduce NPCs into tools, not people. If I can command any Tom, Dick, and Harry on the street to do my bidding and tell me anything about everything – it sort of kills role-playing. You could easily go the other way, because mythical mages like Merlin certainly could have that sort of power. But for me, I wanted people to have to interact with the high and low and use their wits, guile, and persuasive abilities to get by.

Ferret Baudoin is a lead designer at BioWare. He’s worked as a designer at Cyberlore, Black Isle, and Obsidian. His plan is not to take over the world. So don’t pay attention to the silently encroaching mustelid army.

Bwahaha.