NASCAR In Game Design Terms

I was having a great dinner at GDC last week when the conversation drifted to NASCAR. As is often the case, I was the only fan, and I invariably found myself explaining my interest in the sport. My answer to this topic is usually two-tiered: for one, the NASCAR garage is one big dysfunctional family. There’s 43 guys with different personalities who are shoving, pushing and banging on each other 36 races per season. You know that tempers are bound to flare, and that rivalries aplenty are bound to spring up – on and off the racetrack. Having an opinion on NASCAR is easy, and it’s fun! Just start watching for a bit and you’ll catch on.
The other reason to watch NASCAR are the actual races, which, believe it or not, are very entertaining. That part is harder to explain without reference. But since I was at the Game Developers Conference, it occurred to me to describe the appeal in game development terms:

NASCAR is the Mario Kart of real-life racing.

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Normal Map Information

This paper on real-time normal map compression, written by J.M.P. van Waveren and Ignacio Castaño, is a great read for everybody who wants to deepen their fundamental understanding of normal maps. The paper fully explains a whole bunch of issues with normal maps that I only touched on in my 2007 GDC talk, and contains a lot of details that I didn’t know about yet. Highly recommended reading for all technical artists and grpahics programmers.

Always Remember The Passion

As I was driving home the other day, The Almighty iPod Shuffle decided to take me on a serious nostalgia trip. After serenading me with a megamix of terrible songs from the early 90s (it turns out that I am not “too sexy for my car”), the “Travel Theme” from Ultima V: Lazarus came on. The Travel Theme, for those who don’t know, was specifically written for the Amiga port of Ultima V, and it was the only piece of music included with that version of the game. So the music looped when playing the game – over and over and over again.

Ultima V for the Commodore Amiga wasn’t a great conversion. It was over two years late (part VI had already been released for the PC, significantly advancing the state of the art); its primitive EGA tile graphics looked positively outdated at this point; and it lacked all musical variation found on the other computer systems, featuring that one single song instead. Oh, and it was copy protected! Ultima V on the Amiga came on two nastily protected 3 ½ inch disks, and it saved the only possible savegame on that very same, non-backupable disk! I’ve never been so afraid for my game progress in my life.

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Bald Men In Videogames

GossipGamers has a comparison between male main characters from a multitude of modern videogames. And why the similarities are indeed striking, the article is missing the main reason why that’s the case: we simply cannot do good realtime hair in videogames yet. The limitation is slowly going away, and several games have made an effort to put some actual hair on their main guys. But it’s still a pain in the ass to do. That doesn’t excuse all other similarities or uninspired character design, of course. But it does lead to a certain character type.

Religion, Myth and Games

As expected, Bill Maher’s new documentary Religulous is stirring up strong reactions from supporters and opponents of religion alike. I probably won’t watch this movie because it seemingly aims to prove a predetermined point: that religion is ridiculous. A more bipartisan effort might have tried understanding why people subscribe to a religion, and what the religious belief adds to their lives.

But I don’t think that a discussion of the validity of organized religion will lead to a fruitful result, anyway. As game developers, understanding why religion plays such an important part in many people’s life can help us, though! Because religion is myth. And understanding myth can help us to create games that connect with the audience on a deep emotional level.

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BBelief 2008 – Visual Storytelling

One thing that has bugged me a lot about Quake environments – especially now that I’m taking another look 12 years later – is how sterile they often feel. That’s not a new complaint, of course. Back in ’96, several print reviews expressed the same sentiment – undoubtedly still under the impression of a recently released Duke Nukem 3D, which created a much more intricate world. Most of Quake’s sterility can be attributed to the game’s lack of visual storytelling.

As explained in my earlier post, visual storytelling is all about adding a sense of history and purpose to the 3D environments that the player traverses. A well done 3D level never feels like it was built for the player (or, by extension, for the game). A good environment feels like has its own identity. The more the player feels like he is passing through a living, breathing place (or better yet, the more he feels like he is trespassing), the better.

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Visual Storytelling

A few months ago, on a private message board, we were discussing Digital Extremes’ game Dark Sector (which I finished – good game, with a few shortcomings), and got on the topic of infusing life into 3D action environments. As part of the discussion, I wrote a personal definition of “Visual Storytelling”. I don’t know if this term is widely used in the game industry yet, but everybody in game development will know what you’re talking about once you start describing it. 

I want to give credit to Harvey Smith for digging up this piece of text in the first place, I’d forgotten about the discussion. But why am I reposting this on my own blog when it’s already been published elsewhere? Because I want to set up a later BBelief 2008 post! So, let’s lay some groundwork. What do level designers, game designers and game writers mean when they talk about visual storytelling?

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BBelief 2008 – Burning The Midnight Oil

If there haven’t been a lot of updates on Beyond Belief 2008 lately it’s because I’ve resisted the urge to post simple editing blurbs like “And now I’ve added this room! Take a look!” With nobody having played the level those posts wouldn’t make much sense, anyway. And if I explained every little detail you wouldn’t have to play the level anymore because I’d already have spoiled everything!

With that said, my output has definitely decreased in the last couple of weeks, and that’s for a very simple reason: the Olympics are over.

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BBelief2008 Focus

The weekend was filled with racing, so I didn’t do much level editing. So now might be a good time to discuss the criteria that I apply when making decisions about what goes into Beyond Belief 2008 and what doesn’t. And to muse about guiding principles in general.

When embarking on any artistic endeavor, it’s good to establish focus early on. On multi-faceted projects, these principles help the author determine which ideas should be included in the work and which ones should be left out. This is true for many creative undertakings: commercial games, books, screenplays, movie… It’s true for hobby levels, as well. So here’s the guiding principle I established for BBelief2008:

I want to evoke fond memories of the original Quake.

That’s a decidedly mundane ambition, especially if you consider that 12 years have passed in which the Quake community has moved on to much grander projects. Looks like my plan is to make a map that amounts to nothing more than a tribute level. But this guideline makes a lot of sense to me for various reasons:

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BBelief2008 Level Flow

One of the fun parts about making this level is that I don’t have to worry at all about planning ahead. That’s the way of working that comes naturally to me: I never planned out my levels in the Doom and Quake days. I just started working on something and discovered where the level would take me.

You can’t do that in today’s professional game development, of course. When working with a team on a commercial game, things tend to be much more planned out from the start. Every level has a place in the game. The start and finish are usually predetermined. Certain story points need to be hit, specific gameplay elements need to be utilized. And things are so complex today, with several people working on the same environment, that the level needs to be roughed out as early as possible. So that the environment artists can start working on the building blocks. So that lighting artists (if the game has them) can start thinking about the look of the level. So that gameplay elements (which might not necessarily all be proven out yet) can be tested as early as possible – in the levels that they’re supposed to appear in.

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