Introduction to Maya - Modeling Fundamentals Vol 2
This course will look in the fundamentals of modeling in Maya with an emphasis on creating good topology. It's aimed at people that have some modeling experience in Maya but are having trouble with
complex objects.
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76
02-09-2011
, 12:46 AM
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77
06-09-2011
, 07:00 PM
The Maya Mountain
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So, unemployed, I get married to the love of my life.
Luckily, before the wedding, I had an interview with Zombie Studios and accepted a position there that would begin when I returned from my honeymoon.In February, I began my time at Zombie Studios in Seattle. Zombie is a studio that has been around for a long time. For a 3rd-party developer to have been around for that long, they essentially had to be a work-for-hire style studio. This can mean that many of the games they've done in the past haven't exactly been blockbusters. They are only just now actually starting to get the chance to break out and make their own IPs and show their muscle. So, their pedigree in the past hasn't exactly been eye-popping. Lots of military games and ports and stuff like that.
But when I came on, they had begun working on two titles: a military shooter and a horror game based on the SAW film franchise. I'll be honest, when I finished my interview, I was hoping that if I got the job, I'd be working on the shooter... SAW? No thanks.
So, on my first day, I started work on SAW. As someone who isn't that much of a fan of horror, I had never seen a SAW film. That had to change. I started watching them all (5 of them by that point).
...ugh...
BUT, I did see the potential of what a neat interactive experience could be had with such a premise, so I was hoping the game would take advantage of those potentials!
Fingers crossed!
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78
06-09-2011
, 09:14 PM
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My thoughts exactly when it comes to the SAW films, and I'm a horror film fan! I just can't stand how all of these new 'horror' films coming out at the moment are sold purely on how gorey they are, rather than how SCARY they are. I want to be scared, not disgusted. That said, I'd be interested to see how a game based on the films would actually play....ugh...
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79
07-09-2011
, 07:16 AM
To sleep, to dream, maybe... to???
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See this is what I call cruel irony.Year 9 2008
when I finished my interview, I was hoping that if I got the job, I'd be working on the shooter... SAW? No thanks.
So, on my first day, I started work on SAW.
~MG~
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80
09-09-2011
, 06:10 PM
The Maya Mountain
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Let's begin by talking a little about SAW and how it relates to games. The core of the SAW franchise (at least at the beginning) is that it is all a game! Jigsaw, the villain, even refers to all of his endeavors as a game for those trapped within them. He develops these mechanically genius devices of torture as well as fiendishly clever mazes and booby trapped locations with puzzles and the whole 9 yards. Sounds like a video game to me! So, while I was turned off by the gore and the self-mutilation and torture, the "game" itself was something that I thought could make for a really interesting video game experience.
I was just an artist, though, so it really wasn't up to me! When I began working on SAW: The Game, I was simply developing props. My very first prop was a girder to be used on underground walls as supports.... nothing too exciting. My next prop was the tape recorder/player that has featured prominently in the films and it was a model I was rather proud of.
Coming off of Garden Defense and iWin's casual games as well as porting PS2 games to the PSP before at Buzz Monkey, I found I was a bit out of practice when it came to actually creating modern art assets! But I did get up to speed soon enough.
Not too long into development, the assignment of creating the first "trap" came to me. The traps, in the SAW franchise, are a pretty crucial component of the whole enchilada that is SAW, so it was a pretty cool distinction that I'd be able to make one. I was brought in on meetings and so forth about what the traps should be, how they should be done, etc. It became pretty obvious to me that this was going to be tricky. It seemed to me that there was no real consensus about how these traps should be handled, what the gameplay would be, and so on. As a lowly artist and not a designer or director, I stayed out of it mostly and tried to do what I was told. The result was a "back-breaker" table that a victim would be strapped to. Chains would be pulling the different components of the trap and the player would have to manipulate some sort of gear shifter contraption to somehow stop the trap from killing its victim.
To be honest, the end result of this trap was awful. Even my artwork was mediocre at best due to the very vague direction the design of the trap had. It was decided to put that trap on the backburner and for me to move on to something else while the designer worked out the kinks. My art director at the time thought I had done a pretty good job though, so he handed me the task of making the Reverse Bear Trap. The RBT was a very iconic trap from the SAW series. If you look up SAW, more then likely you'll find this trap. It was a helmet with large hinged teeth that would split a person's head in half when triggered. They had actually already gotten a model done by an artist they hired earlier but that artist literally quit after one day (his old studio offered him his job back with a raise... can't blame him!) so I got his left overs. I finished it up and they liked it. So that was good. But I wasn't very happy with it. I hoped to one day get another crack at it if time permitted.
Over the next couple months, I became the "trap guy" on the art team. Anything related to traps or puzzles or mini-games, I got the art assignment. I'll be honest, I think that's pretty cool! I'm not a big SAW fan, but if you're making art for a SAW game, doing the traps and puzzles is the meat of the art, in my opinion!
Next: My opinion gets me in hot water!
#
81
12-09-2011
, 02:52 PM
The Maya Mountain
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The next trap I was tasked to work on was what was referred to as the IV trap. This trap had a lot of design elements put into it for a relatively complex puzzle. This time, I wasn't in the meetings involved in actually designing it, and just got the final notes with a few sketches. I thought I'd read through this design doc and try to walk through the puzzle in my head so that I could visualize what it was supposed to look like and feel like to the player. As I played the puzzle in my head, I noticed a few things... like what would happen if the player went in different directions then the designer thought? Or how was the player supposed to know how to even play this puzzle? And how does the player win anyway? These seemed like fundamental things that the designer must have known about, so I sent him an email.
I never really got a satisfactory answer for any of these things. He was busy designing other stuff and finally, after several email and in-person conversations, I just said, "whatever" and created the artwork. Low and behold, when it was play-tested, no one could ever beat it. Not even me, who made the thing! It was put on the backburner and I moved on.
While I never would tout myself as a great designer or anything, I thought I'd try mocking up some gameplay to see if they liked it. I had the advantage of the art skills so I figured I'd be able to get across what I was thinking by just showing it. Lock-picking was a large part of the game, and I knew people would be doing it often, so I started designing some lockpicking mini-games. I must have designed about 6 different mini-games where you used the two sticks to manipulate the picks and make it into a game to unlock the pins within the lock. Fallout 3 had already come out by this point, and I was impressed with their lockpicking game, so I didn't want to copy it. So my designs were a bit different from that.
While it was said that they liked them, none of them were ever used. Instead we went with some sort of color-match minigame that was on a wheel interface. I was disappointed, but oh well, I'm not the designer.
Batman: Arkham Asylum comes out and the design of the cryptographic sequencer is EXACTLY what I was trying to do... oh well.
Let me pause here and talk about the company and my input. When I was interviewed, I was specifically talked to about my ability to have input on a game. It was very encouraged for me to give ideas and critiques and so on. So, when I started working, I took that encouragement to heart. As I play-tested the game, if something felt off or was confusing, or if I just thought it was downright bad, I said so.
It seemed to get to a point, however, that I was viewed as a negative person. The designer even about bit my head off when I started talking to him about pacing and whatnot. Not that he felt pacing wasn't necessary, it's just that he didn't want to change the pacing that was there. Eventually, the designer left the team. I kept looking for his replacement but he never came. SAW just didn't have a designer any more.
That's not a good thing.
NEXT: Taking bets!
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82
12-09-2011
, 03:35 PM
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83
16-09-2011
, 04:23 PM
The Maya Mountain
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Thanks though!
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84
16-09-2011
, 05:32 PM
The Maya Mountain
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At the time, SAW was being published by Brash Entertainment. They were a mediocre publisher that snapped up movie licenses and pushed out mediocre games based on them. We were determined to not be one of those games. However, unsurprising, it turns out that Brash is in financial trouble and they go out of business.
We suddenly found ourselves without a publisher. The powers that be start scrambling to find a new one for SAW. The game is about half complete and has to be picked up soon or else we'll miss our release window (when the next movie comes out). If we were to release a SAW game without a movie, only the SAW die-hards would even look at it. We wanted that movie to be our marketing so that people would have the SAW movie in their heads and would find our game and find an interest.
I'm not really sure if that's how it really works, but that's the common thought with this kind of stuff.
We are able to get rid of some stupid stuff that Brash was expecting from us, such as multi-player, and focus on the single player experience. They were also pushing some very bad design choices that we were able to nix as well, so that was a relief.
However, as it turns out.... Zombie had to get rid of people if they wanted to stay in business without a publisher for our game. They promised that, if another publisher was found soon, we'd be offered our jobs back.
And I found myself without a job again, Christmas of 2008.
Year 10 2009
Konami to the rescue! They saw some sort of value in what we were working on, got the rights to publish, and funded the rest of development! After a month or so of unemployment, I was back at Zombie and cranking on SAW once again.
But still, SAW isn't really turning out too great. I'm disappointed as I really did feel that it could have been a really intense experience. I try to take pleasure in the fact that my work is getting showcased as much as it is, but at the same time, the perfectionist in me is really wanting to at least voice all of my concerns so that I can at least come away saying, "I told 'em!" as opposed to staying silent.
Over the rest of the project, I meticulously write bug reports for everything that I feel should be addressed. I mark them as "suggestions" or "low priority" where appropriate (as gameplay suggestions really aren't as high a priority as, say, bugs and crashes). While a few ideas are done, the vast majority are turned back as "Won't Fix."
Most of these problems stem from repetitiveness. We had several mini-games in SAW, but they were all used far too often. The mini-games themselves weren't all that original either. You had your "rotate tiles of tubes to get power to flow through the maze" minigame, you had your "match colors around a wheel" minigame, your "match pictures from memory" minigame... nothing that hadn't been seen before a dozen times.
But anyway, that was just how it was and I had no power to do anything about it. I do feel that, aside from the gameplay, we did get a good grasp of the feeling of dirty, rusty, dread that the SAW films do so well. The environments, lighting, and music all had that going for it. It was really a shame that the game itself wasn't all that great.
In October 2009, SAW will be released. Before it is, we all decide it'd be fun to have a betting pool. Everyone who plays along chooses a review score between 1-100 and if your score is the closest to the AVERAGE review score on sites like metacritic.com, you win the money that everyone contributes ($5 each). I throw my $5 in and choose the rather controversial score of 60. It's the lowest score that anyone on the team chooses and I get a bit of flack for it. Everyone has invested so much of their time into this game in the last 18 months that most people felt it was a 75-85 game at least. Some even scored it into the 90s.
I won the bet. The average score (at that time) was 62, I believe, and I was the closest. People are upset, but can't fault what people are saying... repetitive... bad combat... uninspired puzzles... and of course, it's a movie tie-in so it must suck mentality that is hard to fight.
NEXT:
So... sequel anyone?
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85
19-09-2011
, 01:18 AM
The Maya Mountain
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We submitted and got it back around a week later: AO.
We had to scramble. We weren't a big player in the game industry, so they didn't really share anything more about what exactly we were knocked down for except for "Gratuitous Gore." Gratuitous gore? It's a SAW game, what'd they expect? I didn't even think it was all that gory to be honest and had even submitted suggestion bugs along those lines... I guess it's a good thing those were sent back as "Won't Fix", huh?
We decided to focus on the trap failures. If the player failed to successfully disarm the traps in the game, the victims of the traps would be killed rather gruesomely. We toned down the cut scenes and changed camera angles. We also removed a few other gory elements. The traps were a joke now, I lamented. SAW fans expected a certain level of gore from this series and we were going to be short-changing them dramatically, I felt.
But, we were at the whims of the ESRB. We submitted again. A week later, we got the European results: M! (or Pegi 17 or whatever it's called). Success! American results: AO. What? You gotta be kidding me...
We started scrambling again, this time branching off a separate build of the game for North America... hey, if the Europeans were ok with the gore level, we weren't going to change it. Besides, if we did, we'd have to submit to the ESRB for another rating and that'd waste time. So, all of you Europeans out there have a much gorier version of the game then the Americas! For the North American version, we once again toned down the gore, toned down the sound effects, cut away camera angles, obscured the deaths until they were a shell of their former existence. We submitted: an M. Thank you! Sheesh!
Meanwhile, games like Mortal Kombat, Dead Space, and Resident Evil show FAR more gore then we ever did. That's the difference money makes. If you're a big-money publisher of a big-name title, you get special treatment from the ESRB. If you're a nobody, expect the same kind of treatment for a nobody. It's pretty despicable, really. But I digress. SAW came out and fans of SAW were disappointed and fans of good games were disappointed, so it was an all around disappointment. But I will say still that, I'm proud of the artwork I did and the style of the game. I do feel that that was something that was done right.
Next: SAW II???
#
86
23-09-2011
, 06:30 PM
The Maya Mountain
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SAW was in the bag and released and we all said, "What now?" Konami was interested in a potential sequel but only after getting the numbers on how SAW sold. We all knew we wouldn't be getting those numbers for months at the least, so we decided to go ahead and start cracking on a sequel now and if or when Konami decided to do it, we'd be ahead of the game.
The first thing we all did was write out proposals of what we wanted to do differently, what improvements could we make in the time we had, and what our "must haves" were. I dove into this, writing up a story-like proposal of what the first few minutes of gameplay could be like. No more quick-time events, no stupid "find key, open door" types of puzzles... more visceral experiences, more mood, more environment interaction. It was well received.
We did NONE of it. We still had no designer, so our producer decided to design the game himself. That's a problem, in my eyes. The job of a creative director or lead designer is to PUSH design forward. The job of a producer is to get a job done on time and on budget. These two jobs do not mix well and in fact, collide together.
One of the biggest complaints of the first SAW game was the melee combat. That was on everyone's list of "must have" improvements. Over the next few months, many different combat systems were mocked up and designed. In the meantime, a quick-time event system was used as a placeholder until a "real" combat system could be made. We had a year to get it done and get this game out the door before the next movie.
Actually, we only had about 10 months. Before a game ships, you need at least 2 months just for getting it all printed, so we needed to have this game done by, like, July or August of the next year. After working on the sequel for a couple months, we got the news: Konami has approved a sequel! Now we were really moving forward!
NEXT: Stepping backwards...
#
87
28-09-2011
, 02:44 PM
The Maya Mountain
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I didn't get laid off over Christmas! That's a nice change of pace!
So, the sequel to SAW was being developed. Once again, I was tapped as the trap and puzzle artist. We still had no designer so our producer continued to act as designer. I contacted the studio heads asking if a designer was planned to be hired any time soon and they pretty much said, "If the producer wants to." which I took as meaning "No." Like I had mentioned previously, the producer's main job is to make sure the game is done on time and on budget. Remembering the issues we had with the ESRB with the first game, the decision was made to not push the envelope at all for the sequel. In fact, we didn't touch the envelope with a ten-foot pole... the violence in SAW II was pretty laughable, as far as SAW standards go. Electrocution seemed to become the preferred method of death as it was very gore-less.
So, once again, SAW fans were bound to be disappointed with their SAW game. Isn't that who were supposed to be making this thing for?
As the puzzle designs began to come across my desk, I lamented... they were all casual game puzzles again! Stuff you could find for free off of the internet! And not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different "pipe flow" maze puzzles... Ugh! Other then that, a matching colors minigame, a classic "lights out" minigame, and hardest of all for our testers... a math game. Really? A math game? Come ON!
Meanwhile, combat design seems to be spinning its wheels. The tiresome QTE combat "mini-game" has been in the game for months, and I'm begging for a different system. Yet every system the combat programmer is coming up with, the producer is shutting down and rejecting. As the months go by, it becomes very obvious that the game is going to ship with this awful QTE system for combat. So, we took the biggest complaint about SAW and made it WORSE in the sequel. How does that happen?
I start begging the animation department (all 2 of them) to start making more varied animations for the QTE combat so that it's not the same exact motion over and over again. I don't know if it's due to them not having time (they were animating for more then one game) or if the programmers didn't incorporate the change to allow for variation in the combat animation... but it never happened. You go through the whole game and each and every time combat occurs, it plays the same animation sequence.
And once again, the puzzles are over used, causing ever more repetitive gameplay. Weapons are neutered to where it no longer matters what weapon you have since it's all in the QTE. No more thrown weapons or ranged weapons (except for your enemies of course). To add insult to injury, the moment your character actually acquires a gun, it's out of bullets. This is despite the fact that the enemy you took it from had an infinite supply.
Again I'm seen as overly negative about our project. And let me take a moment here to mention, they're probably right to some degree. I got SO angry during the development of this game, that I even had a bit of an outburst with our Producer's Assistant WHILE Konami was visiting the office which caused me to be taken aside and have a talking to to calm me down. That's not a good situation. And it's something that I strive to change in future projects.
I should say here that, I wasn't alone in my views. Most everyone I worked with agreed that the game's design and direction was awful. But what could we do? We couldn't do anything to change it. Others at the company who were working on other projects saw us as a bunch of idiots. I remember the creative director (wish we had one of those for our project...) saw the math puzzle I mentioned before and commented "You guys are expecting your players to do math in your game?" It's a good question to ask as it was a very difficult puzzle. But it stayed.
In the final months of the project, I looked over the credit list for the game. There, under Designer was credited "The Entire SAW Team."
What?
Are you kidding me?
NEXT: The gambler returns!
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88
29-09-2011
, 04:04 AM
To sleep, to dream, maybe... to???
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~MG~
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89
29-09-2011
, 07:32 AM
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90
13-10-2011
, 05:22 PM
The Maya Mountain
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Once again, we thought we'd have a betting pool for the review score for the sequel. This time, however, there was no money put on the table. I guess they got cold feet from the last time. Anyway, everyone is choosing their score and writing it up on one of the whiteboards. I walk up and put 50. Of course, my coworkers are flabbergasted, and no one else marks a score even close, opting more for 70+.
Reviews come out... the average? 45.
Ouch. That's too bad, I could have used the money.
Biggest complaints were again, atrocious combat, repetitive puzzles. Bad gameplay as a whole, really. Once again, art work and sound receive better marks, so I can be somewhat vindicated in that, but considering the game was done without a true designer, I'm surprised it even shipped.
So what now? And please don't tell me SAW III.... Luckily (I guess?) Konami seems to get the picture from the reviewers and opts out of whatever sequel they could have published. Plus, supposedly, the SAW films have now ended with their 7th release so there wouldn't be a movie to ride the marketing coat tails. To be honest, I still believe a compelling game experience could be done with the SAW franchise... it's just not something you can spit out in less then a year and expect to be any good. Anyway, back to work... but on what?
Zombie is a two-team studio divided by floors. The upstairs has been the SAW team while downstairs, they've been working on Blacklight: Tango Down, a first person shooter that saw release on XBLA and PSN the previous year. They've been working on a sequel ever since then. I'm hoping that, like I had hoped when I first got hired, that I might be moved on to their team. I don't. Our Lead Environment Artist does though, subtracting our art team 1 and leaving us with 4 people to work on whatever upstairs will be doing next.
There have been rumblings on a game based on Blackwater, a real-life private military company that served in Iraq and other places. And it'd be for the Kinect. I roll my eyes... to be honest, I had no idea who Blackwater was or their reputation. I just thought the idea sounded kind of dumb. However, there'd be a new guy taking charge of this project and he seems like a good producer. I shrug my shoulders and wait.
Sure enough, I'll be joining the Blackwater project. I guess I'll have to figure out how to use these Kinect thingies.
Next: I stay out of it...
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