|
|
|
Thursday, October 04, 2007 |
|
Tech Talk
Recently we were on our way to Leipzig. The videogame center of the universe, well at least for those few days anyway. It struck me how things change quickly in this business, and it seems Leipzig has quickly grown to earn a place on the calendar as securely as E3, CES, and Tokyo Game Show have done over the years. Thinking back to CES, the logical precedent to E3, it makes you realize how far we’ve come. Back at CES in the early 90’s, videogames were clearly part of the electronics lineup alongside car stereos, big screen TVs, and LaserDisc players (ask your Dad). Games were about lots of frantic action, smooth frame rate, and above all a hell of a lot of fun. Nowadays instead of sharing half an exhibition hall with stereos and LaserDisc players, hundreds of thousands flock from around the world just to see what we’ll all be playing this season. Without getting too nostalgic here, between then and now, something happened on the way to the forum…
For the last few years we’ve seen games balloon in scope and complexity, weaving deep stories, intricate control schemes, and forging levels of realism that were quite literally in the realm of super-computers only a decade-and-a-half ago. With all this has come an arms race of technology, a battle of the superpowers, to see who can out spend and out design the next guy. But once in a while we’re reminded what it’s all about. Sometimes it’s about refinement of design meeting a dose of innovation, such as Guitar Hero, other times its pure goofball fun such as Cooking Mama. Back in the day titles like Tempest and Robotron broke the mold in a world of Pac-Man and Galaxian clones. They brought fresh simplicity of design and deadly addiction combined. Geometry Wars is one such vice.
Back in 2005, I was lucky enough to be stuck inside for nearly all of Thanksgiving in Chicago, playing Xbox 360 for the first time. My friend had a stack of titles to check out, but after three days of giving them all a fair shot, we kept coming back to one – Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. In fact, it wasn’t even a boxed product, it was one of the first XBLA titles, and although limited to only one grid and one player, it was mesmerizing. Initially you could be forgiving for thinking multi-billion dollars of consumer electronics R&D budget had brought this manna from heaven. But this one was deceptively simple – blow up the crap out of everything, keep moving, and don’t get killed.
It may have been done a hundred, if not a thousand times before, but Geometry Wars hits the nail on the head. It’s like a dose of raw videogame protoplasm - no cut-scenes, no fancy story, no characters to empathize with, just pure mad frantic action that gets the adrenaline going. If you don’t know the history behind Geometry Wars, it’s really the story of the game within a game that finally justified its existence by breaking out on its own. If you own a copy of PGR2, you own a copy of the first Geometry Wars! The team at Bizarre did a stunning job, and have been tweaking and playing around with the concept ever since then. The Geometry Wars: Galaxies design still reflects that original old-school inspiration, whilst really blowing out a larger experience to add a ton of variety; plenty to keep everybody twitching on those cold winter’s nights!
In late 2006, our “man on the ground” in Europe, Roger Carpenter, brought it in, and helped get it into production. In fact, this one has been a supremely focused and dedicated development effort by the folks over at Kuju. I think Rog has blogged a bit about Kuju and how dedicated they are, I really take my hat off to them. But for this blog, it might be nice to fill you in a bit on what happens back at HQ here in sunny Los Angeles.
I have the huge pleasure of working with an equally dedicated group of individuals. It’s easy to think of videogame publishers as just a bunch of suits who talk money and business all day. But the reality is that behind every title is a huge crowd of really dedicated people who expend all their efforts to help it reach the shelf. My group helps ride shotgun with the Producers all the way through projects – working with the developer to firefight issues; giving feedback, advice, and support; triaging through QA; and maintaining a constant dialog with our friends at Nintendo (who’ve been incredibly supportive). The cold harsh reality of ship dates and budgets do come in to play, but above all we’re gamers. And there can be no greater guilty pleasure than working on a title like Geometry Wars: Galaxies.
It takes a whole bunch of people to help get the game from conception to proudly sitting on the shelf. We thought it would be fun to give you a little background about life at the publisher. Over to our resident Geometry Wars: Galaxies tech guru, Danny Koo…
-- Brian Leake VP, Technology
Hi there, I’m Senior Software Engineer at Sierra Entertainment. Besides playing Geometry Wars: Galaxies all day long, my role in this game is to provide technical direction. Sometimes things come up you don’t expect, and it’s my job to help handle those unexpected surprises.
Fitting content on a Nintendo DS cartridge is as important as optimizing the performance of the game itself. One area that is a challenge is fitting great sounding music onto a cart. For game sharing between two DS units, we knew we’d want the second player to experience the full game music without compromise. Music plays an important role; we really wanted to find a way for the fans to share the game to another DS without losing music fidelity. Playing the Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved without music would be unheard of, Galaxies is no exception. We had to find a creative way to fit the content into a finite space.
For the game share version, the task was to faithfully reproduce the Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved theme in midi format. Since the original GW:RE music piece has at least five different instruments with effects on top of it, even in midi format, five samples on five tracks is still a challenge when it has to be shared wirelessly.
Quite some time was spent optimizing the instrument samples, fitting the five tracks down to three tracks - we have a winner! The tracks consist of one effects channel, one drum channel and one melody channel. How on earth did we do that you ask? For the effects channel, I split each octave of C note to trigger each effect. The drum channel is on its own, each key triggering different component of a drum (snares, hi-hats, drum kicks, etc.) The melody channel is split into four different regions, each starting with a certain range of keys. The melody track was the hardest one and fun to tackle. Comparing each of the note progression for each track, placing them next to each other on one track and ensuring they didn’t overlap took the most time. In the end, I think it was well worth it. Did I tell you the midi sequences are reproduced without a musical sheet? Awesome I say.
I want to talk a little bit about some bonus music. Bizarre Creations were cool enough to allow me to take a stab at the Credit track. I’ve come up with a rock remix of the GW:RE music. The core of the music is to preserve the most memorable melody track, take it and mash it up with guitar, bass and drums. The track itself has evolved several times, each time, the track takes form in another three different sequences, each with its own strength. I usually work at night. The best ideas always seem to come around the 6th - 8th hour into a session. This remix is written from the ground up, none of the original samples are used. However, the bass lines and guitar riffs are carefully written around the original song note progression. Part of the melody from the original has been nicely fits into the breakdown portion of the remix. When you get a chance to play our game, swing by the credit session and listen to it! Hope you will like it.
As a third-party publisher, we work with first-parties closely, in this case the Big N. From the beginning we’ve had a great dialog with Nintendo regarding different aspects of the game features. We’ve been keen to support features like game sharing, synergies between console and handheld, single-cart multi-play, online leader-boards. Not only do these discussions benefit and solve some development hurdles, but they support the design philosophy of the Wii and DS hardware.
Attending the Nintendo developer conference also helps us to understand more about the Wii and DS. You may ask why publisher needs to attend a developer conference. As Brian mentioned, we have a group of Technical Directors that oversee all our projects, providing direction, guidance, and direct support. The TDs at the publisher compliment those at the studios; keeping up with tech-related aspect of the consoles, knowledge of tools and middleware, tips and tricks of what-not-to-do, what-to-do and help developers to reach the finishing line. It’s all about helping get the game on the shelf! We’re involved early on in the project, working closely with developers to draft technical plans and staying with the initial vision as much as possible. When things don’t go according to plan, there’s a lot of cursing and yelling, drinking coffee and staying up late! Having the TD and developer work on contingency plans is essential in game development. The granddaddy of technical directors is Brian Leake, who is the Vice President of Technology at Sierra Entertainment. Brian provides a hand if there is something challenging to resolve. By the way, he is a left-hander, and a firm believer of non-discrimination of left-handers. So I am pleased to say, yes, we do support left-handed controls for both Wii and DS.
Roger Carpenter is the Senior Producer for this game. He started living with Kuju Entertainment since the beginning of this project. I won't go into his job function in much detail, except yes, he works with Kuju Entertainment closely on the creative and production aspects of the game, at the same time, making sure we still have time to finish the project.
@_@*. This guy is called Tim Tran. This is Tim's symbol of saying "This guy...". He’s the Associate Producer for this game. He’s a night-owl like Roger, spending all hours at the office in Los Angeles. Tim has been great in providing production support. He provides feedback on the game's playability, making sure both hard-core and casual gamers get some love for this title. Tim also works with the Public Relations, Brand, and Marketing divisions, providing essential information and assets for this title. Tim lives and breathes Geometry Wars: Galaxies!
Whenever Kuju Entertainment delivers a build for the milestone, the production and technical team will go through the build, and provide feedback. Each milestone deliverable is very important from a publisher's perspective; defining at what stage the game will be at when hitting a certain date. A slip in a milestone means something might need to be done in order to catch up and stay on track. The idea is to keep things running smoothly so we have plenty of polishing time during the beta phase. For every milestone, we have to decide what are the hits and misses, and help work out where to focus through to the end of the project.
Every week, we have a core team meeting which consists of key production, technical, PR (Michael Cerven), Brand (Steve Fuller), Finance (Elizabeth Cho) and Marketing (Guy Welch) personnel. Roger is the core team lead and this is where we meet and provide updates and current status of the project to everyone in the core team so we are all in the same page. Think of Roger as the captain!
I’ve explained the production portion. If all of us are busy making the game, there ought to be someone busy playing the game. They are none other than the Quality Assurance (QA) group. QA is very important in any software development. There is a difference between "playing" the game and "testing" the game. Being a QA tester is not an easy job on this one. How do you control your addiction of "playing" the game and start "testing" the game? There is no clear cut solution, that's what makes QA fun.
The Producers and I worked closely with the QA team for this title. Calvin Wong (QA Manager) and David Luyties (QA Lead) worked hard with their team to ensure the quality is upheld. The testers on the team are amazing, each come from a different background, writing up some pretty interesting bugs at times.
In addition to the functionality testing team, we also have a Technical Requirement Group (TRG). Remember keywords like "Saving, do not power the DS off" messages? Those messages are *requirements*, and this group makes sure all Nintendo checklists are followed (or we can’t publish!) Wait… I am not even sure that message I quoted even adheres to the guidelines! If this is wrong, the TRG group will let me know. Headed by TRG supervisor Kevin Jackson, this group specializes with Nintendo consoles, and is familiar with the challenges from a game that showcases almost every feature the Wii and DS provides. Just like the developers, Kevin's group also attends developer conferences, making sure to keep up-to-date on the latest guidelines. The TRG group is also responsible for submitting the finished game for final approval.
There are other departments in QA too. Let's not forget about the mastering department, which is known as Burnlab to the rest of us. Their expertise is to master and burn discs for everyone in the company. The Burnlab is headed by Afolabi Akibola and Chris Miller. One might think this is an easy job, which I beg to differ. Burning discs for a hobby is one thing, mastering like a professional is another matter. Mastering entails following some very precise specifications, involving detailed settings, file arrangement and layout, complying with publishing requirements, and a whole nine yards of other fun stuff.
Vivendi Games Product Certification (VGPC) is responsible for making sure the game adhere to our own legal requirements. Led by Brandon Valdez, this wonderful group of four works closely with our legal team. All that legal mumbo-jumbo you see in the game and on the manual – that’s these guys! They also make sure we have a suitable age rating for the game. Take a guess at the age rating for this title, would you? =)
Hopefully I have done some justice in explaining the work of the many groups here at the publisher, and a little bit of insight into the processes involved. Everybody at both the developer and publisher works closely in synergy in order to help make it all happen. We hope the love and care makes it all worthwhile. Now, who wants to play-test a score of one billion?
--Danny Koo, Senior Software Engineer
|
Monday, September 24, 2007 |
|
Somebody is Out There…Part Deux
The last Q&A went so well we have decided to do it again. We received some great questions and we want to make sure that they were answered. Enjoy the Fan Q&A below.
8/1 1:56pm, Linkiboy posted:
With the release of WiiWare in 2008, I was wondering if you guys had any plans to bring the original retro version of the game onto the system as a downloadable? Even with the release of the game on disk it wouldn't be harmful at all, and as a bonus(for the consumer at least)would even encourage other developers to put their demos/content onto the platform...
(ROG) Nice idea! I'll pass on your idea to Bizarre Creations, who's the keeper of 'what to do next'....they've probably spotted your idea in the blog already though 
8/1 9:06pm, Pacn99 posted:
Great update, you guys! I'm watching this game with high anticipation. I currently have Geometry Wars on my PC, and I honestly can't get enough of just that one-stage. I can't imagine how dozens more are going to fuel my love for the game.
One question though: With all the additional planets and galaxies to go through, will the Wii and DS versions have a storyline, or will it simply be a game of beating a certain goal on each individual level? I admit, a storyline for a game like Geometry Wars sounds pretty unnecessary, but I'm curious all the same.
(ROG) Glad you're liking it. We did talk about wrapping up the game in a story back in the early days of the concept but there was a serious-cheese-warning that came with it so we decided to go with the no fuss, pure arcade direction instead....."shoot stuff or it'll kill you"!
8/2 5:58am, Zeeroid posted:
Hey, thanks a lot for taking the time to answer some of our questions, really appreciate it.
So on to business; two things.
1. On the Wii version, I've thought about a control scheme where you use the Wiimote to move the ship, and the Nunchuk's analog to shoot. For example, the Wiimote can be used in such a way that, when you hold the A or B button, the ship will move in a straight line to wherever the cursor is onscreen. Hence, if you hold the button down while hovering over the ship, you can move the ship along with the cursor. The analog's fire on the nunchuk would naturally work the same way it does in the dual analog. Maybe you've experimented with this already, and found it to not work too well, but if not I think it could really be an interesting control method. Any comments?
(ROG) Well, we've done a lot of experimenting with the Wii controls throughout the development but we kept coming back to the needs of the game...the ultimate solution is that the Nuchuk is best for moving and the Wii- Remote is best for aiming doesnt matter if you're left or right handed, thats still the case. Everything else we tried was interesting but not really great to play with.
2. And second, on the DS version, please Please PLEASE tell me that you've got left-handed friendly controls intact, such that you can use the ABXY buttons interchangeably with the D-Pad.
(ROG) We have support for left handed gamers....a significant number of the team are southpaws so there would be a war if we hadnt
That's it, thank you!
8/3 7:53am, kenshi_ryden posted:
stephen cakebread... and I thought I had a good surname... *shakes fist at stephen*
(ROG) Nice
9/4 10:49pm, Tobias-the-Fox posted:
I've finally made it under 2000 in rank, improving all the time. Working for XBox tech support has definitely allowed me to get my hands on it whenever I get the urge, however my games are starting to last past my breaks and lunch times. I've started coming in early just to get to play a full game on it! I put in my Japanese techno and pull up my gamertag, and see how far I can make it.
Love the game, and my friends from when the 360 came out were also of that opinion that it was the reason to own a system.
I'm surprised you didn't go into any of why it came to be on the Wii, and how such a system change was, well, permitted. I am curious to hear such information.
(ROG) Good point and one we intend to sort out in a future Blog....stay tuned.
8/7 2:57pm, 12-Stepmasternater posted:
In response to the above poster, they should just put that particle man trailer on tv, or at least upload it to youtube (I don't know if its on there yet). That thing was hilarious, and it got all my friends talking about geometry wars.
(ROG) Glad you liked it. Have say I thought the marketing types were insane when they pitched it to me but I was soon coverted and it still makes me smile......actually damn you I'm now got 'particle man, particle man....' in my head....grrrrr. Oh yeah and it is up on You Tube, quite a few times.
|
Monday, September 17, 2007 |
|
Reminiscing on the Process
Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat and so is this team of developers after many late nights of pizza and take-away food
Yeah that sounds alright, I might use that in the next blog.
‘Hey Rog, when’s the next blog due?’
‘A week ago’
‘Nuts!’
Time flies, as they say, but in games development it flies exponentially. We’re running out of it and there’s still loads to do.
Barely able to blink as all the ingredients meld together to form the final product we call ‘Geometry Wars Galaxies’.
So we’re at the point where the game is there, all the pieces fit together and it is fun to play. Now begins the tricky part, getting it to be all it can be and finally getting it to you, the players.
There is an ongoing process of level tweaking.
Levels are played again and again, discussions are had over how the difficulty ramps and would we be able to play each for a considerable length of time and still find it challenging?
Are the medals awarded at the right stage and does the battle drone experience and levelling seem about right?
All these numbers need balancing, checking and rechecking at Vivendi QA, to make sure we’re as close to the ideal as we can be.
In addition to this another delight that we have to deal with is what is commonly known as ‘Compliance’.
Years and years ago when computer gaming was still in its infancy, we used to be able to do basically whatever we liked, as long as the game ran more or less along desirable lines.
Games would crash regularly, presenting the player with an amusing variety of visual effects or something like a red flashing box exception hander ‘Guru Meditation now begins’.
My personal favourite was the display list crash on the old 8 bit Ataris, affectionately named ‘Scrolly Wallpaper’.
Still I digress!
Nowadays it’s all about the user experience. Everything has to be catered for! If you unplug a controller during play, you receive a ‘friendly message’ telling you to plug it back in and usually it will tell you where to plug it, if you get my meaning?
If you take a disc out of the drive, spread it with jelly and then insert it back in the console. It has to be able to tell you what you’ve done wrong, even down to the sell-by date for the jelly.
OK, well not quite, but we do have to do a lot in order to catch all eventualities (within reason) and cater for them.
This is a considerable amount of work and can add weeks to a development, particularly if it’s a new or unfamiliar console.
In QA departments there are compliance testers that live for this stuff. They have many arms to enable them to unplug and reinsert a plethora of devices at the same time and they have photographic memories to relay every little violation back to you. At least this is how I imagine them to be!
Compliance is normally handed down from the hardware manufacturer in the form of documents of religious text that must be adhered to and part of their approval process is to rigorously test each entry against your pride and joy. Too many violations (in fact sometimes one is enough) and your game is not going to be approved, so back you go to fix those issues; resubmit and then we go around again.
Eventually your game staggers, bleary eyed into the daylight, propelled on only by the thought of ending up in some loving home and then your job is done!
A harsh tale!
To be fair the hardware manufacturers do a lot to help you through this process and if you discover something they haven’t addressed, you can be sure that they’ll make something up on the spot and then add to their ever growing list of demands.
As I write this ‘Geometry Wars Galaxies’ is preparing to venture into this volatile area! We think we’re well prepared for it, but it won’t be long before the results are known and the team discovers just how far it has yet to go.
To sum up, we’ve had fun making this game. It’s a cliché I know, but the dev team really do hope you enjoy our labours as much as we’re anticipating. If it’s any measure, the dev team are still playing the game now on a regular basis and not just because they have to…
Thanks for letting us share our thoughts and I hope we’ve given you a few insights into exactly what’s been involved in bring this game to life.
|
Tuesday, September 04, 2007 |
|
A Brief History of Geometry Wars
Ben Ward
Community & Web Lead
Bizarre Creations
Not a lot of people know this, but Geometry Wars wasn’t conceived in one giant “eureka” moment. It was actually built up from the humblest of beginnings; a simple technology demo. The man behind the game is experienced tech coder Stephen Cakebread. 
Steve has worked at Bizarre Creations for about 6 years now, and in his time at the company has worked on every Project Gotham Racing game. He’s also written code for The Club and Boom Boom Rocket, as well as some essential tools we use internally. Sorcery is one such tool, a scalable database which is used across all of our more recent projects.
Steve actually first dabbled with the idea of a multi-stick shooter back in the days of PGR1, when we as a company were first working with the original Xbox. Whilst developing PGR1 we found that sometimes the cars would accelerate off the line without the user touching the joypad. This was a combination of the calibration code and the joystick deadzone making the game think that the user was actually pushing forward on the pad, whereas in reality it was just noise.
Steve wrote some test code which was originally designed to detect this specific play style and increase the deadzone to compensate. Eventually it evolved into the Geometry Wars we know and love.
The game slowly but surely gained popularity internally at Bizarre, with plenty of people crowding around Steve’s desk to see what the fuss was about. Eventually the decision was made to develop the tech demo further, and Geometry Wars was born. It was to be included as part of Project Gotham Racing 2, as a hidden easter egg in the games garage sections.
Geometry Wars was a great success, and became very well known in hardcore circles. Some fans even posted on the Bizarre forums, claiming that they “bought a copy of Geometry Wars, and found a fun racing game on the disc too”! Some gamers took it to extremes when going for the high score, and continued playing for many, many hours in pursuit of the high score.
As you know, immediately after completing PGR2 we turned our attention to the next big project. That project was a launch game for the brand new Xbox 360: Project Gotham Racing 3. Microsoft was to once again publish the game, and we were once again to work with them on another platform launch title. For us developers, that means unfinished hardware, untested software, and many long hours getting your game design to match up with the reality of a moving target. Of course the rewards are great; being there for launch is a huge advantage both commercially and with gamer mindshare.
Of course, being a launch developer also has other advantages. Microsoft approached us with a new concept they were building: Xbox Live Arcade for the 360. Both parties saw this as an ideal opportunity to bring Geometry Wars into the limelight, and Steve was eager to try out some of the ideas that couldn’t be squeezed into the original game - either because of lack of processing power, or (more likely) lack of schedule time to put toward the minigame.
This time Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved would be a game to stand on its own two legs… and it too would be a launch title for the Xbox 360.
When release rolled around, we were overwhelmed with the positive reaction to GW:RE. Several sites claimed that the game was THE reason to buy an Xbox 360, over and above full priced retail titles. It’s been extremely rewarding for us to see the continued success of the game on XBLA, even two long years after its release!
At present the GW:RE leaderboards are dominated by players who battle for up to 25 hours at a time. If you’re going for a high score this is the amount of time you need to dedicate to a single game, let alone all the practice time too. The world record currently stands in the hundreds of millions!
So what happens with Geometry Wars now? Well Bizarre has recently released two Windows versions (for Vista and XP), and GW:Mobile in the United States. Also Geometry Wars Galaxies is in development at external studios… and looking awesome. We still have a few more tricks up our sleeve… who knows what the future will bring?
|
Thursday, August 30, 2007 |
|
Geometry Wars Galaxies Poster in Nintendo Power
We almost missed our flight home when the guys at Nintendo Power wouldn’t put down the controls when we dropped in for a visit. Turns out that mad dash to the airport was worth it – the editorial staff chose Geometry Wars: Galaxies as their monthly centerfold poster in the October 2007 issue.
|
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Peer-IGN
Oct 11 '07 9:51 am PST
Smash Bros. Delayed
In your face, Casamassina. After yesterday's reveal that Sonic would indeed be in Nintendo's...
ShishouMatt
Oct 11 '07 4:41 am PST
Blog #200: Retrospect
I have blogged on IGN for a little over a year. Time to take a look back on some of my Blogs...
PikaPal13X
Oct 10 '07 11:04 pm PST
All Aboard The Hype Train... Capcom Style!
All aboard the hype train! But this time, it's not the Nintendo Express. Instead, Capcom has...
Greggy-IGN
Oct 10 '07 8:41 pm PST
So, I'm Married
Hey-- Yup. After months and months of planning, worrying and panicking, Katie and I got...
sng-ign
Oct 10 '07 5:20 pm PST
Well - I found my GOTY 2007
...
Jess-IGN
Oct 10 '07 2:34 pm PST
PS3 = DONE.....Wii Monster Hunter 3 trailer
...for right now. And possibly forever. Japan's Nintendo wins exclusive deal for Capcom's...
Next-Gen-Gamer
Oct 7 '07 11:35 pm PST
Dear WWE, Save Yourself
"Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to...
MooseyMcMan
Oct 6 '07 7:27 am PST
I have finally played Lair!
Yes! It is true! The day has finally come when I tell you, my faithful readers (and other...
craig-ign
Oct 3 '07 3:34 pm PST
Halo DS, Real or Not Real?
I'm actually amazed at the amount of people who are trying to debunk Casamassina's blog entry...
Hil-IGN
Oct 2 '07 9:53 am PST
The San Diego Sports Nightmare
This is one of the worst years of my life as a sports fan. Little background: I was born in...
|
RSS Feeds
