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GDC: LucasArts and The Force Unleashed 54

Posted by Zonk from the tie-fighter-toss-your-way-to-victory dept.
With the title of 'Next Generation GamePlay in Service of Story and Characters', LucasArts had a lot of ground to cover Thursday morning. Their new technologies have been well received, and the developers and journalists in the room were anticipating details on the over-the-top effects we've seen from The Force Unleashed. From a technical standpoint, Haden Blackman's talk fully delivered. Read on for my notes from this fascinating look at the point where storytelling and physics meet.
The next-gen focus for LucasArts is on simulation-based gameplay, how that feeds into character. Environments and characters, events and systems built around physics and objects rather than scripts and hand-crafted events. They're doing this to make it a foundation for more cost- effective development. There's a greater emphasis on surprise and novelty with this route, because every time you play it's going to be different. Authenticity is the aim: the world behaves the way you'd expect given what you know about the setting.

The other goal is to revolutionize story and character. LucasFilm is an obvious example within the company. Their goal, then is to bring new life to stories, telling them in different ways. They're always looking to tell stories in new ways, both in and out of the game. The 'out of game story' is the player's story: what the player did to overcome obstacles. Their goal is to make every player story unique: I beat the game slightly differently than you did. They're aiming for relatable, authentic characters. Characters that behave how you'd expect in animations, AI, and physically.

Once they'd gotten rallied around those concepts, they began working on Force Unleashed's game's core concepts. "The Force = The galaxy's best simulation catalyst." It's an interactive power that allows you to manipulate your environment. They really wanted to push the boundaries with the Force. Their goal is to amp up, over the top showcase Jedi powers. They began doing imagery, and then a pre-visualization video, with the goal of grasping just how powerful they wanted the Force to be.

They show the pre-viz video, which is something we've all seen previously on YouTube. Blackman says "After that I had the most terrifying moment of my career." He had to go show the video to Lucas, and convince him it was the right direction. He said "That's great, go do it." Blackman was even more afraid then, because they didn't have the tech to do it.

He then outlines some of the elements of the game, which is available in more depth in IGN's preview of the game. The best part of this slide: "What is the core gameplay: Kicking someone's ass with the Force."

At that point they had a game in search of technology. Design drives everything, so they didn't start with the tech, they started with the story/concept. They began building their team that began building the 'Ronin' engine, integrating Havok and Digital Molecular Matter. They partnered up with ILM for elements like cloth and fur, too.

The ILM partnership has been very fruitful. They are utilizing Zeno, their digital editor, originally made for film. LucasArts adopted it for games, and now they have a common pipeline for assets, VFX, and other elements. They're working on likeness captures and facial motion capture technologies, to get really accurate performances. ILM is one of the forefront workers in fluid dynamics, and so they're hoping to utilize that as well with true water simulation. They're sharing engineers across the company, leveraging the expertise of both companies to produce more powerful results. ILM is getting something out of it too. They'll be using some of LucasArts' tech to do pre-visualiation on films; using the Ronin engine to make animatics for big-budget Hollywood flicks.

He then shows an 'ILM Sizzle' piece, showing some of their incredibly impressive work on the Poseidon movie. Lots of fluid dynamics elements, tons of special effects elements. "There was no boat, there was no ocean." They also show a number of scenes from Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest, using much of the same sizzle footage in the online piece we have previously discussed here on the site.

Blackman then moves on to the two techs they're incorporating into the game. Digital Molecular Matter allows them to translate real materials into their titles; wood breaks like wood, glass breaks like glass. DMM saves on art time, increases the authenticity of the environment, and encourages experimentation. "What happens when I throw the Stormtrooper through that hut?" It provides surprising payoffs, and it's different every time. "Soft bodies are cool." Soft bodies are game elements that bend or sway instead of breaking. (Denting metal, bending girders.) This all results in more exciting and immersive stories. It begs players to share stories. "I made a bridge to cross the lava." Character interactions are also more varied; creatures moving through a forest force plants and trees out of the way.

They then show off the DMM tech, using much of the same elements as the much-watched YouTube video we've probably all seen before. He goes further, though, editing the properties of elements in the room he's in. Glass in the ceiling can be edited to be flexible and fragile; when he resets the room the glass breaks under its own weight. He demonstrates again with a brick wall, which can be made to collapse and sag depending on the properties he sets. The goal is to get authentic experiences, but also ones that are fun, and this is what a lot of their designers spend their time doing.

Euphoria is the next subject up, and is "true bio-mechanical AI". Characters have a central nervous system, muscles, and a brain. NPCs then, have reflexes. They grab onto things in the environment to save themselves, do their best to stay alive. It's not about replacing animators; it's about making sure animators are working on important things (character performances) rather than gross physical movements. "Barrel of Stormtroopers - How many Stormtroopers can we get to latch on to each other when held over a pit?" This results in a different story every time, improves the immersive experience, and gives characters somewhat of a sense of self. It also leads to comedy. Comedy is a big part of Star Wars, and torturing Stormtroopers is something that they do on a daily basis at the company.

They boot up a demo, and show off some of the 'best ways to exploit Euphoria'. They start with the Stormtrooper drop. It's different every time, with the poor guy getting slammed into the ground again and again. They use a pile of boxes to show how the objects and character, based on orientation and speed, scatter and flip. The next demo is the Balancing Act, which has a surface with a trooper on it. As they shift and jump the surface, the little man tries to keep his balance and stay upright. GrabNGo shows the hanging physics: a trooper slides down the slope, and tries to grab onto the ledge before he falls. The next uses animated legs (the trooper is running forward) and a euphoria upper body. By tossing boxes at the trooper, they show how he tires to deflect incoming objects. The final demo shows actual force effects in use, knocking troopers off a ledge with a box, force chocking and light sabering a trooper.

They're in full production on all levels, now working on motion capture and art, higher level elements.

So, the keys here are that these simulations are really hard to get right. It took a lot of work, and several brand new techs. Designers had to learn to deal with fear; get over the possibility of doing something 'wrong'. Iterating and experimentation has been key to getting the 'feel' of these systems right. Consistency is king; if you do it in one level you have to make sure that you can do it every time. Don't be constrained by realism; if the force of their 'Force Push' was applied to a real human they'd probably be ripped in half. Go for fun, not for reality. They are trying to encourage and reward experimentation, breaking the player's conditioning, and pull them fully into the game.
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GDC: LucasArts and The Force Unleashed More

GDC: LucasArts and The Force Unleashed

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  • As long as we don't have to relive Hoth again, I'll be happy.

    Hoth Adventure XII: Remember those droids you saw in the background? And that guy? This is their story.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 )
      > As long as we don't have to relive Hoth again, I'll be happy.

      Leia: "Hoth. The one place in the galaxy where my metal bikini would make me look more dignified than this flimsy white dress."
      Han: "Hey, Princess, if you can't stand the cold, get outa the fridge."

  • Bothans (Score:5, Funny)

    by MeanderingMind ( 884641 ) on Thursday March 08, 2007 @02:33PM (#18278924) Homepage Journal
    Many Bothans died to bring us this information.

  • Physics Hype (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HappySqurriel ( 1010623 ) on Thursday March 08, 2007 @02:37PM (#18278982)
    I see the value in moving away from scripting everything to a more physics based system but at some point it becomes more involved to create something interesting using physics as compared to scripting ...

    As an (extreme) example, consider a racing game where you were forced to design and build a real engine for your car ... Suddenly, rather than set acceleration = 1.0 and max speed = 145 you have to hire a dozen designers to get exactly the same effect ...

    I understand we're decades away from an example like that, but physics is not the solution to every problem
    • I understand we're decades away from an example like that, but physics is not the solution to every problem

      No, but it is cool. And in the end isn't that all that really matters?

    • There have been plenty of F1 sims, some with the option to setup your own car. Great, get it to ride as low as possible because that is what F1 cars do. Everybody does it.

      So then came grand prix legends, a historic racing sim, with even more options for tuning. So everyone tried to get their car as low as possible and something wasn't right.

      Cars were hellish to drive, skittish and any error would lead to a crash.

      The problem? Well F1 cars of that era had NO wings and therefore no benefit to riding low. Wh

    • Other than more steps to the end product, it doesn't wind up being much more complex, unless you want to get into some really extreme down-in-the-weeds engine modelling. You define an engine torque curve, and a transmission with a set of gears, and tires with particular traction characteristics, and a coefficient of friction from air drag, and you can iteratively simulate feeding more gas to the engine until you're flat out and can't go any faster.
    • The ultimate physics engine for a game would only allow you to change universal constants.

      I for one would enjoy seeing the cataclysm resulting from setting the gravitational constant to 0.
    • The nice thing about using a physics engine like this is that it will work in any number of situations.

      Code the physics engine once and use it in a dozen different games with minimal changes.

      This is better than changing all your scripts.

  • Wii (Score:2, Redundant)

    by rlp ( 11898 )
    Hopefully Lucas Arts will build a game for the Wii that takes full advantage of the motion detection, rumble, and audio capabilities of the WiiMote. Yes, I do mean single and multi-player light-saber duals.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )
      I believe GameInformer magazine's preview said that LucasArts where planning a Wii version but it would not be the "lightsaber" game people want.
    • Hopefully Lucas Arts will build a game for the Wii that takes full advantage of the motion detection, rumble, and audio capabilities of the WiiMote. Yes, I do mean single and multi-player light-saber duals.

      That was about the first thing I thought of when I heard what Nintendo were planning with the Revolution. Having played with one for a few months now, I doubt it'd be as cool as we hoped. The wiimote isn't precise enough when pointing away from the screen; that's OK on Wii Sports, where the motions are

    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      by king-manic ( 409855 )
      Like everything else star wars related in the last while, it'll be a good to mediocre game of it's genre that heavily trades on the star wars name. All SW titles in the recent past have been this way. Only notable for the franchise tie in. Republic comando is a good but nto exceptional FPs, Galactic Battlegrounds is a okay but boringly repatetive C&C style RTS, then a hodge poge of bland action games. The onyl notabel exception is lego star wars which is amazingly fun and interesting. I suspect a Wii SW

  • Force Chocking? (Score:5, Funny)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Thursday March 08, 2007 @02:59PM (#18279240) Homepage

    The final demo shows actual force effects in use, knocking troopers off a ledge with a box, force chocking and light sabering a trooper.

    Force chocking?

    ...that's where you use the Force to cram Captain Antilles under the wheel of your boat trailer to keep it from rolling, right?

    • Mod this up!!! I almost chocked on my trail mix!!!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by kmcrober ( 194430 )
      ...that's where you use the Force to cram Captain Antilles under the wheel of your boat trailer to keep it from rolling, right?

      Well, he is a Wedge.
    • This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. So why can't I stop laughing! My god that's funny. Just plain funny.
  • Could this be the secrect title Free Radical Design (Timesplitters, key members Golden Eye 007 team) is working on? http://www.frd.co.uk/game6/pressRelease.php [frd.co.uk]
  • So, Slashdot is running Lucasarts press releases now?

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Did you notice the GDC at the beginning of the title? Game Developer Conference. Zonk is reporting on a seminar given there.

  • I wanna see what this tech can do with lightsaber dueling, the problem I see is that saber fights require a certain input that for the most part has to remain static(I'd be pissed if I used an input that returned a different result everytime...)The sweet side I see is that input speed would produce a dynamic physical reaction.

    See you in Nar Shadaa.
    • I think that would only work on the Wii, but they might be able to get a passable implementation on the PS3 as well.

      Anyone remember that Lucas Arts game where you built Droids? I loved that one! I want something like that, but an RPG.

      That could run on any console nowadays.
  • What I'd like to see from LucasArts is some new point-n-click adventure games. You know, the industry they pioneered in the late 80s when Sierra was still in the "mouse for movement, but commands must be typed in" stage.
  • How many times now have we heard this "truly realistic, destructable environments where objects behave according to real world physics" promise now? What we always end up getting is an environment where SOME objects are destructable or have physics, and the vast majority don't. The computer muscle just isn't there to deliver on the grandiose promises.

    As for that crap about "modeling materials down to the molecular level," I'm not even going to justify that ludicrous claim with a response.

    -Eric

  • They use a program called "endorphin", by a company called NaturalMotion

    the sweet thing is there is a free trial learning edition here:

    http://www.naturalmotion.com/ele.htm [naturalmotion.com]

    and i have nothing to do with them in case anyone is wondering

  • I'd love to just be able to play with some of the demos they have shown off in the videos. Chucking stormtroopers at wooden beams over large pits just looks like a great stress reliever. Add in the ability to change the properties of the beams, and also the ability to throw droids while I was at it, and I'd lose hours just seeing what I could do to hapless stormtroopers.
  • Stormtrooper falling demo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWpmQzYWI44 [youtube.com]

    DMM Tech Demo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4EF9IkhAOo [youtube.com]

    Endorphin Tech Demo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp1stQ49Bfo [youtube.com]

    Pre-viz video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDUQYc_OeVg [youtube.com]

  • Hope they would fix the light saber problems...
  • ... find large group of stormtroopers.

    Step 2: Force Jump

    Step 3: Force Pull

    Step 4: Sing "It's raining men"

  • That's so great what about story (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aztektum ( 170569 ) on Thursday March 08, 2007 @08:22PM (#18283586)
    It's great that you can make something look awesome, but like these styrofoam balls my mom has that she glued "pretty" beads and beans on, what's the fuckin' point? Running around looking cool is fun at first, but after that you need to keep people around.
  • The Force will truly only be unleashed when George Lucas dies. That man has damaged his own franchise more than any developer has with shitty Star Wars games.

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