Videogames of their own Volition
As you step through the darkly tinted, steel-framed raucous door that bears the label "Volition" in a thick white broken text, you are greeted by a friendly secretary in a waiting room decorated as if a stylish fashion with the phrase, "Welcome to Volition."
The waiting chairs are comfortable and covered in leopard upholstery. The side table contains large overflowing piles of the latest PC and Videogame magazines, and a large glass cabinet hangs on the wall containing 27 boxes, all different sizes, shapes and colors, christened with the title, Decent.
This is no ordinary trip to a mundane office overrun with cubical uniformity, you have just been absolved into the world of Volition, Champaign based videogame developer THQ Inc, world renowned videogame publisher.
It is here where famed videogame series like the Summoner and Red Faction were born and bred. Recently THQ acquired the license to one of Marvel Comics most illustrious vigilantes, The Punisher, and Volition has been adorned with the task of creating The Punisher videogame.
Once you're taken out of the front room, you enter a new world where dimly lit, mazelike passages interconnect and double back on themselves. The hallways are festooned with story boards, sketches, temporary level designs, special effects illustrations, as well as 2D and 3D character composites.
Each room is set up in a different fashion, but all share the same eerie emanating blue glow of computer screens in the dark. With each room you pass, you see flashes of walls covered in videogame, movie and anime posters, toys piled on shelves, art books and physical references stacked desks embellished with keyboards, controllers, electronic pens, multiple monitors and TV's.
All of a sudden, multibillion-dollar videogame industry no longer looks nor feels as big and out of reach as it once did. With this notion, you discover that the development of a videogame is a much less static process then one might first expect.
It all starts with the concept, and what comes with the license of any Marvel character, is a long rich history of storyline conflict and character development.
"The Punisher is one of Marvel's grittiest heroes," said John Enricco, Volition concept artist.
We look forward to working with Marvel in bringing a perfect blend of classic comic book and videogame action of The Punisher to console gamers, said Clint Ourso, Volition product lead.
The Marvel Universe and all of its characters continue to provide engaging content in the interactive videogame arena to players across the world. The Punisher is one of many licenses issued for games based on comic book heroes.
It is speculated that this is a game that will satisfy long-time Punisher fans of the Marvel Comics' series as well as any new fans turned on to the character after his feature film adaptation this April," said Ourso.
The development process on The Punisher first began with concepts and storyboards. "Basically, we started character designs for (THQ's) new punisher game as soon as we got the character list," said Steve Halt, Volition concept artist. "When designing a character, I first attempt to get an idea of how I want the character to look. I generally get real picture references off the internet for textures on clothing."
After the concept work is done for the characters, the composites are then sent to a 3D modeler, who formats both a skeleton and outer shell for each character in a program called 3D Studio Max -- it can both model and animate three dimensional objects."Basically, when I start, I map a 3D skeleton for characters using the frontal and profiled composites of the 2D characters from the concept artists. Once I determine the skeleton outline, I go into detailing what I want the characters face and clothing to look like," said Scott Rays, Volition 3D Artist.
This process is a back and forth effort between the concept artists and the 3D molders. "If I run across a problem with a characters design, I'll go work it out with concept artist to get these characters looking right," Rays said.
After the characters are modeled in full 3D, these models are then moved into the animation phase of their development. During animation, characters are given a certain physical weight in a 3D realm, and all their movements are either mapped out through the looping of specific motion captured actions or manually constructed by animators said Dave Carter, Volition artist and animator.
Motion capturing is the process of attaching identifiable balls a person's body, and having them perform physical actions in front of a camera that only detects the movement of these balls through space. The data from the camera is then sent to a computer so the movements can be translated into a computer generated 3D world
"It is the animator who will set how a videogame character will move through their 3D universe. We control how different parts of their body shift as they perform certain actions throughout the course of the game," Carter said.
A videogames level design occurs in a similar fashion. Basic models are rendered in the computer, built with 3D blocks as representations for a final structure and the play mechanics such as gravity, movable area, and artificial intelligence (AI) are implemented. "We set the game play, we're the ones that make the game 'fun,'" said Matt Boynton, Volition level designer.
After the levels and play mechanics are detailed on this base model, the levels are then sent to Level Artists who place all the details into the levels.
"A lot of the time, especially recently, it's our job to place most of the interactive objects in the levels in addition to making the game look pretty" said Level Artist, Frank Marquart.
While levels are constructed and made pretty, markers are placed throughout levels so that, "if the player does something, or gets to a certain point, we set this certain event to happen. Once they complete a certain objective, other ones will turn off because it's similar or redundant action. This allows for a greater variety of game play multiple times through," said Boynton.
While the look, feel and play of character and levels are a large core part of game development, the enemy's artificial intelligence is just as important.
"AI generally adds the difficulty to the game... The trick with having separate difficulties is that you want to make your characters look and act intelligent on all levels of play, but you still need to delineate clear lines between easy, medium and hard" said Chris Neihengen, Volition programmer.
Throughout the development of the game, every aspect needs to be tested and retested before the complete production is finished said Dan Behrns, a Volition quality assurance lead. "What we do here is test and report every piece of programming that comes out of every department here," he continued.
Almost every area has testing systems, or development kits, that it uses to test out to see how things are working in the game Behrns said.
"The menu systems for the games are created according to specific guidelines, rules and regulations given to us by the console makers," said Doug Nelson, Volition quality assurance lead.
"For instance, on a menu screen, certain buttons have to serve certain functions, if they do not, the test copy we sent to Sony or Microsoft will get sent back for us to fix before they authorize the game for production," Nelson continued.
The last portions of a game that are added onto in the development stage are the full motion video sequences (FMV's). "These sequences are computer generated and serve as a movie like scenes in the game, they can serve as introductions of characters, transitional scenes, provide moving story elements and the like; generally we outsource for these types of scenes because they take so much manpower and hours that we simply don't have with the size of our current staff" Nelson said.
The musical score and sound effects are added to the game in a similar that they're added to movies. Sounds and music are sequenced with game events to play when a player walks into a certain area or a certain scene occurs said Dan Watts, composer and sound designer for Volition.
For standard sound effects like walking, and gunfire, we have a fairly large sound bank to pull from, we use those standard sounds because those are the sounds that need to be there for a more realistic experience, but aren't as important as say, the specialized sounds for characters, Watts said.
"Voice actors are given scripts just like in animated movies in which to convey their parts. Generally an actor will do at least 10 to 20 variations of anyone line to give us a variety of choices to pick that will work the best for our characters at any one point in the story," said Watts.
Though all the behind the scenes work is important, it takes a lot more then programming code to get a game from concept to completion and onto the store shelves.
The standard videogame goes through massive amounts of strategic marketing, public relations, business relations, beta testing, packaging, licensing approvals, art and design to get them out to the public. "And while we've got a standard process down here, most of the concepts and ideas that go into the game are highly malleable," said Nelson.
"Very few ideas make it complete and unchanged before the final project is out. The process is very organic, the concepts and ideas grow as they're put to the test, some make it, fit and work, some don't and they're out the window" Nelson said.
"It's really a new experience each time, no two games are or can be made the same way, we progress too much during the process for that to be possible," Nelson finished.