gamedeveloper200611-dl.pdf

>> PRODUCT REVIEWS LUXOLOGY’S MODO 202 * DARWIN DIMENSIONS’ EVOLVER

NOVEMBER 2006

THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

>> LUCK IN GAMES

RICHARD GARFIELD ON

RANDOMIZING FUN

>> SURFACE TENSION

PHYSICS TO FLOAT

YOUR GAME’S BOAT

>> LOOKING ASKANCE

ARTISTS: FEAR NOT THE

RISE OF THE SCANNERS

DEATHWALK

FOR

PREY

POSTMORTEM:

DESIGNING

[

CONTENTS

]

NOVEMBER 2006

VOLUME 13, NUMBER 10

FEATURES

11 GETTING LUCKY

Many video games diminish the importance

of luck, as it’s often considered the opposite

of skill. Magic: The Gathering creator and

game design legend Richard Garfield ponders

the benefits of adding an ounce of luck to

computer game titles.

By Richard Garfield

21 GO WITH THE FLOW

The world of game physics is advancing, but

water dynamics can be difficult to pin down.

Two pros from Resolution Interactive show us

how to use science to make better water and

liquid simulations, which in turn can lead to

more immersive gameplay.

By Erik Winter and Matti Larsson

POSTMORTEM

30 CREEPING DEATH: DESIGNING THE DEATHWALK SYSTEM

IN 3D REALMS’ AND HUMAN HEAD STUDIOS’ PREY

The creators of P REY , the first-person shooter game from 3D Realms

and Human Head Studios, hope you never die—so much so that

they’ve built a system that nearly prevents that ghastly act from ever

ripping game players from the heat of the action again. Twelve-year

game veteran Chris Rhinehart unravels the numerous strategies the

team employed before they were able to pull this trick off.

By Chris Rhinehart

DEPARTMENTS

COLUMNS

2 GAME PLAN By Simon Carless

Right of Reply

37 BUSINESS LEVEL By Pat Christen

[ BUSINESS ]

Serious Expectations

4 HEADS UP DISPLAY

TGS and GDC London reports, Trion forms, Nintendo announces

LiveMode, and more.

39 THE INNER PRODUCT By Mick West

[ PROGRAMMING ]

Stylus Control

42 GAME SHUI By Noah Falstein

[ DESIGN ]

7 SKUNK WORKS By David March and Tom Carroll

Luxology’s modo 202 and Darwin Dimensions’ evolver

Changing Brains

43 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore

[ ART ]

56 A THOUSAND WORDS

Nippon Ichi Software’s D ISGAEA 2

Through a Scanner Darkly

46 AURAL FIXATION By Jesse Harlin

[ SOUND ]

Be a Demo Dynamo

COVER ART BY HUMAN HEAD STUDIOS

WWW.GDMAG.COM

GAME PLAN

]

www.gdmag.com

CMP Technology, 600 Harrison St., 6th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94107 t: 415.947.6000 f: 415.947.6090

RIGHT OF

EDITORIAL

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Simon Carles s scarless@gdmag.com

MANAGING EDITOR

Jill Duffy jduffy@gdmag.com

FEATURES EDITOR

Brandon Sheffield bsheffield@gdmag.com

ART DIRECTOR

Cliff Scors o cscorso@gdmag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Jesse Harli n jharlin@gdmag.com

Noah Falstein nfalstein@gdmag.com

Steve Theodore stheodore@gdmag.com

Mick West mwest@gdmag.com

ADVISORY BOARD

Hal Barwood Designer-at-Large

Ellen Guon Beeman Microsoft

Andy Gavin Naughty Dog

Joby Otero Luxoflux

ADVERTISING SALES

DIRECTOR OF SALES

Steve McGill e: smcgill@cmp.com t: 415.947.6217

GLOBAL SALES MANAGER, RECRUITMENT & EDUCATION

Aaron Murawski e : amurawski@cmp.com t: 415.947.6227

SR. ACCOUNT MANAGER, SOUTHWEST, CONTRACTORS, & MARKETPLACE

Jasmin Davé e: jdave@cmp.com t: 415.947.6226

ACCOUNT MANAGER, EAST COAST, U.K. & EASTERN CANADA

Cecily Herbst e: cherbst@cmp.com t: 415.947.6215

ACCOUNT MANAGER, NO. CALIF., NORTHWEST, ASIA & WESTERN CANADA

Nick Geist e: ngeist@cmp.com t: 415.947.6223

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Kevin Chanel

REPRINTS Cindy Zauss e : czauss@cmp.com t: 516-562-5000

Julie A. Douglas e: jadouglas@cmp.com t: 516.562.5092

CMP GAME GROUP

VP, GROUP PUBLISHER APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES Philip Chapnick

VP, STRATEGIC MARKETING Michele Maguire

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Ta r a C . G i b b

CONFERENCE DIRECTOR, GDC Jamil Moledina

SENIOR CONFERENCE MANAGER, GDC Meggan Scavio

EXECUTIVE WEB PRODUCER Peter Leahy

EDITOR-IN-CHIE F, GAMASUTRA.COM Simon Carless

ASSISTANT EDITO R, GAMASUTRA.COM Frank Cifaldi

CIRCULATION

CIRCULATION COORDINATOR Miguel Mendiolaza e: mmendiolaza@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Michael Campbell e : mcampbell@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Andrea Abidor e: aabidor@cmp.com

SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

FOR INFORMATION, ORDER QUESTIONS, AND ADDRESS CHANGES

t: 800.250.2429 f: 847.763.9606 e : gamedeveloper@halldata.com

INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION

Mario Salinas t: 650.513.4234 f: 650.513.4482 e : msalinas@cmp.com

CMP TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT

PRESIDENT AND CEO Steve Weitzner

EXECUTIVE VP AND CFO Adam Marder

SENIOR VP, AUDIENCE MARKETING & DEVELOPMENT Bill Amstutz

SENIOR VP, CMP INTEGRATED MARKETING SOLUTIONS Joseph Braue

SENIOR VP AND GENERAL COUNSEL Sandra Grayson

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE MARKETING Lisa Johnson

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE SALES Anne Marie Miller

SENIOR VP, MANUFACTURING Marie Myers

SENIOR VP, COMMUNICATIONS Alexandra Raine

VP, AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Michael Zane

PRESIDENT, CHANNEL GROUP Robert Faletra

PRESIDENT, CMP ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA To ny Ke efe

PRESIDENT, BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY GROUP Jeff Patterson

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR, ELECTRONICS & SOFTWARE GROUPS

Paul Miller

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS GROUP,

Stephen Saunders

IT’S BEEN MORE THAN 10 YEARS SINCE GAME

Developer first hit gamemakers’ mailboxes. The

magazine, now run by CMP Technology under the

erstwhile command of yours truly, has weathered

the storms of generational transitions and

innumerable game hardware and software wars,

all the while attempting to deliver inspirational

and motivational information to game developers

the world over.

But where will we be after 10 more years?

And how can we ensure we cover the right

material for our extremely varied audience,

while maintaining our wider readability? I’ve

been mulling over this issue for some time and

now seems like a good time to ask for more

feedback, since you are the people we make

the magazine for.

postmortems of recent months have been written

by independent developers, who have let loose

with the unvarnished truth. We’re also pretty keen

on the postmortems that discuss one specific

innovation in a game, such as this month’s

investigation of DeathWalk, a feature in 3D

Realms’ and Human Head’s P REY (pg. 30 ).

But what universal truths are you trying to

discern when reading a postmortem? When do

you really care about what a postmortem has to

say? Would you rather read a good postmortem of

a game you don’t know or an average one from a

game you do? Comments are welcome.

Dave Pottinger Ensemble Studios

George Sanger Big Fat Inc.

Harvey Smith Midway

Paul Steed Microsoft

GAME DEVELOPER PLUS?

Finally, you may have noticed that the girth of

Game Developer magazine fluctuates

significantly from month to month, depending

on what’s happening in the game world and

what big show is approaching.

Given the current state of the print market for

consumer game magazines, we’re doing very well

as a smaller professional trade magazine. It helps

that we reach key decision-makers, too.

Still, as long as you are an eligible North

American developer, you’re given the magazine

for free, and this sometimes acts as a strike

against the amount of editorial we’d like to run,

due to the economics of our business model. And

occasionally, we daydream about alternatives:

for instance, would you pay for an enhanced

version of the magazine with more editorial if a

free version were also still available?

The more feedback we receive about Game

Developer —its content, presentation, circulation,

writers, contributors, and editors—the more

options and insight we’ll have to deliver the best

material to our entire readership.

We love Game Developer . We hope you do, too.

And we want to find ways to continue to

differentiate it, so that it’s just as fresh in 2016

years as it was in 1996. Send your thoughts to

editors@gdmag.com. We’ll appreciatively take

them into account and perhaps print some in

forthcoming issues.

STRIKING A BALANCE

One thing we’ve been striving to get right over the

past few years is the balance of articles that are

suitable for the many disciplines that make up

video game development. Those with longer

memories may recall that Game Developer in the

late 1990s was much closer to being a game

version of Dr. Dobbs’ Journal (another CMP

publication), which is to say it was very technical

and much more programming-focused.

But as the make-up of the industry—and of

Game Developer readers—has broadened, and as

artists, designers, and managers filed into our

readership numbers, we realized that we needed

to counterbalance our technical pieces with

columns and features that discuss other matters.

Trying to appeal to everyone is a tall order—but

what’s your take on it, readers? Would you prefer

fewer State of the Industry features and more

technical features? Are you yearning to read more

practical business analysis? What makes you

turn the pages of Game Developer ?

POSTMORTEM PATCH

If there’s one thing Game Developer is known for,

it’s the monthly postmortem articles that dissect

the production of major games. But in today’s day

and age, with PR agencies (most of whom we love

dearly) carefully vetting articles to include

relatively positive spin, it’s sometimes tricky to

acquire true, unmasked “what went wrong”

admissions directly from developers.

In fact, some of our most memorable

Simon Carless

Editor-In-Chief

Game Developer

is BPA approved

NOVEMBER 2006 | GAME DEVELOPER

WWW.CMPGAME.COM

[

WWW.CMPGAME.COM

Idea:

Assemble the ultimate team to create a John Woo sequel that you can play.

Realized:

The line between video game and ﬁ lm is ofﬁ cially blurred. When faced

with the challenge of creating a video game sequel worthy of John Woo’s

movie “Hard Boiled,” the team at Midway chose to use Autodesk ® 3ds Max ® ,

Autodesk Maya ® and Autodesk MotionBuilder™. Using this 3D arsenal,

artists are able to create graphically stunning characters, backgrounds

and animations with amazing production efﬁ ciency. Get the full story on

this next-generation masterpiece at autodesk.com/stranglehold

Stranglehold © 2006 Midway Amusement Games, LLC. All rights reserved. Stranglehold, MIDWAY, and the Midway logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Midway Amusement Games, LLC. Autodesk, 3ds Max,

Maya and MotionBuilder are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk re-

serves the right to alter product offerings and speciﬁ cations at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2006 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

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