The principal speaks the biggest difference in Japanese-American game development "level design"

"Level designer"It is a job type that creates and directs each stage that appears during the game. AdvancedGame engine(A comprehensive tool with an environment for efficient game development developed), even planners without program expertise can handle this work. In recent years, the importance of story and artistic production in each stage has increased due to the improvement of hardware performance, and accordingly it is said that importance of level designer's work is getting bigger as well.

Game engine in 1998"Unreal Engine"Developed and using this engine"Unreal Tournament"Series and"Gears of War"We have mass-produced worldwide hit titles such as seriesEpic Games. Grasson Edge of Epic Games talked about "level design" which is said to be the biggest difference in game development between Japan and the United States.

The way to distribute "Level · Designer" of multiple people including Edge, and to divide in extremely efficient way is not only game development, but also all projects.

Brothers to the End: Level Design and Actual Cinematics Production at Gears of War 3 | CEDEC 2011 | Computer Entertainment Development Developers Conference

Epic · Games Senior · Level Designer Grayson Edge (Edge):
Today, thank you for coming to "Level Design and Cinematics Production in Gears of War 3".
Grayson Edge is a senior and level designer at Epic Games.


As a level designer for 11 years in the game industry history, I was in charge of "Gears of War" and "Unreal" series. Currently, in addition to working as a cinematic artist, we also offer product support and sometimes such lectures.

※ In game development"Cinematic"Is to make a story like a movie, using a cinematic approach. In this lecture, the term cinematic often appears, but those who are unfamiliar with the word cinematic,"Cinematic part of the game"Please interpret it.


I will outline the session.

First, I will introduce about Gears of War. The cumulative sales volume of the series is 13 million. The number of awards received through the series is 280. The latest work "Gears of War 3" was developed over two and a half years by the teams of gears 1 and 2. A relatively small team of 80 to 90 full-time developers.


In today's session, I would like to talk about cinematics and level design of Gears of War 3, with various materials from the gear series.


◆ Cinematic approach of the "Gears of War" series and its goals

First of all, Mr. Edge will explain the overall flow of game development from a broader perspective than level design. Here, from the overall picture of this lecture, I will tell you what kind of things Gears of War targets in terms of cinematic, the history of the change.

Edge:
Let's take a look at the content to talk about today. First of all, I will explain the transition of the cinematic policy, then the process from the initial stage (pre-production) to the "polish", how to proceed with it, and the adaptability of how we faced difficulties Regarding flexibility, in the end, I will proceed with the cinematic tips and the extremes.

※ In this talk says"Polish"Means raising the quality of each part of the game and "polishing" the game itself. In development of the gears series, we emphasize this polish, repeat verification and feedback from the team many times, taking a development style that continues to raise the quality of the game until the final stage of development.


On the cinematic style of the first "Gears of War". In this case, I used a single camera on hand. I wanted to express the feeling that the player walked with soldiers, so I moved a lot, on the contrary close up closeup of the face is almost lost. I did not make static pictures as much as possible, and I always wanted to make moving pictures. Here we introduced a movie shooting technique.

When this became Gears 2, I followed the atmosphere of Gears 1 and began to think more about developing the story. Further making the scene tighter, so-called"Franken Sine"I wanted to make less sense, I made it.


Briefly explaining "Franken Cine", here refers to doing a patch when there is not enough animation, but such work occurred at gears 1. As animation was not enough, I made scenes with patches, more closely matching the parts I got from other scenes. I thought that I want to eliminate such a thing in gear 2.

※ "Franken Sine" is a coined word made by film director Fred Wilder. As Dr. Frankenstein made an artificial man at the patch, it refers to a reasonable movie produced by diverting various parts, customizing the camera, diverting the parts from the shot image.

And I also aimed for high quality motion. For gear 1, motion slowed down or speeded up, but at Geers 2 I tried not to do that. In order to maintain consistency, we are taking photographs that adhere to traditional cinematography techniques.

When this became gears 3, I followed the atmosphere of gears 1 and 2, made a more tight scene, and aimed at zeroing Franken Cine as well. Thinking that planning thoroughly could avoid the circumstances where we had to do Franken Cine.


In addition, at Gears 3, we aim at constant creativity and motion with a more realistic camera and motion by keeping constant editing and pace of the whole. Also, at Georges 3, the traditional cinematography technique is maintained and shooting is maintained consistently. Overall polishing was aimed for even more sophisticated cinematic, but I believe this was relatively successful.

In this way, the policy is consistent from gear 1 to 3, but there is a difference in the degree of polish.

◆ Pre-Production: Storyboard, Animatics

Here we are talking about "storyboard" and "animatics" that were held in the early stages of the production of Gears of War 3. Although both are methods of film production, you can see that in game development, it is also an effective tool for sharing game concepts with teams.

Edge:
Next, about pre-production, before production. First of all it is about a storyboard. We used a storyboard for gears 3. A storyboard is very convenient and it is useful in that it gives the director "I want to do something like this" visually.

Not as beautiful as a storyboard, there are things that can be drawn roughly on the spot. Basically, the storyboard will be used at the start of construction of the scene. With the storyboard, you will be able to grasp what the scene will look like at an early stage.


This storyboard becomes like this when it changes to a scene.





Like a storyboard,AnimaticsWe also produce. This makes sharing more specific visual images possible. I use a storyboard for rough grasp of the entire scene.

Animatics can visualize scripts like a storyboard. This allows you to scale and determine the number of shots. We will decide the pace, decide the mood, and decide on the style of making movies. Show the animatics to the designer and have the margin to receive feedback early on what you want to do with the movie and make changes before implementation. This also enables planning.

There are various types of animatics, some based on storyboards, others based on editor, there are also mix media using engines. There is also an engine only animatics. Animatics is preparing cinematics.


This is an example of animatics.







Depending on the scene, this animatics will show you some of these characters, what kind of set you need, special things such as props, custom animation is necessary, and so on with this animatics. Such data is very important in production and it will be useful. First of all, I grab the whole picture of the scene and grasp what I need there.


* The lower movie is the official trailer of "Gears of War 3". The storyboard scene is recorded from 0:15 and the animatics scene from 0:43, respectively.

Gears of War 3 - "Brothers to the End" Trailer - YouTube


◆ In order to deal with the problem of "There is no time"

Epic Games is an Epic Games that promotes game development efficiently using the Unreal Engine, but temporal resources are very valuable in order to orient "small team". Here, a method to make development more efficient from the viewpoint of task management is described. One way to do that is "production pipeline". This pipeline will clarify in what order the process involves and where the development must proceed in order to prevent the whole production from stopping.

Edge:
Next, I will talk about the challenge of gear 3. One big challenge is "I have not had time". I needed 166 scenes, 103 minutes equivalent cinematics. Also, being a "small team" was one of the constraints. And it was also a problem "how to organize everyone and lay down a set that can accomplish all tasks". Furthermore, there was a problem "how to complete a cinematic without a story". Cinematic of gears 3 is made in such a way that it goes forward with design alone.

As a solution, I thought of the following things. First of all, it means "to produce by phase". We divide tasks and develop it by dividing it into phases. As another alternative solution, I also used "outsourcing". If there is not enough time to make a scene, we will outsource a part of the scene to another company.

And "team communication" became the key to a big solution. Communication is more important than other things. In addition to weekly meetings, we also held everyday meetings. In the meeting, we observe the progress of the scene and do a tidy follow-up. While communicating firmly, artists, programmers, level designers, and everyone have shared and managed information within a tough schedule.


I will show you the production pipeline. Although it may seem quite complicated, I would like to explain as much as possible to understand.

First of all, as a whole, we are developing phase by phase. Tasks are also divided finely. Particularly it takes time to cooperate and decide to respond to it.


Let's look from the left. First, I will create pre-production audio play and animatics. From there, the animation production task starts with the flow of the downward arrow, and the motion capture is taken first. In parallel, the flow of the arrow on the top will produce art levels and assets. After that, the layout task will flow according to the stage. If there was a problem at some stage, we took measures to concentrate the personnel on the task and prevent the overall progress from being delayed.


By deciding the layout, the process of cinematic progresses forward. After the layout is decided, write, do add effects, add sounds. With the production of Cinematic of Geers 3, the pipeline of this process progressed so as not to stop somewhere.



◆ Preparation at the initial stage lives at the stage of actual production

From here we enter the stage of actual production (production). The contents that we have prepared in the early stage (pre-production) will be useful here.

Edge:
In setting up the scene, all of the parts we have produced so far in the layout will appear. I will also shoot scenes here. The contents of motion capture are also integrated here at the same time. This will be done when applying changes to the scene. The final pace and style of the scene are determined at the layout stage. And, as far as possible, we will match the scene with animatics created at the stage of pre-production as much as possible, but detailed elements such as actor's performance and timing can be changed here. After doing these, I actually shoot the scene.


In order to advance cinematic production, it is necessary to make a scene cut decision somewhere. This is very important to facilitate the subsequent production pipeline. By determining all the elements, you can minimize subsequent changes. It is also important to fix and fix the shots. We are going to do a facial for all animations, but at Georg 3 we did this for each shot.


Sound is very important in making the atmosphere of the scene, but it tends to be neglected. By making the scene early, better sound design becomes possible. A large amount of Foley recording is required, but also by confirming the scene earlier, it will be possible to repeat the trial & amp; error by spending enough time for audio effects and so on. Excellent Foley and music will dramatically increase the quality of the scene.


As soon as you fix the scene it will take polish. Polish is done carefully. It is important to finalize everything including audio, camera, animation. I will advance the pipeline so as not to come up to this stage, change the angle of the camera, add / subtract animation etc.

We will also optimize at this stage. We will reserve 30 fps for real-time cinematics. Although we will pursue the best looking things, care must be taken not to sacrifice performance. And I will add a hand to where I can. You can not move the camera after confirming the scene, but if you are using a single camera on hand, you can refine the movement of the camera, make adjustments to the lighting, and make such improvements. We also polish the set. By improving the set, the whole scene will be polished.


Let me introduce some TIPS. I have experienced cinematic for years and what I feel is as follows. First of all, as an editing TIPS, "cutting with action" can be cited. As I often do in movie shooting, I think it is better to cut against actions.

Also, it is important to ensure continuity of body motion. When the main character turns to the left, make sure that consistency is given for every shot so that no error occurs so that the next shot is turning to the left as well. As if running in one shot, just keep running on the next shot properly. Even if I make a mistake, I will pay attention not to happen such as walking in the next shot while running in one shot. Body language is also the same. It is one of the things that we must ensure the consistency of the body language by not being able to suddenly become quiet with the next shot although it was tremendously swinging arm and saying something.

TIPS on cameras is what I learned with gear 3, but about FOV and camera type. If it is high FOV, the action feels faster. We use a high FOV to create an atmosphere like the one we are shooting with a handheld camera. If you use a small lens or if you took it from afar, it will slow down slightly. If you want to produce lively actions and movements, we recommend a high FOV. Also, I think that missing some imperfections will make more preferable cinematics.


For TIPS on teams, pre-production planning is very important, and if you do not spend time on pre-production perfectly, you will leave problems behind. Next, by dividing the art task into multiple phases, we can respond flexibly when problems arise.

This is also what I learned with gear 3, but the flexibility of the development team is very important. Most people of cinematic steam had the ability to work on another team as well. Anyone can take scenes and edit them. This is particularly important in the work of cinematics.

It is also necessary to activate communication. Even in keeping the cooperation within the team this will be a great help but the feedback to the scene will also tell you about each other's scenes and say something like "That was good, was not it?" It is also necessary to raise the overall quality. It is also important to make use of each strong point. For example, if there are people who are strong in lighting, we will arrange the tasks that people can finally write.

Also, I wrote that "polish makes a difference", but in the role that the director plays in cinematics, it is vital to focus on details as well as lead the production. Make sure of camera work and lighting firmly, and go through the polish of fine details tightly, improving the quality of the whole scene. And finally I learned that "cinematic does not end". Improvement is always possible.


◆ Reality of Level Design: How to Concept the Concept and Expand it

I have seen the progress of the whole game development so far, but from this point I will focus on the "level design". Edge is one of the major stages of Gears of War 3"Raven's Nest (stage of the ship carrying the hero)"The level design was done. An example of this Raven's Nest is told how the level design was actually done.

Edge:
Next I will move on to the level design story. This is a list of what we did in the level design of "Gears of War 3". I will tell you how you designed the level design from the concept of the upstream process such as a story to the final polish.


At first, writers and designers gathered, and thought about a story among them. Regarding the upstream concept, we are doing a very large amount of discussion. At this stage we are also talking about whether to insert a new character.

After the whole story is decided, we will assign each work to the level designer. We create a "summary" that summarizes the contents of each level on one page, and hands it to the level designer. Then the level designer draws the details according to the summary and makes the contents darker.


Next, I will talk about "brainstorming". It is a story about how to proceed with level design after a story is created.

First of all, "3 pager" is written, but I will make a summary of the one page I talked about, expanded to 3 pages. Based on this, the whole level designers gather and discuss what kind of cool things can be done in the overall level design. This is a brainstorming meeting.


Among them, we will decide the main atmosphere of the level, for example. Would you like to be defending, making it creepy, or making it crazy? Regarding Raven's Nest, we first decided to take the slow development and finally try to raise the tension.

In addition, we will decide when the incident will occur. At Raven's Nest, it was decided that setting in the early morning would be better instead of night. I will also decide how long it will take for game play and how it progresses. Raven's Nest decided to set it from 32 minutes to 1 hour.

We also talked about whether to include elements of "surprise". Regarding Raven's Nest, a scene that a huge fish monster attacks a big ship is put in it.

Besides that, I examined what kinds of weapons and creatures to put on the level, whether to include specific elements that would not appear in other games. Intro introduces new characters. In addition, we talked about whether to include lines related to the level about stories and conversations between characters.

◆ Mechanism for receiving feedback "Schelling"

In the development of Gears of War 3, a style is taken to make opportunities to get feedback from team members as much as possible while eliminating waste and promoting development."Schelling"Is a mechanism to simultaneously achieve getting rid of waste and getting feedback so that you can move games before going into fine designs and see if the concept is correct and what the real game will be like , You can check again.

Edge:
Next, I'm going to work "Schelling". This is the most enjoyable part for us. At the stage of Schelling, we can see roughly what this level will be.


Schelling is the process of determining the overall picture of "shell". First, we will decide key geometry and flow. Use tools such as BSP and simple mesh.

In Schelling, we will also decide the overall picture of gameplay. Here I will decide scripting with scrimet. If there is a part without a game code, for example, if there is a new monster or new character, use the technique POC. Furthermore, if texts such as conversation scenes are not settled, we test the robot's voice.

Schelling will take 2 to 3 weeks. This confirms the skeleton. I will do the test first, but it is a very good timing to get feedback from various people. Whether the whole concept is good or not is not yet understood at this stage, but it is the best timing to get feedback.


This is the shell of Raven's Nest at an early stage. It is a corridor. The texture is pure white and flat, there is no fancy lighting. It is made simple.


This is also the initial shell of Raven's Nest. Ship and computer, but it is very simple. Nothing is drawn on the texture of the computer. With such a shell in place, a stage that can be played for a while is made. With this, it becomes almost visible what kind of atmosphere it will be. Creating this makes it easier for you to receive feedback.


First of all, it is because why she is going to do sheltering, but it is still easy to change. Since we do not implement art until the core part is completed, there is less waste when you change it after it is finished. It also provides a roadmap to final product version.


For example, at Raven's Nest, you can see all this with Schelling, what size the ship will be, how big it is inside, whether it feels like it will evoke claustrophobia.

By looking at these things, feedback will be easier and new ideas will be easier to come out. Very good ideas come out here. For example, in a scene where monsters attack Raven's Nest comes out, should we be able to attack monsters from inside the ship?




◆ Improve efficiency by "Proof Of Concept"

When developing games with Unreal Engine, level designers"Unreal · Kizmet"We will make "POF" using the tool called "POF". Since the scrimet can visually create models such as items, characters, monsters and so on and can be implemented in the game, for coders who produce real code, understand what kind of code the level designer is seeking It will be easier.

Edge:
I will show you the POC of the monster. This is the concept of POC. Since this monster is a new monster, there was no code to implement it in the game, but it was able to be made quickly by "scrimet". This monster is made in about 10 hours in total. .


Again meaning POC, POC is "Proof Of Concept", concept demonstration. You can quickly implement and review newly introduced items. It will also be a design drawing for showing to the development team. I can actually show you what it is trying to make new. It is also very easy to understand for coder. As I can show off, "Oh, I knew it," Koda can reply as soon as possible.


This is pretty early, but the battleship is shooting a huge fish monster. I made it all with scrimet.


◆ "Visual Pass" and "Scripting Pass"

Here we will talk about the stage of brushing up the art and play contents of the game, respectively. In "Visual Pass", the image side of the game is created, while in "Scripting Pass" the content aspect of game play is created. Again, you can see that the verification and feedback system is working.

Edge:
I'd like to go on talking about visual pass. The visual path is the stage of how to make the level even more beautiful. I will talk about using Raven's Nest example.


After making a shell, I will make concept art. The left is Raven 's Nest "Nest" concept drawing. The right is the overall appearance of Raven's Nest. Using such concept art, we will examine the mesh etc when fleshing shell.


This is a breakout seat. There is a concept diagram on the upper left. I will express this with a mesh in detail by separating them apart. It is divided into parts such as roof, pillar, wall, and we will express each piece with mesh.


I tried arranging the purpose of visual pass. At Raven's Nest, Messing first. Put the mesh in and see if it looks like a ship properly. I will direct the overall atmosphere and mood with lighting. Also, we will put in the particle FX at this stage. For example, it is like blowing a fire or steam at an event.

In this way, the overall atmosphere is determined at the visual pass stage. The visual pass is done twice in the whole, and receives group feedback here. This gives visual staff time feedback and time to confirm it.


The next stage is the scripting pass. The purpose of the scripting pass is to refine the experience of gameplay. Also, we will use the temporary model for animatics and cinematics to assume the actual length of the game. We also add major audio and conversation here. I will put the voice of the voice actor here.

In this way it is decided what the whole play experience will be. At this stage, I will bring AI and most of the game code to the state that it can operate. By providing scripting pass twice in the whole, scripting and visual team can work together at the same time.


It is the game screen of the stage of scripting pass. It is not complete yet, but it is approaching completion considerably.





◆ The final stage of game development "Level Swarm" and "Final Polish"

After the visual pass and the scripting pass, the entire elephant of the game was completed. From here we are going to "polish" the contents of the game. Among them, Epic Games first distributes tasks for polish by "level swarm". What is to be done, what are the priorities, level designers gather again, examine and make a path to the final polish.

Edge:
Next I would like to talk about level and swarm. After going through the visual path and scripting pass, the shape of the game is completed in a rough form, and from here it polishes, but level and swarm will start here.


In the level · swarm all are divided into small teams. Planning, level designer, game play programmer, producer, FX artist, animator, world artist meet together and decide the task to polish the game.

The level · swarm generally lasts about 4 weeks. The level · swarm is divided into two or three times.

What we learned from this level swarm is that there are so many data to process first. We need to allocate them to individual level designers and solve the problem. Therefore, it is important to filter the data firmly, prioritize, and distribute in the proper form.

It is also important to limit the number of swarms. Level designers prepare for the meeting and participate in the level · swarm, but we made consideration not to spend too much time preparing for it. For the final polish, we will check in the level / swarm whether the whole is well carried out.


The final stage is final polish.


It is about how to polish as a team, but the main staff are assigned to the place where the main staff can demonstrate their own power. Because the ability differs depending on the person in charge, in the final polish, the visual is a strong human being, the script is allocating the final job to the strong person in the script. As for leads, they will be the overall responsible person for this final polish.

It says, "Foster experts from the trial", but I will confirm who did the best through the project. Within the team, we will examine who this is detail-oriented, who is big-minded, and considering such things, in the next installment we will arrange pretty-oriented people in pre-production or place people with detail-oriented persons in polish I will do.


Besides that, we conducted a group test with Epic as what we did in the organization. We also tested the level design, and also did the work of discovering the person who could best optimize among them. Also, if the design of the artist could not be done very well, we also tried and errored it with a level designer and raised the level.

There is "passion and positive attitude", but suppose that there are people who like lighting very well, for example. For those people, we will ask members of the team to teach lighting. It was very well understood at the gear 3 that such a suitable place suited great difference. I think that the level designers were properly arranged in gear 3 and it was a good example of the right place.


* The play movie of "Raven's Nest" completed in this way is the one under. It is sophisticated and finished in a powerful stage.

Gears of War 3 - E3 2011: Gameplay Demo - YouTube


◆ To make level design a success

Edge:
Let's summarize the key points for the level design to succeed.

First of all, we need to give feedback to each other. It is to constantly repeat the product, feedback in it, constantly making improvements. It is also true for our pacing. It is to work at a good pace.

It is also important to make a moment that will remain in memory. I have a little break and have the time to spend with everyone else, I develop my sharpness and return to work.

It is also important that those who do level design / lead are hardcore gamers. In order to make a product, it is necessary to understand the product firmly and to understand the market, such a hard core part. It is also important that you like games.

Finally, it is important that you do not give up to make a good game. We always have this as a message to the entire team, and we believe we were able to make great works.


thank you for listening.

◆ Q & A

Q:
Although it was that there are many level designers, is there no discrepancy if changes on one stage affect the next stage?

Edge:
I think that it is a matter of communication. In such cases, instead of sending by e-mail, stand up from the seat, walk to the members of the team, clearly say face-to-face. Even if we walk around in the office if necessary, I emphasize going directly to talk.

There are also tools in the organization. It is a tool used by the editor, but it is a tool called perforce, which is a tool to check the map. You can also say that two people do not work at the same time on one map. Also, we need some ingenuity to divide the level.


Q:
Although it is said that it was partly outsourced, how much did you outsource?

Edge:
About outsource, there are only some scenes. Of the 166 scenes, we outsource only 8 scenes. To outsource is limited to cases where you are really busy and have no time. Also, we do not outsource the entire scene. It is sometimes to outsource only the first part of the layout.


Q:
It was that the level designer did various experiments with the scyette before the coda implemented the implementation, but how many people can use the scrimet in the team?

Edge:
Most people in the team, especially people involved in level design, all know how to use scimets. However, there are differences in their arms, some people are using very well and some people say that they can use basic. Is it 10 people in the department of local design who is using scrimm on a daily basis?

Q:
Thank you very much.