Ragdoll Acrobats: GCG Interviews IGF Finalists

 

GameCareerGuide, Gamasutra’s sister site for education and career advice about the game industry, has just posted an interview with the student developers of Carneyvale: Showtime, which was named a finalist in the 2009 Independent Games Festival.

The game is about a circus acrobat and uses ragdoll physics to fling the character through a pinball-like environment. Players can manipulate a wide variety of props to get the main character through the game environment, catching and flinging the acrobat using trapeze-like grabbers.Carneyvale: Showtime also comes with a map editor, allowing players to create new maps and levels. 

In the interview, Bruce Chia, a programmer on the team who is also a student at the National University of Singapore and is professionally affiliate with the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab, discusses a number of technical issues the team hashed out in making the game, from optimization to ragdoll physics:

“The theme of CarneyVale: Showtime was based on a previous game that was developed under Gambit called Wiip. In that game, you played as a ringmaster, trying to tame your animals by whipping them. 

We decided to develop this game in the same world, but instead base it on circus acrobatics. This led us to the idea of using a ragdoll as the acrobatic main character named Slinky. We tried out various ways to make the ragdoll perform tricks and stunts including gaining points by crashing into the surrounding environment.

However, the idea did not turn out to be very fun so we decided to invert the controls such that the player controls the environment instead of directly controlling Slinky. We were much happier with the change, and although some work was discarded, it turned out to be the best decision we made.

Development started around March 2008 and we developed the game in four months of full production time. …

Fang Liang was concentrating on the ragdoll physics for the character. The difficulties there included getting the ragdoll to shift into different poses upon interaction with different objects. For example, a dash move in our game will make the ragdoll spread out its limbs, while another game object the ragdoll can interact with will turn the ragdoll into a sitting position like a ball. 

As for myself, I concentrated on optimizing the game the most. This was especially tough because there were many parts to the game, including the physics, graphics, and particle effects.” 

In the interview, available in full on GameCareerGuide, Chia also discusses how the team took cues from games such as Pinball, Super Mario Galaxy, and even the sport of soccer, to get the gameplay just right.

Bosslady Blog: GDC Adds Brutal, Far Cry, Killzone, Fable Lectures

 

[In her latest Bosslady Blog update, Game Developers Conference event director Meggan Scavio discusses some of the newly-confirmed lectures, revealing the art and science of games like Killzone 2, Brutal Legend, and the newest Fable and Far Cry titles.]

Happy 2009, everyone! While the holidays tend to disrupt the workflow of a good portion of the world, the Game Developers Conference team never takes a break. It’s like a coal mine over here. In a good way! A good coal mine. 

So what have we been working on? More sessions, of course, and here are some of the newly-confirmed highlights coming to our March 23rd-27th event:

- Freshly added to the Programming Track is ‘The Rendering Technology ofKillzone 2‘. Michiel van der Leeuw and Michal Valient from Guerilla Games will present an overview of the extremely pretty rendering techniques used in their highly anticipated 2009 PlayStation 3 shooter. 

As they explain in the session description: “We put the main focus on the lighting and shadowing techniques of our deferred shading engine and how we made them play nicely with anti-aliasing.”

- The Production Track has added “‘Producing Fable II‘, presented by Louise Copley and Jonathan Taylor from Lionhead Studios. This likely to be enlightening postmortem looks into the timeline, production methodology, team structure and organization of one of 2008’s best-received games, revealing what went right, as well as their biggest challenges building the major project.

- Just announced in the Game Design Track is a talk from Ubisoft Montreal’s Patrick Redding, who was most recently narrative designer on the critically acclaimed Far Cry 2. It’s entitled “‘Read Me: Closing the Readability Gap in Immersive Games’. 

His lecture argues, provocatively: “Game output appears information-rich, but how much of that information can the player actually use to play better, and how much of it is just there to be spectacular or cinematic?” – and then goes on to suggest some solutions to make games more ‘readable’.

- To round out this week’s update, we head down the street to Double Fine Studios to bring you ‘The Brutal Art of Brütal Legend‘, as part of theVisual Arts track at this year’s GDC. 

Double Fine art director Lee Petty gives us a behind the scenes look at creating the art for their (pictured) “lovingly-crafted”, Jack Black-starring original IP. He’ll also touch on how the Tim Schafer-headed small, independent studio has evolved with the current generation of game development.

More soon!

[Meggan and her colleagues will be posting regular updates from behind the scenes through the lead-up to this March's Game Developers Conference 2009, including content reveals and other helpful information. You can subscribe individually to the GDC News blog via its RSS feed.]