GK3 Designer Diaries - by Jane Jensen
December 7, 1998
At last I can report real progress. You know, "real progress" - in designer lingo that's the stuff that you can actually see when you boot the game as opposed to all the behind-the-scenes work that goes on (programmers, needless to say, have a different definition of "real progress"). Since about the end of August we've had the G-engine midlayer finished and have been able to put together rooms and scenes in a process we call "scripting." It's called that because it's a higher-level process than programming. Part of the G-engine rework included adding a text-based interface that lets us play animations and messages, position characters and cameras, etc. with simple calls. So we now have three scripters building these text files in addition to the actual programming team. The scripters put together the bulk of the room scenes while the programmers remain busy with things like the walker code, lighting and other graphic issues, the puzzles (which still have to be programmed the old-fashioned way), and continuing engine work. The process of actually building the game has thus stabilized, and we have Day 1 (there are three days in the game) more or less playable and quite a bit of Day 2 working in bits and pieces. Attention, Houston, we have a game!
Right now my week goes something like this: I'm at the office two days a week, and the other three days I'm at home working on my next novel. Two days on GK3 is plenty at the moment. All the writing for the game is done and recorded. My main job is play testing and generating notes and bug reports. My focus is to work with the scripters on later time blocks to get them "clickable." That means all the basic logic is in place, and you can actually play through the time block, though there might be (and usually are) missing animations, and none of the camera work or polish work has been done. Our team's art director, Richard, and our producer, Steven, are working on the earlier time blocks that are already playable to add the final level of polish.
Now that we're actually building the game it's more apparent how much animation is still needed and how intricate the polish work really is. For each of the game's 60 or so environments (rooms) we must do final walker boundaries (so ego doesn't walk through desks or take strange routes), camera boundaries (so you can't zoom the camera through walls), the final lighting for four different time periods in each room, the panoramas (what you can see in the distance from each location), final textures, props, and so on. Character and prop positions must be finalized, and there's lots of camera work to be done as we lay out the cinematics for all of the story scenes. Besides these film-like cameras we also have what we call "inspect cameras" (close-ups of every object you can click on) and room cameras (different views of the rooms that let you navigate quickly). We also put in facial expressions for the characters and sometimes specific gestures for the more important lines of the 8000 or so we've recorded. Our bottleneck is animation, and there are plenty of areas of the game already where everything's done but that.
Fortunately, Sierra Studios has shipped all its Christmas products: King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, Half-Life, and Return to Krondor. That means we're next at the gate and get lots of extra resources and attention (it doesn't suck). We've already picked up three new animators and a scripter from KQ. It probably won't be long before I, like everyone else on the team, enter crunch mode - no more of this two-days-a-week stuff then.
I have to say that I'm really impressed with this team. Despite the fact that I've accepted and assumed we'd ship with the technology we had in place a year ago, the programmers keep adding new features. Recently, the characters' faces were changed so that they're higher res. Suddenly, Gabe's eyes aren't fuzzy at the edges; they're crisp and they can move in any direction independent of the head. The lighting has also undergone a new boost of technology, and we've been able to do away with 2D insets due to an ability to make certain textures higher res than others (even writing is crisp). The programmers keep up with the latest technology out there and are always up for the challenge of outdoing anything they see. We definitely have some world-class talent. Sierra Studios is a different place - geographically and mentally - than the old Sierra used to be, and I think you'll agree it's a vast improvement if you check out our recent releases.
As for me, I'm determined to stay relaxed on this one, enjoy the process, and let our producer, Steven, shoulder the worry. Hey, it works. I hope everyone has a great holiday season. Merry Christmas.
Last update: October 24, 2007
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