...First Karaoke of the year pics

A bunch of us got a room at Do Re Mi for some serious singing.

Guess the song!

BChan's first ever karaoke song.

All together now!

Fin.

...Pax East

Dan, Casey, Brian, Chris and I had a Harmonix designer panel at Pax East. Around 800 people came to see it.

I took this right before we started.

...Rock Band 3

Has been announced for Holiday 2010!

...interesting insight into the structure behind successful movies

http://www.screenplaymastery.com/structure.htm

...Hell Yeah (Caught Up In You)

...Late 2009 Pics

 Mom's brisket - if you don't like brisket, you haven't tried this.

Christmas party pics.

 

 Birthday cake and dinner.  Yummy lobster.

The Jesus Lizard!

 Best Arcade left in America?  Funspot - the place where records are broken....

I finally got a comfy couch.  But it's leather and huge!  Problem solved - got a cover and rearranged the living room.  Combine that with my new home theater and my place is a good place to relax again.

 Recently got back from a work trip.  Check out this crazy-nice hotel room...

 

 Sara had a birthday party too...

...My Best Movies of 2009

Top 5:
1. The Hurt Locker
2. Anvil
3. Food Inc.
4. Avatar (3d)
5. Up

Honorable Mention (in no particular order):
Star Trek
Where the Wild Things Are
Zombieland
Moon
Gomorra

All my 2009 reviews are here.

...My Best Books of 2009

Actually strike that...these are the top books I read in 2009.  I barely read anything that came out in this year :)


Top 5:
The Road
Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health 
Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12 Minutes a Week
The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram Your Genes for Effortless Weight Loss, Vibrant Health, and Boundless Energy
Understanding Comics 

Honorable Mention: 
The Wisdom of Crowds
Anticancer: A New Way of Life
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage: Lessons for People from Animals and Their Trainers
Power of 10: The Once-A-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution


All my 2009 reviews are here.

...My Best Music of 2009

Top 5:
1. Coalesce - Ox (not the EP)
2. Converge - Axe to Fall
3. Ladyfinger(ne) - Dusk
4. Kylesa - Static Tensions
5. The Horrors - Primary Colours

Honorable Mention (in no particular order):
Megasus - Megasus
The Beatles - The Beatles in Mono (Box Set)
Nirvana - Bleach (Remastered)
Baroness - Blue Record
Lightning Bolt - Early Delights
Nirvana - Live at Reading
The Jesus Lizard - Head (Remastered)
Yob - The Great Cessation
Zu - Carboniferous
Gallows - Grey Britain
Trash Talk - Trash Talk
Rumplestiltskin Grinder - Living for Death, Destroying the Rest
The Bronx - The Bronx 3

All my 2009 reviews are here.

...My Best Games of 2009

Top 5:
1. Batman Arkham Asylum
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
3. Uncharted 2
4. UFC Undisputed
5. 'Splosion Man

Honorable Mention (in no particular order):
Pixeljunk Shooter
Assasins Creed 2
Trials HD
Fifa 10
Peggle (Iphone)
Shadow Complex
Resident Evil 5
Death Tank

I'm not including 2 games I worked on that I think were great, The Beatles: Rock Band and Rock Band Unplugged :)

All my 2009 reviews are here.

...All Reviews for 2009

Here are all the books, games, and music I got in 2009. I'll post my best of lists in a few days.

Recommended items in Bold.

Music:
Mew - And the Glass Handed Kites
Baroness - Blue Record
Arcade Fire - Funeral
Girl Talk - Night Ripper
Coalesce - Ox (EP)
Slayer - World Painted Blood
Jemina Pearl - Break It Up
Working For a Nuclear Free City - Businessmen & Ghosts
The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
Lightning Bolt - Early Delights
Tides - Giant
Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures
AC/DC - Backtracks
Hall & Oats - The Essential Darryl Hall & John Oats
Converge - Axe to Fall
Nirvana - Bleach (Remastered)
LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
Danzig - Danzig
Nirvana - Live at Reading
The Jesus Lizard - Head (Remastered)
LCD Soundsystem - 45:33
The Beatles The Beatles in Mono (Box Set)
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Legacy - Beyond Hurt Beyond Hell
Public Image Ltd. - The Flowers of Romance
Pissed Jeans - King of Jeans
Future of the Left - Travels With Myself and Another
Yob - The Great Cessation
Zu - Carboniferous
Coalesce - Give Them Rope She Said V2.0
Michael Jackson - Off the Wall (Special Edition)
Coalesce - Ox
Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Tweak Bird - Reservations
The Horrors - Primary Colours
Isis - Wavering Radiant
Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Gallows - Grey Britain
Japandroids - Post-Nothing
Graf Orlock - Destination Time Today
Trash Talk - Trash Talk
Death - ...For the Whole World to See
Ladyfinger(ne) - Dusk
Kylesa - Static Tensions
Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Tears for Fears - Songs From the Big Chair
Rumplestiltskin Grinder - Living for Death, Destroying the Rest
Megasus - Megasus
Portishead - Third
The Lonely Island - Incredibad
The Swell - Tonnage
Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain
The Bronx - The Bronx 3

Movies:
An Education
Avatar (3d)
The Road
Where the Wild Things Are
A Serious Man
Capitalism: A Love Story
Zombieland
It Might Get Loud
District 9
Inglorious Basterds
Humpday
Moon
The Hurt Locker
Food Inc.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Public Enemies
Tokyo
Up
Tyson
The Hangover
Drag Me to Hell
Star Trek
Anvil
Crank High Voltage
I Love you Man
Watchmen
Gomorra
The Wrestler

Books:
The Wisdom of Crowds
David Cross - I Drink For a Reason
Anticancer: A New Way of Life
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
The Cartoon Guide to Physics
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage: Lessons for People from Animals and Their Trainers
The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram Your Genes for Effortless Weight Loss, Vibrant Health, and Boundless Energy
Power of 10: The Once-A-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution
Game Feel
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12 Minutes a Week
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008
Fretboard Logic
How to Win Friends & Influence People
Understanding Comics
The Road
Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health
Hip: The History

Games:
Pixeljunk Shooter
Assasins Creed 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Fifa Soccer 10
Uncharted 2
Demon's Souls
Madden 10
Halo ODST
Batman Arkham Asylum
Trials HD
Peggle (Iphone)
Shadow Complex
'Splosion Man
Battlefield 1943
Ghostbusters
UFC Undisputed
Fallout 3
Resident Evil 5
Death Tank

...Bioshock AI Q&A with Dean Tate

Dean Tate is a Senior Designer at Harmonix. Immediately previous to his time here at Harmonix Dean worked on Bioshock and Bioshock 2 - specifically working on AI and level design.  Seeing an opportunity, I decided to have a Q&A with Dean. The questions here primarily focus on Bioshock's AI and their integration Bioshock's levels - I think this aspect was particularly well done in Bioshock. I hope you enjoy peeling back the curtain a bit to see how it was done and what was learned.

Sylvain: How much of the AI in Bioshock is scripted versus autonomous?

Dean: A great deal of our AI was scripted but we worked really hard to somewhat mask that fact. In a lot of games, it can be really obvious when an AI is scripted versus when an AI is systemic. This is something we really wanted to avoid. In a lot of cases, this just meant exercising some restraint; one thing that can make scripted AIs appear to very obviously be scripted is when they display some whacky behaviour that you never see the systemic AIs use. So for example, Splicer AIs in Bioshock take cover, but they don't use cover animations. So we avoided having situations where the player would enter a room and AIs would be scripted to be laying in wait behind cover and then pop out and attack. We wanted consistent behavior between our systemic and scripted AIs.

We also worked really hard to blur the line between 'scripted' and 'systemic'; our AI scripting system, with enough designer crafting and tweaking, could very gracefully handle having an AI that is scripted become systemic without players noticing the transition. It also allowed players to intervene and affect when that transition occurs. Dealing damage to an AI for example to stop it from continuing down it's scripted path. I think everyone on the level scripting teams took great strides to use this ability to great effect and avoid crafting situations that were very obviously scripted. Scenes that occur behind bullet-proof glass, for example.

Sylvain: What kind of high-level (and low level) systems were used for AI thinking? How did you interact with the system (did you manipulate data or edit script logic or just go into code)?

Dean: I didn't touch the low-level code at all, which was all handled by our AI Programming Lead, John Abercrombie. A lot of our AI system was hard coded; things like how our ecology functioned and how AIs viewed each other, AI abilities and weapons functionality and behaviour, etc. Getting those things right was just a process of heavy collaboration and back and forth iteration. At a level above that, I had access to and could tweak all of the numbers that affected discrete AI behaviors. Things like AI movement parameters, attack parameters (how often an AI attacks, how far from the player it tries to remain, under which conditions it will initiate different attack and movement behaviors or weapons, etc). I did all of this by manipulating data in text files. Very high tech stuff (snort). Experimenting with changes to an AIs behaviors was quite a laborious affair that involved (if I remember right):

-Opening the correct text file

-Finding where I wanted to make a change to the text file data, and then saving the file

-Closing the file

-Running our level editor, and opening up one of my AI testing levels

-Tweaking a set of scripts so that they're spawn the correct AI (the one I had changed) when the level ran

-Baking the level content and data changes to a testkit

-Testing my changes to see if the desired effect had been attained, often while making sure a bunch of debug info was being displayed so I could be sure I was seeing the effects of my changes.

-Rinse, repeat

Each of these steps was important. For example, if I made a change to a parameter in the text file and then forgot to save and then close the text file before testing the change, the change would not take effect (I remember this because I made this mistake all the time!).

Things could and would often go wrong, and I'd need to repeat the entire process. I also sometimes ran into what I called "Placebo Parameters": parameters that were supposed to effect AI behaviors, but that in fact hadn't been hooked up yet in code (or, more often, weren't working because of a newly introduced bug). I'd tweak the value over and over again, checking the effect it had on the AI's behavior, stroking my chin and thinking "that didn't seem to make a difference...", tweaking the value some more, working towards getting the desired effect, before finally realizing "Hey! This isn't actually doing anything!" The lesson learned was that when a programmer gives you a new value to tweak, you should first set it to a minimum or maximum value and test it out; then, you can be sure it is doing what it is supposed to do.

And then, at a level above my base behavior editing and tweaking, level designers had some control over AIs through the use of our scripting system. The ability to initiate or cancel specific behaviors, toggle behaviors on and off, give AIs movement and navigation orders, etc.

Sylvain: Wow that's quite a long process for each change! How did you deal with changing an AI's behavior and making sure that it didn't mess up how they worked in all the other areas of the game?

Dean: It was quite a laborious process. When you're making incremental changes to any system, you want to make one change at a time, test it, make another small adjustment, test it again...making large sets of changes all at once makes it much harder to catalogue the effects of each individual change.

Making sure that changes didn't have unexpected knock-on affects was tough. Whenever large sets of changes were made I needed to make sure that our QA and Design teams were well aware of the changes and kept an eye out for abberent behaviors. Designers would focus on making sure any scripted sequences they had already implemented didn't become broken (thankfully, this didn't happen often) and QA would make sure that interactions between our AIs and other game systems (weapons, plasmids, etc) didn't become broken.

Sylvain: What kind of perceptual model did the AI use? What were the main parameters you had control of?

Dean: Wow, I'm remembering some pretty old stuff here. It's been years since the game was released, so I hope this is all accurate. To the best of my knowledge, it is.

The most interesting fact about our perceptual model is that Big Daddies are essentially deaf and blind. They have very little need for any sort of perceptual model up until the point that they have a target to attack. If that target is the player, than they will employ vision if they lose sight of the player; however, their vision is essentially 360 degrees and very long range, so basically if they lose the player they'll try to get within line of sight and then continue to attack. So if you think it's hard to lose a Big Daddy once it has started attacking, now you know you're not just imagining it.

Sylvain: I'm assuming then that they has a simple timeout after which they stop looking for you?

Dean: That's right. If I remember correctly, once a Big Daddy has chosen a target to attack, it won't return to a neutral state until the target is dead (this includes the player). Splicers are different. They will pursue a target they have lost sight of, and eventually lose interest and return to a neutral state. This happens after a timeout period that kicks in once the AI has lost sight of the target and then traveled to the target's last known location (AIs hold absolute knowledge of a target's location for a few seconds after they lose sight of it)

Our splicers used a perceptual model that is extremely similar in design to that used in other Irrational and Looking Glass games such as System Shock 2 and Thief, only tuned differently. Splicers are much more aware in general than their counterparts in those games, and when it comes to vision, hiding in shadows is much less effective for the player (splicers will have a harder time spotting you than when you're out in the open, but not to the degree that they do in, say, in Theif 2).

To go into a little more detail, splicers rely heavily on vision. They have near and far forward facing vision cones that have quite a narrow arc. If the player falls within these cones, it'll take the splicer some time to notice their presence. The amount of time is based on factors such as lighting, as mentioned, and the amount of the player's body that is obscured. The splicer will notice the player more quickly if the player is within their near vision cone, and longer if the player is standing within the far vision cone.

Splicers also have peripheral vision cones. They have peripheral vision in an almost 180 degree forward facing arc. If a splicer sees the player in their periphery, they will exclaim "Hey what's that!" and turn to face the player, putting the player squarely in their forward facing vision, giving them a chance to actually spot the player and then attack, unless the player reacts quickly enough to duck out of view before this happens. This was a tricky thing to balance; we wanted our AIs to be much more aware than in previous games, but still wanted situations to occur where it didn't feel like they were so absolutely aware of the player's presence at all times that there was no middle ground between "neutral" and "attacking" (for example, it didn't feel good to have a splicer immediately attack a player that it had spotted in its periphery).

Splicers also have backwards facing vision cones. If you sneak up behind a splicer, it won't hear you coming; it'll literally see you coming, because it has eyes in the back of it's head. This is spooky as hell and you will now have trouble sleeping tonight.

The tricky task I had in tuning splicer vision cones was in hitting some numbers that worked well in most situations across our game. All of Bioshock's levels are quite different from each other, and there is much environmental variation; large spaces, cramped spaces. Brightly lit caverns and dimly lit closets.

Finally, sound and hearing played a lesser role in splicer perception. Sounds could be tagged as "investigative" and given a radius. If a splicer hears one of these sounds, and it's source is in LOS, they will turn to face it, at which point they're relying on their vision cones to spot a possible target. If they hear one of these sounds and it's source is out of LOS, they will path to its location while always facing the source, and again, vision becomes key.

Sylvain: How did you handle spawning of enemies that wander around the world?

Dean: Bioshock levels are chopped up into regions, each of which has a desired population level that is split along the ecology lines; protectors (Big Daddies) and aggressors (Splicers). That desired population level is in most cases satisfied with scripted spawns or initial spawns when the player first enters the region; the player will enter the region, and it'll then be filled with AIs that spawn at designer-specified points and then do what they're told; either designers tell them to follow some scripted behavior, or the AI will do something systemic. Splicers will patrol (patrol points and paths are designer crafted), Big Daddies will seek out Little Sister vents, and then escort their Little Sister to dead bodies that hold Adam. We called these bodies "booty". Booty can be designer placed, or be dynamically spawned when a splicer dies.

When a region's population drops below the desired level, our population manager takes over. It'll wait a designer-specified amount of time before spawning in new enemies, and it'll spawn them at points which the level designer has specified. These points hold a bunch of variables that designers can change; enemy archetypes spawned, the chance for each type to spawn, and patrol path assignment. The system is actually quite simple, and very similar again to the spawning manager used in System Shock 2. Designers could tune spawning manager variables for each level, and for each region in a level; so there can be regions that have a high respawn rate, or a low respawn rate, differing population levels, etc. We used this to make some areas feel more dangerous or "busy" than others. Because every level designer could tailor-tune the system for their own specific level, we needed to develop some ground rules and best practices to ensure the system was somewhat consistent game-wide.

Sylvain: Did you have any strategies to avoid enemies killing each other when the player wasn't nearby or was this not an issue?

Dean: I'm a little iffy on the exact details of the LOD system we had in place (LOD stands for Level of Detail). I think it was something quite simple: AIs would deactivate their attack behaviors if they fell outside of a certain range of the player. The design also didn't really allow for random battles to break out amongst AIs unless the player was already close-by; in fact I don't think they can break out randomly. This could happen at some point reeeeeally early in development, and it basically created mayhem and chaos and an ecosystem that was impossible for players to understand. They would always end up coming across either battles in progress between Big Daddies and Splicers, or, much worse, rooms full of dead bodies. The former was bad because it made it very difficult to telegraph to players that Big Daddies only attack when provoked (which had been something quite unheard of in this genre), and the latter was worse because it made encounter pacing an impossible task for designers.

Sylvain: Finally, how did the AI evolve through the project and what lessons did you learn?

Dean: Our AIs evolved massively over the course of the project, though the basic archetypal foundation of each individual AI remained intact almost from day one; the grenadier (Nitro Splicer), assassin (Houdini Splicer), ranged aggressor (SMG Splicer, Pistol Splicer), melee aggressor (Melee Thug), the gatherer (Little Sister), the protectors (Big Daddies); we settled on the behavioral basics of each of these guys very early on, and then over the course of the project iterated on the details of their behaviors massively.

The Big Daddies are a good example of this. Early on, we intended to make these guys hulking, lumbering masses of muscle and power, and we stuck to this goal quite literally for a very long time. Their movements were very slowly, they had delayed reactions, were easily outran, their attacks were hugely damaging but had a long windup period, etc. As the game evolved from a slow-paced stat driven fps/RPG (that's rpg IN ALL CAPS!...fps in low caps...) into Shooter 2.0 I pushed to make our Big Daddies much more agile and reactive once they had become aggressive. I wanted there to be a clear difference between "neutral and mellow" and "angray!". I really enjoyed seeing player reactions to the huge behavioral switch that came when a Big Daddy decided that it needed to defend its Little Sister. "OH GOD, I THOUGHT THEY WERE SLOW!" players would scream, as a Bouncer smashed into their face with the speed of a freight-train, or a Rosie became impossible to outrun.

Another example of design aimed at "sticking to your base and iterating on the details" is the grenadier (AKA the Nitro Splicer); we knew early on that we wanted an AI that threw explosive projectiles. That was the basic design (and totally original, right guys?). As time went on, we layered more interesting behaviors and system interactions on top of this design base to make this AI more interesting; the grenadier gained the ability to throw Molotovs, to drop smoke grenades like chaff when retreating, and let loose a devastating kamikaze attack. Players could also catch their grenades by using the telekinesis plasmid.

Starting with a simple yet strong design base was I think in the end a very smart move (I'm not taking credit either; I very much worked on the details of each AI, but came into the project once they already had a strong base laid out). Though the basic design for each AI archetype wasn't exactly imaginative or completely original, we managed to create something fresh with each archetype by living in the details. This meant little wasted work. In fact, we shipped with almost every AI archetype that was originally conceived and designed, bar one Big Daddy archetype that made it very far into production before being cut; though you may see him re-appear sometime in the future, *wink*.

I'd like to point out one interesting thing that came out of the design process; these days, a lot of good AI design is focused on ensuring that AI states and behavioral intent is fed back to the player clearly, usually through the use of VO. Basically, AIs will scream out to the player what it is they intend to do. "I'm hiding!" or "Here comes a grenade!" or "Take cover!" or "Flank him!" or whatever. Our AI VO writer (and Audio Director) (and fellow Australian) (and my best mate!) Emily Ridgway pushed against this idea from very early on. She made the stylistic and creative choice to use our AI VO to help sell the idea that each splicer is a twisted, ruined husk of a person. A lost mind overtaken by dementia, paranoia and confusion. They're not battle-hardened soldiers employing military tactics against the player; they're lost and scared and want you to go away. And so, when writing lines for our splicers, she made the conscious decision not to have them clearly state their behavioral intentions. This was met with quite a bit of resistance, which I'm glad wasn't successful. I'm quite happy with the idea that in Bioshock, you never quite know what a splicer is thinking or planning...

I feel like I should end my response to this question with one big overarching "lesson-learned".

Let me think...

I know!

If you're going to end your game with a fight against a giant naked bronze man, you better really mean it.

...wow what a year

One of the best years I think I've ever had.  I'll have some new posts coming soon.  Stuff to come:

- Pics from the last few months
- Q&A with Dean Tate (Senior Designer at Harmonix)
- Best of 2009 posts

...Fugazi will be here all week

Amazing link for Fugazi fans - here.

...DFA...

I miss this band...


death from above 1979

K A W A N | MySpace Video

...for 10 years

I just realized last night I've been making games for 10 years this month!

...Harmonix on Jeopardy

...Harmonix voted #3 place to work in the Globe 100

...Daily Show

This segment was awesome last night:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/13/daily-show-destroys-cnn-f_n_318295.html

...RIP Ron

1999-2009

...P-town

Went to Provincetown in Cape Cod with Allison this weekend. What a cool place. She found an awesome room with a fireplace in the middle of town for really cheap.

...and I had lobster mac n' cheese.

...Director's Cut Pics

By request:

...Amsterdam and Berlin pics

It was a pain in the ass getting there but it was worth it! Here's some pics from Amsterdam and Berlin:

Yummy...I ate a lot...

I tried to make my best "Bro" face...

I work with one of the 2 guys in this band. I saw the poster at the huge flea market in Berlin.

This bear gets around...

Actual piece of the wall with recreated art...

If I lived in Berlin I'd go here ALL THE TIME.

...and then I'd wind up here.

This guy stood up quite a bit on our bus trip around Berlin. I was determined to take more interesting pics than he did by getting him in my shots...



Mom and Sis walking the streets of Amsterdam...

...More Beatles press

Possibly the most positive review I've read for a game, and definitely the best for a game I made:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/arts/television/06schi.html?_r=2&hp

(btw - Amsterdam Berlin pics coming soon)

...I am a Jelly Donut

In Berlin now...pics to come when I get back...

...whoa, John Hughes ruled...

http://wellknowwhenwegetthere.blogspot.com/2009/08/sincerely-john-hughes.html

...It's been an awesome summer so far

Just got back from roller skating and then berry picking...I've done so many cool things these last few months:

• Clambake on George's Island
  
• Much house parties
• AC/DC in Gillette Stadium for Free!
  
• Going to see the Red Sox
• Mike Runy's Wedding in NC
  

See the pics below. I go to Amsterdam soon for two weeks! And in one month, The Beatles: Rock Band.

...Cheaper Beatles: Rock Band

Friends, here's a relatively cheap way to get The Beatles: Rock Band. Hurry only a couple days left:

- Trade in $50 worth of games
- Get a 50% coupon
- Use both to get the bundle for cheap

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_84701651_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000395991&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=right-2&pf_rd_r=0JRDXK5EMQEGKQRBWYKZ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=482460011&pf_rd_i=979418011

...Reviews for 2009

Here's a running list of what stuff I'm checking out this year. Recommended items in Bold.

Music:
The Beatles The Beatles in Mono (Box Set)
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Legacy - Beyond Hurt Beyond Hell
Public Image Ltd. - The Flowers of Romance
Pissed Jeans - King of Jeans
Future of the Left - Travels With Myself and Another
Yob - The Great Cessation
Zu - Carboniferous
Coalesce - Give Them Rope She Said V2.0
Michael Jackson - Off the Wall (Special Edition)
Coalesce - Ox
Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Tweak Bird - Reservations
The Horrors - Primary Colours
Isis - Wavering Radiant
Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Gallows - Grey Britain
Japandroids - Post-Nothing
Graf Orlock - Destination Time Today
Trash Talk - Trash Talk
Death - ...For the Whole World to See
Ladyfinger(ne) - Dusk
Kylesa - Static Tensions
Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Tears for Fears - Songs From the Big Chair
Rumplestiltskin Grinder - Living for Death, Destroying the Rest
Megasus - Megasus
Portishead - Third
The Lonely Island - Incredibad
The Swell - Tonnage
Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain
The Bronx - The Bronx 3

Movies:
It Might Get Loud
District 9
Inglorious Basterds
Humpday
Moon
The Hurt Locker
Food Inc.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Public Enemies
Tokyo
Up
Tyson
The Hangover
Drag Me to Hell
Star Trek
Anvil
Crank High Voltage
I Love you Man
Watchmen
Gomorra
The Wrestler

Books:
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
The Cartoon Guide to Physics
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage: Lessons for People from Animals and Their Trainers
The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram Your Genes for Effortless Weight Loss, Vibrant Health, and Boundless Energy
Power of 10: The Once-A-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution
Game Feel
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12 Minutes a Week
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008
Fretboard Logic
How to Win Friends & Influence People
Understanding Comics
The Road
Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health
Hip: The History

Games:
Batman Arkham Asylum
Trials HD
Peggle (Iphone)
'Splosion Man
Battlefield 1943
Ghostbusters
UFC Undisputed
Fallout 3
Resident Evil 5
Death Tank

...Harmonix Designer Emails (#2)

Dan Teasdale

Welcome to the designer email thread, Mr. Brian Chan! In honor of him joining the thread, I have a topic that he might have some idea on how to solve:

Item Hoarding


As a collector, I find myself hoarding powerful weapons and never using them "in case I need them later". I did it with airstrikes in Mercs 2, I did it with nukes in Fallout, and there's probably a bunch of games that I've repressed doing it in.


Is this good? Is this bad? How do you think designers can solve this, or at the very least balance a game where people won't use the most powerful weapons?

Brian Chan

Thanks, everyone, for presenting me with such a warm welcome. I'm looking forward to learning a great deal from all of you. And thanks, Dan, for asking me something I can actually answer (I'm still in that muddle of new terminology and culture shock that comes with switching workplaces [and cities]).


When a player finishes a game with "leftover" items, it can be either a positive or negative indication. On the positive side, the leftover items suggest that the game presents choices, with the items representing the path not taken. If players vary as to their leftover items, even better-the game presents meaningful choices and allows for alternate solutions. On the negative side, leftover items might signify poor communication to player of item utility or scarcity. That is, the player might not have used the item because he or she didn't understand its value or how common or rare it was.

The problem is summarized by the notion that, if players cannot experiment, then they cannot plan. By providing safety nets for experimentation (and failure), designers can discourage item hoarding.


I like when a game provides the player with some sort of consequence- free sandbox in which to "try before you buy." Often, games do this via gated tutorials. In a game where balancing is achieved via scarcity or resource cost, it's nice to give the player "freebies" so as to whet their appetite. And, if an item is a higher- magnitude version of another item the player is already familiar with, then this fact should be made abundantly clear to the player.

A few games solve the scarcity problem without sacrificing balancing- by basing the economics on (easily) renewable resources. In Bioshock, I don't mind testing out new plasmids because EVE is relatively plentiful. In World of Warcraft, all resources can be translated into time, which is a resource that the game's players don't seem to mind spending prodigiously.

Chris Foster

I thought I came to Harmonix after past jobs strategy games and MMO's so that I didn't HAVE to think about balancing uber items of destruction!

I can think of a few tools to balance hoarding versus wanton nuke-spamming: consequences, limitations and scarcity.

Consequences are ways to say that using a superweapon isn't all wonderfulness and smiting, but that there are potentially painful tradeoffs at work. If a super item is going to create lasting negative faction somewhere in your game, or hurt your character/base while crippling someone else's, then you can make people think more strategically about its use.

Limitations are ways to make sure a superweapon isn't always useful in every situation. I think there are a bunch of limitations that aren't appropriate here, since if a weapon is too limited, it's by definition NOT super. I'd be more interested in limits that make the weapon harder to use but no less potent, such as a missile that is slow moving and therefore somewhat easier to avoid, or a weapon that requires prolonged manual control to hit its target in the most destructive manner possible.

Scarcity is a double-edged sword, as Brian called out. Having plentiful resources in your game, but a significant cost for the best weapons, can be a pretty potent balancing factor. You can see this in everything from Civilization to Death Tank. (And if you haven't played Death Tank multiplayer, stop reading this and play it now.)

Dan Teasdale

I'm going to channel a conversation Sylvain and I had after I sent the email, and in turn steal his thunder. Hopefully I'll misrepresent it and he can come in and make it sound more awesome.

So, the biggest problem I have isn't on the spamming end - making something less appealing to use is kinda easy. My problem is when things are so powerful in a way that's not a direct tie to my standard weapons, with the direct example being airstrikes in Mercs. I'll swap my normal weapons up to the most powerful instantly, but I'll hardly ever launch airstrikes unless:
* I've cornered myself in a save and have nothing else to use
* The game forces me as part of a mission objective

Sylvain then brought up Halo, which solves this problem so elegantly that I didn't even realise they'd solved it. Essentially, restricting you to two weapons means you can never hoard a weapon. If you get a superweapon, your incentive to use it is that you'll be able to pick up another weapon soon, so you'll happily spend the small amount of resources.

Thinking forward to Fallout 3, they end up in this weird mushy area. You have your inventory, and when it's full you'll start burning through some of the cooler things in order to make room for other cool things. The problem with that though is that there's still enough room to carry lots of weapons, so the "superweapons" you're burning are things like medical supplies and stimulants.

(As a side note: It's unnerving how many pacing and design problems Halo solved compared to how revolutionary people think of it as being - especially so considering how much designers didn't enjoy it past the first few levels (myself included). Say what you want about the level design issues in the second half or the cookie-cutter narrative, but things like balancing health for encounters rather than levels, or getting players to experience more cool things by reducing their amount of choice, these things have ended up changing how people balance all types of games.

Funnily enough, designers never give Bungie never credit for it because of the other issues in the game. At the same time, Half-Life did the exact same thing but flipped (standard mechanics, amazing narrative innovations) but it's the game that people reference in terms of the turning point of FPSes. For mechanics designers, it's mildly depressing food for thought :) )

Chris Foster

While waiting for Sylvain to take back what's rightfully his, I'll chime in with this observation.

Your Halo anecdotes remind me that good game mechanics are really like good film editing. When I studied film in college, one thing that was hammered into me is that bad editing -- like an jump-cut, or someone facing left talking across the room to someone who's supposed to be looking at them but is ALSO facing left -- immediately draws attention to itself. However, good editing is invisible editing; it works so well that no one realizes it's working, and all of its subtle emotional and psychological manipulations occur while no one is looking.

When a game mechanic does exactly what is necessary to produce fun, then it's likely that no one will notice that the mechanics are even there; they're too busy having fun. And while that can be a little tough on the designer's ego, remember that the flipside is someone calling you out for your BAD design decisions. I'll call it a fair trade.

Sylvain Dubrofsky

Thanks Dan! I realize at this late hour that the deadline for this email is tomorrow and you typed up a lot of stuff I immediately thought of from my own gaming experience so I won't have to lose too much sleep :)

I remember finishing Half-life 1 having used primarily pistol and crowbar throughout the game. I had all this ammo left over for all these cool weapons that I barely used. The same thing happened with RE 4. I must have had 30 grenades when I finished that game!

Halo had a nice natural solution for the problem. As an aside I am a fan of the series (especially Halo 1 and 3) and think the innovations the game generated are often overlooked - primarily: checkpoint saves, dedicated melee and grenade buttons, 2 weapon slots, dual wielding, regenerative health and the FPS-style driving controls.

I agree with the Brian in the previous email that I prefer getting each new weapon (or any item really) in an environment where I can freely experiment with it - AND that fact is made clear to me. Also agree with Chris that Death Tank rules :) I find if I get too many weapons in Death Tank I get overwhelmed so I tend to only concentrate on 3 or 4 powers at a time.

The biggest improvement in this area was a personal change. I've changed my tune since I was younger and started "trusting" developers more. By this I mean that I will now use my best/funnest weapons first and trust I will continue to get ammo drops such that I won't be stuck with just my pistol and melee weapon. This trust worked very well in Half-life 2 - they had very well paced ammo caches and the tension of getting low with my best weapons had a nice release when I found the next cache of ammo.