gamedeveloper200601-dl.pdf

GDC : 06 PREVIEW GUIDE INCLUDED

J ANUARY 2006

THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

>> 2005 FRONT LINE AWARDS

THE VERY BEST TOOLS

FOR GAME DEVELOPMENT

>> BETTER GRASS BY DESIGN

MAKING VERTEX BUFFER

GEOMETRY TEXTURES

>> FUN FANDANGO

CHARTING INGENUITY

WITH TIM SCHAFER

POSTMORTEM:

THE BRAINS BEHIND WIDELOAD’S

STUBBS THE

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[

CONTENTS

]

JANUARY 2006

VOLUME 13, NUMBER 1

FEATURES

10 GAME DEVELOPER’S 2005

FRONT LINE AWARDS

Game Developer ’s eighth annual Front Line

Awards aim to single out those companies

and products that have made significant

strides in the battle to get developers home

by five in the afternoon. Along with a panel of

respected industry judges, we have awarded

the leading tools, hardware, and book for

their excellence, and inducted one

distinguished tool into the Hall of Fame.

POSTMORTEM

19 MAKING THE GRASS

As 3D game worlds become more realistic,

small-scale geometric details will become

more and more important. While it’s vital to

showcase our expanded hardware power in

impressive ways, these tiny details, be they

tufts of hair or blades of grass, can be

computationally expensive. This technical

article discusses the use of the GPU and

vertex buffers to create memory efficient

details in vibrant game worlds.

By Holger Gruen

24 CHOMPING AT THE BIT: WIDELOAD GAMES’ STUDIO

EXPERIMENT BITES BACK WITH S TUBBS THE Z OMBIE

Wideload is using a unique model for game development which has

generated significant buzz in the industry. Similar to what Hollywood

studios do, the company only hires select core staff and outsources the

brunt of the work to contractors. Here, Wideload founder Alexander

Seropian lays out the ups and downs of his cost-effective model, sharing

how it helped his team ship a successful game.

By Alexander Seropian

DEPARTMENTS

COLUMNS

2 GAME PLAN By Simon Carless

Zombie Zoo

33 THE INNER PRODUCT By Mick West

[ PROGRAMMING ]

Mature Optimization

4 HEADS UP DISPLAY

Bioware/Pandemic, Xbox 360 launch, and Valve’s Steam

37 BUSINESS LEVEL By Philip Oliver

[ BUSINESS ]

Pigeonholed

7 SKUNK WORKS By Carey Chico

Softimage XSI 5.0

38 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore

[ ART ]

Anatomy for Animators Part III

48 A THOUSAND WORDS

Atlus’ M AGNA C ARTA

41 GAME SHUI By Noah Falstein

[ DESIGN ]

Schafer on Creativity

42 AURAL FIXATION By Alexander Brandon

[ SOUND ]

The Voice Over Challenge

COVER ART: JUAN RAMIREZ AND MARK BERNAL

WWW.GDMAG.COM

GAME PLAN

]

www.gdmag.com

CMP Media, 600 Harrison St., 6th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94107

t: 415.947.6000 f: 415.947.6090

ZOMBIE ZOO

EDITORIAL

EDITOR

Simon Carless scarless@gdmag.com

MANAGING EDITOR

Jill Duffy jduffy@gdmag.com

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Brandon Sheffield bsheffield@gdmag.com

ART DIRECTOR

Cliff Scorso cscorso@gdmag.com

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Alexander Brandon abrandon@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 Monolith

Andy Gavin Naughty Dog

Joby Otero Luxoflux

ADVERTISING SALES

DIRECTOR OF SALES

Afton Thatcher e : athatcher@cmp.com t: 415.947.6217

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER, EAST COAST, EUROPE & EASTERN CANADA

Ayrien Machiran e: amachiran@cmp.com t: 415.947.6224

ACCOUNT MANAGER, SO. CALIF., SOUTH WEST, CONTRACTORS, &

MARKETPLACE

Susan Kirby e : skirby@cmp.com t: 415.947.6226

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

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

ACCOUNT MANAGER, GLOBAL RECRUITMENT/EDUCATION & TEXAS

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

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION

ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Kevin Chanel

REPRINTS Julie Rapp e: jarapp@cmp.com t: 510.834.4752

GAME GROUP MARKETING

DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS STRATEGY Michele Maguire

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

CMP GAME GROUP

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR, APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES Philip Chapnick

CONFERENCE DIRECTOR Jamil Moledina

CONFERENCE MANAGER Evelyn Donis

EXECUTIVE WEB PRODUCER Peter Leahy

EDITOR, GAMASUTRA.COM Simon Carless

FEATURES EDITOR, GAMASUTRA.COM Quang Hong

CIRCULATION

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Kevin Regan e: kregan@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Manager Jessica Ward e: jward@cmp.com

CIRCULATION COORDINATOR Miguel Mendiolaza e: mmendiolaza@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Michael Campbell e: mcampbell@cmp.com

CIRCULATION ASSISTANT Adrea 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 MEDIA MANAGEMENT

PRESIDENT & CEO Steve Weitzner

EXECUTIVE VP & CFO John Day

EXECUTIVE VP, CORPORATE SALES & MARKETING Jeff Patterson

SENIOR VP, AUDIENCE MARKETING AND DEVELOPMENT Bill Amstutz

SENIOR VP, INTERNET BUSINESS Mike Azzara

SENIOR VP, CMP INTEGRATED MARKETING SOLUTIONS Joseph Braue

SENIOR VP & GENERAL COUNSEL Sandra Grayson

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE SALES Anne Marie Miller

SENIOR VP, MANUFACTURING Marie Myers

SENIOR VP, COMMUNICATIONS Alexandra Raine

SENIOR VP, CORPORATE MARKETING Kate Spellman

VP, AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Michael Zane

PRESIDENT, CHANNEL GROUP Robert Faletra

PRESIDENT, CMP ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA To ny Ke efe

PRESIDENT, CMP HEALTHCARE MEDIA Vicki Masseria

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR ELECTRONICS & SOFTWARE GROUPS

Paul Miller

SENIOR VP, ENTERPRISE GROUP Fritz Nelson

SENIOR VP, GROUP DIRECTOR COMMUNICATIONS GROUP

Stephen Saunders

STUBBS THE ZOMBIE, THE MCCARTHY ERA

throwback from Wideload Games’ first title, meets

the Game Developer Front Line Awards in the gory

cover image of this issue—or at least it would be

gory if the statuette could bleed. Fending off

monsters with one hand and giving out plaudits

for game tools with the other has left us feeling

slightly zombie-fied, too.

bank. Beautifully detailed tufts of grass have

never been so accessible.

Elsewhere, programming columnist Mick West

adds a highly relevant feature about code

optimization; Pixel Pusher’s Steve Theodore

continues his anatomy lesson; longtime design

columnist Noah Falstein interviews Double Fine’s

Tim Schafer about game originality; Heads Up

Display explores the key BioWare/Pandemic

merger; and the A Thousand Words art section

showcases Korean RPG M AGNA C ARTA .

Dave Pottinger Ensemble Studios

George Sanger Big Fat Inc.

Har vey Smith Midway

Paul Steed Microsoft

TRENCHANT WARFARE

In a year when game tools and other products to

aid game professionals are even more important,

especially as game budgets increase during a

market transition, we’re delighted to present the

2005 Front Line Awards (pg. 10) , honoring the

best products related to video game development

in multiple categories, such as middleware, game

engines, hardware, and a number of others.

Thanks to our panel of experienced judges, we

whittled down first the nominated products and

then winners in each category. Plus, one tool has

earned its way into the Game Developer Front

Line Hall of Fame, joining the ranks of DirectX

(2002), Photoshop (2003), and Renderware

(2004) for its continued dedication to improving

game development.

SLUMPING? MAYBE JUST A LITTLE

As I write this, the full ramifications of the U.S. video

game holiday season sales are yet to be realized,

but it’s pretty clear that game sales were, at the

very least, somewhat disappointing in the key post-

Thanksgiving weeks. A fully fledged crash? Hardly,

but an uncomfortable pause, perhaps.

Of course, critics are already pointing to a sagging

game industry that produces tired sequel after tired

sequel, and, as usual, they’re largely wrong. Sure,

there are plenty of follow-ups this holiday season, as

in any holiday season, and since companies are

working on early versions of next-gen titles, it may

be difficult for them to produce all-new games for

current generation hardware. There’s only so much

production game companies can endure.

But iterating on the same game template and

gameplay engine often makes titles better in the

long-term, and there have still been plenty of

interesting, original titles on the market this

season. Naturally, I’m not saying that G AME

F RANCHISE V OL . 8 is always the best idea, but I don’t

think that sequels are what disrupted the market

this year. Rather, it was the promise of next-

generation gaming that got in the way.

Am I blaming Microsoft’s undersupply of the Xbox

360 for all the industry’s woes? Not entirely,

although it certainly has not helped. But knowing

that a new, allegedly transformative graphical and

online experience is just around the corner (even if

you can’t find the bloody hardware) will make

anyone back off from buying current-gen games

for a while. And that’s exactly what happened.

Suddenly, the gold at the end of the rainbow is

more important than the riches piled around us

right now.

INTESTINAL FORTITUDE

When former Bungie Software co-founder

Alexander Seropian set up shop on his own with

Wideload Games, he decided to do things a little

differently. Company-owned IP? Check. Small,

manageable internal team and lots of external

contractors to complete the game? Check.

In early 2004, when Seropian first announced

this route, it was thought to be a sign of things to

come, and, to many, an important test of alternate

production methods. Now that the quirky 1950s

brain-eatin’ Xbox action title S TUBBS T HE Z OMBIE :

R EBEL W ITHOUT A P ULSE is complete and on retail

shelves, Seropian has had a chance to sit down

and write a definitive account of its creation. How

did these new business attitudes affect the game,

both positively and negatively? Wideload’s founder

spills the beans in the S TUBBS postmortem (pg . 24) .

MOW NO MORE

We’re also pleased to feature some fresh

technical features and columns this month, with

Holger Gruen’s full-length article on vertex buffer-

based geometry textures (pg. 19) , which

discusses ways of adding geometric details to

the game world without breaking the processing

Simon Carless, editor

Game Developer

is BPA approved

J ANUARY 2006 | G AME DEVELOPER

WWW.CMPGAME.COM

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