We decided we wanted to try motion-capturing the marine animations in NS2 because there are tons of them to make and because they are very time-consuming to create (because the human eye is so familiar with how humans move). Colin Knueppel is one of two animators on NS2 and has done motion-capture before (unlike the rest of us). He wrote up with this set of guidelines to help us get started. We thought this might be helpful for other game developers and interesting for everyone.
Check with the mocap studio
Motion capture most often uses a myriad of cameras to catch reflective balls sticky taped or velcroed to an actor's body. If you bring something similarly reflective.. well, it can cause issues. Discuss what you'd like to bring with you to the studio with the studio. Ask them what you can do to minimize any conflicts your props may cause.
Have some masking tape
Hopefully they'll have it there, but if they don't, have your own tape. Putting down a target from start to finish helps. We animators can dampen or ramp up motion to make a target move X far or turn Y more, but the closer to the mark they get, the less work we animators will need to do.
Send the actor lots of Marine concept work with notes
The better the actor understands what his character is wearing and what restrictions he may have, the better the performance will be.
Bring the material with you
Unfortunately many actors have been disappointingly unwilling to read material sent to them, preferring to "wing it." Setting aside 45 minutes before you're on the mocap clock with the actor to make sure they understand what they'll be doing is preferable to arguing it out while the machines are running. If you can set aside an afternoon to plan through moves with him or her before the mocap, even better. Inside the mocap studio your on an expensive clock. A parking lot with coworkers to get down the gist of motions is a great start. Getting time with the actor to convey what you learned will cost you the actors wages, but the motion capture session will go many times smoother.
Proper weight
A marine tends to carry something akin to 60 lbs of gear, ammo and armor. Weighting the mocaper down correctly will keep him from doing unrealistic motion, give his foot steps proper weight and dampen the slight dancey tendencies that come with mocapers. It's not their fault, usually. It's human nature. When you don't properly weight a character, the actor often hams it up to "act" bigger or more impressive. It may work on film, but the cruel eye of the motion capture cameras will make every odd mannerism twice as goofy. Ask the motion capture studio what you may be able to use to properly weight the character. A belt with some sand bags attached to it, a shoulder straps with some weights, some ankle or wrist weights. Get or make a well-weighted weapon. Find out if there's a color you should use that wont throw off the capture.
With each of these, we don't necessary want to go realistic but light of realistic. Ask the actor what he'd be comfortable with. Test it ahead of time when practicing with the actor, if you can.
Recoil
An innovative approach to motion capture was tested by my lead at Bioware, Shane Welbourn, and it worked fairly well. Gun recoil comes from the gun, not the marine shrugging spasticaly. When the actor is "firing" have someone strike the rifle's end. This makes the motion driven by the gun, not by muscle contractions in the actor.
Make it as realistic as you can
Ultimately the less the actor has to guess, the more realistic the motion will likely be. If you can restrict his spine movement, he'll compensate for the marine's rigid outfit. If you tape a mocap friendly ruler to his forearm, he wont have to guess where the pad will be. If you give him a nicely weighted weapon that's approximately the right size, he'll wield it right.
Experience
Find someone that has "been" what you want to mocap. Finding an actor who was a marine, he'll bring his experience to the session. When you get someone that isn't familiar with appropriate motions, they sometimes bring their other non-related experiences to play. We had a martial artist being dual-booked for our sci-fi game that could not, if his life depended on it, make a kick that didn't go at least a foot and a half off the ground by the time it was finished. That flourish took hours of animation and creative camera work to tone down.
Getting an appropriately experienced actor is not without pitfalls. Sometimes what actual marines do is less interesting then what we think they do, and even a hardened marine can come across with oddly consistent emotional gestures. Meeting the actor is a good way to pick up on problematic gestures, and practicing and discussing the moves ahead of time is a good way to avoid uninteresting motions.
Do what looks right, not what is right
This is a huge, but sadly not well known, rule of animation. The human mind has expectations, some of which are not always true. When confronted with whether to do what looks right or what is right, always go with what looks right, because an audience is not going to have the benefit of an explanation. They will cock their head and say, "that's odd." We want to keep the player in the game focused, not educate them.
We hope you found this interesting and helpful and we're hoping to share with you some footage of our motion-capture session!
As the third part in our alien "reveals", we give to you, the Gorge!
The Gorge probably has the most character of any of the aliens and we knew we wanted to preserve is his slightly pitiful, hard-working and heavyset character (never say fat, it's rude).
Being the main builder/healer class and without much offensive power, we thought his pudgy visage needn't say "I want to eat you" but instead, "No one appreciates my slime-piles". Hence, the defeated look of his half-closed eyes. His semi-awkward face armor implies that he needs to stay safe more than he needs to attack fast-moving targets and the upturned armor "ears"...well, they're just cute.
His glowing spare tire ties him into the hive somewhat, in that both play a key role in the team's abilities and advancement. Here's the finished model and texture:
Here's a video showing him in all his swollen glory:
Spit
As in NS1, the Gorge can spit a projectile that does damage to marines and structures. It makes a sizzling sound on enemies and glows, doing damage over time. It also obscures marine players' screens a bit and slows marine movement for a short time. It shows up as a bumpy infestation on its target. Spit alt-fire is a shorter-range, slower speed, more potent version especially suited for structures.
Health Spray
We're keeping the healing spray from NS1 as well. This creates a cloud of healing bacteria that will heal all friendly players and structures within it. Using this he'll be able to keep his teammates and precious structures alive and healthy. The area effect also means he won't have to move his corpulence unnecessarily.
Damage Soak
One new ability we're giving the Gorge is a armored protection ability (name pending). By holding crouch, he can drop his cushy paunch to the ground, extend the armor plates on his back. Doing so will mean that he takes damage off his energy instead of health, as long as he can do so! Energy is like the equivalent of alien ammo, but it never runs out and is always replenishing itself. So if he goes immobile, he can soak quite a bit of damage without getting hurt. At some point though, he'll run out of energy and he'll need to be saved by other players or will need to get up and shuffle away. You can see this ability at 0:32 in the Gorge video.
Geeky gamedom anecdote: if you played the celestial Star Control ][, you'll recognize this ability as similar to Utwig's special ability. We are toying with having the ability give you energy when it soaks damage as well, and reducing energy when using it without actually taking damage. I think it could an interesting Yomi layer.
Chambers
Chambers and how they relate to alien upgrades represent the weightiest change for the Gorge in NS2. Now there is an Alien Commander building technology structures, so Gorge-created structures won't unlock upgrades or abilities for other players. The unctuous chambers that the Gorge spits up will be purely tactical. These include the familiar Defense Chamber (automatically heals players or structures nearby) and the Offense Chamber (a kind of organic turret that shoots spikes, possibly renamed to Spike Plant). His overabundance...of abilities mean we'll probably limit his structures to these two.
One last ability we're considering is one suggested by the community - by holding shift he could Belly Slide along slick or downhill surfaces. Maybe as a quick escape down a ramp or just for fun?
We're hoping that these abilities will make the Gorge a fun class that straddles the line between attacker and defender and gives him lots to do near combat and in alien bases. He'll never be much of an attacker, but this butterball is the team medic and engineer and thus, deserves to be loved (by anything with slime on it at least).
Next up is the Lerk!
This is too much to write for a tweet so I thought I'd write a micro-blog update about modding in NS2 in response to this e-mail:
"Would it be possible with a "bodycount" mod or mode in NS2 where bodies of the fallen remain in place? Possibly they can be removed by consumption by aliens and the infestation (extra res) or disassembled by the welder (also extra res). Would be cool to stand in a corridor on a pile of aliens and hammer away ye ole' 'chinegun. It would add an extra dimension in blockage though. -Daniel V."
Cool idea. The awesome thing about the tools and our modding setup for NS2 is that this would be really easy. I think it would be no more than a couple dozen lines of Lua (which is a pretty simple language) and possibly a couple particle effects which you can build visually using our Cinematic Editor. 99% of the NS2 game code is written in Lua and we will be releasing it all with the game. So you can change the resource model when welding alien carcasses, disable the fade away time, etc.
Of course, mod code will all auto-download and won't muck up your install so you can always play "vanilla" whenever you want. We think NS2 is going to have the most creative and prolific mod community ever!
We continue our look at the revamped marine structures in NS2 with the new design for the Infantry Portal.
The gameplay function will remain the same as in NS1, which is to allow marine players to respawn after they've been killed. The IP will also have one additional feature which is that marines can instantly rejoin their squad by using the computer screen on the back, once the IP has been upgraded.
The technology behind the Infantry Portal concept is based on current scientific experiments with teleportation, or, more accurately, the successful transfer and encoding of information from one atom to another. Essentially, when the photons have been triggered in just the right way their parent atoms enter a quantum state in which atom B takes on the properties of atom A, after which process atom A disappears.
So, in the case of the infantry portal, all of the physical information of marine A is imprinted onto empty-marine-blob-of-atoms B, which has been created from the similar 3d printing technology used in the armory. Then the consciousness of marine A is downloaded into marine B, all in the space of several seconds.
Thanks for reading, and please join us next week when we discuss advanced quantum electrodynamics and how that relates to the new TSA marine electric toothbrush that has been added to the game.
In the meantime here are some renders of the IP model and a short video showing the deploy and active animations.
Just to switch things up a bit from the alien reveals, we wanted to show off some more of the revamped marine structures in the game. First up is the new look and design for the Armory.
In NS2 this structure will allow the marines to purchase weapons and equipment. Like the NS1 model, we wanted to make sure that it was approachable from all sides, to allow as many players as possible to access it at the same time. It's an important structure, so we also wanted to insure that it's easily noticeable by first time players. Hence it's increased size, and the addition of a rotating holographic gun projecting from the top.
We also went with a more interactive design, so, as a marine approaches the structure, the side closest to them unfolds and opens up, welcoming them in. The arms scan the marine, running diagnostics, assessing and repairing armor damage and injuries, while the marine links in via their helmet HUD. When no one is near the structure, it remains nicely folded up, protecting it's delicate machinery and electronics, and taking up less of a footprint in the environment.
When an item is purchased the arms essentially become 3d printers. The requested item has been scanned offsite, and downloaded into the structure, and then it is printed instantly into the marine's waiting hands as soon as it is purchased.
Here are some in engine renders:
Here's short video showing the armory deploying, opening up to be accessed, and then playing a scan/printing animation.
Hope you enjoyed this first look at the new marine armory structure!
As the second part in our alien "reveals", we give to you the Skulk!
He's everyone's favorite wall-hugging murderer and he's looking more handsome than ever. As most of you know, the Skulk is the default character class and main element of the alien fighting force. He is fast, able to hide and ambush and has a powerful melee attack. But with no ranged attacks and without a lot of health (although he's a bit tougher than in NS1), being effective as a Skulk is all about knowing when and how to attack and being skilled enough to get close to the target. Pervasive vent and ducts systems help him choose when and where to fight and also provide a quick escape.
Here's some concept art showing how he started his new life:
...and here are some renders showing his finished model and texture:
Here's a video showing him in action:
The Skulk's abilities are pretty similar to those in NS1. He's such an important class that we're a little timid about giving him crazy new abilities (although new ones are always under consideration).
Wall-running Skulks can drive their sharp leg spikes into crevices to walk on walls or ceilings as if they were the ground. It doesn't cost energy nor does it slow you down, so it can be used to dodge gunfire, confuse enemies or hide. You can get a glimpse of wall-running in action with the Skulk running up the wall behind the Onos at 0:41 in our teaser video.
Bite With his powerful multi-hinged jaws, he can deliver a lot of damage very quickly. As in NS1, the Skulk player's view is from inside his mouth (is this really that controversial or weird?).
We're still not sure what his alt-fire for Bite is going to be. We've talked a lot about a grapple type of attack where he could clench down on a marine and do damage to him over time, but that seemed too annoying from the marine's perspective (and how would he shoot the skulk off of him?). Please give us some suggestions.
Leap The Skulk can leap short distances quickly, landing in a pounce and doing damage to its target. In NS1, leap appeared later in the game – now he always has it. Coupled with wall-running, leap allows good players to traverse the map without ever touching the ground.
What about 'site?! You'll notice that he no longer has Parasite. The reason we currently don't have it as one of his abilities is because we think it's better for the Alien Commander to be scouting (which is the main purpose of Parasite). I really like the secondary purpose of it though, which is to do a small amount of ranged damage to kind of goad a marine into (hopefully, very stupid) action. I would love a kind of provoking ability for him here and will probably put one in later if we come up with an appropriate one.
Finally, we wanted to show you a bit of the environments the Skulk will be spending his time in - vents. We have a shiny new engine now and also because players spend so much time as a skulk in vents, we wanted to make them look a lot cooler. Here's a concept piece Cory painted showing him in a modeled vent (click the magnifying glass in the lower right to get an even higher-res version for your desktop).
The in-game vents look almost this good and we can't wait to show them to you soon! If you like what you see here and you didn't know about our pre-orders and teaser, we would love your support!
We hope you enjoyed this look at the Skulk and can't wait to show you the Gorge, Lerk and Fade (in that order)!
Got comments?