My Liner Notes for Spore - Revision history

Checker: /* Creature Animation */

2022-09-07T00:20:13Z

Creature Animation

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	===Creature Animation===		===Creature Animation===
			<center>
			{\|
			\|[[Image:E3_Creature_A_small.jpg\|120px]]
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			\|[[Image:creature_14_small.jpg\|120px]]
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			\|[[Image:creature_11_small.jpg\|120px]]
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			\|[[Image:E3_Creature_E_small.jpg\|120px]]
			\|}
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	I've written and lectured a lot about the creature animation system, so I'll just point to those resources here:		I've written and lectured a lot about the creature animation system, so I'll just point to those resources here:

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	I tried to include a cute video of an animation John Cimino did of Spore creatures singing the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTXyXuqfBLA Mahna Mahna] song, but YouTube flagged it as copyright infringing. Damn you, DSP algorithms!		I tried to include a cute video of an animation John Cimino did of Spore creatures singing the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTXyXuqfBLA Mahna Mahna] song, but YouTube flagged it as copyright infringing. Damn you, DSP algorithms!


	===Behavior Tree AI===		===Behavior Tree AI===

Checker at 06:15, 26 February 2011

2011-02-26T06:15:16Z

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	[[Category:Games]]		[[Category:Games]]
			[[Category:Programming]]
			[[Category:Design]]

Checker: widgets

2010-08-02T20:56:42Z

widgets

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	Here's a video of the skinpaint system at work in the prototype on a test mesh:		Here's a video of the skinpaint system at work in the prototype on a test mesh:

	<center>~~<videoflash>~~7lz8pK3U4n8~~&hl~~=~~en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18\|~~640\|505~~</videoflash>~~</center>		<center>{{#widget:YouTube\|id=7lz8pK3U4n8\|width=640\|height=505}}</center>

	As you can read about in [http://oceanquigley.blogspot.com/2009/04/spores-creature-skin-painting.html Ocean's blog post], this system proved out the concept, but more work was necessary. Henry took it from here, and replaced the ''Swarm'' hookup with a custom system that allowed the scripts to reason about the morphology of the creature, doing things like giving the particles limb-relative coordinate systems, etc. Henry also ported all the lowlevel paint code from the [[OpenGL]] prototype to the RenderWare/Direct3D game engine, and made it run in the background, a thankless and difficult task!		As you can read about in [http://oceanquigley.blogspot.com/2009/04/spores-creature-skin-painting.html Ocean's blog post], this system proved out the concept, but more work was necessary. Henry took it from here, and replaced the ''Swarm'' hookup with a custom system that allowed the scripts to reason about the morphology of the creature, doing things like giving the particles limb-relative coordinate systems, etc. Henry also ported all the lowlevel paint code from the [[OpenGL]] prototype to the RenderWare/Direct3D game engine, and made it run in the background, a thankless and difficult task!
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	Here's a fun video of an early prototype:		Here's a fun video of an early prototype:

	<center>~~<videoflash>~~xut9cOlX9DA~~&hl~~=~~en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18\|~~640\|505~~</videoflash>~~</center>		<center>{{#widget:YouTube\|id=xut9cOlX9DA\|width=640\|height=505}}</center>

	'''Cute vs. Science'''   Since it just seems to keep reanimating like a really bad zombie movie, even though it's been called nonsense by [[Do Your Job Well, Please\|me]], [http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/165/8555.page#128787 Executive Producer Lucy Bradshaw], and [http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/11211.page Will Wright], I will simply state clearly that at no point did I try to steer the game towards a simplistic, shallow, or casual design. ''Sigh.''		'''Cute vs. Science'''   Since it just seems to keep reanimating like a really bad zombie movie, even though it's been called nonsense by [[Do Your Job Well, Please\|me]], [http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/165/8555.page#128787 Executive Producer Lucy Bradshaw], and [http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/11211.page Will Wright], I will simply state clearly that at no point did I try to steer the game towards a simplistic, shallow, or casual design. ''Sigh.''
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	There have been [http://spore.com/sporepedia zillions of amazing creatures] created in Spore, and I've used many of them in my lectures around the world, but here is my all-time favorite creature, made very early on by a contributor to the [http://forums.somethingawful.com Something Awful Forums].		There have been [http://spore.com/sporepedia zillions of amazing creatures] created in Spore, and I've used many of them in my lectures around the world, but here is my all-time favorite creature, made very early on by a contributor to the [http://forums.somethingawful.com Something Awful Forums].

	<center>~~<videoflash>~~hfbicNG2XNI~~&hl~~=~~en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18\|~~640\|505~~</videoflash>~~</center>		<center>{{#widget:YouTube\|id=hfbicNG2XNI\|width=640\|height=505}}</center>

	When you're making games, and struggling with technology and design and people and all the rest, it's things like this that make it all worth while.		When you're making games, and struggling with technology and design and people and all the rest, it's things like this that make it all worth while.

Checker at 09:32, 8 May 2009

2009-05-08T09:32:25Z

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	* Lauren gave a [https://store.cmpgame.com/product.php?cat=76&id=2083 lecture at the 2008 GDC] on our system as well, but I believe only the audio is available right now.		* Lauren gave a [https://store.cmpgame.com/product.php?cat=76&id=2083 lecture at the 2008 GDC] on our system as well, but I believe only the audio is available right now.

			'''What are Behavior Trees?'''  Various people have asked me where I think Behavior Trees fit into the taxonomy of game AI techniques. I characterize them as still firmly in the Finite State Machine category. The magic of Behavior Trees is not that they're a new technique, but that they have such good development process properties—meaning the friction for using them is very low—that they allow you to scale your AI complexity far beyond the other FSM representation methods I've seen, including switch statements, objects for states, graphical node editors, etc. In effect, they allow you to put off the (inevitable?) transition to real planning with all of its implementation and debugging issues, by allowing you to continue to use FSMs for more and more advanced AI. BTs have limits as well, and I do think game AI will be planning based in the future, but putting off dealing with an opaque planner is a good thing. I liken it to hotloading data files: hotloading is just a process improvement; it doesn't change your data or code much; it doesn't directly make your game better. But, it's such a massive process improvement it becomes a revolution in productivity by allowing you to [[Advanced Prototyping\|iterate faster]]. BTs are the same kind of thing for AI. They're so simple to use and debug, and have such good scalability characteristics (avoiding the <math>n^2</math> issue as mentioned in the [[/Spore Behavior Tree Docs\|docs]], etc.), that they allow you to vastly increase your AI's complexity without running into a wall.

Checker at 22:37, 19 April 2009

2009-04-19T22:37:10Z

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	Implicit surfaces are interesting, because they are very topologically robust, yet they lack "local control". This lack of control compared to modeling with triangles directly (called a boundary representation, or b-rep) is one of the reasons implicit surfaces haven't really ever gained traction for regular 3D modeling—when you're making James Bond, you want to get his nose just right. However, the topological robustness is actually more valuable to Spore than the local control, since we have a higher level user interface on the creature creation. We don't let the player manipulate at the polygon level anyway, both because we would end up with an interface as complex as Maya, but also because we need to keep the "recipe" for the creature very small so we can transmit it over the wire to and from the [http://spore.com/sporepedia Sporepedia]. The deltas for per-polygon editing get big, fast. Robustness, on the other hand, is vitally important, because we let the player have so much control over the creature morphology, and the skin always needs to flow smoothly over the skeleton of the creature.		Implicit surfaces are interesting because they are very topologically robust, yet they lack "local control". This lack of control compared to modeling with triangles directly (called a boundary representation, or b-rep) is one of the reasons implicit surfaces haven't really ever gained traction for regular 3D modeling—when you're making James Bond, you want to get his nose just right. However, the topological robustness is actually more valuable to Spore than the local control, since we have a higher level user interface on the creature creation. We don't let the player manipulate at the polygon level anyway, both because we would end up with an interface as complex as Maya, but also because we need to keep the "recipe" for the creature very small so we can transmit it over the wire to and from the [http://spore.com/sporepedia Sporepedia]. The deltas for per-polygon editing get big, fast. Robustness, on the other hand, is vitally important, because we let the player have so much control over the creature morphology, and the skin always needs to flow smoothly over the skeleton of the creature.

	Here are some images of the first "creature" I built with the metaball skin system, showing the skin, wireframe, the metaballs, the voxelization, and a 3D print of the creature.		Here are some images of the first "creature" I built with the metaball skin system, showing the skin, wireframe, the metaballs, the voxelization, and a 3D print of the creature.

Checker at 10:09, 15 April 2009

2009-04-15T10:09:22Z

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	[[Image:Lizard.jpg\|200px]]		[[Image:Lizard.jpg\|200px]]
	[[Image:Beetle.jpg\|200px]]		[[Image:Beetle.jpg\|200px]]

			[[Image:Intestisaur.jpg\|200px]]<br/>
			<div style="max-width: 300px;"> <small>This last one is a creature called the ''Intestisaur'', created by intern [http://users.design.ucla.edu/~mflux/ Michael Chang] in an early version of the creature editor, and painted by John. I've put a high res version with alpha [[Media:Intestisaur-alpha.png\|here]].</small></div>
	</center>		</center>

Checker at 09:52, 15 April 2009

2009-04-15T09:52:43Z

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	<center><videoflash>xut9cOlX9DA&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18\|640\|505</videoflash></center>		<center><videoflash>xut9cOlX9DA&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18\|640\|505</videoflash></center>

	'''Cute vs. Science'''   Since it just seems to keep reanimating like a really bad zombie movie, even though it's been called nonsense by [[Do Your Job Well, Please\|me]], [http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/165/8555.page#128787 Executive Producer Lucy Bradshaw], and [http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/11211.page Will Wright], I will simply state clearly that at no point did I try to steer the game towards a simplistic or casual design. ''Sigh.''		'''Cute vs. Science'''   Since it just seems to keep reanimating like a really bad zombie movie, even though it's been called nonsense by [[Do Your Job Well, Please\|me]], [http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/165/8555.page#128787 Executive Producer Lucy Bradshaw], and [http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/11211.page Will Wright], I will simply state clearly that at no point did I try to steer the game towards a simplistic, shallow, or casual design. ''Sigh.''

Checker at 09:47, 15 April 2009

2009-04-15T09:47:56Z

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	[[Image:~~behaviortree~~.png~~\|654px~~]]		[[Image:654px-Behaviortree2.png]]
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Checker at 09:39, 15 April 2009

2009-04-15T09:39:59Z

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	[[Image:frog.jpg\|200px]]		[[Image:frog.jpg\|200px]]
	[[Image:frog-diffuse.~~png~~\|border\|200px]]		[[Image:frog-diffuse.jpg\|border\|200px]]
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Checker at 02:58, 14 April 2009

2009-04-14T02:58:29Z

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	Early in production we were running into trouble with our existing Artificial Intelligence (AI) system for creatures, so [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/2/329/168 Tom Bui], [http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,325087/ Lauren McHugh], and I did a bunch of research and decided to switch to a Halo-style ''Behavior Tree'' (BT) system. [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Damian_Isla Damian Isla] documented Bungie's system at GDC 2005, and it was [http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2005/features/20050311/isla_pfv.htm reprinted on Gamasutra]~~<ref>This article is currently busted and missing the images. If they don't fix it soon, I'll post my local copy.</ref>~~. I spent a lot of time talking with Damian, [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Max_Dyckhoff Max Dyckhoff], and [http://www.igda.org/breakingin/profile_chris_butcher.htm Chris Butcher] about their system, what worked, what didn't, and how they'd change it, and ended up creating our BT system as a kind of "version 1.5" of theirs. I'm trying to get permission to release it to the public domain, but for now, here is the main chunk of the documentation, which can be read as a sequel to Damian's article linked above.		Early in production we were running into trouble with our existing Artificial Intelligence (AI) system for creatures, so [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/2/329/168 Tom Bui], [http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,325087/ Lauren McHugh], and I did a bunch of research and decided to switch to a Halo-style ''Behavior Tree'' (BT) system. [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Damian_Isla Damian Isla] documented Bungie's system at GDC 2005, and it was [http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2005/features/20050311/isla_pfv.htm reprinted on Gamasutra]. I spent a lot of time talking with Damian, [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Max_Dyckhoff Max Dyckhoff], and [http://www.igda.org/breakingin/profile_chris_butcher.htm Chris Butcher] about their system, what worked, what didn't, and how they'd change it, and ended up creating our BT system as a kind of "version 1.5" of theirs. I'm trying to get permission to release it to the public domain, but for now, here is the main chunk of the documentation, which can be read as a sequel to Damian's article linked above.

	* [[/Spore Behavior Tree Docs]] The first part of a kind of pseudo-literate-program describing how our system works.		* [[/Spore Behavior Tree Docs]] The first part of a kind of pseudo-literate-program describing how our system works.