Chris Bischoff - Animal Use Protocol

Monke. Rat. Wishlist.

@DreadCentral In fluid sims, practical is the shortcut, :D

The process behind the haunting end credits of 'EVIL DEAD' (2013). Every frame was created by hand using practical techniques... no CGI shortcuts. Once you see how they did it, you'll never watch the credits the same way. Must-watch👀👇

@Damian_Zhao_ Thats what I mean by bringing a small piece with us. :D

@StasisGame Huh? No? 🫡You and I both have Neanderthal genes; we Asians have a bit more—roughly 2.5%.

The more I read about Neanderthals, the more fascinated I am by them. I’m sad that they never ‘made it’ to our modern day world, but glad that we can still bring a piece of them with us.

Hot take #435 - Designing and creating a Point And Click adventure game would make most modern designers buckle at the knees. One of the simplest core loops that leads to some of the most complex design challenges you will face.

@mikeklubnika Just do it. 100% just do it.

Oh to make a point and click adventure game

@JussiKemppainen Do you think a system like this could be created for Unreal? Cos I know of a horror game…

Dev day 623: a variant of the same analytic GI setup, but this time meant for interiors. Supports window portals (sun&sky direct and bounces from surfaces) and emissive meshes. #solodev #buildinpublic #indiegamedev more in the 🧵

@JussiKemppainen Nnnnnnnngh

America being only 250 years old and having the influence on the world that it has is like reading about those people who are 25 and considered masters in their crafts. Happy ID4!

@Darian_Wolf @puck_psx Thats very neat. :D

@puck_psx @StasisGame relevant to you

I just released an all-in-one tool that lets you extract textures from any perspective, turn them into seamless textures, and use them on your 3D models. #gamedev #indiedev #gamedevtools #itchio #indiegame

@JussiKemppainen @Issybeatz_ I’ve made SO MUCH ART that nobody will ever see. I think that maybe 5% of my art is ever seen by people.

@Issybeatz_ Yes

If your art stopped getting any response at all, would you keep making it?

Adding in skill tree style mechanics is a really good way to have lots of gameplay variation by simply adjusting a few values. So it’s less ‘content’ needed for more gameplay. It also helps when doing balancing if the balance is built INTO the game design itself. Same reason why crafting is a popular mechanic - the input content vs the output gameplay advantages are huge.

Why do so many indie games have a skill tree??

day 608: ! built a fake real-time GI system for my game and it cost almost nothing to run! The warm sunset light wrapping under the car is not baked, not a probe volume, not a reflection capture. here is how it works 🧵 #buildinpublic #indiegamedev #unity3d

Juicy!!!

@JussiKemppainen I use old legacy versions of almost every piece of software. I even still use Freehand. Im so old.

@StasisGame It is actually pretty smart not to use the latest version. As the previous versions are built to run on much lower end hardware and are thus usually way better optimized. You may not have access to the latest bells and whistles, but 99% of games do not need any of those features

I don’t know if this is a super hot take - but.. you don’t HAVE to use the latest version of a game engine to make your game. If it doesn’t have the features you need - just don’t use it.

No - it is work you throw out. They know what they want the game to look like. They know what systems need to be added. They know how they will work. They don't 'need' to spend time polishing up a scripted animation that will be done JUST for a trailer - or setting up custom triggers that will never be used outside of that interaction - and that work does get discarded. @TheCartelDel 's point isn't that trailers aren't important - but that making trailers moves resources AWAY from making the game - because a HUGE chunk of dev time is spent polishing up things that don't need to be polished yet. I don't know a single developer who looks forward to diverting their workload to work on something for a trailer. Its important work - but it is a HUGE distraction and creates immense stress, ESSPECIALLY on a very systems driven game with a huge amount of eyes already on it. Every single trailer probably pushes the deadline back a few months. Without fail. Even on my tiny game - our trailers probably push out the release date by a month at minimum.

@StasisGame @TheCartelDel @aswordofsoap Seems like a great opportunity to know how to do it and how you want your game to look like. It’s not work that you throw out of the window. Also, those trailers are what made the game sell millions in its first day. Without the trailer there’s no sell.

"why no NaUgHtY dOg tRaiLeR?" Because every time a AAA game studio has to move resources over to making a trailer, it causes the game to lose about 4 months of actual dedicated development iteration time. Look, do you want a new game or not?

@Alejandro947174 @TheCartelDel @aswordofsoap Yes... but in the TRAILER that wasn't a feature that WORKED. It had to be SPECIFICALLY ANIMATED and SCRIPTED just for the TRAILER. There was an entire section of the GROUNDED Documentary dedicated to this.

@StasisGame @TheCartelDel @aswordofsoap Didn’t you play the game? You can get dragged from under the vehicles

No - games aren't anywhere near 'looking' completed until VERY far into production. Temp assets - big pink boxes, half blocked out levels, scratch VO, temp writing, old and recycled sound effects, old recycled UI - these things only start coming together RIGHT at the end of a games production cycle. Most trailers are 'in game' - that doesn't mean they are 'completed' parts of the games. If you look slightly to the left or right, things fall apart. I think on TLOU 2 they specifically mention that the trailer was made up of gameplay features that they had plans to add, but weren't actually added (Ellie being dragged from under the truck is the part that I remember being scripted).

@StasisGame @TheCartelDel @aswordofsoap That’s just bad direction and misleading consumers. TLOU 2 trailer was all in game and that’s exactly how it looked and how it was played

@TheCartelDel … and then someone wants to add VOICE to the trailer!

When I say a AAA trailer can cost "about four months of development iteration time", I don't mean it LITERALLY takes four months to edit a video. I mean that's roughly how much disruption gets spread across the team. The first month is goddamn death by a thousand cuts. Producers and Directors need to figure out what the trailer is trying to say. Teams are pulled into meetings. Features get reprioritized. Artists, designers, engineers and QA all have to estimate what they can realistically contribute. Nobody stops working entirely, but everybody for sure loses some momentum. Then you can have a period of intense focus where parts of the team temporarily pivot away from buildin the core game. Artists gotta create bespoke assets. Engineers are hacking together functionality that only needs to work in a controlled environment. Designers have script moments that sell the fantasy that takes so much iteration to get right. QA has to maybe validate a slice of the game that may not represent the wider experience. Because you can't showcase something that looks well but doesn't play well, (and then you're stuck with bullshit that looked good in a trailer). For a month or two, a significant amount of creative energy gets redirected toward the trailer. BUT GUYS IT GETS EVEN MORE ANNOYING WHEN THE TRAILER SHIPS. The month after is often spent stitching all that shit back together again. Teams gotta resync, all the damn plans get rewritten. All those features built for the trailer get integrated, or re-scoped (or ABANDONED???). Feedback from execs, publisher, press, or the public might even create new priorities. Not ot mention people have to remember where they left off before the interruption. A whole bunch of people gotta take a couple days vacation after the trailer if they had to crunch for it. The trailer migtt only be three mintes long, but every AAA game development i worked on ran on momentum. It's not that everyone suddenly stops working for four months. It's that hundreds of people each lose little chunks of time, and eventually those chunks add up to months of development momentum disappearing into the fucking void. I'm trying to teach everyone how Game Dev works but it's too many words sometimes.

I didn’t really like Disclosure Day - but it was so refreshing to watch a movie that looked like a big budget blockbuster. Not grey and ambient, not standard 3 cameras and some coverage that you can edit around, no obvious ADR. I don’t know if the bar is just really low - but it was (almost) worth the ticket price for that alone.