Kipakolt egy volt Limbices fejlesztő !! (Oroszról fordítás) ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MIGHT AND MAGIC HEROES 7
Durva hogy sok helyen 1-1 feladatra (Pl AI) csak 1-2 ember dolgozott és alacsony volt a költségvetés ezért nagyon kevés ember volt és volt hogy (ezt a kommentekben írták le) egyetemistákat még iskolásokat alkalmaztak a technikai fronton..... Régen nem volt ez probléma ma miért az mikor minden sokkal drágább pl a játékok is mint régen? Ma minél olcsóbban minél rövidebb idő alatt minél kevesebb emberrel csinálnak férc munkát??? A patchekkel azóta már sokat javult azért remélem a kieggel is sokat fog.
In the summer of 1998, when I was playing actively in the Heroes of Might and Magic II, and I had no idea that I would later almost fifteen years to participate in the establishment of the continuation of this legendary game.
Since Limbic Entertainment I no longer work, I finally had an opportunity to tell about the peculiarities of the creation of Might and Magic Heroes 7 in terms of level designer.
Attention! Everything written below is not the official position of the Limbic Entertainment and Ubisoft. At the moment I am not an official representative of any of the above mentioned companies. Everything written below - this is only my personal opinion, which may not coincide with the official position of the above mentioned companies.
TECHNICAL DEMO
Technical demos - this is a primitive playable prototype, created using the temporary content. This is the first phase of development, which laid the foundation for all of the key game mechanics and create all the necessary tools.
In this case, the wheel is not required - it was enough to recreate carefully on the Unreal 3 basic game mechanics, which holds "heroic" gameplay (city management, capturing resources on the strategic map and tactical fights).
Development of the technical trial began in April 2013, and took place in two stages.
The first phase (April-July 2013) included the creation of a prototype of a tactical "chess" card that could fight step by step, alternately moving figurines of characters on the cells. As a temporary assets list used standard UDK resources and Heroes 6.
The first tactical map of the technical demo (July 2013)
The second phase (August-December 2013) ended with a playable version of a full-fledged strategic map. The player had the opportunity to manage an army, capture mines and forts, gather resources, and engage in battle with the neutrals. The number of tactical maps has increased to five, and their appearance was dependent on where it is on the strategic map the player will enter into the battle (the coast, forest, fields, mountains, etc.).
In the process of developing a technical demo team level designers were two men - one engaged in the tactical map, the other strategic. Developers, in turn, worked on the superstructure for the UDK Level Editor, which later became the basis for a new simplified the editor of Heroes 7.
Along with us, staff writer Yubisoft engaged in writing the script of the game, thinking through the characters and the selection of locations on a global map of Ashan.
SCOPE OF STRATEGIC MAPS
Creation of the prototype allowed us to answer some important questions:
How to make the gameplay on the strategic map more dynamic in comparison with Heroes 6?
As the distance camera on the strategic map will affect its detail?
How to optimize the process of building levels?
The main problem of the gameplay of Heroes 6 had a limited number of actions in a single turn. This was due to the large size of the card and the low saturation area interactive objects. As a result, to grab mine and grab some artifact, the player had to make an indecent number of moves, while crossing the large blank areas on the maps where nothing happens. Play became not only boring, but also a very long time.
In Heroes 7, we decided to approximate the scale and intensity of strategic maps to the standards of Heroes 3, which allowed to kill two birds with one stone. Firstly, we immediately had a feeling for the big world tour, because Army became quickly pass the distance from one landmark to another epic. Secondly, because of the good saturation of the space with interactive objects, the number of the player's actions during the same turn (to win the neutrals, grab mine, to besiege the fortress) has increased many times over.
In artistic terms, it was decided to show a realistic landscape in the style of "the view from the bird's eye view", in which all the gameplay elements have been stylized.
Concept art of the first strategic map
Distance camera not only allows you to recreate the form similar to Heroes 3, but also made it possible to not pick out fine detail environment and focus more on the epic landscapes. This approach will further allow us to save a lot of time creating a level.
For example, in Heroes 6 on the strategic map the player can bring his camera close to the landscape and see a lot of small parts (3d grass 3d stones). The problem was that the full decoration of only one such level artists had to spend as much as four weeks. Together with skriptovkoy haulage and gameplay cards manufacturing process dragged on for several months.
In Heroes 7, this problem was solved just by eliminating useless sverhdetalizatsii layer. Since the player is not able to come closer to the surface at close range, the point in spending time on drawing 3d grass 3d stone just yet. With this solution, the time of production of the same level in Heroes 7 was reduced to two to three weeks.
And now look at a few videos showing the technical prototype of Heroes 7 of December of 2013. Strategic map looked like this:
And in this video, you can judge the state of gameplay:
A test version of the cut scenes of a technical demo, in which titanium is destroying the city.
FIRST playable version
The main objective for the period from January to April 2014 was the first full assembly playable version with a small portion of the final quality of the content. In fact it is an alpha version, showing the basic game mechanics and art style.
In January 2014 by the writer collective Yubisoft we first got the current version of the script with the description of the main key locations and battles. In the same period, two new level designer and a designer cinematics were transferred to the command from another project. We immediately began to discuss the future study of maps and layouts on paper for the first two campaigns (Academy Alliance and light).
At the same time engaged in the creation of strategic maps for the first playable version. level of evolution can be seen in the screenshots below:
By April 2014 the game included: Hotseat mode, a multiplayer strategy map in a desert setting of a dungeon, one fraction (Academy) with all units, main buildings and resources (town fort dvelling, mines), examples of cutscenes, fog war alpha version of voice and music tracks first.
The final screenshots of the first playable version as of April 2014 were as follows:
By this time, I was ready the first version of the simplified level editor, which is a mixture of UDK and "heroic" superstructure. An hour of work for two minutes:
PUBLIC DEMO
In early July, we started working on demos for public exhibition GamesCom 2014 / Igromir 2014.
The main requirement was a small story map with linear gameplay for ten minutes, showing the two factions (Alliance of Light Academy) and three natural regions (green forests, snow-capped mountains and desert oasis).
It was decided to focus on the epic events in the game environment, in consequence of which lined up a very interesting scenario that contains a lot of spectacular moments (in the style of God of War).
level layout and description of embodiments of the key events
On the creation of the first playable prototype level has gone a week, and all the demos have been collected for about a month. The demo was an excellent proving ground for testing the system scripting events and cinematic cameras. At this stage, we still used a lot of "crutches", which were later replaced with full-fledged gaming system.
For example, all of the Titans move armies had to be created manually in the form of cut-scenes (Matinee). For comparison - in the release version of the game, all scripted movement neutral armies used the game logic and auto search of ways - it was enough just to specify the coordinates of the desired cells.
Prototyping CAMPAIGNS
By the end of 2014 the level design team has grown to 10 people and we have started mass production of cards for the story campaign. By the time most of the necessary tools for scripting was cut scenes already available, which made it possible gradually to throw out cards prototypes of all time "crutches" and replace them with full-fledged gaming system.
During the development of the story campaign Heroes 6 action of level designers and writers' collective Yubisoft were very poorly coordinated. This led to the fact that all the cards have been built without looking at the script and just before the start of the game developers had to hurry to string plot on existing levels. In the case of the 7 heroes this error and decided not to repeat the story for each card was worked closely with Ubisoft with the start of production of the game. Simply put, the levels of developed building on the plot, and not vice versa.
Gameplay prototyping process for story campaign was constructed as follows. Designer level studied the script, was a sheet of all the events at the level of and designed the step through a future mission. Then I pictured 2d plan, which is usually the starting point for the creation of 3D levels. Sometimes the layout created based on rough notes in the editor, showing certain features of the landscape. After discussion and approval of the level of the plan could start working in the editor.
Left: The campaign for the Alliance of Light Mission "Blind fate of guns." Right: Campaign for the rebellious tribes, the mission "free slave"
The most effective tools for prototyping levels for Heroes 7 were the simplest functions of the editor - the brush to paint layer on the terrain (soil type and special markers would help block cells).
In order to start testing the gameplay, it was enough to draw the game space (the green fields and roads), to outline to interactive objects (cities, mines, resources) and lock all cells leading off the map. Alter the landscape at this stage there was not much need, as all the gameplay takes place in 2D plane and elevation changes are purely cosmetic element. If desired, the level can be added triggers issuing text message with comments that in this place should occur. Using this method to create a simple playable card blanks spends only one day.
level prototype for Necropolis - Mission 5 - "last steps"
WALK for rake
Most of the problems of development of Heroes 7 rested on indecent low budget and short development time. Fierce savings in all not allowed to expand staff, capable of qualitatively improve the game.
For example, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) takes only one person. This led to the fact that most levels have been built without the opportunity to test the gameplay in "combat" conditions, and the whole gameplay scenarios had scripted entirely. Designers have received more or less working AI only at the end of the development (the same one single programmer AI still finished his work). Looking back, we can say that attend the creation of sane AI had another prototype stage.
Adding chips while maintaining the game in the middle of the development level designers to enclose all the big pig - to ensure the correct preservation, I had to lose a lot of time for processing all scripted events. On good, save the system need to lay still at the prototype stage.
The visual style of the game environment expected turned out to be a weak point in the development of Heroes 7. In the studio of the artist was not selected for the game environment, and art director was constantly busy outsource control and coordination of every detail with Ubisoft. Monitor the status of each card and to work closely with the designers of levels he did not have the physical possibility. As a result, designers are left to themselves and worked to the best of their abilities.
All this has led to what some levels began to suffer variability in terms of scale and artistic style. The same objects can be found on different maps at different scales. The situation with registration saved by the fact that the team with time to allocate some talented guys with a good artistic taste, which helped pull the clearance levels from a "terrible" to "very good" and sometimes even "beautiful".
Thus, the visual part in any case should not be allowed to drift. If your designers for some reason suddenly must deal with levels of decoration, then it is vitally important to provide guidance on the design of the gaming environment, taking into account the style of games (compiled by art director).
Incidentally, with the gameplay in this respect was all right, because guide to creating a level we have made at the stage of prototyping.
Another problem was the lack of time to test the gameplay. In most cases, it worked out only the main quest line, and alternate player is not thought over behavior. As a result, the player steps on the part of the storyline led to a large number of exploits and critical bugs breaking passage. Needless to say that in order to save time in their levels of designers playing with cheats and basically balancing the real games began in fact only after its release.
TOTAL
In my opinion, for the low-budget project developed in a short time a young team, Heroes 7 turned out quite good game with a lot of innovations in the field of "heroic" level design (breakable forts, bridges, caravans, control zones, verticality, a large number of scripted events, puzzles etc.).
Another of our achievement is very easy to use map editor, which began to be popular among modders. Will Might and Magic Heroes 7 descriptions or sink into oblivion time will tell.
Might and Magic: Heroes VII
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