00:07There are 3 main pillars on which we build our games.
00:10Controls, Camera and Character Actions.
00:12And these all define how the game will look, feel and play
00:15and are the first areas to prototype in Hellblade.
00:25Choosing a camera view was one of the first decisions to be made on Hellblade.
00:28We're making a third person action game but even so the type of camera can have a massive impact on
00:34the gameplay and the controls.
00:36In Heavenly Sword we had cameras on rails which were painstakingly mapped into the levels by designers
00:41and it is a system that won't really work for the more open world that we are building.
00:45In DMC we used a free roaming camera but it was still intelligent enough to behave well in most instances
00:51without player input.
00:52It took the coder the best part of two years to implement this system and it's a luxury we simply
00:57cannot afford for Hellblade.
00:59Our world in Hellblade is more open than in previous games and our team is small.
01:04So we can't afford to create a camera system that is heavily reliant on coders and designers.
01:09We need a camera that is cinematic, easy to implement and gives the player complete control.
01:15We settled on a third person over the shoulder camera and it's not something we've tried on other games
01:20but it's straightforward to implement from a code point of view.
01:23It's easy to set up from the design point of view and being so close to the character minimizes collision
01:29issues which is always a big problem.
01:31The control system is defined by the camera system and this viewpoint has a lot more in common with a
01:37third person shooter
01:38where you have the left stick for moving forward, backwards and strafing and right stick for turning.
01:45There actually are very few melee games that use this kind of control system and camera view but so far
01:53it seems to work well in Hellblade.
01:54For combat the view would need to frame both Senua and the enemy very clearly and to do this we
02:00would have a lock on button
02:01which when pressed would both pull out so that we can see Senua clearly and zoom in so that we
02:07can see the enemy nice and big on screen.
02:09And then once locked on you'd be able to strafe around the enemy very easily.
02:14With this working the next step was to try out different numbers of enemies and different sizes of enemies
02:19to see if the view could cope, to see how the controls would feel and to explore how lock on
02:24targeting would work in these instances.
02:27You may have noticed that our animations at this stage look very basic.
02:30In the prototyping phase we create bare bones placeholder animations that can be churned out and changed quickly as prototyping
02:38progresses.
02:39This allows us to iterate on gameplay to make it feel good before we focussing on making it look good.
02:45To find the right look for the combat animations we always do a thing called style tests on all of
02:50our games
02:51so it's no different for Hellblade.
02:53And in this style test I really wanted to capture the essence of Senua, that she should feel grounded,
02:59that there should be an anger that drives her attacks, that there's a wildness about her
03:02but also a sense of discipline that she's achieved through years of training.
03:06Happy with the results the next step is to cut this up into usable animations
03:10to get them into the game to make sure we're hitting all of the right notes in terms of control
03:15and responsiveness
03:16whilst at the same time maintaining the visual style.
03:18So while we're using Unreal Engine 4 out of the box for the most part
03:22combat is one area where the investment in iteration is required.
03:26Mel, one of our coders, is implementing our combat engine to do just that.
03:31The battle engine will allow us to visually create a combat system.
03:34It allows us to link together animations, reactions, pad inputs, data
03:38and all other things like visual and sound effects.
03:41The Hellblade combat system is likely to involve hundreds of animations, sound effects, visual effects
03:47and driving these are thousands of parameters that the designer will have to tweak over and over
03:52over the course of the project.
03:54So the ability to iterate rapidly and often is what will determine the quality, the precision
04:01and the responsiveness of Hellblade's combat.
04:04The system runs in real time so the combat system can be developed live while the game is running.
04:08It's a system that will eventually allow designers and animators to create and expand the combat system
04:13without any code involvement.
04:16At its core Hellblade will have a hardcore battle system, one that is entirely skill based
04:20and one that the big AAA studios tend to shy away from in the pursuit of mass appeal.
04:26Just like one on one fighting games the controls should be dead simple, lightning fast
04:30but there should be endless nuance in the way you play the game.
04:34On top of all of that there's still room left for something that we call special source.
04:39Something that sets the combat gameplay apart from anything else that exists.
04:43This is based on the themes that underpin the story in Senua's character.
04:46And we've already started to pre-vis the ideas for this, which we'll be sharing in future episodes.
04:54I will be sharing in two parties.
05:02See you soon!
Commenti