It took some time, but we finally got the actual stuff used in the trailer in our office! It just arrived and even though it unfortunately broke a little bit during shipping (doh!) and will need repairing, everyone gets pumped up just looking at it!

Check out some pictures of it and let us know what you think in the comments!

It's here!

That's us!

Pleased.

Leashed!

Gore and hotdogs!

Cacti attack!

They made it.

You win this round.

But I win this one!

Maps for Echoes and Anarchy mode!

The DLC is out NOW for Xbox 360 and PC and it’ll be released on PS3 later. I recommend all of you Bulletstorm fans to try it out, because I’m sure you’ll find it to be quite amazing.

„The 2 new Echoes maps included in this pack are: Monorail factory, which has you annihilating your foes through the hallways of a monorail transport hub. Secondly we have Mean Streets, which tasks you with destroying a medley of different enemy types through the streets of Elysium. The Anarchy mode maps allow you and your friends to kill with skill in 3 new areas, including: Mini-City, here enemies can be thrown into miniature skyscrapers as well as sent into the path of a rampaging Mechaton. Rock Quarry, which will see players fighting at night by a cliffside waterfall next to a mining facility and features a number of environmental hazards such as runaway minecarts and furnaces. Finally, we have Ulysses, this map takes place in the jail hub of the ship and, again, offers some ‘unique’ opportunities for creative players to dispatch their enemies.”

Play it!

Because of my role as the igniter, I was rarely able to experience a review of an idea I knew nothing about. It’s just logic: if I was to be surprised by any element of the game that would mean I’m not doing my job very well.

However, “rarely” doesn’t mean “never”. One of the things that was always a surprise to me – a surprise I could review just like everyone else was reviewing my ideas – were the script pieces we were getting from Rick Remender. Every time I saw an e-mail from him with attachment I knew I have fun times ahead.

Just to clarify, this is all from our internal documents used during the development and not from the actual game.

Check it out how Rick sold The Battleliner Galleon Spectre and Dead Echo to us:

THEN: GRAYSON HUNT, ISHI SATO, RELL JULIAN, and DR. WHIT OLIVER brothers in the shit, former soldiers embedded in the most feared band of elite, overt, crush your world into null space, annihilate any memory of you, hardcore, no-nonsense mother !&#%-ers in the confederation of humanity — Codename: DEAD ECHO (they make the band of soldiers from the opening of PREDATOR look like pastry chefs).

Yes, this is how Remender writes internal documents… The man knows how to start the fire. This is what happens when the Jumpship arrives (not a spoiler, since this is actually different to the final game):

Jumpship lands: the band rushes to the nearby spaceport, it’s total chaos [...]. Final Echo emerge. They are supremely bad-ass super future warriors of mother !&#%-ery, dicks made of fire, next-gen Leashes that make Gray’s look like a dog leash.

Exciting, isn’t it? The rest is even crazier, but I don’t want to spoil the game for those who didn’t play it yet. And for those who did – can you imagine that the dialogue you have just experienced is a much TONED DOWN version of the scripts that Rick wrote? Yes, you read that right, toned down. If someone leaks the original versions one day, I don’t envy Remender: the entire Spanish Inquisition will rise from their graves and he’ll burn at the stake shining like the superstar he is.

That's how you do it.

And you’re right. The true reason why I wrote this blog entry was not really to talk about my role as the firestarter or Rick’s role as the writer from hell. All I really wanted was an excuse to quote some of his internal work, because AWESOME. But I know you’ll forgive me. I mean…

No one had any idea what any of the members [of Dead Echo] looked like; no one who met them had survived. They were a band of ghosts who made entire colonial cities vanish. They were the thing parents used to frighten their children into eating their vegetables.

What tools does a game designer need then?

Well, we use the computer a lot, but the tools we keep coming back to when discussing things amongst each other are toys!

Meet the Design Team!

Our toolbox

These guys have been part of many of the design decisions made during the development of Bulletstorm! They always provide great input and are great at explaining ideas!

Oh, they’ve been with us for a long time. I remember winning Mr. Galaxy many years ago, but I don’t remember how. It might have been at a nacho eating contest or a “wreck the keyboard as fast as you can”-contest. Either way, he’s awesome.

The three fellow furthest to the right are Ed’s. Ah, Mr. Spinning Top. He sure spins a lot and is a great representation of a projectile fired from Mr. Hairy’s gun.

Having actual physical objects at hand when trying to convey ideas to your colleagues is a great tool, not to be underestimated!

Then you kick him, like this!

We might not use hammers, but we do have a toolbox of our own!

Actually, a lot of people. But I love it!

When I came here to work, I directly noticed that people here are fun and easy going. I also noticed that Bulletstorm was gonna be over the top while hilarious to both play and experience, so I set out to make damn sure we got some high class Internet humor in it!

There was one great of way to achieve this.

I was the one put in charge of handling the Achievements/Trophies in the game. Collecting ideas, coming up with my own, writing the descriptions, balancing the points, etc. Of course, with a lot of help and input from other members of the team.

There are rules you have to follow when deciding on this. A max amount of different awards, how many points they should total and stuff like that, so we had to pick and choose from our ideas. And we constantly thought of new ones. In total, we’ve had way more than 100 different challenges to complete in a bunch of different categories.

I felt that the Achievement names was an area when we could just “have fun” with it, instead of being so serious.

When we put in the little parasite creatures called Nom in the game, and we already had the flesh eating Flytraps I just knew, we HAD to have an Achivement called “Om Nom Nom”!

My Lead, Ed wasn’t overly convinced about using Internet humor in the Achievements, because not everyone would “get it”. That’s very true and a fair point, but my stand point was that for those who does get it, it’s geek cred and just fun.

With great skepticism he didn’t stop me and nor did Adrian, our Creative Director.

Later, when Maciej, a Concept Artist got involved to do the icons for all the Achievements, he made a hilarious one for it.

Om Nom Nom!

How could it not end up being a success?

But seriously, he really struck gold with his idea for the picture of another icon that originally wasn’t all that funny; “Armed and Dangerous” It has the description: “Grow as a person, experience betrayal. Again.“.

:)

Oh, Internet memes, how I adore you.

We all realized not everyone is going to find it funny, but we laughed our asses off and if some people would feel the same way, then it’d be a great win!

We’ve hidden a bunch of different jokes amongst the Achievements, not all of them obvious but funny for some. Have you discovered them all?

And do you think it’s okay to have fun and make jokes using the names and icons?

Once the list got out on the Internet, we finally got some feedback from the people and what they thought.

Om Nom Nom:

-          “Best achievement name EVER!”
-          “WIN.”
-          „Already wins the title best name achievement”

Armed and Dangerous:

-          “greatest achievement pic ever!”
-          “Nominated for the best Achievement Picture 2011”
-          “achievement tile of 2011! WIN!”

I was happy. Ed was happy (hah!). Hopefully, even Rage Guy was happy!

I’m not sure why, really – it just happened like that. I started writing about level design stuff and ended up talking about Goals, Gating and Good Ideas. More specifically, it’s about how one small idea can prove valuable, by helping a level designer achieve many different goals at once. If you’re interested in level design, then read on!

So with any project, it makes sense to start by asking yourself what your high-level goals are. Why am I doing this? What is the essence of the creative challenge I’m tackling? What criteria should the final result satisfy, in order to be considered a success?

Making these goals clear at the start means that you can use them to judge the value of all your ideas and decisions that come later.

Here are some (not all) of the goals I had in mind for the Guns of Stygia map:

• Sell the “escape” theme with dynamic movement – Make the player feel like they’re improvising a way out of the Skulls base they’re in – not just running around and shooting like in any old FPS, but climbing over barriers, sliding around and kicking doors down, etc.
• Verticality – Avoid making a boring, flat level, and go for something more vertical, interesting and surprising
• Clear and fluid progression – Make each part of the level distinctive (creating a  clear sense of progression), and have them flow from one to another smoothly
• Gating – Do it regularly, in non-artificial ways

Out of all those points, Gating might stand out as something that not everyone is familiar with, so here’s an explanation. It’s basically a term used to describe ways in which a level keeps the player within a certain area, until they’re able to continue to the next one. It’s an important level design tool for creating a structure to work with, for more control over things like the scripting, pacing and difficulty, and ultimately for a better player experience.

For example, remember the classic side-scrolling beat ‘em ups like Streets of Rage and Golden Axe? The gating in those games came in the form of the screen itself – you walk your character to the right, and the screen scrolls along to an area where enemies appear, at which point it won’t scroll anymore until you punch, kick, hack, slash or Special Rocket-propelled Police Napalm Attack them all to death.

Imagine if the same game didn’t have this gating, and the player could just keep walking right, scrolling through the whole level, and spawning all the enemies without dealing with any of them. The screen would become swamped with enemies, the difficulty would go through the roof, the framerate would chug like Jabba on a treadmill, and the game would probably explode.

Exploding games are rubbish.

These days, with our fancy first-person cameras and believably-presented worlds, we need to gate our levels differently. An awful way to do it would be to place invisible walls around an area, then make them magically disappear (err, can invisible things disappear?) when the player has cleaned up all the enemies. It would feel incredibly artificial though, so we don’t do it like that. If you notice bad gating as a player, you’ll probably instantly hate it, so ideally, it should be done in a way that seems natural, and makes sense in the context of what’s happening.

…So anyway – enough about gating. Back to the goals, and onto the (hopefully) good idea.

As I said earlier, ideas come after you define your goals – and the goals tell you whether your ideas are good or not. The best ideas address many goals, without creating problems. It’s all about getting the most value out of the work you decide to do – getting bang for your buck, hitting two birds with one stone, that kind of thing.

In this case, the idea was placing a few ziplines and ropes throughout the level, that the player uses to quickly get to the next area. Here’s how the idea matches up to the goals I talked about earlier:

• Selling the “Escape” theme, with dynamic movement – using ziplines is a visually interesting way of giving the player a short, passive breather section inbetween combat areas, and moving them straight into the next one. It also backs up the “Escape” theme of the level by making the player traverse through the base in ways that look / feel improvised, and unintended by the Skulls in the base.
• Verticality - The downward nature of sliding down a zipline or jumping down a rope means instant verticality. Using elements like these to avoid making a generally flat level is one of many ways to make the journey and gameplay more interesting.

No uppy-downy is boringy. More uppy-downy is more interestingy.

• Clear progression – The fact that the player presses the Activate button to use these elements to progress makes them nice, clear bookends to the start and end of different sections in the level. In Echoes mode, these bookends can be used by a player to track exactly how many skillpoints they have at different parts of the level, to judge their playthrough during repeated play. Finally, the fact that these events quickly take the player from one place to another helps us create more varied situations and environments for the player to be in.
• Frequent, Natural Gating – The final nice thing about ziplines and ropes is that when the player has used them, they finish up in a situation where it makes sense that they can’t go back (because being able to climb back up the rope or zipline would be weird). The same generally goes for using an elevator, too. Woop.

So with this fairly simple idea, I’m not just hitting two birds with one stone, but loads of them. It’s a veritable bird massacre*. Of course, these ziplines aren’t all that’s needed to achieve the goals mentioned, but they help in many areas, and in this respect, they definitely were a good idea.

Hopefully you’re playing the DLC as I type, and you’ve already seen the subtle but significant effect that these ziplines have in the level. Enjoooooy!

Bang. Boom. Wheeeeeeeeeee!

(*All the birds that were economically and simultaneously murdered with stones during the production of this level were strictly metaphorical.)

One page in that book is about cliché, tired, annoying objectives in games. I don’t actually think they are „beyond repair”, but I do believe they are tired in their current form. We (designers) don’t need to be removing them from our arsenal of mission objectives, but we if we use them, we’d better make damn sure we have our own fresh spin on them.

RESTORE THE POWER TO X.
The biggest offender? It’s not the fact that almost every game – not just shooters – features this kind of mission. It’s the fact that game developers almost never use it to progress the story. It’s merely a nuisance that needs to be dealt with. It’s like me standing at the front door of my home realizing I left the keys at work.

PROTECT X WHILE HE HACKS THE DOOR/PANEL.
These kinds of mini-objectives are okay, although overused. The biggest offender is the fact that players easily figure out that usually it’s not a time-limited mission, but an enemy-limited one, i.e. your friend will magically hack the door exactly at the moment when you kill the last enemy.

Team Work.

DESTROY THE HELICOPTER
The helicopter is just an example, it can be a tank, an anti-aircraft gun, etc. What I hate about these missions is their predictability. I enter a room, there’s a fully loaded rocket launcher on the floor that apparently was of no use to anyone, and my first thought is: “Sigh. Helicopter mission …incoming!”. And then of course it begins. Sometimes there’s no rocket launcher, sometimes you have to approach the target only to put an explosive on it, and then magically somehow you have this explosive with you, and then what I usually think is: “Hello, big chunk of dynamite. Where the hell were you when I needed you most, like, ten minutes ago?!?”.

GO DO X, WE WILL PROTECT YOU
…but they never do! Name one game where the sidekicks keep their promise and they really protect your ass from the distance while you try to do your job? Okay, fine, Half Life 2 Episodes. Yeah, yeah, Red Dead Redemption. But that’s it. Most of the time you don’t get the feeling that your team really wants to deliver the goods they promised you.

Safety first.

JOHNSON, GET ON THAT TURRET!
Again, predictability. The second you hear that you know that suddenly there’s going to be a surge in enemy presence, and that every single of them will decide to role play a lemming, because running out in the open is the best thing to do when your enemy is firing from the turret gun like there’s no tomorrow. The other bad thing about these kinds of objectives is that for some reason you are the only one in the entire universe who can do it. “Johnson, for the love of God, open the door! OPEN IT NOW!!!” – says the guy standing two meters away from the said door. With ten other guys in the room. Really? And the reason YOU can’t do it, is…?

Let me say this once again: most of these mission objectives are not going anywhere, because they just emulate real life. I don’t treat them as a big no-no, but as a challenge: how to make them feel fresh?

By my calculations, in Bulletstorm we have used only two out of the above five mini-objectives. Can you identify which ones – and when they happen?

The names used in Bulletstorm today aren’t necessarily what they’ve been during development. Read more to find out what a Lavagun is.

Things change during development of… Well, anything. I’m sure a singer tweaks the lyrics a bunch of times before finding what really rhymes or an artist trying different colors before finding the right hue.

In game development pretty much everything changes every now and again. It’s true. But the one thing that you can change but often refuses to be forgotten are old names. Picasso once said: “I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. ” and that’s very true when it comes to our names as well.

Just earlier today I had a conversation with a few colleagues here in the office and one of them started talking about the Lavagun in Bulletstorm. Do you know what a Lavagun is? Well, it’s the old name for the Bouncer.

The “Bouncer” makes sense because the balls do bounce, but they sure as hell aren’t made out of lava. I’ve never heard a proper explanation of how the “Lavagun” was ever a good idea. It was just what it was called and it stuck.

It’s the same with people always talking about the Lighter. It sounds like a Zippo, but it’s actually the old name for the Peacemaker Carbine (PMC). It was changed to sound more aggressive and military. I think it was a wise choice, to be honest. Lighter sounds like a flashlight. “Turn on the lights for those mofos!” doesn’t really work.

Ligh...PMC!

The Lighter is a good weapon for killing Renegades. Oh right, the Renegades are actually the red dudes called Creeps. Everything needs an initial name, even if it’s never meant to be final. Renegades was used for a long time in development. I think it was changed around the summer 2010. Renegades is a pretty good name, but Creeps is better. When Rick Remender came up with Creeps, it was decided to go with that.

Another “never-meant-to-be-final”-name of a feature in Bulletstorm is the Flashbacks. When the idea of Echoes came about, Adrian called it Flashbacks (I suggested Fleshback instead, but was shot down immediately) because it made sense. Later, when the game mode was implemented a lot of people came up with suggestions for the real name and e-mailed them around. Suggestions like “The Hunt” (referring to Grayson Hunt’s last name) and “Kill With Skill” were in the list. I’m happy to say that my suggestion of calling it “Echoes” (referring to the Dead Echo and hearing something again) was the one people decided on. Even after we changed, people here in the office keep referring to it as Flashbacks at times.

One of the more complex name changing stories is about many people’s favorite weapon. We used to have two weapons, a Magnum Revolver and a Flaregun. Easy enough. Those two weapons were later in development merged into one weapon with both weapons’ functionalities. Some people called it the Magnum, some called it the Flaregun. It was named the Daylighter. Some people stuck to calling it the Magnum, some to Flaregun and some adapted to saying Daylighter. Then it was changed again into what we know today as Screamer. Why? Because it sounds more badass!

Early concept art... Believe me?

Where I come from, there’s an expression (maybe it exists all over the world) that goes “A beloved child has many names”. This is very true here, as the Magnum-Flaregun-Daylighter-Screamer is many’s favorite weapon and we still hear every name for it.

But the coolest one is without a doubt Mr. Awesome himself (no, not me) Grayson Hunt. His name was Mike. In all the scripting, all the code, old scripts, old story, etc. it’s all about a hero named Mike. Mike is an alright name, but not only does Grayson sound cooler (Sorry to all you Mikes out there!) but there’s also a problem saying Mike Hunt fast.

- What’s that?
- Mike Hunt.

Last Saturday at the Raleigh Amphitheater in Raleigh, NC., University of North Carolina students were treated to a concert by Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr., also known as the one and only Snoop Dogg. The concert was sponsored by Bulletstorm, Epic Games and EA Games. The evening started with Epic Games Design Director, Cliff Bleszinski introducing Snoop and bringing him onstage. From then on, the UNC students rocked, sang and danced to some of Snoop’s greatest hits like “What’s my Name” and “Drop it Like it’s Hot”.

UNC Students won the concert in a Facebook contest on the Bulletstorm Facebook page. The college that “Liked” the Bulletstorm Facebook page more than any other was chosen as the winner. The staff at Epic Games was thrilled to find the concert would be right in their neighborhood and many of the staff were able to attend the show, including Community Manager Will Kinsler. Will is seen below in the gallery with community member Tre Carrington.

Snoop Dogg images courtesy Kathy Hanrahan, WRAL.com.

The first lighting pass I did on Guns of Stygia was when it was just a few blocky platforms hanging in the sky. At this early stage I use very broad strokes and make sure the map is playable, so Steve doesn’t have to fumble around in the dark too much. In collaboration with designers and other artists we set early, but important decisions like time of day, setting the direction of the sun and ambient hue of the environment.

The layout of the map lent itself to having the player always move in the general direction of the sun. And you know what that means; Lots of bacon. Godrays playing hide and seek with the scrappy metal trimming and support beams just looks plain sweet.

With the sun direction set and more environment art appearing I went in and added secondary bounce lights from the sun. In real life when light hits a surface an amount of it is bounced of the surface and reflected, and then this process repeats until the light is no more. There is a system in Unreal engine 3 called LightMass that mimics this behavior. With an evening setting I set my palette with variations of pink and purple from the sky as well as a rich red/yellowish tint from the sun.

What do you mean overcompensating?

I like to keep the general hue of the world dark (Environment color in the editor), and then go in and place extra bounce light by hand. I find that this goes great lengths to getting a slightly richer final image. After Lightmass has done its thing I go on with my detail lighting pass. At this point I hand place lights to add bleeding light from the sun into certain shadows and custom bounce light to give a nice rim light to specific assets.  And its good fun!

I played around a lot with different colors for the artificial lighting (Lamps). I wanted it to really contrast the natural light in the map so one would never mistake a lamp for the sun. It ended up as this slightly green-blue sickening hospital lighting in the interiors, which I quite liked. I pulled the green tint down in some areas and pushed it further in others to add more variation.

See. Looks just like a hospital…

As a lighting artist, I love contrast. As a game developer, I understand contrast can get in the way of gameplay. Let’s say that the artist in me wants to portray a bright sunny day. I want the sun gashing down on the world, almost over bright and warm and where the sun don’t hit I want to push the shadows towards a dark, slightly cold hue coming from the clear sky. Pushing this across with eyes set on pure esthetics can sometimes result in unwanted situations.

What if a character is standing in the shadow and is occluded by the darkness and you just can’t see him. It can also turn out that you, as the player, are looking up towards a platform and behind it is the sun and it is so strong that you can barely make out the shape of the guy on the platform you want to shoot. So I have to wear two hats and think of all of these things to make the map as enjoyable and visually pleasing as possible.

Side note: The guns fire actually do fire.

When I got in to making games I started as a level designer in the Unreal Community. It took me about 5 years to realize that I suck at level design. So I went in to art, and eventually ended up primarily doing lighting. Point is I can’t look a level and see if it is going to be fun to play but I can get annoyed at games from a gamers point of view. Playing the map over and over again enables me to get in to a gamer-state of mind and if I find myself thinking “Ah shit, this place is way too dark, can’t see shit” or “Fucking light getting in my eyes all the time!”. Then I know I have to change things.

Finishing up the lighting for Guns of Stygia, I also did a post processing pass on the level. For the people not in the know, Post Processing is like taking the image that is on its way to be rendered on your screen and do stuff to it before you see it. Nothing too crazy took place with the post processing in this map. Just some pushing the contrast a bit further, tinting certain colors and adding depth of field and some bloom.

So that’s a bit of insight into the life of a lighting artists at People can Fly. Steve will now take over in the next post and write about… you know, level design stuff. I can’t elaborate more on that subject as.. well shit, I don’t know. I dropped out of the level design scene, remember?