Again, I don’t know how these things work. Maybe our getting-food-stuff-to-the-office-lady reads our blog?

I promise this blog won’t be all about snacks and food but I feel it’s my duty to update you on the current situation:

It's very good for you!

And best of all; no tomatoes!

To be honest, I’m not sure what happened then. In that e-mail thread we discussed getting more dried fruit, nuts and stuff that healthy people eat. Not really my area of expertise I’m afraid… Hrmph…

Anyway, so management here told the getting-food-stuff-to-the-office-lady to make it happen.

I give you PCF PEPPERS!

It's good for you!

Don’t get me wrong. It’s cool and I love peppers, but it’s not common to have one as a snack. Yet, for some reason they were all gone shortly after lunch.

I’m impressed though that a guy gives a suggestion on how to make the office better and the next working day it’s already done. I’m sure we’ll see more of these kinds of healthy life things happening around here.

Too bad I absolutely hate, despise and loath tomatoes…

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!

We just set up our own motion capture studio!

T-Pose

Making animations for characters in games is mostly about finding out what looks and feels good and what doesn’t. The first pass of an animation is almost never the final one. Animations need to be re-done over and over in different versions, to find the ones that you want to use in the final product.

When we were making enemy prototypes for Bulletstorm we constantly encountered the same problem. We were here, and the nearest motion capture studio was 300km away. That obviously was a huge bottleneck when it came to making new versions of animation sets. We had to wait until the requests for new animations piled up, book a whole day of motion capture session, record it and then wait a week or two for the results. During this time the designers very often changed their minds and didn’t need those animations anymore, or they invented new ones that had to be recorded.

We realized that purchasing our own motion capture cameras and suits will greatly increase the efficiency and speed of making prototypes. We did a little research and decided on a small setup with a short turnaround time. Though the capture area isn’t big (a few square meters), the quality of the movement data is amazing. We, the animators, are really excited about this, so we did a short movie presentation. Enjoy!

First up is Fort Bema. It was built between 1886 and 1890 about 5 kilometers west of the center of Warsaw. The fort successfully resisted German attacks during the beginning of World War 2 until the capitulation of the Poland. Post war it has been remodeled into a kind of a park area with nice new bridges, bike trails and some parts of the interiors being patched up. The main attraction, at least for me, is all the history you feel when walking around the place. We headed there a warm, early summer day and below you can see the result.

Environment artist Tor (Left) and Art Director Waylon exploring the interiors of Fort Bema.

This picture is a pretty good representation of how dark this place actually got when you ventured far in to the tunnels.

You see the little gap there in the wall? There is no floor beyond and it’s a 5-6 meter drop to the level below. Additionally, it was really, really dark in there. This photo was taken over a few seconds just to get enough light show this deathtrap. Lesson learned: If places are boarded up there might be a reason for it…

We crawled out of all the fun and interesting places and emerged on a hilltop. It was late in the day and time to head back to the office. When we arrived back at the office we found an awesome Easter dinner awaiting us, courtesy of People Can Fly. It was a good day!

Although, that’s not how real Polish men like Tomasz do it. He brings drinks and huge chunks of meat. I like that even more!

Know why he did it? The man just got married!

The man you might have seen falling to the floor, head first is now an adult and is a married man!

Hands off ladies, he's taken!

When the 4 meter tall man comes up to me and says “Come with me…” with a smirk on his face and brings me into the scary place known only as the programmer’s area I’m fearing what’ll he do to me.

But turns out, I was treated to some fine Polish cuisine incl. a very potent drink and some sweet ass meat! (The expression, not the body part.) Tomasz was a very good host and even cut the meat for me.

A good host.

Some amazing meat!

And something much nicer than coffee.

Other offices might have coffee and cookies.  So do we, and more!

I say congratulations and best wishes on your new life as a husband! And thanks for the meat.

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!