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#1526
02-14-2012, 04:40 PM
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#1527
02-14-2012, 04:56 PM
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#1528
02-14-2012, 08:26 PM
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#1529
02-18-2012, 01:31 AM
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Guys, I really don't know is it appropriate place for this or not.
3_killa_bytes - video podcasters from Toronto made short interview with Elias Toufexis when they were at FanExpo 2011. Few days ago they invited Elias to play DE:HR. They uploaded part one of three.
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Sorry if my English is not perfect!
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#1530
02-18-2012, 01:41 PM
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Thanks! That's really hilarious hearing Elias do voice overs while playing the game.
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#1531
02-18-2012, 04:15 PM
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Ha! I didn't watch it all, but what I did see was pretty funny. "Shut up Megan."
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 Something something, death and taxes. Confucius.
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#1532
02-19-2012, 01:43 PM
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Latest EM tweet:
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 I am the shadows, the dark and deadly, the velvet night...
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#1533
02-20-2012, 09:29 AM
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Don't know if this really counts as an article when it's written by me, but I scribbled down a few thoughts on what I'd like to see from future Deus Ex games. Check it out.
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#1534
02-20-2012, 10:42 AM
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#1535
02-20-2012, 10:48 AM
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 But thanks, glad you enjoyed it. And also glad to see you're alive again! Where have you been?
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#1536
02-20-2012, 11:06 AM
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I hope everything goes well for you too?
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#1537
02-20-2012, 12:21 PM
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What you say about cutscenes in that article (and the dedicated one earlier) is absolutely true. As with a large portion of gaming related babble, I lacked a strong opinion on it but you've clued me up to the evils of them. If I'm honest, I usually look forward to cutscenes with them tending to trigger when something important is happening. The anticipation rarely pays off, though.
I'm a little bit absent from in-depth discussion due to a lack of time, but I've been really enjoying your and Mike's articles. Especially the Cleaning bot and the Dino one. :P
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Something something, death and taxes. Confucius.
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#1538
02-21-2012, 09:41 AM
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- Not having EM remake the original. I don't think it's a feasible idea anyway (commercially or creatively), but I'm not against it on principle. Here's why: Even just adhering to the basic main storyline of DX would forcibly insert the elements so lamentably missing from HR; saga-wise, but also in terms of pushing the gameplay envelope. That we can agree on HR didn't particularly do, right? For instance, it would mean the devs would have to deal with the problem of (not) killing off key NPCs at any given time. It would maybe push them into new directions of player-NPC relations. I'm thinking advanced trust/loyalty/reputation stats for instance. How fitting would that be for a game that deals with conspiracy and paranoia? If HR is the template in look, feel, complexity and atmosphere for the future of DX, I'm out. If they made a pass at re-imagining the original, I'd give it another go, just out of curiosity. (If you really think about it: how many characters, events, or organizations in HR would have to be even just cosmetically altered in order to be able to market the game as a completely new, not DX related franchise? Not that many at all. HR is practically stand alone.) - And yeah, you deserve a serious whooping for mentioning Deus Ex and steam punk in the same sentence. We got Thi4f for that sort of falderal. 
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#1539
02-23-2012, 11:19 AM
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The game and its DLC is 66% off this weekend on Steam!
Deus Ex: Human Revolution - $10.19 / £10.19 / 16,99€ Deus Ex: Human Revolution Augmented Edition - $13.59 / £15.29 / 20,39€ The Missing Link - $5.09 / £3.05 / 3,73€ Explosive Mission Pack - $1.01 / £0.67 / 0,77€ Tactical Enhancement Pack - $0.67 / £0.40 / 0,50€ Tactical Enhancement + Explosive Mission Bundle - $1.35 / £4.12 / 1,01€ (Looks like the game had a price drop in the US, so the prices are hilariously unfair at the moment for Euro folks)
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The Information must flow... feed my thread... yeeeees.
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#1540
02-23-2012, 12:13 PM
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That's less than it was during the Holiday Sale. >_>
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#1541
02-25-2012, 02:56 AM
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Some relevant news.
 Warren Spector to receive GDC 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award Warren Spector will be receiving the award on 7th March this year at the GDCA 2012 (Game Developer Conference 2012). Read full article here: http://www.ikogamer.com/2012/02/03/w...evement-award/
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I am the shadows, the dark and deadly, the velvet night...
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#1542
02-26-2012, 01:30 AM
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You got a funny way of talking... JJB.
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#1543
02-26-2012, 06:36 AM
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Part three.
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Sorry if my English is not perfect!
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#1544
03-02-2012, 11:52 AM
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#1545
03-07-2012, 07:55 PM
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http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/03/07/de...e-truly-sorry/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/164871/GDC_2012_Finding_the_soul_of_Deus_Ex_Human_Revolution
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#1546
03-08-2012, 10:54 AM
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#1547
03-09-2012, 12:20 PM
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I'm kind of hesitant to just post scans of this, but Game Developer Magazine had a fantastic postmortem of this game in the January 2012 issue (it's 4 bucks online) by Jean-Francois Dugas (game director), Martin Dubeau (project manager), David Anfossi (producer) and Mary DeMarle (lead writer), so here's an overview of it. Special thanks to a person that probably wishes to be un-named who pointed me towards the existence of this (you know who you are
)STUFF THAT WORKED: Work started in early 2007 with a very small group of people. The core team was Anfossi, Dugas, JJB and Francois Lapikas. It mentions how they played the other games in the series to get a feel for them and see what worked and what didn't and also read a ton of books, watched movies and played other games while taking notes. They had very organic brainstorming sessions, with a presentation of the ideas to the other team members and taking their input every week. That way it felt like a true group effort. The concept phase itself took five months. It talks about putting the rough ideas and game systems on sheets of paper and (whenever an idea felt like it worked) plastering them on walls. That was basically the "design document", and it talks how it was an amazing experience since it was a very friendly environment, using a freeform approach and everyone was on board. Selling the game to Eidos basically meant bringing some suits into the room and showing them the important parts of the room until they said "Deus Ex is back!" The concept phase had a stimulating environment that allowed their creative ideas to bloom without them feeling the pressure of being formal. Pre-production also contained something called a "blueprint". The production ended up being turbulent at times for various reasons, but since they blueprinted the overall game in advance they were able to avoid some risks of not knowing where you're going. It was basically putting the game on paper before actually producing anything else for it. That way, it says, they were able to merge gameplay and story together, then balance them when gameplay had to trump story, or vice versa. Initially they had to build six or seven major plot points, then Mary DeMarle's team could flesh out the story. For three months, they had meetings from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, and those involved the writers, level designers, level artists, game designers, art director and game director. They broke down enemy lists, enviros, dialogue, cutscenes, etc... This helped them solve a lot of problems down the road during production. Then it goes into what they kept in mind during each meeting: blueprinting is a creative and organic process, has a true sense of ownership for everyone. It let them have a clear vision of what they had to build and WHY it's needed. They were able to predict building 80% of the content (maps, scripted events, cutscenes, dialogues, etc...). It made it much easier to determine what to cut without damage the game's cohesiveness. Thanks to blueprinting, they were also able to plan out the teams that would work on various parts of the game. It's not magic tho, and for it to work you need a committed team and it's a hard process. They also talk about how cutting early and often meant the final product would be able to be healthier in the end. This is how the Bangalore city hub got cut when they actually started to build Detroit as a demo and realized just how much work is needed for each of them. Surprisingly, it only mentions Detroit, Hengsha and the cut hub here, no mention of Montreal. Anyways, just by looking at the blueprint, they were able to determine which hub getting cut made the most sense without disrupting the whole concept too much, and they were able to rework things so that its story and gameplay bits could be folded into the Hengsha map. Later, they had to cut the upper Hengsha part, along with some compounds (one in Hengsha and one in Utah) which also had some of its content shifted into lower Hengsha and the second visit to Detroit. It took them three weeks for the rework. The average team member's experience level was around 10 years, but this doesn't necessarily make a recipe for success. They still had problems such as ambitious scope vs. unexpected departures. Every time they had a crisis, they took the time to sit down and really examine the state of things, and this happened several times. They had the directors and leads go off-site and examining/brainstorm solutions. This meant they had strong contingency plans that helped them overcome obstacles. Their experience meant they could make hard choices and defend the project when people had doubts. They also praise their project leaders since they had the balls to be able to go to a publisher, actually tell them when things weren't going smoothly, didn't hide  from them... Apparently, Square Enix was incredibly chill and understanding about this and also respected their dedication and passion, which meant the relationship between studio and publisher was an awesome one.One of the major things that helped was an internal playtest department (their Playtesting Lab). They didn't have this when they started, so initial playtests had to be done off-site and were expensive (U.S. West Coast and Europe). It was hard to conduct them on a regular basis due to this, but it did give them some info on high-level intentions and basic gameplay mechanics. Once they built the lab, tho, things changed. In the last year of development they were able to schedule several playtests (over 15). They had objectives in advance for each, and it wasn't for stuff like "I want more guns", but just observing players and determining where they got stuck or didn't understand something. The devs could actually observe the players while they were playing, and this helped a lot in understanding on what to fix. They even had a playtest in the end of May 2011, a few days before locking the game down for their Gold Master candidate. The lab allowed them to line-tune a lot of things, but in the end it didn't help them realize one of the biggest problems: boss fights. WHAT WENT WRONG: They knew they wanted bossfights (to spice up the rhythm of the game) and they had very high ambitions for them, but didn't actually plan them out much. They initially planned to build a team that would handle the bossfights, but those people kept moving around to help build other resources instead. Not having a huge team overall meant they had a lot of headaches like this for the first two years, just building the core gameplay mechanics and underlying systems. So, for a while, the fights just didn't advance. They knew who they were, their philosophy behind each encounter, but nothing else. By the time they realized just how problematic this was, they shuffled people around and named someone to lead that. Unfortunately, it was an inexperienced level designer without giving him the management, programming and animation support he needed. The problem just kept growing for a few months, and it was a result of several factors. Later, they removed the person in charge, but didn't assign anyone else to take over. Working on other stuff just meant that they didn't have anyone to spare for the boss fights, and they only had the basics for one of the four fights actually designed. And it just kept getting worse as production continued to the point where they considered dropping them altogether. That, however, would have impacted other aspects of the story, basically creating another problem elsewhere. That's when they found a company in Montreal that specialized in AI and was willing to do the boss fights. But since it was so late in the production, the schedule was very aggressive, the fights got completely re-scoped, and the company would produce two of the bossfights, while they'd do two in-house. However, internally, they had a new AI team, which redesigned several fundamental systems, which made the boss fights literally mostly incompatible with the game. So they had to re-scale them back AGAIN. Towards the end of development, they finally found some time to work on the bosses and make them "still fun" according to their testers - they didn't know just how bad the feedback would be at the time. They did know, however, that they were inconsistent design-wise. They didn't address the boss issue early enough, and when they tried to fix things, they were pulled in so many other directions that they couldn't see the full impact of their decisions. Early on, they knew they'd have to rely on cutscenes to present their story (about an hour of them was planned), however in the blueprint they wanted them to be build in-engine, not pre-rendered, so they'd fit into the game seamlessly. It turned out they lacked the experience to realize that the number of people they planned to take care of cutscenes was insufficient. Their tools weren't efficient enough to build them with 'em, and they didn't have the resources to actually build those efficient tools. The truth finally sunked in when they made the 2010 E3 demo. They had 3 cutscenes planned for the demo, and those three scenes were about 1/10th of what they needed to produce for the entire game. It took everyone working towards this 4 months just to produce those 3 scenes. So, they COULD produce high-quality in-game cutscenes, but only had less than a year to actually do the rest. It was just impossible. That's when they had to go to Goldtooth studio, build a small internal team to evaluate stuff that would be going to Goldtooth so they could produce the cutscenes. This was kind of a defeat for the team, but it had to be done. One of the major problems was actually going for shared technology with Crystal Dynamics. The original mandate was to revive Deus Ex within 24 months, which was just plain old impossible. However, the initial technology decisions were still based on this, so Eidos's philosophy was to support shared tech, aka Crystal making improvements on the engine that would fit the needs for this game. When they build the first tech demo, things were still going smoothly. Later on, tho, due to their ambitious vision, specific needs quickly started to pule up, and CD was already busy with their own project. The needs of both companies just started to veer off in different directions, EM was almost two years into DX:HR and they were losing too much time due to the tools and shared tech pipeline. Luckily, Eidos backed their decision to branch off rom Crystal and let them make their own version of the engine. This also allowed them to improve upon a lot of the tools. So: shared tech sounds good on paper and it's done with good intentions, but when it's built upon projects that are too different in nature, it's a bad idea. EM also struggled sometimes to find the right key people, due to their high ambitions and expectations from their potential new employees. This happened mostly with animation and UI. It talks about their plans with hubs, populated with "living people" and the social bossfight conversations. Their first lead animator did not shared the same vision and both sides agreed to peacefully part ways. Due to the high recruitment requirements, it took a while until they found a replacement. With less than two years to go on the project, they found someone, and as much as he tried to save everything (they specifically point to the takedowns, the social bossfights and the AI patrol cycles), he couldn't salvage it all. They also had problems with finding the right UI designer. They really wanted to push things with their augmented reality through the HUD ideas and the game would need to have a ton of menus. They eventually found a very talented guy who blew them away, but who had no experience actually LEADING a UI team. Since it was hard to find candidates at all, they chose him anyways. This lead to him being intimidated by the people (a "strong-headed team of old-timers") under him, plus he didn't get enough support from the others. He eventually left, and after two years they were still struggling with nailing the UI direction. The next guy whom they found actually had the experience needed to give a clear direction, and "what ended up in the final product is pretty good". Outsourcing also turned out to be a much bigger problem than anticipated. Eidos could offload some of the workload to Eidos Shanghai, but that meant they wouldn't be able to use the same kind of structure they had used for in-house production. They had to outsource modelling and texturing of thousands of objects and characters, and later on, had to subcontract animations, boss fights, cutscenes and some code. They determined approval and communication workflows, organized internal reviews, etc... The problem was with setting up an internal team structure to oversee the outsourcing - a team that's dedicated to monitoring tasks, ensuring approvals, planning deadlines and carrying out constant communication with the outsource studio, plus sending internal teams off-site to train staff, maintain quality, and filter work that's sent back for approval. They had 30 external artists, 20 external animators and external programmers. They never gave the Shanghai team clear management because they lacked the required bandwidth, and had to do additional overtime to compensate for the work that didn't meet their expectations. The production wasn't always a smooth ride - far from it. They hit walls, they learned and bounced back several times. It was their ability to adapt that was how they were able to see through the project to the end. "Most importantly, three constants remained throughout development: our passion for this project, the love we put into it, and our commitment to make the best possible game. Despite the fact that [DX:HR] is not a perfect game by any means, we like to believe it has a soul."
__________________
The Information must flow... feed my thread... yeeeees.
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#1548
03-09-2012, 12:33 PM
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In a weird way, that all sounds like good news to me. It basically all boils down to "we had the vision, and we wanted to do things the right way, but we underestimated how much work it would take at the start / key personnel left or were unavailable, so we had to 'make do' with less than ideal solutions." The upshot of that is, of course, that they'll have the benefit of experience for DX4, and should hopefully not run into the same problems again, and should be able to make the game they want to make with far fewer hiccups.
Let's just pray they go in the right direction with it: "let's fix what didn't work and expand the whole experience," not "streamline, streamline, streamline." After DXHR, I do have faith that the team are capable of making an absolutely stellar DX game - but whether they'll be allowed to or not is a different matter.
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#1549
03-09-2012, 02:12 PM
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Latest tweet:
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__________________
I am the shadows, the dark and deadly, the velvet night...
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#1550
03-09-2012, 05:48 PM
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