GDC 2013: Ubisoft Programmer: New Climbing Engine Not “Showcased as Much as We Would Have Liked” in Assassin’s Creed III
17
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 02:53 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 02:55 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 03:19 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 03:26 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 03:27 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 03:32 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 03:44 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 04:19 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 05:11 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 05:16 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 05:18 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 05:44 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013 @ 05:54 PM
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 @ 09:46 AM
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 @ 05:43 PM
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 @ 08:57 PM
Friday, April 19, 2013 @ 05:02 PM
Monday, March 25, 2013
Talking at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Senior Behaviour & AI Tech Lead, Richard Dumas, said that Assassin’s Creed III’s new dynamic climbing engine “wasn’t showcased as much as we would have liked” in the game.
Dumas and Aleissia Laidacker, ACIII’s Team Lead Gameplay & AI Programmer, took to the stage as they conducted a post-mortem of Assassin’s Creed III. The pair dazzled onlookers with a series of tech demos of engine upgrades they had to make because of the new frontier and discussed the problems they had to overcome.
The highlight of the post-mortem was the new climbing engine, where Connor’s climbing animations and actions were now dynamic and based on the environment around him as opposed to being a scripted affair. Dumas, however, hinted that they only scratched the surface with what the new engine could do.
“Although the system really works well it wasn’t showcased as much as we would have liked,” said Dumas, “because actually we didn’t get to have many moving stuff on the buildings, mainly because of memory and production constraints.”
The development threw up a number of other hurdles too, including the game’s animations – especially when it came to slopes – climbing more unpredictable surfaces, how the character responded to obstacles and even making Connor feel like his own character and not a carbon copy of Ezio, or even do something out of character.
“We had a few goals in mind that we did not want the assassin to climb the trees like a koala and we didn’t want him to swing on vines like Tarzan,” chuckled Dumas.
“In the beginning we didn’t expect to change too much for the free running system,” said Laidacker, “but as the game progressed we realised that the style for the free running reminded us too much of Ezio and it didn’t really fit with the new style that we had for our new character Connor.”
“It was around that time that we decided as a team that we actually wanted to change every single animation in the game so that it would reflect the new style for Connor,” concluded Laidacker.
The pair closed with a slide titled “Aimed for Next-Gen… before Next Gen,” so there’s a chance that with Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, the new engine upgrades could really come into their own.