Shopping list

Posted by Michael on June 6th, 2006, in Development

June is the month that has been scheduled to design Drama Princess. On the one hand, I feel like I have only started my research into this topic and there’s so much more interesting stuff waiting to be examined. But on the other, trying to actually make something will help us make decisions about which study material is useful for our project and which is not. Also, theoretic musings, while amusing in and of themselves, and very valuable as preparation, are not very satisfying for hands-on designers like ourselves.

From what I have learned already, I’m not expecting the system that we will now try to design and build to be the ultimate solution to our problem. I think we’re going to call it “version 1.0” and hope we get the opportunity to develop it further later on. After all, our main motto is “it’s better to make something than nothing”. 🙂
This does not mean that Drama Princess will be incomplete. There is a real game, 144, that we want to make that relies on this technology to work. This game has been designed and scheduled, so we have a strong motivation to build something that really works.

The first thing we need to come up with is a “shopping list”: a list of elements that we will need to make a complete system.

As a reminder, we’re talking about building a system for a non-linear interactive realtime 3D environment with no spoken or written language. All characters will be driven by Drama Princess, including the player’s avatar. And the project will be built in Quest3D, a realtime visual programming environment for DirectX.

Shopping list

• character model and skeleton
• skeletal animations
• morph targets for facial animations
• animation selection system (Drama Princess core)
• object interaction (emotional response, observation, using)
• perception (of environment, objects, characters and their properties)
• navigation (motion, path finding, obstacle response)
• external special effects (footstep sounds, footprints, shadows)
• body special effects systems (clothing, hair, inverse kinematics)

Note that relatively trivial elements (such as interfaces between different elements) have been left out.

This list already represents a number of choices. We’re going to use a large number of pre-made skeletal animations and a system that will choose which animation a character should play. This system will be the core of Drama Princess where all the “A.I.” stuff will be happening. Object interaction could be considered to be a part of this, but we chose to list it seperately because it involves objects, which have to be dealt with on a higher level in the game engine design as well.

The list also implies a “philosophical” decision which has probably been sufficiently announced through previous posts: we consider the core of Drama Princess to be an “animation selection system”. This is not merely because, in the end, given our context, any A.I. system could be reduced to this. But also to keep us focused on our goals: animations is what the player will see, not mood, or mind, or intelligence, or even drama. All those things have to be triggered by the animations in the imagination of the player. But all that Drama Princess does, is select and trigger these animations. Whether we need a simulated mood or mind for that remains to be seen and is only a secondary problem.

The first three items in the list are “data”, i.e. to be produced by artists. But the choice of animations will at least be partially influenced by the “processes” designed in the remaining six items. The last item will be programmed in such a way that it impacts the logic of the other systems as little as possible.

It’s quite possible that this list keeps evolving as the design happens. But at least it gives us an idea of the scope of the project and the context of its core.

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