Disco Elysium Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[ERYFKRAD]

This week our animator Kristjan Bobkov wrote about motion capture and how we´re not really using it

"Using mocap"
by Kristjan

Hi! I am going to briefly talk about how we use motion capture in our development. Now our final playable game will not use motion capture data in-engine at all. Hurray! The reason for this is that it’s not fun to retime mocap and make it loopable if necessary. The animation curves on the mocap skeleton contain a keyframe on every single frame making it a lot less manageable. It is possible to optimize mocap data but the ending result is going to be unpredictable and jittery. So instead we use a custom rig to drive the skeleton, allowing the animator to put in keyposes, control the in-between frames by graph editing and achieve a completely predictable outcome. Also we can’t use mocap because at some point we could decide that we need motion that is really difficult for the mocap-actor to perfectly perform.

Like the title says we somehow actually still use it. Yes, but only as reference. It’s a lot better to see motion from every angle. We also use video as reference and sometimes it’s enough to just look at a coworker or some random people on the street acting stuff out.

When we started working on animation, we got an idea that maybe mocap could be a good way to really quickly get placeholder animations. Unfortunately it was too time consuming and we were not sure if we should invest in proper mocap equipment. The cheapest and fastest way for us was to use two kinects and they did a pretty good job as seen below. :D

Neat, the dudes who made Satellite Reign did something similar for mocap even.

 

[HoboForEternity]

So kinect is still the best gaming related stuf thats not used for gaming? (Aside from the airforce using ps3s for supercomputers)

 

[Kasparov]

So kinect is still the best gaming related stuf thats not used for gaming? (Aside from the airforce using ps3s for supercomputers)

Yuss. That is so :D

I was away for a week on a sort of vacation-road-trip. I headed waay out of town to spend some quality time with le girlfriend and all the bits of family spread all around the country. I have three different kinds of sunburn and a plethora of various bugbites to show for it. Can´t say that I´m really that refreshed after all this but I sure am glad to be back working on the game in our stuffy little studio.

This week´s blog post is from a fresh face to the blogs and forumses, one of our trusty code-monkeys Markus.

"Audio & Action"

Markus Rondo
Programmer

Hi! I’m a programmer. I do this and that. I implement, integrate and innovate. Let me tell you some tidbits about sound and cutscenes.


It would be great if all audio related code and components could operate off of a single central sound manager. Then some customization could be possible in Unity so our sound pipeline wouldn’t be a convoluted mess full of tiny changes.


New conundrums arise while attaching sounds to stuff. For example a case where an action can be performed quickly in succession:

• Do you just play the sound each time?
• Do you just cancel the effect and play it again from the beginning?
• Do you crossfade the second bleep-bloop into the first bleep-bloop effectively making a single bleep-bloop that still sounds nice but indicates a repeated action?
• Do you do something completely different that really fits the visuals but is kind of tricky to construct?

All of these solutions have their uses in certain situations. First two can be implemented fairly quickly. The third one – which seems like a nice general solution – needs to keep tabs on all sounds that are currently playing and perform a crossfade of different sounds. The fourth approach can be a combination of anything and everything. That’s why we are using Master Audio for audio management. It already has these kinds of functions and it’s a component we would have had to craft ourselves if it hadn’t already existed.


So once we had our basic necessities covered we could focus more on our specific needs. The camera and character moving to certain spots should change the ambiance and music in a meaningful and mindful way. So we created something that could be called a sound map! A collection of triggers embedded into the earth which send directions to Master Audio through an interpreter which has information about the current soundscape and keeps the changes logical and deliberate. This sound map can hopefully solve increasingly complex audio situations with relative ease.


Actions that the characters do are more often than not intricately weaved into the dialogue. The dialogue system and articy have “stage directions” (third party support between assets and environments really makes me feel warm inside) which are tools to make sequencable commands. So with a little preparation it would be possible for any member of the team to use these high-level commands to program the cutscenes. This means it’s important that different animations and actions automagically fit together so the whole system is as dynamic and modular as possible. Otherwise our animators would have to redo every animation after each layer of polish.


That’s it for now. Until next time.

 

[Kasparov]

Our art lead Rostov says he´s neck deep in character modeling.

Doing folds is a ton of fun I learned. Figured out this process you can do where you cut the flow of the folds into the mesh with the knife tool and then bevel it out to give it shape.

 

[Irenaeus]

What's up with his shoes, though?

 

[Fenix]

What's up with his shoes, though?

Gumshoes?

 

[Irenaeus]

Disgusting.

Also, I thought the game was from an earlier period. Not modern times.

 

[Kasparov]

Disgusting.

Also, I thought the game was from an earlier period. Not modern times.

The game is set in a world roughly similar to our 70's. The word "modern" has been thrown around quite a bit. Look at Martin Luiga's post about it for example - it's a page or two back in this thread - or find it in our dev blog.
Aside from sneakers (gumshoes?) the kid is also wearing sweat pants and a zippered sweater

On another note - that's a screenshot from Blender. Most of our modeling is done with it. In the image the model is 90% untextured and in Unity will have various maps (like glossiness, normal and vitruvius) plugged in for our custom shaders to do their magic.

 

[Kasparov]

Disgusting.

Also, I thought the game was from an earlier period. Not modern times.

The game is set in a world roughly similar to our 70's.

Confirmed for no truce with the FEVER

During the design phase our protagonist has worn various shirts, one more fabulous than the other. As a repressed homosexual Iraneous should at least appreciate that

 

[Kasparov]

Hoot! It is Monday and it is blog post time. Robert/Marat Sar put this in the mail:


"Afterthought system for dialogues"

Robert Kurvitz
Since this devlog is all about skinning milk cartrage assets in SKUyA — I make this remark with deep apologies to our technical artists, SKUyA is not a real thing and no one “skins” anything — I thought I’d share a little “RPG stuff” with you. For good measure. It’s this little trick I might have implemented over the weekend. It’s called afterthoughts, because L’esprit d’Escalier was too fussy to copy-paste in this post.

For those unfamiliar, L’esprit d’Escalier or Spirit of the Staircase is a cute french expression for the predicament of coming up with a perfect reply too late. I.e. when the conversation is already over. When you’re walking down the staircase and suddenly the perfect witty reply or devastating argument pops into mind. Well — how would that work in an RPG?

I haven’t, technically speaking, seen it work in engine yet, but I think we have the answer.

CHECK IT
In No Truce, you have conversations with a lot of people. But the person you’ll have most conversations with — is yourself. We use this literary device a lot. We’ve even built special systems to facilitate it. Systems like our sense orbit, that lets skills pop up outside dialogues. Basically, we designate areas and then — if you have a high enough skill — said Skill will pop up there. Click on the skill and you can have a conversation with it (a part of yourself), if you like.

For example: you step on a stage, Drama pops up and asks you if you feel at home. This grounds you in the world more. We can even give conditions to these pop-ups: click on a drainpipe, it says: “rainwater is gushing out.” Then go down the street, Visual Calculus pops up and tells you the street is tilted to east, because the water only streams there. (No click on drainpipe — no get this pop up. Conditions!).

So, using these building blocks, we can do afterthoughts too! Even exactly the same L’Esprit D’Escalier effect I described before. Say you’re in a conversation. With a colleague from the RCM, the Revachol Citizen’s Militia. You get into a little argument over an irrelevant detail, then go back to the main topic. You end the conversation and walk away. So far so usual. But the area around the colleague you just talked to is designated as the area where a medium difficulty Rhetoric pops up if you had the argument before (the condition is met), and you have enough points in the Rhetoric skill. You then click on the little Rhetoric orb on your head, this starts a dialogue. Your Rhetoric gives you the perfect thing to have said. If you’re nice to it. Some skills are touchy. (Yes, really).

Then turn back to that colleague of yours. The argument appears on his main conversation menu. You choose it. He replies with something like: “You literally just came up with that four meters away. I could see it on your face, you made this…” (Makes crooked face) “stupid face, like you were trying to come up with something.”

WHY I REALLY LIKE THIS…
Postmodern tricks aside, afterthoughts let us make our dialogues shorter and leaner. No Truce is a talk-em-up, but conversations still need to have pacing. And under pacing I mean they need to be FAST. The quicker the better, so as not to become chores. On the other hand, we like to pack in as much content as we can for different character builds. The detective with perfect encyclopedic knowledge wants to pick up trivia and discuss that with his colleague. The physical character wants to get Half Light anger flashes (more on that another time) and hound the suspect on a stupid suspicion he has. Putting all these skills in the conversation, however, slows down the tempo and leads you into tangents. This draws attention from the main dynamic of the conversation.

We work on some dialogues for well over a month. In this time a writer-designer gets many weird, adventurous ideas for different skills to add. Afterthoughts could be a way for us to keep dialogues leaner while adding more content for different builds. A win-win.

In theory.

It may be annoying in practice, who knows. Right now I’m quite excited about them. I made a bunch of these micro-dialogues over the weekend. Who knows, maybe there’s even a gif added to the post, illustrating one pop up…

 

[Kev Inkline]

This week our animator Kristjan Bobkov wrote about motion capture and how we´re not really using it

If there's ever going to be an animated gif for butthurt, this gets my vote.

The blue avatar in particular.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Hmm neat.

 

[StaticSpine]

Man I love those cars!

 

[Wulfstand]

Really digging the art-style. Has the 2nd season of Fargo had any influence on it, or is it just me?

Looking forward to playing the game.

 

[TOUGH GUY]

Kasparov, tell us about the name. What does it mean? Is it like a pretentious metaphor, or is there a genocidal war with Erinyes going on? My money is on the former but it never hurts to ask. Also I like how the game looks.

 

[Fenix]

Metaphor.

 

[Prime Junta]

This thing just keeps getting better and better and better and better

 

[Kasparov]

Kasparov, tell us about the name. What does it mean? Is it like a pretentious metaphor, or is there a genocidal war with Erinyes going on? My money is on the former but it never hurts to ask. Also I like how the game looks.

What fenix said - more metaphor than a genocidal war with Erinyes. No Truce is very unlike The Witcher games or Diablo et al. I think if you´re acquainted with the concept of furies you should get it, so to say. If you go so far as to google R. S. Thomas, you might get even more out of the gaming experience. Enter the satisfaction of spotting the reference. That´s what makes art art, right? I guess it is a little pretentious if you look at it like that...

 

[Brancaleone]

Kasparov, tell us about the name. What does it mean? Is it like a pretentious metaphor, or is there a genocidal war with Erinyes going on? My money is on the former but it never hurts to ask. Also I like how the game looks.

What fenix said - more metaphor than a genocidal war with Erinyes. No Truce is very unlike The Witcher games or Diablo et al. I think if you´re acquainted with the concept of furies you should get it, so to say. If you go so far as to google R. S. Thomas, you might get even more out of the gaming experience. Enter the satisfaction of spotting the reference. That´s what makes art art, right? I guess it is a little pretentious if you look at it like that...

So is it about metaphorically hunting down the demons who are tormenting/punishing you for the crimes you have committed? Because otherwise it doesn't make much sense, it is the Furies/Erinyes who have no truce with you, not the other way around.

 

[xxxCatholicKillahxxx]

Have you talked about itemization or is it too early for that? No doubt the system will be as different as most other aspects of this game. Unless you have decided to omit items entirely. If not will items have any economical value to them or will their value be measured in another way? Emotional perhaps?

 

[Kasparov]

So is it about metaphorically hunting down the demons who are tormenting/punishing you for the crimes you have committed? Because otherwise it doesn't make much sense, it is the Furies/Erinyes who have no truce with you, not the other way around.

Uh, I´m not sure about your crimes - I guess you´ll have to wait, play the game, and see. It is safe to assume that you do battle with your inner demons. You know how life is when you´re no longer a teenager... DEMONS EVERYWHERE!

Have you talked about itemization or is it too early for that? No doubt the system will be as different as most other aspects of this game. Unless you have decided to omit items entirely. If not will items have any economical value to them or will their value be measured in another way? Emotional perhaps?

No, we haven´t talked about it in-depth. I can assure that we have not omitted items entirely.

If you scrutinize the screenshots a little more you´ll notice that there are some dudes brandishing their gats with authority - there are gund ion the game.

There´s also the wardrobe management bit - you can forgo pants, if you wish. Let us not forget Electrochemistry - you need the chems to make that work. What is different and yet in essence similar to regular item management is Throught Cabinet - the so-called Inventory For Thoughts. To a larger or lesser degree each of those affects your performance in various rolls and checks while you interact with the game world.

 

[Brancaleone]

So is it about metaphorically hunting down the demons who are tormenting/punishing you for the crimes you have committed? Because otherwise it doesn't make much sense, it is the Furies/Erinyes who have no truce with you, not the other way around.

Uh, I´m not sure about your crimes - I guess you´ll have to wait, play the game, and see. It is safe to assume that you do battle with your inner demons. You know how life is when you´re no longer a teenager... DEMONS EVERYWHERE!

Well, I was of course just hoping to extract a bit more info...

Being familiar with the concept with the Erinyes means knowing that they cannot be fought, opposed, reasoned with, or escaped. There's a partial exception to the third one in Aeschilus' Oresteia, and even then, it takes place after Apollo himself admitting to Orestes in the Choephoroe that he cannot do anything to protect him from the Erinyes, and it involves Athena together with Peitho (the goddess of persuasion) persuading the Erinyes, at the very end of the Eumenides, to accept the acquittal of Orestes by promising them basically to become part of every aspect of Athenian society (that is, carrying out the transition from blood-law, which the Erinyes symbolize, to tribunal justice represented to the Areopagos tribunal instituted by Athena in order to judge Orestes).

So if you say "if you acquainted with the concept of the Erinyes you should get it", no, sorry, doesn't work. It means "no truce with something you can't fight" which, apart from quoting the title of a semi-obscure poetry book by a Welsh nationalist, doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

 

[Kasparov]

Sorry, Brancaleone. I find it very hard to add to what you´ve already said. We could debate the various manifestations of Furies/Erinyes endlessly. After all that is something that is done without end in academical circles. But any more specific than what we´ve already published and we´ll have to start dissecting the plot points and that would be helluva spoilery, I think.

It kind of is the idea that the whole affair is rigged, you know (and not in your favor). That´s also why No Truce! is jokingly labelled "an RPG about being a total failure". Sure, you could view the title as a poetic exaggeration on the author´s part and go on and label it pretentious.
Don´t you agree that in Planescape: Torment all of the NPCs dealt with their own furies, the personal and sometimes very literal demons that would give no quarter whatsoever. Do you think it is a very pretentious game? How about the demons the characters in Pillars of Eternity face?

 

[Wayward Son]

Do you think it is a very pretentious game?

Isn't it?
But, seriously, I will probably be getting this. Maybe even a

 

[Space Insect]

It would be easy to think of this as a pretentious game, but after seeing how the devs interacted with the Codex, I have hope that it won't be terribly pretentious.