- February 20th, 2010, 10:38 pm#210077OK, long time lurker, first time poster. So, bear with me. I attended the event earlier today too. It was impressed upon us more than once that recordings of the event could get the hosts into big trouble. So, even if a recording existed, it could not be shared. What I can do; however, is give you a complete break down of what happened at the presentation. If you actually read all of what I have typed below and still have questions, I'll do my best to answer. Also, I guess if you haven't played the game, the following will likely contain some spoilers for you. Here goes ...
A Bunch of Short Guys (ABOSG) presents Terminal Reality to present the Making of Ghostbusters the Videogame
Introduction by ABOSG representative (9 minutes)
Announced raffle tickets for Terminal Reality giveaways (6 copies of the Xbox 360 version of the game)
Materials are proprietary - no photos of the screen, no recording
Promoted paying memberships in the ABOSG club
Discussed other club business
<Loud applause as several members of the Dallas Ghostbusters arrive - in full uniform>
First Speaker - Robert "Bobby" St.Aubin - Concept Artist (31.5 minutes)
Talked about his career background
Played a video of the intro to the videogame
His job responsibilities - visual continuity, designed characters & environments, UI, HUD, effects
He worked on pause menu design (concepts and in-game assets) and achievement/trophy logo designs
He showed the release version of the achievement/trophy artwork
- original design was retro/pixel art/8-bit design, but looked blurry/muddy when ported to the consoles
- final achievement/trophy design was meant to look like an 80's style sticker pack
He voiced one of the ghosts - The Chairman ghost from the museum
- no speaking lines, just screaming & laughing
He then played a video of concept art stills set to the song Savin' the Day
- featured art from all 3 concept designers (Bobby, Sonny, & Grant)
- art from all levels, in order (Hotel, Library, Museum, Island, Cemetery)
Went to the movie first for concept art inspiration
- they decided they didn't want to base the whole look of the game's baddies on the female Gozer incarnation from GB1
- so, they pretty much threw out her as an inspiration (as well as her floating crystal environment)
- they did keep the Terror Dogs as visual touchstones however
- the boss from the lost island level was basically a Terror Dog "Queen" (ala Aliens)
- the "queen" in his concept art looked more Terror Dog inspired
- in the final game, of course it's a slor
Talked about the concepts for cultists
- showed several cultist concepts from before the team had established what the Gozerian look should be
- he credited grant with establishing the "face of Gozer" - an elongated mouth in sculptures, etc.
- his followers would emulate their god by attaching weights to their jaws to stretch them out
- his followers in life were awarded their prize of becoming powerful cultist ghosts in the afterlife
- one pic showed a cultist ghost with weight attached to jaw
- one showed a cultist ghost with black slime cloak
- one depicted a more alien looking cultist ghost since Gozer is from another dimension, but this look was not used
They had 2 classes of Gozerian cultist ghosts (a thin one and a short, fat one)
- the short one was a melee class that would charge and smack the player
- the thin one was to be a summoner that would float high and throw fire at the player
- their design was tied into the Lost Island level (in the "slime labs")
- the tall one would have long delicate looking "tuning staffs"
- these staffs would be for adjusting slime level instrumentation, etc at the higher levels of the slime lab
- the short one was a worker class to work at the bottom in the pits, cranking on bolts and carrying heavy things
- his weapon was multi purpose - a heavy wrench looking staff for turning bolts & attacking player
- originally, the player would encounter these ghosts going about their slime lab work in the afterlife for Shandor & Gozer
- he showed a design for a heavy style cultist with glass orbs/vats of slime on his shoulders
- the general looks of the lab, the staffs, etc was referred to as "Shandor Tech"
They developed a Gozer script/language/alphabet which can be seen on cultist clothes
Next he went on to talk about the PKE meter/pause menu
- the pause menu was originally based on the Tobin's Spirit Guide (traditional old, moldy tome look)
- would work like a bird watcher's guide
- another design was to model the pause menu after a WWII field manual (a manual for new recruits)
- the choice of making all necessary readouts visible on the proton pack drove the pause menu towards integration with the PKE
- he had several pieces of art exploring how the PKE meter could incorporate the pause menu
- he imagined that the PKE meter could act as more of a PDA
- one design has the PKE meter's screen sliding out to reveal a screen (like a cell phone with hidden keyboard beneath)
- but, eventually, they just upgraded the PKE meter design such that the whole face of it was now a digital screen
He showed some concept art for the Proton pack beam upgrades & area effect blast from multiplayer mode
They has a slightly different shotgun blast effect in game before it became the blue Shock Blast
The concept art showing Pappy Sargassi fishing for a Great White shark with tombstone dorsal fin was originally for the Graveyard level
Publisher fell in love with the Pappy Sargassi concept art, so he was definitely going to be placed somewhere in the game
- Sargassi eventually ended up in the Hotel (of course)
- originally the player was meant to help Pappy catch his prize shark in the graveyard
- originally a tombstone in the graveyard would start digging across the dirt towards the player and startle the player by surfacing as a shark
In the final game, Pappy's backstory was that he owned the hotel seafood restaurant, but didn't like the direction of it since his departure
Someone asked why with Murray and Aykroyd was there no Landshark joke, but Bobby said very few Terminal Reality people had any contact with the actors
Pappy was just a random ghost concept created during early design brainstorming
There were many different types of Marshmallow minis that would spawn from StayPuft
- it was simpler to just settle on the one small design
- Bobby really liked one that resembled a monkey, which would smash windows and throw "poo" at the player
Second Speaker - Ian McIntosh - Senior Character Artist (25 minutes)
Talked about his career background
Terminal Reality actually sought him out as someone who could make really accurate likenesses for their game
He was told that the direction would not be stylized - humans should be as photo-accurate as possible
He found reference material on the actors from the 80's and early 90s (including screen captures from DVDs, etc)
Most old photos and DVD captures have lower resolution, so that made his job of creating skin textures more difficult
- a lot of paint by hand for the textures
He started by making a generic head topology (an Adam head and an Eve head) that could then be sculpted into any head
His work was done in Maya (not a sculpting application)
Took about 2 days to sculpt a given character's head
The hair was modeled either by himself or Jesse Sosa
Ian didn't model the character bodies (with the exception of the main ghostbuster flightsuit body)
He actually even modeled the skeleton inside the bodies for joint accuracy (this is rarely done in games)
Interestingly, while he was clicking through character model folders, there was a Rick Moranis/Louis Tully folder
- there was no Sigourney Weaver/Dana Barrett folder
Polygon count for characters was about 20,000, head alone was about 2000 (used all quads on the heads, no triangles)
He was much more comfortable in Maya (and didn't use 3D Studio Max)
- many of the artists at Terminal Reality do use 3D Studio Max, however
- Using Maya allowed him to do some of the rigging for the animations since those too are done using Maya at Terminal Reality
The statue of Liberty was modeled for one of the environmental shots
He then pulled up the character model of one of the museum security guards (as prompted by his girlfriend in the audience)
- one security guard's likeness was modeled after Ian himself
- the other guard was modeled after Jesse Sosa (another Senior Character Artist)
- the hotel manager's likeness was based on John O'Keefe
- a news broadcaster character model was based on Hunter (a level designer)
There were very few instances where a character's likeness wasn't based on an actual person
The Ilyssa character was not directly modeled after one individual (she was a composite of 3 real people who he did not name)
All of the characters' facial animations are achieved with bone animation
He then showed a couple of very high resolution character "posters"
- one poster showed Peck, the mayor, and the 2 security guards
- the other poster showed the 4 ghostbusters
- zooming in on the walkie talkies revealed that Ian had placed a logo on them featuring his initials (IFM)
Cinematics were outsourced
Third Speaker - Tomas Gonzalez - Senior Animator (35.5 minutes)
Talked about his career background
Talked about how he likes Maya better than 3DStudio Max now for character animation
- most animation in modern movies uses Maya
He ran a basic character animation cinematic of a figure walking up to a mini fridge
- the character takes a drink from the fridge, wipes his mouth, looks both ways, then places the drink back inside
- Tomas reveals that the player's character was originally going to do this as he first entered the Firehouse
- then, he would meet Janine, who would tell him to make sure not to drink anything from the refrigerators
- she explains that chances are that anything in there could be something Egon is working on
They used mocap for most animations, not hand animation
He presented a demonstration of the tool they used to map mocap data to a character animation rig
- showed how they could take the original mocap animation and enhance it to give it more punch
- the animation showed the character's movement during release of the capture stream
Tomas was responsible for animation the Rookie character's movements
Originally, the player would be able to move around/run, but would stop and fire a stream from a fixed position
- test group feedback showed that people wanted to be able to run-and-gun (shooting & trapping while moving)
Tomas then ran a file showing the animation of the character running while aiming
- he described the difficulty in animating the character aiming correctly while running in any direction
- the automated blending the application offers for these animations needed manual tweaking to get the right result
- they had a run system, walk system, walk with PKE, walk with proton gun, etc. (a large animation tree)
He then showed a progression of animations by Paul Allen
- the scene was the hotel elevator scene where Venkman first encounters Ilyssa
- the first play through showed no character expressions and very little personality in their movement
- Paul obtained the mocap for the Ilyssa character and used bits of it to embellish the elevator scene
- progressive runs of the same scene showed all the neat characterization that was added
- the iconic Venkman swagger was added in (from Venkman character mocap data)
- you will see that swagger animation in several parts of the game
- finally, Ilyssa's facial display of disgust towards Venkman was added in
He had a bunch of StayPuft and Slimer animations he wanted to show, but his time was up
Fourth Speaker - Glenn Gamble - Senior Effects Artist, Senior Environment Artist (30 minutes)
Described the various roles he performed during the Ghostbusters project
He showed a still of the Sony Proton Pack prop compared with the final in-game model used
- at first they were instructed to make the game model accurate to the movie (a mandate)
- some subtle changes were made at first to make the model "read better" in a game context
- example is that the four red lights on the cyclotron were enlarged so they are more easily seen
- he described to his boss his vision of the whole pack transforming into a gun during a fight with Gozer
- his art director told him he'd been watching Transformers too much
- but then, he added in an "overheat" animation to the pack (against the mandate)
- the publisher ended up loving it and went on to green-light multiple weapon states, etc.
- the meson collider was originally to have a Van De Graff generator added to the pack
- the publisher thought the Van De Graff generator looked too fragile
- eventually it got a "jacob's ladder" with electric arcs instead
- they wanted this proton pack state it to look potentially dangerous (hair singeing)
He clarified that the dark matter generator is not a freeze gun, it just crystallizes ectoplasm (he said, winking)
- however, it does use a blue motif and modifies the pack with radiator grills from an air-conditioner
Slime blower just repurposes bits from GB2 onto the pack
He then demonstrated some of the effects animations for the Shock Blast/Dark Matter gun
- the muzzle flash from the Shock Blast (Dark Matter gun)
- the Dark Matter gun was originally a freezing/cool motif that the publisher wanted them to get away from
- he ran the projectile animation from the Dark Matter Gun, but it didn't render properly
He then showed some fire animations for Time Square (fire + smoke + embers)
- he showed how he added a ripple effect to the smoke
The stairwell sequence in the game is a nod to GB1 (tell me when we get to the top floor, cuz I'm gonna puke)
- the 4 floors you use are the only ones in high polygon count (10,000 polys per floor)
- the next 4 floors down were only 1000 polys
- below those floors is just a displacement map giving the illusion of more floors below
There were 12 environment artists on the project
He then showed a still of the sewer level which was cut then added back in (when the game got delayed)
- the sewers were inspired by the 2nd film with the pink slime running under the streets
He said that the best & worst experience of the project was getting the GB license
- it was a dream come true, but also a huge responsibility
- he also didn't want to be known as the guy who destroyed the proton pack prop (in case anything were to happen to it)
The Dallas Ghostbusters got to visit Terminal Reality about 1.5 years before the game shipped
- the developers ran after them to capture the sounds of someone running in full gear (in the sound studio)
- they were filmed getting up from seated position (in full gear) as reference for the animators
He mentioned that Yahtzee's review of the game (Zero Punctuation) kind of made him sad
- Yahtzee later admitted that he'd never played past the 2nd level
He commented that Terminal Reality doesn't have any more inside scoop about GB3 than anything we can all read online
He mentioned how the Angry Video Game Nerd came out of retirement for the game
The development cycle was 2.5 years (which later got extended to 3 years)
He talked a bit about the Activision merger situation (no new revelations though)
He mentioned Sony's interest in delaying the game so it would release for the 25th anniversary
The 6 month delay allowed the sewer level to come back in, another boss fight, and more polish
He loaded up the level where the rookie repels and fights StayPuft on the side of the building
- He ended by showing the animation for the StayPuft splatting, saying it was his favorite
Wrap-up by the ABOSG representative (5 minutes)
He reiterated about how much trouble they could get in if audio or pictures of the presentation ever hit the web
Then they gave away the Xbox 360 copies of the game
Two trivia questions were asked:
- Q: what are the names of the 2 stone lions outside the New York Public Library
- A: Lady Astor and Lord Lenox, or Patience and Fortitude
- Q: How many people worked on the project at Terminal Reality (A: over 80)