Creating First Person Movement for MIRROR'S EDGE Jonas Åberg, Lead Programmer, DICE Tobias Dahl, Lead Animator, DICE

Agenda Intro DICE The Vistion Team structure Prototyping Tools and pipeline Iterations Final Thoughts Questions

Mirror’s Edge Intro movie

DICE facts Founded in 1992 by 4 guys in high school Owned by Electronic Arts since October employees -17% non Swedes -13 nationalities -10 % girls -25 % of Sweden’s games developers work at DICE Battlefield series sold 17 million copies

DICE Studio

DICE timeline

The Vision First person free running Rather run than fight Highly stylized A new take on first person gaming

First person free running

Rather run than fight

Stylized world

Through the character experience Redefine Battlefield’s ”Throught the gun” Feel the presence Put the person back into first person

Keys to success Team structure Tools and pipeline Prototyping Iteration

Team structure

Scrum – Product backlog – Sprint backlog – Sprint Planning Meeting – Daily Scrum – Sprint Review Meeting

Team structure Perfect fit for the scrum format 2 Week cycles 5-6 people Team seated together Always one designer, one animator and one coder assigned to a feature at the same time

Prototyping Initial concepts First previsualisation First Person Mesh The Whiteroom The Game

Initial Concepts

First Previsualisation Playblast Early Version Playblast Iteration Version Playblast Final version

First Person Mesh Blendshapes for knuckles and wrist, keeping the volume Blending normal maps for vains and muscles FOV Deformation Movie FOV Movie

Animate First Person Perceivement First idea, do some mocap, parent the camera to the head, done!

Animate First Person Perceivement Second idea, put some aim constraint on the camera.

Animate First Person Perceivement Third idea, animate it by hand and make it look cool and believable

The Whiteroom A fast loading level with all the moves available Instead of an Animation Editor Example Movie

The Tools We developed our own Maya tools and Pipeline tools for the project. High demands on functionality Short iteration times Reuse animations for all projects Support all projects on DICE Support different engines like Frostbite, BF2 and Unreal3

The Tools Develope our own animation format (.curve) Import Mocap as well as handle hand animated animations Deal with many characters for Cutscenes Facial animation system Animation in Layers High framerate (no playblasts)

The Tools DEMONSTRATION VIDEO OF THE TOOLS AND THE PIPELINE ~5 min…..

Iteration Movement was a key area of focus Camera motion Motion sickness Most moves iterated on 5-6 times

Jumping Context sensitive animations Layered landing animations Heavy landings / skill rolls

Wall runs Impact animation Guided camera Aiming Dynamically triggered

Vaulting Fixed metrics at first Became fully dynamic Choose animation based on height / speed /obstacle shape

Grabbing Impact / Different into animations Shimmy Aiming

Final Thoughts Successful production methodology Strong belief in the game concept from the beginning to the end First person restrictions sometimes very challenging. The whole production – a learning experience