Creating First Person Movement for MIRROR'S EDGE

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

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

3. Mirror’s Edge • Intro movie

5. DICE facts • Founded in 1992 by 4 guys in high school • Owned by Electronic Arts since October 2006 • 260 employees • 17% non Swedes • 13 nationalities • 10 % girls • 25 % of Sweden’s games developers work at DICE • Battlefield series sold 17 million copies

6. DICE Studio

7. DICE timeline

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

9. First person free running

10. Rather run than fight

11. Stylized world

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

13. Keys to success • Team structure • Tools and pipeline • Prototyping • Iteration

14. Team structure

15. Team structure • Scrum • Product backlog • Sprint backlog • Sprint Planning Meeting • Daily Scrum • Sprint Review Meeting

16. 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

17. Prototyping • Initial concepts • First previsualisation • First Person Mesh • The Whiteroom • The Game

18. Initial Concepts

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44. First Previsualisation • PlayblastEarly Version • Playblast Iteration Version • Playblast Final version

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

46. Animate First Person Perceivement • First idea, dosomemocap, parent the camera to the head, done!

47. Animate First Person Perceivement • Second idea, putsomeaimconstraint on the camera.

48. Animate First Person Perceivement • Thirdidea, animate it by hand and make it look cool and believable

49. The Whiteroom • A fast loadinglevel with all the movesavailable • Instead of an Animation Editor • ExampleMovie

50. The Tools • WedevelopedourownMayatools 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