We on the Visual Effects Team at GPG thought we'd take a moment to give everyone some insight into the creative processes behind making special effects for a game like Demigod. If you look off to your left, you'll see Aaron Lundquist; Effects Artist and Kung Fu fan. To your right you'll see Gordon Duclos; Effects Team Lead and professional Ninja. I'm Matt Vainio, your tour guide, and I help make video game magic COME ALIVE. We three amigos are the centralized VFX team for GPG and create effects for all of its titles.

Creating visual effects is one of the most varied and interconnected aspects of game creation. We work within all three pillars of game creation: Design, Art and Technology. All of these various areas have their own unique concerns that make effects creation both challenging and extremely rewarding. A change in one department affects our work and likewise our work affects all other departments. We on the Effects Team end up being a combination of Artist/Designer/Engineer/Magician in our daily work-flow.

Visual effects are a reflection of game design through their speed, timing, scale, impact and other factors to provide the player with an accurate visual picture of the design of an ability, weapon, environmental hazard - the list goes on. Effects can influence game design through the player's interpretation of what they see and are a tremendously powerful tool to adjust perception of game design. For example, creating an effect for an ability design brings with it questions such as: How large is the radius of affect? What is the relative damage to other abilities? Is the damage instant or over time? Is there an associated buff or debuff? What does the animation and all other timing look like? These are just a few of the many questions involved and are questions of context, which is a critical component of good VFX design. Until you understand the context of a design, you cannot develop a visual representation of it.

The artistic aspect of effects creation cannot be understated. The Lead Artist on a project sets a style for the overall game and we spend a significant amount of time ensuring that each visual effect fits within the visual language of the game world. One of the main ways we accomplish this is through our iterative system. When initially creating an effect, we are not concerned with any visual aspect other than scale, timing and general brightness/color. It's basically 'sketching' in VFX form. We spend as much time as is necessary at this stage and iterate using peer review. The three of us sit next to each other and talk to each other constantly to look at works in progress and give feedback. After an effect is roughed in, we begin the process of finalizing its visuals. By sketching what is in our head, looking at reference of real events when possible or movie special effects when appropriate, we come to a consensus what the final effect should look like.

From this point, we use various image editing tools to paint and photosource particle textures. Each individual texture works in unison in the final effect, blending together in different methods to achieve our desired result. In a game like Demigod one of the main artistic challenges is the variable player camera angle and zoom. Every visual effect needs to look good at all possible distances and we use a variety of tricks to achieve this. An example is adjusting the 'MIP Levels' of our particle textures. Depending on the in-world size of an effect particle (or any other texture in the game), a different scale of the same texture is used. This is called MIP Mapping. We adjust the different Mip Levels of a texture to increase the size of details at smaller MIPs so that at a distance the effect is still readable. Other artistic challenges include achieving the proper scale of detail for the size of the effect within the game world, having the effect look as similar as possible across a wide variety of playfields (which vary in color/value tremendously), avoiding any visual repetition of particle assets and being unique enough from other ability or environment effects to be readable. This is just a sampling of problems and techniques within the artistic spectrum of creating VFX.

On a technology and engineering level our job is to make sure that all effects perform within established guidelines and interact with scripts efficiently. We also make sure they are managed properly, which is to say that the effects appear and disappear at the right moments. Having Fire Nova effects stay around long after the damage has been done would be bad, real bad, but I've never done anything even remotely like that so don't worry. On a performance level, our goal is to create the best visuals with the least amount of particles and without taxing graphics power. On the other hand, we're out to push technology to its limits with those who have high end systems. To this end, we have tied effects to the visual fidelity low/medium/high settings within the video options of Demigod. We scale and adjust all effects to perform at each of these different settings so users can customize based on their own computers capability. On the high fidelity settings we use refraction (heat shimmer) shaders and procedural particle distortion. A good example of procedural particle distortion can be seen in the ambient cold wispy mist effects surrounding the TorchBearer.


This footage is completely in-game, nothing you see here is pre-rendered.

So there you have it, probably sounds more complicated than it actually is. Wait, it's actually way more complicated than I wrote about but completely more fun as well. Even though effects don't get much (if any) mention in reviews we feel it's a very important part of the overall design, art and engineering of a game. Just try playing a game with effects disabled. We dare ya.

I'm trying out the staged build of Demigod off of Impulse right now on my work machine.  Hopefully this will help players walk through what it's like.

I'll be updating this as I go along...

Installed. Running.

Into the game

My fresh install of Vista doesn't seem to cut it with the base nVidia drivers.

So I run dxdiag:

--------------- 
Display Devices 
--------------- 
        Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM) 
     Manufacturer: NVIDIA 
        Chip type: GeForce 7950 GX2 
         DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC 
       Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0294&SUBSYS_035B10DE&REV_A1 
   Display Memory: 776 MB 
Dedicated Memory: 504 MB 
    Shared Memory: 271 MB 
     Current Mode: 1920 x 1200 (32 bit) (59Hz) 
          Monitor: Dell 2407WFP (Digital) 
      Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll,nvapi.dll 
   Driver Version: 7.15.0010.9686 (English) 
      DDI Version: 9Ex 
Driver Attributes: Final Retail 
Driver Date/Size: 11/2/2006 05:46:12, 3022848 bytes

Wow. My drivers are over 2 years old.

So time to update my drivers...

Back to Impulse...

I click on Community and click on the nVidia tab and get my driver updated...

Once my drivers are updated, I re-run the game.

Ah, much better.

Remember to update your drivers!

... Game Play ...

These flags will become increasingly important over the betas. In the engine test, it's basically just about overpowering your enemy.  But over time, the way to do that will be through making strategic choices over which parts of the map you control.

This particular flag gives me access to better creeps who come out of the portal.  But other flags may provide all kinds of other interesting advantages.

This is the UI for beta 1.

On the left side are your 4 primary powers for your Demigod.  On the right side are 3 active item slots as well as your achievement slot.  The achievement slot is currently reserved for special items purchased with achievement points (these would not necessarily be available in skirmish games for those who want absolutely "equal" start ups).

The "1" button you see means I've gone up a level the right side is my player info.

This is the BETA 1 skill tree.  We plan to expand on this immensely over time. Our main goal for beta 1 was to settle on the UI.  Beta testers are free to suggest powers they'd like to see Demigods have (that is one of the benefits of being in the beta).

Keyboard commands:

• Use the SPACE BAR to control the view camera (i.e. hold space down while moving your mouse).
• Use the T key to have the camera track on your Demigod.
• Use the QWER keys to activate your abilities.

Stardock Games has a blog on the IGN site, and CEO/President of Stardock, Brad Wardell gives an in-depth look at the “beginnings” of the upcoming game, Demigod, from Gas Powered Games.  The story starts with how the concept of Demigod started, all the way to the current state of development.  It’s a great look at the inside of both companies and of the games development, which is something you don’t see too often.

A quick excerpt:

“In the beginning, Demigod was viewed as an action-RPG with strategy involved and it was hard to classify. The single-player mode would consist basically of skirmishes to help get players ready to play online, with the goal being that Demigod would be the “Counterstrike” of the strategy genre. “

Read the full article over at the IGN blog here.

It was a good week at PAX as we got to show the pre-beta of Demigod to the world and let people play it multiplayer.  Only a few more  days until the engine test beta.

Joystiq.com got a hands-on preview of Demigod at PAX 2008 this weekend.  You can read the full preview at Joystiq, but here is a quick excerpt:

“Following an interview with Gas Powered Games at PAX 2008, we got some hands on time with their newest creation, Demigod. The first thing we noticed while watching it running on glowing, envy-inducing PCs was how deliberate much of it looked. Everything from the unit/map design to the ease-of-use control scheme oozed hours of careful consideration on developer GPG's part. While the concept of Demigod tends to bewilder many who hear it -- ourselves included -- understanding the idea only took us a few minutes of playing the atypical strategy game.”

Stardock is excited to announce that “phase two” of its digital download platform, Impulse, has begun and all updates, new games and software applications will soon be live.  Concurrent with the new games and software applications, Impulse additions now see a refreshed user interface and a major new set of developer features called ImpulseReactor. Stardock’s recent release, The Political Machine 2008 will be the first game to utilize features of ImpulseReactor, and the upcoming Demigod will incorporate the features which consist of the highly anticipated match-making feature, cloud computing, rankings, achievements, multiplayer, NAT negotiation, and more.

Phase two of Impulse also adds the ability for users to install and update third-party and freeware programs that are available via Impulse. This makes the transfer of the catalogue of programs installed on a user’s machine extraordinarily simple from machine to machine as it’s all centrally located on Impulse. Phase two has already addressed user feedback and incorporates significantly faster load times, downloads, a smart queue option and a smarter updating process which exponentially decreases processing time for updates.

All new titles and software applications are now available at www.impulsedriven.com

I write this from the plane on the way to Redmond which is where Gas Powered Games is located. 

Normally, publishers and developers have very explicit division of labor on projects. The developer makes the game, the publisher takes that game and markets, distributes is, and supports it.

As people observed with Sins of a Solar Empire, you can get tremendous results when the developer and publisher combine their teams together into a single "big" team.

That means Gas Powered Games will be intimately involved in the marketing of Demigod and it means Stardock will be very involved during development.  At GPG, I'll be sitting in the "bull pen" with the development team working on the game itself.  And together, we will be able to tap into the combined team's resources to get things done much more quickly.

Of course, the crucial element that can't be forgotten is the public beta program.  Here's how it works:

We get the first beta out to you sometime in the first week of September. The goal here is to just see how well the thing works on people's computers. It won't be anywhere nearly fully functional.  But we'll rapidly be enabling features and getting feedback which we'll be able to address.

AI needs help? AI developers at Stardock (including myself) can help.  Need more map elements? Let us know and we'll see who is available to help on that too.

Similarly, advertisements and promotions for the game will get posted here before they go live typically. Art work, ideas and concepts won't be from Stardock's marketing team alone but rather the Gas Powered Games development team as well as anyone else. 

One of the reasons why the Sins of a Solar Empire ads came out so well is because Ironclad (the developer) was so involved in the actual creation of the ads. It also didn't hurt that we put out the ads on the forums before they went to print where fans could make suggestions on how the ads could be improved.

Right now, we're playing the internal beta.  The part that we're most challenged by at present is how quickly we can implement the Hamachi-like multiplayer system so that players who don't know what router ports are and such won't have to worry about them anymore.  The first beta won't have that in there (I'm not sure as yet how much, if any, multiplayer will be in the initial beta 1 engine test portion).

One other thing players may find interesting is that GPG and Stardock have nearly a full year of free updates planned for Demigod. While the single player portion of the game is very important, our hope is to make Demigod the preeminent multiplayer strategy game for tournaments and such since the actual game-play is supports a lot more team mechanics than the traditional Starcraft or even Supreme Commander model would. 

We'll have a pre-beta 1 showing at PAX in Seattle this weekend.  If you're in the Washington area, be sure to stop by the Penny Arcade Expo.  Chris Taylor and I will be giving live demos. :)

-Brad Wardell = Frogboy = Draginol

If you've been in one of our betas before you already understand what I'm about to talk about. But if this is your first beta, you may find this discussion interesting.

Our betas tend to be very beta. That is, rough. Whether it was Galactic Civilizations or Sins of a Solar Empire, our first betas tend to be pretty rough. Unfortunately, the higher the profile the game, the more likely people are going to try to use the beta as a way to judge the final game.  The first GalCiv beta was awful. I mean AWFUL.

Here's a screenshot of GalCiv II beta 1:

Here's the final game:

It's amazing how much can change in a few months. Bear in mind, this was a SEQUEL to an existing game in which it was the same games team working on it.

Sins of a Solar Empire went through the same evolution.

So right now, we are working on a ton of things in preparation for beta 1 including the opening screens to try to make them more friendly and well, more polished.  If you've developed a game before, you already know how things like finalized UI images often wait until very late. But the average consumer isn't going to be quite as understanding. :)

The stability of the beta is excellent. It's as stable as a released game IMO. The challenges will be compatibility, balancing, and taking in user feedback and implementing it.  We all have our own lists of things we want to address as soon as possible it's just a matter of prioritizing those changes and getting them in.

Some people at Stardock want to focus on the maps. Some at GPG want to nail down the in game UI functionality. Others want to incorporate additional strategic elements.  And believe it or not, this is the sausage factory that exists on every game whether it come from Blizzard to Bungie or Ensemble. We all go through this. 

Of course, the difference here is we plan to share with you a peek at the inner sausage factory in our development journals here and elsewhere so you can get a sense of what goes into making a AAA title.

If you've ever worked on a game, you know that for 80% of the process, the game is little different from any other development endeavor. It's not "fun". You aren't "playing" the game, you are simply working on it in the hopes that it will be fun at some point.

Galactic Civilizations, for instance, was incredibly boring until the final months. We were starting to sweat it but then, like the flick of a switch, it came together and was very fun. Sins of a Solar Empire was extremely tedious until the last few months of development. But then, as players saw, it came together and started being awesome.

And so it's starting to come together with Demigod.  We still have a lot of work to go. But even with lots of features not enabled yet, I find myself enjoying myself playing just against the computer players in a 3 on 3 game (all AI except me).  I just love the various powers that the Demigods have, the items are really fun to mix and match.  I'd say it's about 60 days away from being at that point where, like Sins and GalCiv before it, Demigod gets the critical mass of "fun stuff" in that it starts to become a problem internally (i.e. where we have to limit "testing" to non work hours).

-Brad Wardell = Draginol = Frogboy. :)

The initial inspiration for Demigod was heavily based on the Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients. If you've never played it, Defense of the Ancients is an incredibly clever game concept in which players team up on on a single map choosing between many different heroes. How one customizes their hero makes all the difference.

Demigod works similarly in that you choose amongst several different heroes (your Demigods). Some heroes are called Generals whose strengths come from their ability to manipulate their minions and engage in larger scale strategy. Other heroes are called Assassins who are immensely powerful individuals whose strengths focus on just being massive butt kickers.

Defense of the Ancients could almost be described as a game where two rivers are flowing against each other. Each player is trying to get their river to make headway against their opponent's river until the flow enters their base. My analogy may not make sense unless you've played DotA. But if you have, you probably get my meaning.  Demigod does not play quite like that.

In Demigod you have a lot of strategic choices you have to make. Arenas have other elements that give one side or the other significant advantages. This means players have to choose often to give up some ground in order to gain longer term advantages. That is, there are certain parts of the Arena that you can control that give your side significant advantages. Hence, there are multiple strategic objectives.

The Demigod gains strength through experience, as they level up, the player can choose to strengthen different abilities or add new powers. Players can also use money to purchase items that give their side or their Demigod additional advantages. This is basically the same as was found in DotA.

So it's definitely fair to say that DotA served as inspiration for Demigod. But Demigod will ultimately be somewhat different in play style. Right now, myself, Chris Taylor, and Mike Marr are putting our combined design experiences together in trying to create a unique, innovative, and compelling strategy game experience.

More to come on this soon.