Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

C H A P T E R 5
CREATING CINEMATICS
Game cinematics are simply movies created to enhance and help define the player experience.
Creation of game cinematics is commonly handled in one of two ways: either
a complete rendered movie sequence is compressed to an MPEG format and
played back by incorporating a playback codec (encoder/decoder) into the game
code, or the game engine itself is used to render and play back a movie cinematic.
In the first case, a video codec like DivX (www.divx.com) or Bink
(www.radgametools.com) is built into the game engine to handle the playback of an
MPEG movie. These movie or cinematic elements are created expressly for the game
in a commercial 3-D package with add-ons, and since these are prerendered (versus
real-time) they can take advantage of higher-resolution models, textures, and dazzling
special effects. Warcraft III had some jaw-dropping cinematics of dazzling
beauty created for the game, handled with the use of a video codec.
In the second case, a developer might choose to use the game engine itself to build
cinematics. Game assets like character models and pre-existing or custom environments
can be used directly in the game cinematics. They simply use the game engine
that draws the game itself to draw the cinematics. Custom scripts are routinely used
to “stage” the cinematics and control character and environmental details.
In either case, your cinematics (included in this general category are introductory
movies, segue or transition movies, special-purpose or insert movies, and end movies)
are used to tell the story elements behind your game, and to bring your player
emotionally into the action by engaging the eyes and mind.
Cinematics are storyboarded with shot breakdowns (or shot contents) divided up
into scenes. Storyboarding skills are an extremely helpful addition in the transition
from written or verbal conceptual ideas into a visual story logic that makes sense to
the player. It shouldn’t be a surprise that considerable resources are required to produce
complex cinematics. Here is another place where developers, in a frenzy of completely
understandable excitement for their title, can simply over-commit. Before you
know it, not only are you building a very complex game, you’re rendering complete
movie sequences. Like so many other areas in game design, it all sits in the balance.
D EVELOPING BACKSTORY
There is plenty of discussion among game developers about the role and status of
story in making games. If you look at the games themselves for evidence, some genres
seem to require almost no story at all. Is anyone really enthralled by the “story” behind
his or her favorite shooter, simulation, or puzzler? I tend to doubt it.
125
Design by Genre