Demigod Before "Demigod"

By hughferriss Posted June 23, 2008 14:52:09

Hi. My name is Nate, and I'm the lead artist on Demigod.

This is my first developer diary. The word "develop" makes me think of two things: condos and puberty. Actually, condos and puberty sounds like the name of a buddy cop show -- Miami detective Emilio Condos and his lantern-jawed Irish sidekick, Patty O' Puberty! His motto: "Nobody, not even the mob, can delay O' Puberty!"

I was the third guy to join the Demigod team. Before I showed up, the game had been in the custody of John Comes (lead designer) and Bob Berry (original producer and lead engineer). John and Bob had gone through the Gas Powered Games toy chest and raided it for tech, art assets, and animations, and they showed me a working version of Demigod on the day that I met them. Of course, it wasn't called "Demigod" yet, and the graphics consisted of box-headed bipeds running recycled Dungeon Siege animations. It wasn't pretty, but it was already fun. Stick man armies marched toward each other and were annihilated by much bigger stick men wielding gigantic stick hammers. The big stick men were special.

This was a whole new kind of game pipeline for me. The fun was there, the whole game was there, and not a single artist had been consulted. At that point, the game could have ended up as sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk -- if Mattel had come to us with cash, we could have gone on to make the world's most violent Barbie game. And there was barely any documentation. The game was the design. With many games, months are spent detailing backstory and characters before the first programmer touches the project. It's sort of like when you form a band in college, think of a name for it (the Vitamen), think of stage names for yourselves (Ray Boflavin), and then never get around to actually writing any songs. Demigod was exactly the opposite: what's the most important thing? Gameplay. How do we start making a game? Well, we just start making the game! I was blown away.

There were a few ground rules that popped up in that initial meeting: first off, we told each other that we didn't want it to look like any other game out there (this Declaration of Originality is to games what the "road less traveled" quote is to high school yearbooks: ubiquitous and ironic). John and Bob also had a strict no-guns rule (revealed after I submitted my first concept, of a gun-wielding fairy -- I still think she's pretty cool, so if anybody wants to make a fairy shooter, give me a call). The game needed to have fantasy elements, but there wasn't any need to follow the Tolkien/D&D canon. John's ideas seemed to cut laterally across a bunch of disconnected genres: he had vampires and angels and dragons and giants all partying together. I think I joked about werewolves at one point and was horrified that the idea wasn't immediately dismissed. I walked away from that meeting excited about the blank slate but a little freaked out, too.

One of our first character ideas had a giant with archers on his back. That led to a drawing of a traditional fantasy-type giant with arrow towers strapped to his shoulders, which we all liked a lot. I'm not sure how many days or weeks passed between that and the next insight, which was the biggie: let's just have the giant BE the towers. When the dust settled there was a big walking castle with a trebuchet on his head and some kind of laser crystal on his shoulder. We called him the Rook. I think a lot of Demigod's look grew from that character. Number one, he was big. Number two, he was ancient. His origin was mysterious. In fact, I'm still not one hundred percent sure he's even a he.

So from the beginning, story grew from art grew from gameplay. John and Bob could stick something in the game as soon as they thought of it (John is one of those very rare designers who can program), and none of us ever got married to anything. We were devastatingly honest with each other, but we also all knew a good idea when we saw one. Working in that little room with those two was tons of fun. The people on the other side of our wall once complained about all the singing.

This all leads to a discussion of Demigod's setting, but I'll stop here for now, since the sun is out and I want to go throw my aerobie.

If anybody has questions, I'll do my best to answer them. With any luck, this diary will become a regular thing. I am almost certain I won't mention puberty again.

-Nate

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Very, very cool post.

Thanks for sharing!

Exciting.

I'm saddened it could have gone Steampunk. Don't feel we have enough of those out there! Especially in this sort of gamestyle. Last game I can really think that was steamypunk is Arcanum!

Nice name. I quite like Rook!

Awesome journal entry, hopefully you'll keep doing these.

I'm a huge fan of Sci-fi and Fantasy universes and I love the art design of Demigod.
Thank you for you work (and above all the feed back to the community).
You have my vote for the fairy shooter.

interesting read,

btw I do think that Kings are always male. (unlike popes)

Really nice, The info about this game is so rare so I tend to suck up anything I get my hands on.
Dont ask me why I preordered, there was just something about the layout and screenshots that just had me hooked from start.

Dont ask me why I preordered, there was just something about the layout and screenshots that just had me hooked from start.

And the combination of Stardock and GPG, I like Supreme Commander and Galciv so this has to be good

Also like to add thanks for your post. I feel like we've all been starving for more information on the game, the beta... anything. Its always good to hear from people in the know, even if you aren't able or allowed to give us all of the juicy details.

Do you also have a large role in level design?

John Comes oversees level layouts, though Jessica Snook (another designer) has designed some very interesting maps, as well. The basic idea for a level is usually an informal and collaborative effort that's led by John -- once we've decided on a theme (say, a giant turnip), Jessica creates a play area that is both fun and plausibly conformant to the aesthetic end goal. After we've played on the level for a few weeks and settled on a layout, I take a screenshot and paint over it in Photoshop to get a sense of atmosphere and what's going on beyond the edges of the playable area. Then the whole kit n' kaboodle goes to our environment team to actually build and texture the thing. Often, the design undergoes further changes during this phase -- the environment artists (Ian Walker and Audrey Cox) are forced to stare at the level for more than a month, so they frequently have insights that result in significant modifications.

So in answer to your question, a lot of people, including me, have roles in level design.

Really nice, The info about this game is so rare so I tend to suck up anything I get my hands on.Dont ask me why I preordered, there was just something about the layout and screenshots that just had me hooked from start.

That's great to hear! I hope you continue to like what you see as more images are released to the public.

Thanks for the journal entry. Nice to get some back story on how the game was started. I am looking at trying to get into the gaming industry and it is nice to get a small behind-the-scenes glimpse.

Awesome. Thanks for the reply on layout. The levels are beautiful, particularly the backgrounds and I'm a big fan of the geometric designs (the sun stone is great). I'd love to see more terrain and doodads that may play into to Line of Sight or Cover rules. Perhaps some ups and downs instead of everything flat?

Graphic-wise everything looks amazing. Honestly, looking at all the big hulking figures, it just seems that gameplay will be slow and clunky. Of course, thats thinking in the 2nd model you described where the graphics come first and then the game. I'm excited to hear that gameplay came first and is fun to play. Looking forward to seeing it all together.

Keep up the good work. It looks fantastic.

I'd love to see more terrain and doodads that may play into to Line of Sight or Cover rules. Perhaps some ups and downs instead of everything flat?Graphic-wise everything looks amazing. Honestly, looking at all the big hulking figures, it just seems that gameplay will be slow and clunky.

Pretty much everybody on the team has fantasized about topography within the playable area. Unfortunately, there were technical barriers to making that happen. From the beginning of the project, we have been very disciplined about scope. That means that early in the project, a well-defined set of boundaries needed to be established so that we wouldn't waste time gutting and rebuilding the game as new features crept in. In the case of topography, we decided early on that we could make a better game with the people and time we had if it happened on a flat surface. In fact, much of what's cool about the game has emerged from that seeming limitation.

When you see how the game plays, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what we pulled off. As for bumpy play surfaces -- if you guys make this game a success, I think it's reasonable to assume that we'll revisit the question when we make Demigod 2!

wow you just answered a question Scathis never wanted to answer

I don't mind it being flat if there are other elements which increase the depth and differences between maps.

So a real 3d-Heightmap with slopes isn't possible but what about different heightlevels as in that image (can't find the right words in english so I made a picture^^):

The different levels would be accessible by teleporters (the cylinders) , I guess it could be still a problem to let the units fire up and down looking good, but then there is also the possibility to have those different parts of the map totally disconnected from each other ,either because of too far away (yellow teleporters or because there is a big fence on the edge of the higher ground (like with the red teleporters)

I don't ask you to do such levels just want to know if this is theoretically possible without much changes / no changes at all.

Nate, you've just become my new hero. Again, thanks for replying to the questions. I see where your coming from with the flat battleground for the early stages. I'm curious as to what the flat terrain has stimulated :imagines huge boulders rolling through tons of lowbies (see Lord of the Rings):

Once you guys have it prettied up to your liking, let us know and we will be happy to run it through beta.

Since gameplay started with white boxes, there was no limitation as to what could be done with the roles. A big box could turn just as fast as a small box. Movement speed can just be coded in. Are there different speeds of the units? Now with the larger than life graphics,did factors such as turning and maneuvering come into greater light? How fast can the Rook turn and engage?

Very exciting stuff, keep it up.

Odit do you mean that different units have different speeds (that will be a clear yes , everything other would be more than silly), or that one unit can move at different speeds ( I would guess that it is possible to have formation move of different unit types so they can match up speed to the slowest)

Odit, I don't know if you have played supreme commander but if you did you should know that already there turning speeds, acceleration (especially in the original supcom), turret rotation etc have been a very extensively used design element so I would guess again it will be similar in Demigod.

Hmm, I guess I'm just trying to picture these things on the battlefield. Looking over the screen shots, it looks like the general battle starts off small. Maybe the AI creep spawns in waves, not sure. As battle progresses more and more units spawn in and also progressively bigger units (either AI or general controlled) start appearing. I'd assume the large lizard ballistas are slower than the smaller gnolls, though maybe they cover more distance in large steps.

The Rook and other giants tower over them all. Traditionally, larger creatures are less agile than smaller quicker creatures. The big units look really slow and lumbering. Of course, thats just how it looks in the screen shots. Maybe these things are quick and they can react and whip that big club/hammer around just as fast as a gnoll swinging a sword.

As Nate has indicated, the game has been developed around gameplay. Instead of looking at the concept art and saying, wow that Rook is huge, he's probably really slow, the developers saw a box(unknown size) and determined its role accordingly. Reaction time, movement speed, turn speed, etc would likely have all been determined in the white box.

So I suppose my first question is:
Has artwork affected gameplay? In other words, the units were first conceived as boxes and their stats were formulated strictly from gameplay, but now, are any stats or other gameplay being changed based on how the units look look?

2nd question:
How do the massive units play? In sup com they were all slow and lumbering which made sense since they were massive constructs. In games like mech commander, the large units feel like they are walking through quicksand. I'd like to think the giants are just as agile as the smaller assassins.

As Nate has indicated, the game has been developed around gameplay. Instead of looking at the concept art and saying, wow that Rook is huge, he's probably really slow, the developers saw a box(unknown size) and determined its role accordingly..

An explicite quote from Nate :

Of course, it wasn't called "Demigod" yet, and the graphics consisted of box-headed bipeds running recycled Dungeon Siege animations. It wasn't pretty, but it was already fun. Stick man armies marched toward each other and were annihilated by much bigger stick men wielding gigantic stick hammers. The big stick men were special.

So I guess the answer is the size is part of the gameplay from the begining and the demigod are the most massive creatures of the game(they are almost gods so they need to be huge).
I think the artworks can be resized in 3D(the community of supreme commander did this for many units in several mods and demigod share the same engine) : afterall the rook could be a small dwarf but that's less cool than a slow giant creating earthquakes with his hammer.

So I suppose my first question is:Has artwork affected gameplay? In other words, the units were first conceived as boxes and their stats were formulated strictly from gameplay, but now, are any stats or other gameplay being changed based on how the units look look?

When he started putting the game together, John decided there would be giants and set them up with giant-type movement in mind. Basic character attributes don't grow solely from abstract gameplay considerations -- it all originally comes from mooshy ideas of cool things we'd like to see, and some of those ideas come out in the art-making process. John's the one who decides what's wheat and what's chaff, and he's very good at telling the difference between a cool but inappropriate idea and an idea that works well for Demigod. But if you're asking whether we allow the game to play a little crappier because we like the way a thing looks -- no, we don't do that.

We have a pretty tight team, and the designers and artists exchange concepts so freely that it's often difficult to tell whether an idea originally came from art or design. We're a big hive mind. It's really inconvenient when one of us wants to talk smack about John. We can't even THINK smack about John, or he makes our brains explode.

All hail John, our loving father and benefactor!

Wow, thanks for all the support Nate!

I'll jump on that band wagon. Especially when Beta is released. All hail John (and Nate for giving us an inside perspective).

Good stuff all around. Everything I read seems like a positive feature.

Not to steal thunder from future journal entries, but how are the heroes shaping up? We've seen several screen shots of the rook, a few of the torch bearer, lizard assassin and perhaps a sniper(?). Its appears that there is some individual customization with each of those (trebuchet, ice torcher, flame torcher, etc). I don't believe I have seen any screens for a general hero.. Are they modeled simliarly and just have a different set of commands, or will they also have their own models?

Keep it coming. Awesome thread.

Not to steal thunder from future journal entries, but how are the heroes shaping up?

They're coming along great! Let's see, besides the Rook, we've got Zesticus, a giant ambulatory taco. There's the Creeping Sense of Ennui, which was very difficult to concept and animate. There's the Rook's cousin, the Rock (very easy to concept and animate, as he is in fact just a rock). Also, Dolph Lundgren is one of our guest heroes.

Don't you love how we don't keep any secrets around here?

Don't forget the 'I M TEH WINNAR' Demigod, he looks like a big red button with the word "WIN" on it.

Man, I kinda want there to be a big bolder that just runs over people. That sounds pretty cool!

I knew this well of information would dry up eventually. Can't blame a guy for trying. ??

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Demigod Before "Demigod"