specialmoves is a high-end interactive production companyClient brief
Specialmoves was engaged by creative agency Playgroup on the "Robin Hood" project, with Playgroup producing the game and driving the original creative in partnership with Tiger Aspect Productions. Specialmoves handled the game design, technical build, 3D modeling and animation.
Marking the first time the BBC has used Unity 3D technology in one of its web games, we designed and built a fully 3D game based on the popular BBC Drama TV series, "Robin Hood".
Working with an existing brand is always fun. Tiger Aspect and IMG
provided custom video and audio for the game.
Initial Technical Consultancy
When a project such as this arrives Specialmoves first assumes the role of a technical consultancy. We listen to the client, explore their ideas and talk with them about what's feasible and, quite often, how we can expand upon their expectations. Playgroup had an initial concept based on a multiplayer jousting flash game set in a stadium. We evaluated the possibilities and limitations of the current technologies, before suggesting we use the Unity3D plugin. By creating a report outlining both the state of games on the internet and where the future was heading, this information and the subsequent prototype allowed the BBC to feel confident with this new technology.
An early prototype of "Robin Hood" convinced us to use Unity3D
Prototyping is Important
We also developed a flash version of
the game as a comparison for the client.
After the initial report the next step was prototyping. Many studios miss this step, but it's essential, as it allows us to nail all the technical, gameplay and creative ideas before full production starts. For "Robin Hood" we made two playable demos at the protyping stage - one in Flash and one in Unity3D. We created as much as we could, and in the end the prototypes were of a high enough standard to make everyone go 'Wow!'
Back to School
We have incredible technical knowledge here at Specialmoves and we use our knowledge to create outstanding interactive designs. But we feel its important to find out exactly how well we're doing by testing our designs. So we took our prototypes to a local school and measured our target audience playing the game. Their response was extremely positive and we knew if our technology, art and game ideas were good enough to amaze at this stage it would be brilliant by the time we'd finish. The prototype stage was completed, presented to the client and easily surpassed any concerns.
Testing the control method at a local school using a maze level. We had three different controls methods and were surprised how adept our target audience was.
Concept Art and Working with Brands
After prototyping we got down to the production stage – designing production pipelines and drafting concept art to match the license holders' expectations. Our in-house artists here at Specialmoves excel at creating concept art and in no time we had an exaggerated style which would display well in the game environment and also be true enough to life to be realistic and please the fans of the show. Our experience in gaming helped to create a style which read well and made fast gameplay possible. Tiger Aspect also supplied us with some brilliant sound effects and video clips for the game.
Developing the style for the game – our initial concept art
is very similar to how our final models looked.
3D Art, Animation and Environment Design
After the concept art stage we started to create 3D assets. Specialmoves has full 3D capabilities so we had no problem turning the concept art into models and animations for the game. We created an incredible Castle of Nottingham and quickly included 3D models of the cast from the TV series. Every detail was covered: from a dynamic lighting system which changed the shadows of the castle as day turned to night, to an animated crowd who cheer when the player does well in the game.
We took the environment through several stages of concept from 3D modeling, texturing, light baking
and then ingame rendering, with
dynamic daytime lighting and shadows.
Game Programming
Part of the process of the early prototyping is to understand what it is you want to make. Much of the work is very technical and involves crazy concepts such as 3D arrow tracking, inverse kinematic animations etc, but not all the fun is done at the prototyping stage – much of the production involves creating code to make the magic happen. In this game we used C# to create an interactive walking, shooting 'Robin Hood'. We created a unique, advanced animation system to allow the player to walk and shoot in any direction and then we created artificial intelligence behaviours for the enemies so they could attack the player, steal his gold and avoid his aim. We were making a game for the browser but we knew our audience wanted a game more likely to be found on a console so we raised the bar and crafted a fast game engine which could have many enemies on screen.
The finished game – 1000’s of lines of code to create tutorial systems, objectives, hints, menus,
realtime arrow physics,
dynamic animation, artificial intelligence and gameplay!
Game Design
Much of our time is spent on the beautiful artwork, but most of the magic comes from programming and the way the game plays is our single focus. We don't just want to make a game which looks great, it needs to play great too. Interaction design lies at the heart of what we do and we are experts in game design. After playing the game over and over and testing it on our target audience we tweaked it until the balance between fun and challenging was perfect. The gameplay must feel right otherwise the audience will just turn away. Balancing "Robin Hood" was really fun – a real time game like this is vastly complex with many dependent factors so tweaking a simple property such as Robin’s walking speed can suddenly change how fast the enemies need to move, how fast the archers fire and how high the scores can get. Fortunately, we have many gamers at Specialmoves so we could trust the gameplay by how many ‘smiles per mile’ the game was providing. The ‘Barrel Run’ was a particularly good fun to make and competitions are still ongoing as to who has the highest score!
Gameplay was the main focus thoughout production – the Barrel Run level was added
at a later stage to provide a more skill based experience.
Conclusion
The response for "Robin Hood" is fantastic and we had a great time using the Unity3D web plug-in. Working with Playgroup, Tiger Aspect and the BBC was good fun – we all loved the result and had a fantastic time making it. There were no technical or creative killers for us. As always, we would have loved to have more time to work more ideas into the gameplay but we're incredibly proud of the end result.
