Postmortem: SANITARIUM
By Chris Pasetto
Gamasutra
December 4, 1998
Vol. 2: Issue 47
Originally
Published in Game Developer Magazine, November 1998.
| Postmortem: SANITARIUM |
Introduction-
The Designers' Tale
The
Artists' Tale
The
Programmers' Tale
The
Sweet
|
While SANITARIUM
represents a phenomenal success for us here at DreamForge (both professionally
and personally), there were some unfortunate stumbling blocks along the
way. We keep telling ourselves: that which did not kill us has made us
stronger. Never mind the scar tissue.
1. ANIMATIONS. Due to the size of the game,
each character had a limited number of animation frames. In many cases,
this caused the movement to look stiff and unnatural. Looking back on
it, we would have preferred smoother animations with more angles - especially
for the main character, Max. If we had taken this into account earlier
in the project, we might have had an opportunity to fix it. By the time
we realized that eight angles looked a little stiff, it was too late.
The limited angles also caused problems for players trying to navigate
Max through the levels. He'd often get stuck on corners, then either walk
in place like some demented mime or frustrate the player with a litany
of, "Can't go that way."
Getting consistent lighting between the characters' standard animations
(status quo, walk, use, and so on) and the specific animations requiring
interaction with the environment (such as kicking in the school door)
was another nightmare. Different artists did these animations months apart,
and this was a constant battle from beginning to end. A huge amount of
time was spent fixing things as opposed to advancing the project.
2. COMBAT ZONES. The action sequences needed
more attention. They were important for guiding the pace of the story,
but didn't have the feel that we were after in the end product. The original
idea behind these areas was based on one of DreamForge's earlier titles,
Veil Of Darkness. It had wonderful combat areas that helped break
up the pacing between the puzzles. However, in SANITARIUM,
multiple factors forced us to water down the combat zones or in some cases
cut them altogether. We had originally planned a large combat zone for
the Hive level of the game. We'd hoped to make "Grimwall vs. the Hive"
one of the most fun and integral combat areas, but it was cut from the
game for various reasons.
3. STURM UND DRANG. When you have a company
of forty to fifty people, it's impossible to do anything without rubbing
someone the wrong way. SANITARIUM was put together
by a design team that in part came together naturally and in part was
hand-picked by Chris Straka, our head of creative development. Individual
employees (usually Chris) designed our previous titles. But we decided
that team design would be the way to go. While team design has the potential
to fracture the unified vision of a game, the various team members ultimately
complement each other's interests and goals, lending more depth to the
game. This is a nice way of saying, "The team argued a lot, but came up
with better solutions as a group."
Difficulties didn't end there. Once SANITARIUM
became a full-time project, many staff members complained, "Why didn't
I get a chance to be on the design team?" Quite a bit of friction was
generated because people felt as though they'd been snubbed. Unfortunately,
a design team reaches critical mass once it has more than six members.
Design teams work in much the same way as clown cars. Too many people
cramming themselves into the design would have certainly brought an already
volatile process to a grinding halt. At the same time, SANITARIUM's
personnel power structure created inequalities between staff members that
were never meant to happen.
DreamForge learned much about design teams from SANITARIUM,
and we're having great success with the design team setup in our current
projects. We've taken steps to recognize people's desire and initiative,
and have parceled out responsibilities to those individuals willing to
take up leadership positions. Now, rather than saying, "Why wasn't I included?"
everyone moans, "Why did I get into this?" It's great fun.
4. LOAD TIMES. While long level loading
times were an accepted design limitation from the beginning of the project,
a system that could better manage memory and allow for streaming of more
data from the CD could have benefited the game. The tight schedule left
such a system impossible to pursue. A more sophisticated memory-management
scheme could have allowed for shorter initial loading times, larger levels,
and so on.
5. NEW KIDS IN THE CUBE. SANITARIUM
is a huge game. A lot of people worked on it, meaning additional efforts
had to be taken to coordinate and organize everyone's labor. Familiarizing
people with the vision of the game from an artistic and design point of
view was a real challenge. Sometimes, keeping everyone on the same page
seemed to be a chore, especially as new people came onto the project.
A lot of time was spent getting people to understand the status of the
project and the direction in which it was headed. A new artist would ask,
"Why am I making this one-eyed guy?" and we'd say, "Didn't anyone tell
you?" We made the mistake of projecting time schedules as if new hires,
following a brief training period, would be as competent as our most experienced
people. Some of those experienced people were performing administrative
and training tasks, and thus weren't producing much art. Art delivered
by our new people often had problems when it went to the programmers.
This meant doing things twice, sometimes three times. Projections and
flow charts slid downhill, taking into account the flow of asset delivery,
identification of problems, correction of problems, and re-implementation
of assets. Since art delays were slowing down programming, we tried to
use temporary art. This didn't work out because creating useful temporary
art for the programmers proved to be nearly as time-consuming as the real
thing. And just to throw a little cherry on top of the three-layered cake
of delays, we lost two artists during production.
Even though SANITARIUM had a longer production
time than any previous DreamForge project, there were still some things
that we would have liked to tweak or add to make it better. As it was,
we went through a lot of crunch periods in order to get things done on
time. The sheer amount of artwork required for the game nearly overwhelmed
us. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the game, delays in artwork had
a snowball effect because the level implementers needed the actual artwork
in order to set up their levels.
Chris
Pasetto is the co-writer of SANITARIUM.
He can be found at your neighborhood bar, wearing a kimono made out of
a Dukes of Hazzard bedsheet and repeatedly screaming, "These are not
my pants!" He can neither walk nor chew gum. He can be reached via
e-mail at chrisp@dreamforge.com
