Ghajini - The Game Development
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The document discusses the development of the video game Ghajini: The Game based on the Bollywood film. It describes the producer's role, sales of 25-30k copies, and collaboration with Intel. It outlines the production cycle and discusses technical decisions like using Photoshop to burn lighting into textures. Key features developed include the 3D menu, comic book cutscenes, AI pathfinding, and integrating profiling tools. Some planned features like ranged weapons were omitted to stay true to the source material. Game balance was achieved by adjusting parameters like enemy health and dodge rates on different difficulty levels.
Ghajini - The Game Development
- 1. Confidential(c) 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 2. Making of Ghajini: Stretching Torque to its Limits Imran Khan K FXLabs Studios Pvt. Ltd NASSCOM Animation and Gaming Summit - 2009 Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 3. Opening • Ghajini – The Game is 3D PC Action- Adventure Game made on Bollywood Movie title. • My Role in the making of Ghajini – The Game o Producer and Tech Lead • Sales of the game – 25K to 30K copies sold • Team effort of FXLabs and Intel. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 4. Agenda • Talk about the making of Ghajini - The Game from Production, Development and Art point of view • Present FXLabs approach to developing games on Garage Games Torque* Engine. • Discuss the TECH and ART decisions that were taken early on in the making of Ghajini. • Explain the workflow and development methods that were adopted to optimize the game for Integrated Graphics. • Uday(Intel) will present the IGP tool. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 5. India Facts Market reality of India that swayed the game • Challenge to define the market in terms of o Demographics – Impacts on the gameplay design o Hardware profile – Impacts the graphics and art quality • Piracy – Impacts the price point (Ghajini – Rs.199) • Distribution - Finding a distributor that would market and distribute the game. ( Ghajini distributed by EROS ) • Competition from AAA games. • Learning - Most people in India do not have 3D accelerated cards, this brought Intel into the picture. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 6. Game Production Cycle • Pre-Production – 2 Months o Select engine, create art pipeline, create style guide, put together basic design. • Design / Prototype – 2 Months o Create basic tech systems and test gameplay mechanics • First playable – 2 Months o First working version of gameplay and Levels. • Alpha – 2 Months o All levels done, all gameplay mechanics working. • Beta / Play testing (External) – 2 Months o Bug fixing, game balancing and final polish. • Final Release – Nov 2009 o Apply Security and SHIP! Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 7. Pre-Production (Tech) • Figure out the limitations of the engine to set game design boundaries. • Listing out broad tech and gameplay feature set required for the game which is not provided by the engine. • Write Tools to automate Art production pipeline. • Making the Game Engine stable - Fixing memory leaks! • Adding core features to the Engine – Audio, AI, Camera system, Collision, etc. • Standardizing on the development tools and processes. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 8. Game Development Tools • Production toolset o QA - JIRA o Art tools 3DS MAX, Photoshop Level Editor and Animation Browser supplied by Garage Games o Development Tools Visual studio, SVN, nVidia PerfHUD and Intel Graphics Profiler. o Design – Word and Excel sheets. o Project Mgmt – SRUM and Excel sheets. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 9. Pre-Production (Art&Design) • Collecting reference for Game Art (References) • Create Art Style Guide • Creating ART Tools pipeline for the game o Textures and lighting o Standardizing on Poly count for levels and characters on min spec machine. o Figuring out the Animation pipeline. • Figuring out game design tenets o Game design that will gel with the movie story o Game design that will complement the movie noir style Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 11. Modelling Steps on modeling - Reference images matching the feel
- 12. Textures
- 13. Final
- 14. Textures and Lighting • During the pre-production phase we figured out that lights are going to be costly in Torque so we made a decision to burn the textures with the light information. • The turn around time to edit lighting information with DIFF files in Torque is huge. • Used Photoshop to burn lights onto textures. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 21. Video
- 22. 3DSMax Export Tool • The Torque Editor is not the best when it comes to editing the levels and coordinating work between artists. So we created an export tool for the artists to use 3DSmax as the main editing tool and export out the level to a Torque mission file. This increased our productivity many times over. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 23. Level in 3DSMax Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 24. Level in Torque Editor Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 25. Feature set • Creating Systems o 3D Main UI Menu system. o Comic book style Cutscene System o Weapons and Combat system o Audio – Object and material based audio. o AI behaviors with State machines, Shortest path algorithms for path-finding o Platform gameplay – Ropes, Ladder, Ledge and Planks. o Messaging system for broadcasting events. o Inventory System for player. o Integration with Graphics Profiling tools(PerfHUD and IGP) to pin point issues and help with optimization. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 26. 3D Menu System Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 27. Game UI • Consistency and coherency in style is important for o Main UI elements o In game menu o HUD • Flow charting the UI before putting down code or art is important to figure out the design and usability issues. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 28. UI Layout Confidential(c) 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 29. Comic Book Cutscene • The comic book cutscene is something we decided we would do for the entire game to bring out the dark style of the movie. • We felt making a comic book style cutscene with Aamir Khan narrating the story of the game would bring the connect to the original movie property. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 31. AI • Implemented Shortest path algorithm for AI navigation • AI behaviors using state machines o Combat - Dodge, Evade, Defend and Attack o Navigation – Patrol, Ambush and Chase • Gameplay for AI defined with events using Torque Scripting language. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 32. AI Path Nodes Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 33. Platform Elements Confidential(c) 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 34. Collision • Collision is one of the module that usually takes up a lot of processor cycles and causes FPS drops. • Torque internally used OPCODE collision system. • To optimize on the collision code we created low poly collision primitives to provide collision in the level. Confidential(c) 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 35. Level without Collision Confidential(c) 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 36. Level with Collision Confidential(c) 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 37. Profiling Tools • Early on in the life of the project we decided to integrate the graphics profiling tools like – perfHUD and IGP into our work flow. We also made it mandatory for artists to check levels for stable FPS on min spec machine (i.e. Integrated Graphics). • Benefits o Level artists were optimizing art while making levels. o We saw less frame drops because of the GPU choking up. o Optimizing level became an inherent step in level editing work. o Not only the assets but the textures were also optimized. o This resulted in overall stability in the frame rate and less FPS issues. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 38. Intel IGP • Uday to present IGP! Confidential(c) 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 39. Omitted features • Full screen shaders for XRAY vision • Full screen shaders for Night vision • Stealth Meter • Player dialog system • Maps for traversal between different locations for non- linear gameplay • Ranged weapons for player. (To be true to the story of the movie) Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 40. Game Balance • Game balance: o AI : Game balance of the AI’s – balance sheets. o Levels: We added time as a parameter to increase the difficulty of the level in hard mode. This is turned off in normal mode. Dodge Roll Difficulty Health Dodge Percent Defend Percent Evade Percent Percent Easy 100 5 0 5 10 Minions Normal 120 10 0 10 20 Hard 140 15 0 15 30 Construction Easy 150 10 10 20 40 Boss Normal 200 15 15 25 55 Hard 250 20 20 30 70 Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 41. Ghajini Audio • Theme music created for Ghajini game keeping in mind the dark style of the game. • Sound design done while level editing to add depth to the experience of the game. • Voice over by Aamir Khan in cutscene brings a connect with the game character. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 42. Production issues • Production issues - Working with movie house on IP has its own issues. o Getting concepts for Aamir. o Getting time with the production team to discuss ideas. o Maintaining absolute secrecy on the project. o Getting shoot material from the Movie house. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 43. OS issues & Security • Readying the game for distribution and Game Security, Windows OS compatibility. o Vista OS issues (Right way – Game Explorer) o Adding security to game Security for game Script – Torque binary conversion Security for game exe – 3rd part security Security for game assets – Encrypted compressed package o Adding a game launch application Tackling windows right and security model Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 44. Embed QA! • Ghajini success was because of QA team. • QA embed into development from prototype phase to provide feedback on gameplay. • QA feedback during play testing was crucial for balancing the game. • Many of the ideas provided as a feedback by the QA team made it into the game. Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
- 45. Thank You. Q&A! Imran Khan K. FXLabs Studios. Imran.khan@fxlabs.com Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.
Editor's Notes
- #31: test