Classic Game Postmortem - Another World

[Music] it's really an honor for me to be here today and to talk about virginity's of another world this game was created 20 years ago and at the time I couldn't have imagined that it would stay in the heart of many my objective today is to give you a clear view of the origins of a game how things were done and in what order how ideas appeared and very importantly in what context we also consider the periods of doubt and the obstacles I met along the way as curious as it seems I started to create the game without knowing what it would be the creation of this game was

an improvisation and that was not clear at the time but in retrospect 20 years later I can see a parallel with theater improvisation because in theater improvisation reactors have to follow predefined rules and we must respect them and play along with them for another world I said some very strong constraint like using polygons and also in improvisation we develop the story layer by layer without knowing where it is going precisely that is what happened for another world that's why I'd like to present the creative process chronologically if that's ok with you

so the talk will be like a diary divided in four parts first I will talk about the ignition with desire but sparked with development then we will look at the technology beyond the game how it shaped the design and give a solid foundation to create it then I will talk about the creation of a game itself gameplay graphics animation and story when published the publishing aspects as far as possible I will describe the context of a creation and how the flourishing of ideas is as important as ideas themself first let's brush on the context we are in July 1989

it is the Amiga era I'm twenty-two year old still living in my parents house okay this photo was taken in 1991 at the end of a development but in 1989 there will be no less mess unfortunately I had been creating various games since 1983 and values platform like or iguana Amstrad and of course Amelia the average time to create this game was from Twitter three weeks to six months none has been really successful and I had just finished creating all the graphics and animation for future Wars which is a

game designed by Paul Creasy and dragon slayer was just released on Amiga and it huge animations really impressed me I was wondering how to do this this game was purely bitmap it was running on eight floppy disks but it inspired me technically speaking to base a 2-d game on a polygon drawing technology why polygons polygons mean low memory usage and therefore it can cover huge part of the screen with average two data it seemed very advantageous and I felt it could it could open new horizons also a new thing

that came with Via Media was the ability to connect a gen lock what's a general a general is allowed where that enable you to put a video behind the picture the picture of a twitch is displayed on the screen of course and I had seen a demo of this in a shop and this led me to a conclusion that if I could connect connect a video camcorder to the Amiga with this ad where I could create realistic animation with polygons by using the classical technique of hottest opinion well an ID is an ID and it needed to become real to have any value but there was one crucial question was

it possible to draw any of polygons at the right speed I hadn't coded for two years and my last experience with C language was a disaster I promise it was really depressing almost so I chose to cut in assembly language which was familiar to me and I prototyped a routine which grew a few polygons at 60 frames per second and on strengthening the system but reduced to dear friend per second and that was good enough to go further so I decided I decided that the graphics unit would be polygons and polygons only that was were constrained this was a major turning point in the creation of again it was like a dogma I was sure about polygons

wherever greatest thing in the world I was I was obsessed by these polygons how how this channel would would look in polygons how would a potato look in polygons and how a quarter would look in polygons well something wrong do words were Hades with huh okay pixie gone what's a pixie gone it's a polygon so small that it has the size of the pixel I was used to doing some pixel art but dealing with flat surfaces surfaces was something new the first time I used polygons to create graphics I was spending hours and hours

drawing pixel with polygons the clock was ticking and months later I was still on the frost level that was discouraging and after coding a fraud of again I reverted to using some bitmap when I I needed details for some backgrounds but finally the whole game use uses only ten bitmaps as you see this choice brute brought new obstacles especially for detailed backgrounds but it opened it opened new horizon for animation again what I would create i strictly

didn't know i can tell you i tried and it was a nightmare because it was too difficult to design without knowing precisely the technical limits I just knew that I wanted to create again with a cinematic feeling on science-fiction theme with a rhythm of a movie but not especially having a story I mean a well-defined at Street a well-defined script I was thinking more in terms of mood ambience but movie but no story yes because it was not the story side that interested me the most but the rhythm and the narrative tension which is connected but different from a story this is an important point I could have said I want to create a game where a

scientist is projected into an unknown universe where he will meet a friend who will help help him all along the game and sure the hero will have had hair and in the end he will almost die but had no idea of this at the time I was stuck it drove me to the conclusion that the only way to solve this situation was to produce but no specific tools for polygons existed and I had to create the whole game system from scratch to let's see the tools used to create the game there are two aspects one a polygon editor to edit all graphics and we / was a home-made editor for the homemade interpreted language this interpreted

language was used to cut all the game logic the tool was coded partly in GF a basic basic and in assembly language basic easy to learn was used to create the user interface since I did didn't need performance the assembly language was used only for the core game engine let's see the graphic editor on the bottom are all the tools it's possible to create an object polygon at the point move a point change it Kuro the ID the idea was to cut a tool where every polygon can be grouped together so that it can be easily manipulated and where each group of polygons can be

grouped together again large Russian dolls here you can see that lester is made of several polygons but his head is another group of polygons there was a special color which enabled transparency indeed that was a color palette trick and it is how I added some light effects so that's for the graphic side and then just by eating a key I was able to switch from the graphic editor to the code editor which which lead us to the specific language of a game I made the choice of of an interpreted language because in 1985 I designed this for a

game called infernal runner this was and this was a really much easier to program than in assembly language the big advantage is whether the game would be interpreted in real so no compiling was necessary to run the game that was a key feature to be efficient during its creation what is more the connection between the two editors when even tighter what we see on the left is the visualization of drawing code on the right I could move the graphics and it would in sorry and it would modify the code and vice versa okay infographic editor it was also

possible to run step by step the part of a program the key features we keep it sure is that the interpreted language has a special instruction to slice the code into time block it is the break instruction you can see the Brecon is instruction here and this is instruction process record until the next game loop and the drop box function just draws an object from the polygon editor this way the interpreted code itself became also an animation SEC sequencer and it was possible to associate more complex code to manage all the gameplay interaction

the language has few instruction very simple and and minimalism like the assembly language but more in readable the problem was that no commands we are possible and the variable name was large V 2 2 5 1 and it carried just a number and no description so the solution are used West to not but each the variable was on paper and I have a full documentation I still have it today and it works so we were entering into details the env env engine I love to run small piece of interpreted code

sequentially on separate tracks little bit large clip in flash but we were graphics so it was very easy to manage timing and sequence inside recorder hence we have one track for character displacement one track to manageable pad control one track to manage laser shot so I had my tools and the game engine Alan we are limits light framerate number of cores memory limits and regarding the improvisation process I accept these limits as a new constraint so now I was not lost and and I can build the game with this with business limits in mind what's wrong again okay

no common data between levels each time I started a new level I copied the previous one to keep the basic basics large controls characters behavior and graphics and indeed it was a major failure in the game development since for every change I was making on generate things I had to do it on all files for example each time Lester's behavior behavior changed had to change it for the all five levels and later when I did a lot of tuning this became a nightmare so let's go through the game creation

the introduction was a landmark because it validates it validated the values of polygons and the use of the interpreted language and the whole thing took only 84 kilobyte yes it was a way so this introduction was a way to explore the dynamic of pictures in a cinematic style and especially the transi the transition between cuts and also this was a way to immerse myself in the universe which was not existing before and it was the first layer of the improvisation process hence I had the first stepping-stone for the story I had too much belief in

rotoscoping I create I created some group some great scenes with with it but in the end there are only six scenes but choose the technique this technique in the involution and the rest of the game in in the rest of the game only begun sequence and we work and run off Lester was was made with this technique I got the best result from on my unmade animation like lightning sequence anyway this confirmed that polygon animation was great but rotoscope in itself was well a little bit too limited the main rule eye fluid during the

creation of a game was to listen my inner feeling what do I feel right now what does it suggest to me that's why doing things in chronological order made things coherent at that moment it was not clear but creating again all alone brought a feeling of loneliness which you can also find in the game and I was always trying to consider myself as a player over again who knew nothing about it each time I was asking myself what would I love to experience and then as a creator how can I surprise and break my initial expectation surprising the player was important playing with the

pacing was a top objective the hill just disappeared and from that point I just knew but he will be teleported into another world but where I fought in the air in freefall first but when I thought it it would be much more surprising and unearthly to make him appear under were underwater which gave another stunning

moment when he emerged on the surface of a totally unknown place but is clearly not earth since there are two moons in the sky is the Jordan there okay the choice to do a 3d game change naturally I was a big fan of karateka on April - an apple - and that was a kind of game and I felt comfortable to create so I went this way so what's the player doing all gameplay activity is very

traditional in many aspects you fight you run you jump you flee you die but The Unbearable the environment suggests a narrative and gives more meaning to these basic actions the color palette only 16 in total and it was very difficult to define a whole week was needed to define the first color palette full one week full time for 16 Cora a determining choice for the atmosphere of the game some colors are sometimes used both for the landscape and for the character for instance the hero's flesh color was also used to suggest the

sunset reflected on Viraj having only 16 colors is very restrictive you could understand my need to optimize the use of each color as each you had multiple users giving Lester or dark hair would have been an easy solution but I didn't want him to look too much like me yes because I was filming my myself to create animation and where hero was physically nearly don't equal to me it was disturbing so I did I did not want to see myself running on the screen be being killed by slowly or whatever so I decided to choose a totally different color red because I was sure that this color would be very useful in many pictures and also I also wanted Lester to stand out from

the backgrounds and I will never have red hair only blue arrow sometime so during the question of this part I define it the vocabulary used through the whole game we will see this right now creating a 2-d game limits the gameplay to one plane but it gives the advantage of exploiting more freely the death at the front and the back of the scene for something else this in order to build narrative without interrupting player activity here of a black beast

can be seen from the beginning so the player can start to think about it so it's really as soo-ji suggest to use a suggestion of storage and what happens in the background suddenly becomes real for the player [Music] this cutscene is very short okay and it see this cutscene is very short and can be seen as punctuating as font rating to give anthesis to a major event which is a turning point in the basing so I played with a rhythm of the action we go from a slow

rhythm before the Creator arrives to a fast and a very stressful situation with a moment of suspension when you have to backtrack then to injure climax where another punctuation surprise again the player here we've reached the end of part 1 which hands on a cliffhanger for her player but also for myself and the regarding the improvisation process

after at that point I didn't know what would happen next I just knew that the next scene would be in a J but the idea of giving lesser friend hadn't come to me yet how how this guy looked under his costume I did I did not know so in Virgil the frosting I did was to remove his clothes do you know what he looked what he looked like [Music] and when I introduced the most important character in the game the friend he else will player but I was still not thinking about him being a focus you will notice

that this card is the only a moment where you can see a body in close-up and this picture is enough for the player to project his face on the small size of character as I say of often the real media is the players memory and imagination so seeing once is enough to complete the mental picture of a game universe in his mind

okay I always loved where they run the laser beams in stairwell movies and they were very expressive visually we've a lot of dynamism and I always wanted to see be seen again okay here is how a nice idea can arise from constraints I was thinking more but the core gameplay something around fighting but also a means for protection after we escaped from jail the initial idea was to progress from one shelter to another to avoid shots fired by the Bible God it was abundant because too complicated to

manage because it was too complicated to manage the death in the end the development of different strategy brought me the concept of protective fields which are shelters generated by the player himself this gives this create very interesting gameplay combinations which lead to the plasma board sorry

which lead to a plasma ball which is a third stage of weaponry like a swiss knife and in retrospect this is one aspect i'm very pulled off because the player has to choose from different strategies the player can use a small shot immediately but we wrote protection or risk his life creating a shield and ultimately ultimately even taking more time to create plasma to destroy enemy shields or doors so somehow this became the building blocks to different types of gameplay after designing my weaponry

I needed to develop to develop exploratory notions everything up to this point was on a single level on a single level on the screen I mean but I felt limited having several stages in a game screen would bring more tactics and puzzles but the difficulty was to create character animation and collision on stairs how could I do this we've literally thought I was thinking of a real elevator but on a variety came why not create a kind of teleporter to switch from level to level just by drawing a few vertical polygons in Lester's color I realized that I could create a very nice impression of motion something that was inspired by inspired

by Japanese manga animation in which we get an impression of I speed movement just by stretching lines this is the end of a jlabel wherever birdie and Lester are separated at this point I realized that I couldn't Lee let him go without finding him again I felt attached to him okay and I only did one third of a game and at this rhythm I would I would have two more years of work which was really depressing from

that point I decided to work more and to not get lost in details some big ones were more flattened so I got organized and created the set a group of graphic block I could reuse to create detailed backgrounds faster from that point I focus I focus more on puzzles creating variations using the building blocks I had at my disposal and each time I was trying to bring you a new idea the friend became the center of a story with a succession of twists

where Lester and his friend help each other I never wanted at the beginning to create a game about the rational relationship between two strangers but the improvisation led me naturally to this producing is a source of inspiration in itself when I extended the use of parallel action to the Frog round here when when

the player leaves the jail we can see the friend being chased by guards in in the foreground this has the same effect as a close-up but we were breaking the players activity on the first level I discovered the pleasure of modulating the pacing but now I was playing around with it for example to modulate the pacing I used I used laser beams to give different rhythm enabling me to modulate the tension a little bit like music score

[Music] here is an animation with five friends the laser beam comes from the foreground giving the impression of raging batter hahaha ok publishing it was time to see

if a publisher would be interested in the game I met Delphine software who are interested but I wanted to meet another publisher which was in fact the French headquarter of virgin games here was a major fort during the creation of a game the moment where another world could have changed drastically it could have become point-and-click it was yeah I love point-and-click and the Soviet oil director said if you want to make it hate make it less difficult by transforming it to a

point-and-click so it was the golden era of this kind of game and as always being full of dirt he almost conveyed convinced me so so future worse of a previous game I did was a point-and-click I love put point-and-click as I said however I don't like doing things twice and vfo to convert it would have been too huge also some friends who played the game really loved it so I maintained my direction and finally the game was published by Delphine software where we are not an international publisher but

we are fully supportive of the creation by trusted we are game creators and we are not intrusive into the design process which was rare and extremely as extremely valuable time to feel had time to think about the end how would I conclude the game I did not know and at this point I had an agreement for its release in November I hadn't 3/4 of a game and and it was a yes it was really the time to step back and review the overall path pace passing passing how I wanted it to evolve to the end so the

idea was to envision the finished game so as to balance the later stage with the rest I drew a curve of all major past events and activity for the player and decided to play with contrasting situation situations and change of pace which lead to tuvieran a scene and which lead to an unopened on river and yes I cover all expression have tales to tell about this throughout my career cover illustration illustration has been a major issue and

a huge source of disappointment I always consider a cover as the continuity of a game and it's the first as it is the first bond between it and the player the publishers of my previous games had be able to impose artwork on me like bees bees or even this while both games were particularly bad by the way over the years had become passionate about illustration to the point but actually wanted to become an illustrator so for another world I didn't want to miss the opportunity of doing it myself being published by

Delphine's of ware was fortunate they were fine for me to create the cover illustration but doing this while creating the game was really difficult as I already as I was already under pressure to finish the game for crisp Christmas it took me three weeks but quite honestly I didn't have one of the big issues for us wheelies in 1981 was the lack of playtest delphine software we are not doing a lot of place testing play testing at the time and we had only two test sessions and that was for the beginning of a game on me I fixed some major issues but the game was really unbalanced later when interplay

became the USP be sure they did a lot of the testing and the game under underwent a second polishing I fixed a lot of bugs and we moved some sources of frustration however they asked me they asked me to make the game longer and some parts became more difficult okay interplay wanted to replace the original music used on via media version with a new music for the Super Nintendo and I disagreed this was a serious source of conflict as we are doing reporting for the game and the situation drove me

totally crazy the music mattered so well the visuals this led to a big present antic fight by fax left lasting several weeks and after exchanging a number of faxes I decided I'd use a new strategy this consisted in sending an infinite fax what an infinite fax it's a long strip of paper where the beginning is stuck to the end using an additive strip-searched such such that it loops around the fax machine and and of course I sent it in

the dead of night in Los Angeles so you could imagine they are surprised when they arrived at work in the morning and found reams of paper repeating the message the message keep the oil channel intro music [Applause] this didn't help they didn't change her mind until Delphine software got involved and said but legally they had no right to impose their choice of music and the discussion was closed

[Applause] having a game on console had its own constraints one of these was censorship whenever world could have ended up in a sexual yes there is a next time we are seeing a future in nudity so you get the drift the alien women were totally naked and here is the cause for concern but bad crack was too explicit so I considered I considered using another

infinite fax with the message keep your general crack on the alien ass however the console manufacturer gave me no choice I didn't send whether to affection so to limit by change had to remove only these three big cells to suggest a bathing suit at the end of a development I was exhausted and this is probably the reason Lister was almost dying in the end [Music]

[Music] okay we have seen the whole process from the origins to a finished product how improvisation process was important in the creation of this game and I I didn't talk about the music and the song because I timing was too

too short well the game has a lived on longer but I originally originally originally thought and has been raised on me on mini platform so I have a little surprise as this is the 20 anniversary the game will be pot with the iPad it varies a little prototype here so and now if you if you have any question well I we I I really want to have to answer to to your question if you have

not now Joey's coming to help me to answer he he will translate your question in in French and if needed yeah do you have any question I've got one yeah right in front of you hey i'm ryan from untold entertainment this was a really inspirational game that your talk was awesome this is awesome so I understand you know you had no involvement in the sequel if it were up to you would you have made a sequel and if so what would you have done with the story from that point so you're talking

about out of the alien right had a very short involvement I was very little implied in this conception yeah continue all the way I which we gave the initial concept which was to play again with like let me with the withered friend and look at the game under another viewpoint we will do that Sasha patty should you she don't want to clear after darkness as memorial don't you she tested in that team I was I was busy creating heart of darkness and I remained rather distant

from this sequel it said about France a dog sorry I see some ah skewed spells do remake Kiki Katie Fae is asking what what what mr. Shaw thinks of the remake that has been with made recently which we make other there's a like special edition or anniversary edition or something that just the 3d stuff no I haven't seen that hi some from what you said it seems like

the game was kind of your diary you wrote at the time and how do you think the game would change if you were to design the whole process from start to finish at the beginning actually you know you kind of do it on the fly the game will be different very different and riposte typic nor I think that typically so I am

the boundary happening more dollar cash you know my more wouldn't enter immediately in the creation Sam preach beaucoup dinero de passe door don't let every that means using a lot of the energy and fear is in theory and in designing should pasta see seen burn shows the do shade is they would have a orderly experimentation and but I think that it's a good thing to look for ideas while experimenting a visual through experimentation and to want to freeze everything Sidoarjo is dangerous okay thanks hi I was I was wondering uh what other sci-fi inspirations you had or

fantasy novels or movies that you're interested in when you were making the game have been influenced by comics [Music] Robin and especially by an artist called Richard Corbin he only bond is named le Marquis Who's Comics had really had made an impression on me it they are no computers - fantastic and more generally all fantastic illustration which I do major when I do Michael William positi-- don't make was it Bernie Wrightson veneration [Laughter] yes thank this version

hello good could you please speak for just a moment about the sound effects creation yes [Music] totally partisan oh yeah if es atado the whole the whole sound part arrived rather late see it if it only CD anymore that all was done in the last six months I see easy enough approached it I see a sea mist in a minimalist way we should have hamachi the bhootish is not yellow I just wanted the essential noises eh let me see justice for the music especially wait but more complicated was music I've been busy once I clear out the school a donate me the belt hard with your I knew

what I wanted in my head but I wasn't I was I wasn't able to translate it easily in cool rock contest to complete detail upon awesome work with all the Papa's Aliyeva shows you llamo kept proposing different solutions regularly yeah I'm a mop - Sofia basically stood easy and then came a moment with everything fell into place crystallize a petroleum oh never miss it no Sammy said music the perception the natural experiment we started with his music especially in the introduction part the essential condition and predictions on the feel of it changed completely we complete emotional in each other customs

whatever she opened or yeah thank you makes us with the head hello first I just want to thank you for creating the aimed as one of my favorite games of all time a question was asked of you earlier about your inspirations I want to kind of reverse that a bit I know a number of games have been made after another world that seemed to have drawn clear inspiration from it specifically specifically a lot of comparisons have been made between another world and flashback and I was wondering if you had any thoughts about these comparisons or if there any other games you could think of that seem to have drawn inspiration from yours oh sure I was wondering if there were in addition to flashback if you want to

talk about that if there were any other games that you feel I've kind of drawn inspiration from another world and any comments you might have about that okay I know I knew that eco as a inspired because to me to tell tell it I just promote security power well mr. Abady atomic is reaching with your sign I noticed a car different games were by it but I haven't really looked and identified it or listed them it's more the creators of the other games that told a CIO office it was really a

pleasure to see that through a pre optional CEO that this game could influence other people George I mean machine itself it well I never I never have thought of it at the start thank you hello first of all amazing talk your game and you know just you as a person as a great inspiration to myself and everyone in here I'm sure I was learning your thoughts on games as a form of artistic expression another world comes up a lot as an example of this how games can transcend the traditional I was wondering your ideas on games as a form of artistic expression because in other world always comes up when people talk about games as art so I wasn't anybody thought about that

communication or whenever helpers go check the phone no make sure she participates mwah I don't have that impression that it's that important is an inspiration facilities for a Electra I'm more focused on create I should say not that much to say about being in the space hi Eric thanks for the great talk

yeah can you tell us from your point of view which version you feel it's the best and if it will be the iPad version please tell us well the iPad version is not finished yet so I don't know but the version which was released five five years ago was had it was possible to play to play to play did enroll in low resolution with another graphic so I think it is it is the best version that has been released because before in via media level was missing and on the console Super Nintendo it was less well less

one enabler display board yeah it was less managed and it was manageable so but the yes iPad the Russian we know looks really nice if you need okay [Applause]