The Many Dimensions of Kirby

[Music] thank you what's my turkey Arigato famous hello everyone thank you all for coming first I'd like to introduce our two speakers for today executive director of Howe Laboratory I worked on Kirby air ride as an artist served as director starting with Kirby

Superstar Ultra and am now involved with the overall development of the Kirby series as general director speak a lot foreign we've worked together since the development of Kirby's Return to Dreamland and he has since been the director on games like Kirby's blowout blast and Kirby and the Forgotten land today you're going to be hearing from the two of us we've been involved with this series for many years and I hope you enjoy our presentation no [Applause] [Music]

no um we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Kirby Series in 2022 this Series has a great deal of History passed down from its early developers I'd like to express my respect for the developers who created the series and those who have carried on its Legacy [Music] to mark this Milestone 30th Anniversary we decided to take on a new challenge [Music] foreign

that challenge was to develop our 3D action game Kirby and the Forgotten land and our 2D Act Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe I'd like to start with Kirby and the Forgotten land discover foreign Herbie and the Forgotten land is the first fully 3D action game in the franchise and the road to its completion was a long one the process went beyond the development of a single title now

foreign experience little by little as we developed many different 3D games and modes as we dealt with the challenges presented by each game we also discussed how we can handle those challenges if we were to create an action game in the main series we finally began development of a fully 3D Mainline Kirby game after the completion of Kirby star allies foreign we begin with two themes our theme for the series was taking a fresh look at Kirby

the theme for the game was a 3D action game anyone can play We Begin our approach by taking a fresh look at Kirby oh we reconsidered Kirby's characteristics Kirby is a strange creature soft like a rubber ball can take on a variety of shapes and is totally fine even if stretched or pulled we thought about how we could create an

intuitive 3D action game that took advantage of this uniqueness is [Music] with that in mind we took a more intuitive look at this shapeshifter's characteristics for example by eating a triangular object Kirby becomes triangular and the same goes for something Square but rather than something mysterious and triangular we wanted to use familiar objects forever [Music]

foreign by that I mean objects that exist in real life like Road cones lockers or cars however Kirby's not as good at swallowing real life objects Kirby's body takes the shape of the object Kirby tries to swallow thanks to a mysterious power study we then use these shapes to enable Kirby to pierce fly and roll creating intuitive actions that behaved like they look like they should reaction s

and that was how we came up with the new 3D Action System mouthful mode Kirby's characteristics [Music] what's more the setting for this game would be a new world filled with the ruins of modern civilization where objects from The Real World wouldn't feel out of place sores [Music] games foreign [Music] that's right we didn't start with the visuals or the both mouthful mode and the new world were conceived in order to create a new

kind of 3D action that took advantage of Kirby's flexibility [Music] foreign we wanted players to be comfortable running around in that new world next we'll hear from director kamiyama he'll be speaking about the trial and error involved in achieving our goal of making a 3D action game anyone can play foreign foreign

and I'd like to introduce some specific examples from Kirby and the Forgotten land to show what we did to create a 3D action game anyone can play I hope you find this information useful the expectation for Kirby games is that they are fun to play even for beginners we did a variety of things to achieve this even in 3D action foreign first let's take a look at Kirby's character design honestly Kirby isn't a good fit for 3D I think the fastest way to explain what I mean is to show you

which direction do you think Kirby is facing here foreign when you rotate a sphere you can't really tell that it's been rotated Kirby has a simple spherical design so it's difficult to tell which way Kirby is facing when seen from behind it is for Kirby's ranged attacks it's a significant issue if the player even slightly misjudges the direction the character is facing foreign

enemies and spinning them out for this reason if you miss you need to look for another enemy to inhale which is very frustrating we used homing to solve this well this is a common approach we also added some twists to it let's talk about these twists the first twist is a way to use a point-based system to determine the Homing Target s the first category looked at is the direction the character is facing the closer the enemy is to that direction the higher the point value

when an enemy is dangerously close to Kirby that enemy is assigned additional points when there is an important enemy like a boss that enemy is assigned additional points too this allows the Homing system to choose the most appropriate Target by evaluating the player's situation via a point-based system s we also paid attention to selectively ignoring certain targets when homing when homing is too strong it robs the players of the fun of aiming foreign

doesn't hit Airborne enemies when Kirby is on the ground this kind of homing failure feels acceptable when the reason is easy to understand so this minimizes frustration however it's especially difficult to get a handle on distance in the air so we supported this with strong homing foreign if it's too obvious that the attack trajectory curves toward the target the player will not be motivated to aim so we handle this by using a simple system that splits homing into two stages to start we use strong homing only during the first frame immediately

adjusting the projectile to face in the right direction after that we intentionally lower homing performance making sure the trajectory does not curve drastically [Music] this two-stage homing allowed us to make the player feel as if they had aimed at and successfully hit their target it's difficult to get a sense of distance in 3D space we solved this problem in forgotten Land by introducing a unique system is before explaining our unique system we wanted to ask the audience there's something wrong in this video can you tell what it is

you can see what's wrong by changing the angle foreign the attack is not actually hitting the enemy the attack didn't hit but the enemy is reacting as though it took damage this is our unique system foreign like I said it's difficult to get a sense of distance in 3D space and players would sometimes be frustrated at failing to hit even if it appeared to be a bullseye therefore we made a tax hit when it looked like they should hit

that doesn't mean we simply made the hitbox bigger we extended the hip detection only for depth as I mentioned in a 3D space it's difficult to get a sense of depth therefore if we extended the hitbox by parsing from the camera position to correct the discrepancy between the visual feel and the actual hit in Kirby and the Forgotten land hit detection is corrected in real time based on the camera position foreign particular pain point for 3D action

games is the camera it greatly affects the gaming experience and takes a lot of resources to adjust properly in addition to this there was another major hurdle for a Kirby game games that even beginners should be able to enjoy the player uses the left and right control sticks to control the character and Camera simultaneously a control scheme that's difficult for beginners it's also very difficult for them to be aware of the surrounding area unlike side-scrolling 2D action games unless you control the camera properly you can sometimes miss the elements you need to get through the game foreign

to solve this problem we made the decision to not let the player operate the camera the set camera is configured optimally by the level designer to match what happens in the stage is this is how the set camera behaves the level designers specify the camera settings as they design the gameplay this controls the player's field of view to an extent and also allows us to leverage our know-how from 2D action games this video is an example of how the camera shifts from being centered on the

character to include relevant objects foreign with this sort of controlled camera we can design the game so that relevant objects naturally appear within the field of view guaranteeing a smooth and comfortable gameplay experience there were other issues that can also be resolved thanks to this kind of camera setup one of these was the issue of hovering [Music] um foreign before we talk about this issue let me first explain what hovering is as you can probably guess hover is an ability that enables Kirby to fly wherever the player wants

this ability is used in 3D space as a developer can you think of a more terrifying ability foreign [Music] if you allow the player to fly around freely by hovering they'll want to keep going and going but in a game based on completing each level there are restrictions on how far you can go foreign [Music] not being able to tell whether you can get somewhere until you try ruins the smooth gameplay experience and can stress out the player to resolve this issue we again use the set camera to hint to the player where they can't go

um [Music] even if you don't go all the way to the edge you can get the idea that there isn't anything there [Music] the mechanism behind this camera setting is to First create walls surrounding the course that only the camera can hit this placement was mainly done automatically [Music] foreign next we sent radial detection lines out from the focal point of the camera within the area we want to show

by having this detection occur ahead of where Kirby is we can smoothly move the camera Focus in addition many artistic Expressions became possible precisely because of this set camera menu with the backdrop as the main focus this bold camera angle serves the purpose of highlighting a new dimension in the world of Kirby foreign that wraps up this section on what we did to achieve a 3D action game anyone can play [Applause]

inquired foreign land during this Landmark 30th Anniversary we also developed something that can be considered the roots of the series a 2d Kirby title Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe series we um Kirby's Return to Dreamland released for the Wii was born at a turning point in the series and this is a remake of that title foreign leading up to the original Wii game Kirby's Return to Dreamland there were three experimental titles that were created starting from the GameCube days

it was the fourth iteration that finally saw the light of day this was the first Mainline Kirby title for a console in 11 years um during those 11 years we continue to iterate on experimentation and development because we were determined to not release a title until a certain level of quality was met we went through a long period of many Growing Pains foreign

and finally the efforts of the entire staff pour fruit and Kirby's Return to Dreamland was complete it became a key title in the history of the series foreign now I'd like to discuss some of the creative Ingenuity that we have been able to accumulate through the history of 2D Kirby titles using Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe as an example Kirby aims to be a series that has approachable yet deep gameplay enjoyable to both beginners and veteran players

foreign to this end we have accumulated a variety of inventive methods and these methods are all based on a certain concept that concept is make Kirby the hero mode foreign we want Kirby to be a heroic figure who fights valiantly to defeat his enemies in order for Kirby and by extension the player to become the hero we feel it is essential to have controls that feel right

so what do I mean by controls that feel right it's not just a matter of matching character movement exactly to button input foreign what leads to feeling right is when a character moves exactly the way the player intended there are times when a player thinks they press the button at the right time but in reality the input was a bit off

from this sort of fuzzy input we predict what the player intended Kirby to do and have Kirby behave according to the player's intent I'd like to share with you a few of the many mechanisms that demonstrate this is you press the jump button while in the air Kirby would usually begin hovering however if the button is pressed just before landing you may get a situation where the player intended to jump but ends up hovering in these situations we predict the players in 10 and make it so Kirby jumps instead of strictly following the button input and hovering

even in situations where the player presses the button too late to jump over a pit foreign we predict the player's intent and make Kirby jump even in mid-air sarani is even the hip detection on Kirby's head during a jump has been adjusted so that it matches the player's intent ions this is a slow motion video during a dash is at this rate Kirby's body would come into contact with the Enemy first resulting in taking damage

but let's see what happens next look at that Kirby was able to defeat the enemy without taking damage let's look at the video again with hit detection displayed when Kirby jumps during a dash the hitbox actually extends a bit toward the direction of the movement we on the dev team call this pompadour detection

thanks to this pompadour detection the player is able to jump as they intended Society in addition to these there are numerous other features that have been implemented or features that support the player behind the scenes the scene and are designed in such a way that they are not noticeable to the player foreign foreign these elements have been inherited and evolved over time and continue to be improved upon

um [Music] next let's talk about Graphics in the early stages of development we also face challenges in terms of Graphics as we attempt into move Kirby as the player intended on this is as a result of our goal to beautifully evolve the graphics we realized that it became easier to lose track of the characters so keeping our Focus firmly on the idea of the player is the hero we considered numerous options and where we landed was the use of outlines

oh um this resulted in a character visibility and ultimately being able to control Kirby as the player intended but simply adding outlines would result in a visual that looks like a logo we continued exploring ways to outline characters in ways that would really bring out their charm we tried using the inverted home method for outlines but this resulted in small bits of noise where parts of the character overlapped foreign

to address this we used depth value by applying gradation to parts of the outline where there were steep variations in depth value we were able to create an outline that allows for a sense of depth is foreign this was the same for complex models besides Kirby with our eyes set on smooth and visible outlines like those you would see in anime characters on TV we worked out these issues one by one

foreign we also worked on the graphics for the background and terrain to make the game easier to play we thought trial and error was particularly important in designing terrain as it ties into gameplay to facilitate this we used an asset placement tool called Cinema that we developed in-house [Music] designers were able to play the game and if at any time the gameplay fell off or cumbersome they could edit and test it out in real time this allowed them to immediately fix any areas that hindered gameplay using Cinema allowed us to

efficiently create a world in which Kirby moves exactly as the player intended thank you next I'd like to talk about the new modes added to the game in order to make this title an even more approachable yet deep game we created two additional modes foreign to Dreamland was its on the Fly multiplayer functionality that allowed family and friends to join in the adventure at any time

we wanted to build on that concept and add a mode that could be played together anytime sitting in the middle of the living room code was Mary magdaland um in Mary magdaland you'll find a variety of sub-games all playable at any time by up to four players however we didn't want this to be just a standalone bonus mode foreign allowing players to go back and forth between the action stages and magoland at any time our goal was to create something that players would want to play between completing stages

which is why we wrapped that mode up into an amusement park called Mary magdaland um the more games the player plays at the amusement park the more dress-up masks and souvenirs they get which can be used in the main game stages play a sub game between completing main game stages then take your souvenirs with you back into another stage that's the kind of gameplay cycle we implemented

our goal with the flow of the game was ease we made it easy to go back and forth between modes mid game with the Press of a single button all these ideas went in together to complete this approachable amusement park mode foreign now that we've created this approachable amusement park I'd like to talk about magalor famous the theme for this section is creating a new character within the long-running series foreign what's important for us is that the character has the essence that makes them a part of that world series

as you can tell from this sketch magalur was built using the fundamental design elements of the series we then carefully considered his abilities role and personality foreign he speaks a lot in the game there's something about him that makes you want to protect him but he also has a hint of shadiness to him oh we gave him a hood to add a touch of mystery to the design in this game we leverage some of the unique characteristics of his outfit such as parts of it falling off to denote that he's in trouble

foreign he is still a voiced character so he hid his mouth to make it easier to create many conversational scenes incidentally he is voiced by the sound creator of this game so on the inside he's a veteran composer in his 50s hahaha subscribe other than Kirby's are done by other s like for example King DDD

wow this is a concept diagram that we drew up when we were creating this game it shows the world magalore comes from another world on a ship called the lore star cutter and lands on Kirby's planet after that he gradually starts to open up to Kirby and his friends as with the flow of this story we hope to design him in such a way that despite being suddenly dropped into a series with a long history he would fit right in

Korea this is how magalor came to be in Kirby's World these are design proposals from the we era development of Kirby's Return to Dreamland many team members Drew countless designs foreign ultimately we arrived at the current design which preserves the spirit of the series while also adding new elements of individuality we also went through the same kind of trial and error for Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe foreign

this is all concept art for Mary magdaland our goal was to summarize the overall mode through symbolic buildings and make it possible to see all the doors to the many sub games at a glance continue the series we are always incorporating new things but when we do it's not until we consider their roles and characteristics and brainstorm many design proposals that's something that will become a part of the world of Kirby is finally born foreign in this game in addition to the

approachable amusement park mode that we introduced we also created a mode where players can really feel the sense of depth that we mentioned before that mode is the magalore epilogue [Music] foreign epilogue becomes available after completing story mode and is a mode that offers a greater challenge I'll start with a brief overview of the game system for this mode in this mode you collect magic points and use them to enhance your character's abilities foreign

has lost his powers and wants to get them back this increases the player's motivation to go on this adventure and makes it easier for them to buy into the premise however that's really just a secondary reason our main goal was to give Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe more depth of play by providing something different from the main game experience foreign the highly flexible enhancement system allows players to control the level of difficulty games

one of the elements that makes up this game system is the combo system the more combos you connect the more reward points you get from defeating an enemy um the word combo might make it sound like the game has a high threshold for entry but we've worked to make the game both approachable and deep here too we put in a little secret sauce to make combos fun um megalore's attacks used two different kinds of hit detection

is the red circle shows the hitbox for a regular attack and the purple shows the area used for combo detection this combo detection area is only used for follow-up attacks when an enemy has already been hit once foreign here we have two videos one with the hit detection displayed and one without as you can see it makes it easier to land hits on enemies even if they've already been knocked back this is another example of a subtle feature that supports the player behind the scenes forever

foreign there are also various other features that support the player from behind the scenes even though the magalor epilogue mode is more challenging we made sure to make the player the hero of the mode foreign this mode is also playable by up to four players at a time which means that everyone can become the hero and battle Mighty enemies Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe is a game where everyone can be the hero whether they be Dads Moms kids or friends

Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe is packed full of the creative Ingenuity of 2D Kirby games cultivated through 30 years of History foreign and in Kirby's forgotten Land We challenged ourselves to create a uniquely curvy 3D action game approachable to all food s whether 2D or 3D everything from the technology and worldview to the design was thought out with the goal of making each gaming experience awesome foreign

it would be one you've heard already approachable yet deep and it's the concept we've kept front and center as we've continued to create Kirby games foreign foreign this year marks the 22nd year since my first involvement in Kirby development the series has continued to expand and somehow it has become a series played around the world with 30 years of History I cannot express how much that means to me is once again I would like to express my gratitude to the developers who gave

birth to this series and continue to develop it and to everybody who has ever played a Kirby game and I would be overjoyed if any of what we have shared today helps you the developers in any small way we will along with our team continue to challenge ourselves to create games that are even more approachable yet deep no matter what genre they are thank you so much for your time today foreign [Music]