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JANUARY 2013
VOLUME 20 NUMBER 01
Ninja Theory and Capcom
Reboot
Devil May Cry
with
Unreal Engine 3
Dante is getting a makeover. The
mercenary demon hunter is back in
action in
DmC Devil May Cry,
a highly
anticipated reboot of the franchise.
By working closely with Capcom,
developer Ninja Theory stripped Dante to
the bare essentials to incorporate the story
of his origin into this new action adventure.
The UK studio utilized Unreal Engine 3
(UE3) to bring this multi-world story to life.
Previously,
Ninja
Theory
utilized
UE3 technology to ship Namco Bandai’s
Enslaved:
Odyssey
to
the
West.
“We’ve worked with the Unreal Engine for
a long time now, and we found that the engine
would enable us to achieve what we wanted
with
DmC,
whilst at the same time allowing us
to get involved in making the game straight
away,” said Dominic Matthews of Ninja Theory.
“A new engine would have meant at least six
months’ worth of learning before we could
get started with the actual development.”
Matthews continued, “We’ve learned what
we can do with the engine and how we can
modify it to our needs. Everything that we
learned during
Enslaved
development we’ve
been able to take into our work on
DmC.”
Alex Jones, producer at Capcom, said
UE3 allowed the team to create larger open
areas than they’d done before, moving
away from corridors, and gave them more
flexibility in opening up the gameplay.
“Unreal Engine scripting is very
flexible, so some of our game events are
a little more involved than in previous
Devil May Cry
games,” said Jones.
Matthews said Ninja Theory used pretty
much all of the engine’s features at one point
or another during the game’s development.
“One really useful aspect for us was
Unreal Matinee, as this allowed us to easily
set up complex cutscenes and really get
into the minutiae of achieving the filmic
look that we’re after,” said Matthews. “On
a related front, the material system gives
us complete control over the look and feel
of every surface – early on we made the
decision to allow our artists to create their
own materials and this really helped us
achieve the distinct atmosphere of the game.”
Ninja Theory has been at the forefront
of performance capture, having worked
with actor and director Andy Serkis on
Heavenly Sword
and
Enslaved.
In
DmC,
Dante and the other characters are being
brought to life using the studio’s latest
performance capture technology, which
has excelled at pushing things forward
over its past story-driven action games.
“We’ve developed an in-house facial
motion capture solver that we used for all of
the cinematic scenes in
DmC Devil May Cry,”
said Matthews. “This allows us to deliver top
quality results without having to pay external
companies to wrangle content for us.”
Performance capture plays an important
role in bringing a Hollywood cinematic feeling to
the game. Early on, Capcom told Ninja Theory
to think of Dante and
DmC
as a contemporary
movie, as one goal is to introduce a
fresh take on
Devil May Cry
to a wider
audience, while at the same time preserving
and building on the DNA of the series.
“This idea of creating a Dante as if he were
in a modern day movie has guided us through
development,” said Matthews. “We’re very
happy with where we’ve ended up and I hope
that those new to the series and existing
Devil
May Cry
fans will find a lot of fun in the game.”
In order to improve the overall game
experience, Ninja Theory built new technology
on top of UE3 to customize lighting and
shadowing and to create faster and more
accurate cloth simulations and faster particle
systems. They also worked with Epic Games
and other UE3 teams on the Unreal Developer
Network (UDN) throughout the process.
“UDN is great for quickly looking up
documentation, but it’s the community
forums that are invaluable,” said Matthews.
“All UE3 licensed developers have
access to the forums so there’s a lot of
experience to draw upon, which always
helps when there is a tricky issue to solve.”
“Having an engine capable of cross-
platform development from the start provides
a huge advantage,” said Matthews. “The
platform flexibility that UE3 demonstrates
was a key factor in allowing us to concentrate
on the game itself. Rather than having to
designate one console as a lead platform
we were able to treat them as equals. There
are, of course, systems that work differently
between platforms but, thanks to the engine,
these are the exception rather than the rule.”
By allowing UE3 to do a lot of the heavy
lifting, Ninja Theory was able to focus its
efforts on creating a fresh approach to a
beloved video game protagonist.
DmC
pushes
the gameplay forward by giving players more
choices, while offering a cinematic experience
that’s sure to attract a wide audience.
Thanks to Ninja Theory for speaking with freelance reporter
John Gaudiosi for this story.
UPCOMING EPIC ATTENDED EVENTS
D.I.C.E Summit
Las Vegas, NV
February 5-8, 2013
Cloud Gaming Europe
London, UK
February 21-22, 2013
Please email licensing@epicgames.com for appointments
© 2012, Epic Games, Inc. Epic, Epic Games, Unreal, Unreal Developer Network, UDN, Unreal Matinee, Unreal Engine, and UE3 are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of
America and elsewhere. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
www.unrealengine.com
toc
V o l u m e
2 0
C On t e nt s_
J a nua r y 20 1 3
N u m b e r
0 1
001
Postmortem
030
PaPo & Yo
How would you make a game about
growing up with an alcoholic parent?
Find out how Minority Media made it
work in this
Papo & Yo
postmortem.
By
Deborah Chantson and Julien Barnoin
Features
008
Front Line awards
The
Game Developer
readers have
spoken: Find out which dev tools were
the best in the business for 2012.
By Staff
018
Bring Your tooLs to Browsers
The web isn’t going anywhere. Insomniac
Games senior engine programmer Chris
Edwards explains how—and why—they
migrated their dev tools to the web.
By
Chris Edwards
025
remixing CLassiCs: interview
with masaYa matsuura
Game Developer
caught up with
PaRappa
creator Masaya Matsuura to chat about
the Japanese game industry, tech, and
the new indie generation.
By Patrick Miller
A game is only as good as your players
will let it be. Don’t let your best-laid
game designs be ruined by contagious
“bad” player behavior.
By Nils Pihl
037
PLaYers make the ruLes
Departments
002
game Plan
004
heads up display
006
educated Play
007
good Job
016
gdC news
040
toolbox
043
inner Product
[editorial]
[news]
[education]
[Career]
[news]
[review]
[Programming]
[art]
[design]
[sound]
[Business]
[editorial]
[humor]
game developer magazine
001
game developer magazine
046
Pixel Pusher
049
design of the times
052
aural Fixation
054
the Business
055
insert Credit
064
arrested development
002
gp
GA ME P L AN_
Jan u ary 2013
GAME DEVELOPER
MAGAZINE
W W W. G D M A G . C O M
UBM LLC.
303 Second Street, Suite 900, South Tower
San Francisco, CA 94107
t:
415.947.6000
f:
415.947.6090
SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES
FOR INFORMATION, ORDER QUESTIONS, AND
ADDRESS CHANGES
Our New Year’s Resolutions
GAME DEVELOPER’S
SELF-IMPROVEMENT GOALS FOR 2013
Every year I make a few New Year’s Resolutions; last year I resolved to wake up by 8 a.m.
every day and start flossing my teeth. (Pearl, our publisher, will be more than happy to
tell you how the first one worked out.) But I’m going to walk you through a few planned
improvements we’re making to
Game Developer
in 2013, in the hope that you, dear
readers, will keep me a bit more accountable than my dentist does.
NEW LOOK, SAME BOOK
First: Welcome to
the new
Game Developer
magazine!
You’ve already noticed the first big step
we’ve taken:
Game Developer
has a new look!
Magazine redesigns are usually a big, time-
consuming endeavor that takes several months
of mock-ups and approvals, but we didn’t
have time for that, so we just told Art Director
Joseph Mitch to redesign the magazine and he
said “Okay.”
We were all sad to see the ripped-from-
Thrasher
grungy look go, but this new, clean
look should be a little bit easier on your eyes
when you’re digging into our latest postmortem
(especially if you’re reading on a tablet). I’m
excited to see what you all think about it, so
tweet your feedback to me at @gamedevmag.
In addition to the new design, we’ve also
upgraded our magazine’s binding from the
saddle-stitched binding to what’s called
perfect binding, which is mostly neat because
now we get a spiffy book spine (handy for
those of you collecting the print versions). It’s
the small things, you know?
IMPROVED DIGITAL VERSION
Our digital
edition has come a long way since its release
about a year ago, and the iOS app in particular
has seen a few major under-the-hood
improvements; not only has the resolution
been bumped up to make the magazine more
readable (especially on Retina displays), but
there is also a new just text-and-images
reader mode (similar to Instapaper or
Readability) that makes it possible to actually
read the articles on a smartphone or other
smaller-than-a-tablet device.
And yes, I say “smartphone or other device”
instead of “iPhone” because our Android app is
finally coming along! We’re still trying to figure
out our specific launch plans (and, in fact, it
might be out by the time you read this), but rest
assured that all of you who told me on Twitter
that you wouldn’t be resubscribing until we
were on Android can rejoin the flock very soon
(that means you, @SnakeEaterITA).
GAMADEVELOPER MAGASUTRA
This year,
we’re going to try to play more nicely with
our sister site Gamasutra. That means you’ll
start seeing the occasional Gamasutra feature
show up in GD Mag (in our new section called
Cross-Platform), and vice versa. We love doing
print/digital magazines, but we want to make
some of our excellent content freely available
for a wider audience to read and discuss, and
for Gamasutra, it’ll be a neat opportunity to
give some love to some of their longer-form
articles that might get missed in your daily
RSS sweep. (Fun fact: The Google description
for Gamasutra calls it the “free online version
of
Game Developer
magazine,” so tease
Gamasutra Editor-in-Chief Kris Graft about
that when you see him at GDC 2013.)
2012 was a big year for us and we’re looking
forward to making 2013 even better. Hope you
enjoy the magazine!
—Patrick Miller
@pattheflip
t:
800.250.2429
f:
847.763.9606
gamedeveloper@halldata.com
www.gdmag.com/contactus
EDITORIAL
PUBLISHER
EDITOR
Simon Carless
-
scarless@gdmag.com
Pearl Verzosa
-
pearl.verzosa@ubm.com
Patrick Miller
-
pmiller@gdmag.com
EDITOR EMERITUS
Brandon Sheffield
-
bsheffield@gdmag.com
MANAGER, PRODUCTION
ART DIRECTOR
Dan Mallory
-
dmallory@gdmag.com
Joseph Mitch
-
jmitch@gdmag.com
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Chris Edwards, Deborah Chantson, Noel
Llopis, Jon Beilin, Steve Theodore, Damion
Schubert, Damian Kastbauer, David Edery,
Alexandra Hall, Matthew Wasteland, Magnus
Underland
ADVISORY BOARD
Mick West
Independent
Brad Bulkley
Microsoft
Clinton Keith
Independent
Bijan Forutanpour
Sony Online Entertainment
Mark DeLoura
Independent
Carey Chico
Independent
Mike Acton
Insomniac
ADVERTISING SALES
VICE PRESIDENT, SALES
Aaron Murawski
-
aaron.murawski@ubm.com
t:
415.947.6227
MEDIA ACCOUNT MANAGER
Jennifer Sulik
-
jennifer.sulik@ubm.com
t:
415.947.6227
GLOBAL ACCOUNT MANAGER, RECRUITMENT
Gina Gross
-
gina.gross@ubm.com
t:
415.947.6241
GLOBAL ACCOUNT MANAGER, EDUCATION
Rafael Vallin
-
rafael.vallin@ubm.com
t:
415.947.6223
ADVERTISING PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Pete C. Scibilia
-
peter.scibilia@ubm.com
t:
516-562-5134
REPRINTS
WRIGHT’S MEDIA
Jason Pampell
-
jpampell@wrightsmedia.com
t:
877-652-5295
AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
LIST RENTAL
Nancy Grant e:
nancy.grant@ubm.com
Corrections
game developer magazine
w
From the November 2012 issue’s Power 50 feature: We incorrectly credited “Dan Miller” from The
Blast Furnace for his work on
P
ITFALL
!
for iOS; the correct name is Dan Roberts. Also, the photo
published for Jon Mak from Queasy Games was the wrong Jon Mak. Sorry about that. (Fortunately,
we ran a whole bunch of photos of the real Jon Mak in the
S
OUND
S
HAPES
postmortem in
December 2012, so you should have a pretty good idea of what he looks like by now.)
w
From the December 2012 issue’s Year in Review feature: The photo next to
Mare Sheppard’s entry was not actually Mare Sheppard. This is Mare Sheppard
right here. We regret the error.
Mare Sheppard.
Peter Candito
Specialist Marketing Services
t: 631-787-3008 x 3020
petercan@SMS-Inc.com
ubm.sms-inc.com
002
W W W. U B M . C O M

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