THE PROCESS OF DESIGNING PLAYABLE ANIMALS

Animals in Wild Savanna are the stars of the show, so it is imperative that we do them justice during the designing, and implementation process within the game. In this devblog, we will go over all the important departements and processes a playable animal goes through to become a playable entity within the game's world from start to finish. We will use the Plains Zebra as the primary reference for this devblog.

1/ - Research Phase 2/ - Modeling Phase 3/ - Texturing Phase 4/ - Rigging and Animating Phase 5/ - Coding and Implementation Phase

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The research phase is the first phase of making an animal playable, and it consists of a lot of data collection about the animal in question. We look at how easily available scientific data, video interactions, photos and vocalizations of the animal are available. This will all culminate by determining if the animal itself is eligible to be playable. A/ Data collection We need to make sure we are able to find good quality photos of the animal in order to accurately model it, as well as finding good quality audio files of vocalizations with its own kind, or while eating, fighting ... etc. Next is behavior references, wrote by biologists on the field, to help us understand how the animal acts, and fits in the ecosystem. Last but not least, is how common can we find video references for animations. B/ Eligibility as playable In order to be playable, an animal must be fun to play, as well as wanted by a large amount of players. However these metrics can vary, and it is useless to include every single animal present in the Serengeti ecosystem for obvious reasons. These being memory wise, and amount of work required from the dev team to complete in order to make them all playable. We also completely reject animals such as invertebrates, fish, small birds, reptiles and mammals from the roster as they would be insignificant in a video game where you can play things as large as elephants, rhinos or lions. Therefore, we have come up with several metrics and variables in order to know if an animal is worth for us to include in the playable roster: 1 - How well known is the animal ? 2 - How common is the animal within this ecosystem ? 3 - Can it efficiently fight or flee from potential dangers ? 4 - Do we have significant data and sources of information available about it ? 5 - How big is it ? 6 - How easily can it travel across the majority of the map ? 7 - How common would be the interactions with other playable species ? 8 - Is there already an animal that fills it's niche quite well ? 9 - What are the mechanics and special abilities that makes it standout as a playable ? 10 - Based on all the questions above, how often would players choose it as their playables ? Let's use Plains Zebra as the reference point to answer all these questions: 1 - Plains Zebra are very iconic and well known animals amongst the public 2 - They are extremely common within the Serengeti Ecosystem 3 - They can effectively run away from all their major predators, but can also defend themselves quite efficiently against them by delivering powerful kicks 4 - We have an extensive amount of data and sources of information about it's behavior, ecology, vocalizations, animation references, and physical capabilities (stats) 5 - It is a medium-sized equine, weighing between 500 to 700 lbs. 6 - Plains Zebras are known to travel long distances for food in very short periods of time and reach speeds of up to =50 kmph 7 - There is a wide variety of behaviors and interactions have with other species, like predator prey hunting relations, competition with other herbivores as well as with most plants and grasses of the grassland and wooded grasslands habitats. 8 - Wildebeest, Topi, Hartebeest all act as mid-tier herbivores that have very simlar predator relations as well as impact on the ecosystem, however it is fair to note that Zebras are bigger and more endurantthan all of those species of antelopes, whilst can also effectively defend themselves against the majority of its major predators. 9 - Plains Zebras can effectively kick, bite and stomp, similar to giraffes but in a much more agile and effective manner. Its unique behavior amongst the roster being the only equine, allows players to have quests and objectives which differ from the majority of the herbivore roster. 10 - Based on the answers above, Plains Zebra seems to be very eligible to be playable and choosen by a large majority of players which would like to play a mid-tier herbivore.

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The Modeling or Scuplting phase, is the first phase where something is created. We model our animals on the software Blender so we can accurately create shapes and not use a large amount of parts like we used to in the last few years. These are called Mesh models which allow us to animate body parts without cutting them into multiple pieces. Allowing us to create lifelike animations, which we will discuss more in the animation phase The scuplting process of an animal starts with idealy four base reference images, top, side, frontal and behind. As the names suggest these allow us to draw the main shape of the body of the animal. Once the main bodyshapes are drawn we use additional close up shots of the animal to draw eyes, nostrils, outer ears, tails, teeth, tongues, muscles ... etc. Male Thomson's Gazelle Base Model:

Made by @LudicrousCunningFox

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The Texturing phase is by far the most tedious phase but not the most complicated. Textures are essentially 2D images which will wrap up around a model to simulate the colors, patterns of the animal in question, in other words it's the skin of the character/animal. To create the texture, we use real life HD images of the animal in order to replicate as accurately as possible the skin of the animal. We then cut up the animal's skin off the image and through several series of actions we can create a base material which then accurately knows where each pixel should be placed on the model. Additionally we can add PBR texture which stands for "physically based rendering" which add weight, shadows to the base material allowing it to interact with lighting. We then add additional textures for the eyes, and hair the animal might have on it's tail, ears, muzzle ... etc. Male Plains Zebra Model with Textures:

Made by @LudicrousCunningFox

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The animation and rigging phase, is where the animal is truly brought to life by following video references and recreating its movement. We recently switched to blender to rig animate our models. Since we value our animals to be as realistic as possible we try our very best to recreate even tiny details within our animations, this however means that we have a lot of animations to create and each animal requires between 80 to 120 animations to be completed entirely. Each animal's animation phase is divided into 5 different subcategories regrouping individual animations which are similar in use or purpose: Phase 1 - Locomotions, Basic Emotes/Idles and situationals Phase 2 - Survival Abilities, Basic Combat abilities and related Phase 3 - Emotes and Calls, Limping/Bone Break and environemental interactions Phase 4 - Prey and Predator Interactions Phase 5 - Interspecies combat and Play The animation phase is by far the most time consuming and tedious task out of all the creation process of an animal and why it takes so long to even complete a single animal.

Plains Zebra Double Kick Attack:

Made by @LudicrousCunningFox

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The final phase is the implementation and coding phase, where all animations and statistics are assigned to the animal for it to be playable. Which is why it takes longer for us, in comparaison to any other animal survival game since we have to miticulously make sure that the animal's stats reflect exactly it's position in food chain. We also need to give care to balancing the animals properly so that players react to interactions in a realistic manner in comparaison to their animal's real life counterparts.

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CONCLUSION

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We hope this devblog has shed light on how animals are selected to be eligible as playable entities within the game, aswell the complex and tedious process of recreating these animals. We hope this also sheds light on why it takes a long time for us to release new animals or remodel them from the ground up.