TUTORIAL: UNCHARTED 2 | BUILD
USING HAVOK
HIND ATTACK
COLLABORATION
WE BROUGHT IN THE Havok physics engine for Uncharted 2. Before we had Havok we had our own in-house physics system, developed by one of our programmers, which we used for the first game. It was great, and it worked well, but we were limited in how much we could do with it and how many different features it had, because it was the work of one programmer. Havok is supported by a huge company, and has been through several revisions, so it made things easier for our artists to use. The Havok system gave us the tools to do things like having a light fixture that’s hanging from the ceiling that swings around in real-time, and can react to the player or even gunfire. Havok also gave us some performance improvements so we were able to push more physics objects around in any given frame.
IN THE NEPAL WARZONE, Drake is chased by a Hind attack helicopter. The Hind destroys the bridge Drake is hanging from with machine gun fire, dropping him onto a series of awnings. He then starts running and jumping to avoid the incoming rounds spraying the windows. We got all those windows blowing out with some convincing particle effects. Drake and Chloe make it to a rooftop garden, so we had a lot of plants in pots and the great thing was that the plants were set up with real-time Havok physics. Not only would they be interactive if the player shot or walked through them, but we could also generate wind that was coming from the helicopter. As the helicopter moves from point to point you can see the direction that the wind is coming from by how it affects the plants. The plants also blow violently when the helicopter hovers.
THE GAME DESIGNER WILL have an idea of what they’d like to see in a level, but they need the co-operation of the background artist and the effects artist to make it happen. The designer has overall responsibility for establishing the pacing and making sure that the level as a whole is the experience that they want to deliver. Within that there’s a lot of room for conversation and compromise and that is how we end up with well-paced games. When those moments come, they’re fantastic. It’s the culmination of a lot of people’s great ideas all mixed together. The most satisfying thing about working at Naughty Dog is the collaborative effort. It’s not just among artists and designers, but also the programmers. Programmers are more in touch with our technical limitations than anybody else in the team. Artists are pie-in-the-sky people. We want to see everything. We want high-res textures, and unlimited polygons. The programmers are tethered to reality, but we try to inspire them to find ways to make the technology facilitate these amazing things that we want to do. It’s all collaborative, it’s all compromise, and then hopefully in the end we come up with something that feels like a win for everybody involved, including the player.
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The Art of Uncharted 2 is a 272-page book showcases the amazing unseen art and ideas that helped make Uncharted 2: Among Thieves one of the most universally and critically acclaimed games ever created. From concept art, to character studies, environment art, character modeling, game art, cinematics, motioncapture, animation, and effects. WWW.BALLISTIC PUBLISHING.COM
AUGUST 2010 | 73