Oh Valve how I love you, let me count the ways...

Wow saturday was a fun day in the lab for all of us... I mean me... nobody else showed up :(. Whatever I still brought my Xbox 360 in for some "research." After some cord fananglin i was able to hook it up to the projector and play on the wall. I booted up L4D2 and started in on the developer commentary extra feature.

Why is this not in every game made?!

Basically you play through a campaign with infinite life and zombies don't attack you. I know that sounds boring and lame but there is a upshot: there a chat bubbles placed along your path that play audio commentary by developers and some even spawn enemies and examples of what the commentary is about.

It was awesome not only were there shotgun noises filling the entire MA building but I was actually able to pick up a ton of cool information on the production of that game. I made a quick text file and started taking notes. Here they are for all you fellow nerds:

L4D2 dev commentary notes:

use of spawned texture maps for different types of damage that change the UV pixel color to simulate blood and gore

use of rag-doll system to create body piles then export them as prefab objects.

use of texture randomizers on different layers to create a myriad of infected combinations like different shirts, dust, pond scum, hair and facial features.

common and uncommon (themed) zombies add theme to each level.

pictures of gore and "infection" are actually textures of housing insulation and potato skins.

Kinematic explosions from "boomers" cause populated areas to become different as players progress.

Pose parameters are used to modify animations for Jockey attacks in different animation layers one upper-body and one lower-body

they record play tester's screens as well as webcams monitoring their reactions so that the dev team could reference specific moments in the play test as well as freeing them from having to sit and monitor testers which takes hours.

blood splatters are handled with a strange form of raycasting that simply stretches the texture based on its angle of impact so that it appears to be coming from the dead zombie and if it is closer to parallel with the wall it will be stretched more but if it is head on with the wall it will appear free of distortion.

valve uses incandescent vomit to make the spitter easier to spot in the darkness as well as track, when she drools it onto the floor.

the impound lot in "the Parish" is a form of obstacle course where the cars all are rigged with alarms that summon the horde when activated making for a sneaking gameplay mechanic

director controlled weapon/item spawns help the player through the map but are constrained to when the director spawns them so if a player is whooping ass the item will not spawn or it will spawn an unnecessary or otherwise less weighted item. on the flip-side of that if a player is doing poorly or struggling the director can spawn a very useful or "clutch" item.

a "smeared axe" melee weapons and corresponding particle effects help the player to see the axe while still conveying the sense of a fast motion. this is a good way of creating motion blur without the use of processor heavy blur filters.

the team made a "left 4 dictionary" that contained terms like "capillary," "close-quarters," "open-spaces," "funnel," and "king of the hill." This keeps designers in key as to what the team wants from a level or specific area.

So basically I spent all day playing video games on the projector and accompanying sound system and taking notes all the while *yawn*. I got some other games that I took notes on (Dante's Inferno, Modern Warfare 2, GTA IV, Condemned 2, Mass Effect 2, Shadow Complex, and Marvel vs. Capcom 2) but I have yet to finish my research. I guess i will have to do this again with the rest of my games because it gives me a chance to step back stop worrying about leveling up and get to know a game and its functions.