AOEO and Orcs updates
Quite a few updates to make here for one post.. I guess I have been slacking and should of got these out sooner! I blame University for taking up too much of my time! In the last week we have had some new AOEO news and a new trap spot light for Orcs Must Die. So without further adue, here goes! Read more
Don’t crossbow me, bro! Plus more AOE-O animations from Chazbot
Following up on the community Orcs One Liners where Robot Entertainment invited members of the community to send in their most interesting and humorous one liners as Orcs were sent to their demise has now come to a close. A whole bunch of entries were submitted and one entry was picked out above the rest. The winning entry of the competition is “Don’t crossbow me, bro!“. I think that’s a very good choice and will definitely be amusing to hear in game! Robot are also going to include some other submissions in game too. So if you submitted your one liner you’ll have to keep your ears open to see if it appears in the game! Read more
Bruce Shelley talks about the evolution of social gaming. Plus more AOE-O animations and Robot swag!
Recently the legendary Bruce Shelley has been in talks with Gamasutra along with Brian Reynolds another industry veteran about their roles at Zynga in the social gaming space. Brian Reynolds before joining Zynga worked at Big Huge Games which collaborated with Ensemble Studios on the Age of Empires 3 Asian Dynasties expansion. Bruce and Brian had also worked closely with each other in the past on Sid Meier’s civilisation games. Now they are both re-united again at Zynga where is has become clear that the company is hiring industry veterans to push their gaming business forward.
When talking to Gamasutra Bruce detailed how he was recommended to join after the company was looking for designers from the “Sid Meier School of Design” era. Read more
Orcs Must Die community one liners. Plus crocodiles and lions!
Robot Entertainment has lifted the lid on their latest community effort – ‘Orcs One Liners’. This is a community competition whereby community members can come up with amusing and witty one liners for the soon-to-be-killed Orcs. The best one liners will be chosen by Robot Entertainment on Monday next week (April 25th). The winning one liner will then be added to the final production version of the game for all the world to hear! So if you think you have what it takes to come up with an awesome Orc based one liner then head on over to the Orcs Must Die facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/OMDGame and then click on “Community One Liners”. Read more
Charles Tinney begins Age of Empires Online animation blogs
Charles Tinney an animator at the late Ensemble Studios who worked on Halo Wars has recently started a blog about his awesome animation work with Age of Empires Online. Charles or “chazbot” Tinney has been taking care of most of the animation on AOE-O while the game was developed at Robot Entertainment.
My initial role, once the art style was finalized, was to concept and visualize the animation style that best complimented the game’s art direction. It was great pulling reference from Looney Tunes and old Disney shorts. Through animation reference, exploration, pushing, pulling, trial, error, I eventually hit a style that was wacky and exaggerated in some circumstances, and kind of an overly animated subtlety for most cases; both with an overall defined timing and spacing that melded the extreme and subtle together
Halo Wars fatality system – new blog
Once upon a time there was an idea at Ensemble to include a fatality kills system into Halo Wars (think Mortal Combat, Street Fighter). Charles Tinney an animator on Halo Wars talks about what these might of looked like and includes some animation drawings and video. Surprisingly the videos are in Quicktime format, despite the Halo Wars website being a Microsoft owned site!
Heres an extract and a link below:
There are two animations I want to focus on in this production diary. I want to highlight these because I took time to thumbnail and choreograph them; which is typically something I don’t have time to do at a video game studio. So, I really tried to get it right. Both of these are exploratory animations developed to have a loose visual guideline for what the fatality system would look like. Fatalities in Halo Wars happen when one awesome melee powerhouse, such as the Arbiter, kills one of the other infantry units.
http://www.halowars.com/news/devblog/archive/2009/06/12/Animation-Exploration.aspx
