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San Rafael, CA – Autodesk Inc. has announced that Montreal game developer Artificial Mind & Movement (A2M) has relied on several Autodesk software applications to create the game’s new title. WET. The characters and levels in the game were created using Autodesk Maya and Autodesk MotionBuilder 3D animation software. Autodesk Kynapse middleware was used to implement artificial intelligence (AI) to drive the game’s many non-playable characters.
Rubi, the main character of the third-person shooter, is a spirited problem-repairer trying to figure out who dubbed her and why. It combines shooting, acrobatics and the sword to fight enemies. The game’s dual targeting system allows players to control one of Rubi’s weapons and automatically target the other.
With a combination of photorealistic 3D and stylized graphic novel-style visuals, the look and feel of the game can be compared to movies such as Kill Bill, Desperado, and City of sin, said a representative. In key moments, Rubi goes into “Rage Mode” and gets faster and stronger; and the in-game graphics transform into a minimalist color scheme with enemies in contrasting colors.
Using Autodesk Kynapse allowed A2M to focus their development efforts on the creative side of the game and high-level game interactions, rather than the tedious path finding and location processes.
“Our main philosophy when it comes to developer tools has always been that if they’re good and they already exist with the right price, why reinvent it? This is why we have chosen to work with Kynapse as an AI engine for WET. In the game, the player faces a large number of enemies. We needed a whereabouts and whereabouts system to control decision making for these characters in a consistent manner, â€says Martin Walker, CTO, A2M. “Kynapse has a fantastic concealment algorithm
and disperse enemies naturally in all environments. “
Maintaining a stable and consistent pipeline from one title to another is essential for A2M. With a workforce of 500 people and a dozen projects per year, standardization on reliable, ready-to-use tools like Maya is essential. MotionBuilder has also been used extensively by the A2M team to help improve motion captured footage.
“MotionBuilder has been used extensively to clean up motion capture data,†says Walker. Also, when we did our mo-cap, we weren’t sure which villain would take which move. With MotionBuilder, we were able to retarget the motion data to different characters even though the skeleton data wasn’t necessarily a match. perfect. It saved a lot of time and experimentation. “
WET is A2M’s first mature ranked game title. “Titles like WET are almost interactive movies at this point, and the quality of the content is more important than ever. So if we can optimize our pipelines to allow more
iterations at a faster pace, so we have a head start. Tools like Autodesk Maya, MotionBuilder, and Kynapse help us achieve this, â€says Walker.
Posted by Bethesda Softworks, WET released on September 15, 2009. The game was written by Duppy Demetrius and actress Eliza Dushku (“Dollhouse” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) voices the game’s main protagonist, Rubi Malone.
Images (C) 2009 WET, Artificial Spirit and Movement. (C) 2009 Bethesda Softworks. Image courtesy of Artificial Mind and Movement.
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