Interviews with the developers of the free game "The Tale of Pyatigor"
In March 2016, a new, fully open browser game "The Tale of Pyatigor", made exclusively with the help of free tools, was published. Its creators are the developers of the domestic Blend4Web WebGL framework. This is the first game made with this engine. It is important that it is not a priority project of the development team. Moreover, the lion’s share of the work was done by just two people: 3D artist Mikhail Luzyanin and programmer Yevgeny Rodygin. The game was colorful, but not without flaws. The project caused a flurry of comments on various resources with polar opinions from “thanks to the developers” to “to the firebox”.
Nevertheless, this game is colorful and saturated with three-dimensional graphics, it demonstrates the possibilities of WebGL, both positive and negative. I propose to "listen" to a small conversation with its main creators.
First I want to congratulate you on the release of the game. I know that this is the first major game project from the developers of Blend4Web. The game caused an ambiguous reaction of users, but we will return to this, but for now let's get to the sources.
')
Mikhail Luzyanin: Yes, it was nice to read a lot of different reactions. Especially negative :)
We will return to the reaction a little later, but for now I have my first question. Work on the project began, if I am not mistaken, in 2014. Why was this particular genre chosen, where did the idea of ​​lava golems and a man jumping with a sword come from?
Mikhail Luzyanin: We have chosen the arcade in order not to bother much with the gameplay. Our goal, above all, was to demonstrate the suitability of the engine for creating games, that is, to show the capabilities of the API and graphics. In the arcade, you can get by with some minimal means of building game logic. Of course, there are different arcades, but we wanted to somehow minimize this part.
Evgeny Rodygin: I will add that the project is very spontaneous. At first, we were not going to make the game. Just wanted to make a third-person programmatic example.
M.L .: The story began with the idea that Yura, our manager, had an idea to create a series of articles for game developers, such as “where to start”. Zhenya came to me with this task, and we began to think.
A lot of things were planned: the flying dragon, and some complicated bonus system with points depending on time. But then they stopped on several islands and golems that climb out of the lava. I did not want to make a bloodthirsty game in the manner of modern handicrafts, so I chose inanimate creatures as objects for shredding.
The game has very stylish, colorful graphics for my taste. A lot of small details, you can see a lot of man-hours spent, and how many people actually were involved in the project?
ML: At first, as an artist, I worked on it alone, then I hooked up a concept artist who painted golems, but practically the whole first level was made only by me. When working with the second level, one more our artist, Eugene, came to the rescue, and made the process a bit easier by working on various small objects. But the introductory scene, we have done almost the entire team especially at the end, and we should not forget about our student during the practice of Pierre Merval.
The most cool thing that meets the user is the prologue or the “beginnings”. The most ambiguous is a screensaver with a balalaika on a cart that goes somewhere for a long time. Admit it, who invented it?
I actually looked through the entire path of the cart movement twice, until I realized that it was going in a circle!
YR: This is all a flight of fancy from Misha. He is a screenwriter, director, and orchestra.
In general, about ambiguity - this is true. The greatest number of bugs in people arose with this screensaver. One flying balalaika is worth something.
ML: Well, 90% of this occurred in my head. Then someone else suggested something. But basically, everything matured at home on one sleepless night, and I immediately began to translate ideas into a project.
I wanted to create the atmosphere of the screensaver, cozy and peaceful, so that one could just meditate contemplating it for some time.
It turned out. I have long contemplated ...
Let's go back to the “conception” ... Very long, beautiful, good camera work - a whole cartoon with a plot. But it would be much easier, perhaps, to render the scene and show the video. Why was chosen such a real-time "cartoon"?
ML: I really didn’t want to make some kind of video. I wanted to show that this is not a simple menu, but the fact that it is tightly connected with the game and the game world, even if it is not very big here. A kind of imitation of the living interactive world. And of course, I wanted to demonstrate that on our engine you can make very complex interweaving and interpenetration between scenes, animation and a variety of content.
Let us turn to the technical part. At first glance, the game uses a lot of all sorts of developer stuff to attract the player’s gaze. Trees sway with grass, leaves fly, i.e. the particles. And so, what interesting and unusual decisions would you single out in this game?
E.R .: Pumping trees, grass, particles and other effects - this is what was already in the engine. Specifically, we did not work on them additionally. If we talk about the software part, then the most difficult thing is the golem's intellect, for which I spent the most time. There both physics and ray tracing and decision making (albeit in a relatively simple form) If we talk about graphics, then perhaps the most interesting thing was to make it work on the GTX-980 and on the old iPhone. We had to dynamically adjust the parameters for different devices. Actually, here, too, much fell on the shoulders of Misha. Because even at the design stage of materials, our artist decides where to make simplifications for mobile phones.
M.L .: As far as I remember, many effects appeared in the engine, just in the process of developing Pyatigor, for example, the same animated world (environment) - before this was not the case. Animation of the light source type Sun and a lot more on the little things.
We smoothly move to the sore subject - performance. A lot of comments on the network that the game shamelessly slows down on different systems. Unfortunately, I have not found any requirements for iron anywhere. Although, personally, my game was launched on Ubuntu, and on Windows on different configurations. But many even with top-end video cards had a slideshow. What are the reasons?
E.R .: In general, the main reason is that WebGL is still a relatively new technology for the web, and as a result, browsers do not behave perfectly on all hardware / driver combinations. For example, a large number of problems arise for users with mobile cards, since the system needs to be “explained” that the browser will now draw not two-dimensional web pages, but will show the most natural realtime 3D.
There were still problems with godless memory consumption. Is this a feature of the engine or WebGL in general as a whole, or maybe something third?
E.R .: Yes, there is such a moment. This is primarily manifested in FireFox, which has problems with leaking memory. On this issue, we have already written to the guys from Mozilla. Well, Pyatigor itself uses quite a lot of resources. There are tons of textures, meshes and other weighty data. Users are not confused that many modern games require 8gb of RAM?
I agree. Modern games are resource intensive, but is it possible to expect a full game for mobile platforms?
ER: Now you can run on both locations, if you have a fairly fresh smartphone. On my HTC, the game works very well.
As for the "intro", we decided to turn it off, because it is still too heavy a scene for mobile phones.
The game is positioned as Open Source, but tell us a little about your working tools. Rumor has it that everyone in your company uses exclusively free applications?
E.R .: It is. This is part of our ideology, so to speak. We all work in Linux. Artists and 3D modelers use Blender, GIMP, Krita and other open utilities. I think Misha can tell more about this, because my main “hammer” is the text editor Vim.
M.L .: All artworks, and not only artworks, we perform in open source programs. In terms of our scope of work and tasks, these programs do an excellent job with it. Blender on its head still surpasses its fellow Open Source (this is my opinion), which are not always suitable for commercial use, although I also love and use them. But Blender stands out, he is quite mature and I started using it in previous work to visualize new developments in the bus industry. In principle, no one even knew about it, that I switched from the well-known three-letter program to Blender and LuxRender. For our own tasks, this Blender property as “all-in-one” is very tempting: modeling, baking, sculpting, and even exporting to the engine takes a few clicks. So, while designing something, I am already at the very earliest stages driving the scene to the engine and looking at how it will look there. Very comfortably.
Gimp and Krita do an excellent job with their tasks, especially I liked the last time Krita for preparing textures. Audacity is great for creating and editing audio files easily.
Earlier you said that at first the game was positioned as a “demonstration of the engine's work”, but, as it seems to me, the project turned into something more. How is her future planned? Create a community, introduce social functions. What awaits the game next?
ML: In our team (from the sending of the leadership), ideas are about to create a separate community around the game. A start has already been made. We released the game not in the form of an application among other demo scenes on the site of our engine, but as a separate full-fledged application with its website and positioning it, first of all, as a full-fledged game made on WebGL. If there is interest from people in this project, we plan to create a community with our own forum. It is possible, with the involvement of people on an ongoing basis who will be engaged in the further development of the game, to organize various competitions among the community. From the results of these contests and simply the suggestions of users and their content, a further continuation of Pyatigor will be created. Maybe the next level, or maybe it will already be a game with a more open world and complex mechanics! But this is still only in the plans and the fate of Pyatigor is not finally decided.
Plans to create a completely open game from the community and for the community. That everyone could participate in its development. Perhaps this will be a basic platform for creating your own game. The Internet often lacks full-fledged examples from which one could push off.
In due time, when I started playing igrostroi, it was very difficult to find some impressive and even adequate open examples. I would like Pyatigor to become such an example for newbies.
Y.R .: Actually, we have already created separate groups on Vkontakte and Facebook dedicated to Pyatigor, in which we will cover news related to it, and attract interested people.
As they say, "wait and see." I can't help but wonder if there are any ideas in the plans of Blend4Web developers about creating new games?
ML.: A year ago, we announced the development of an even larger Capri gaming application, and as I understand it, management still has plans to bring this project to the end.
Y.R .: Pyatigor has caused, though not a definite, but nonetheless a very hot reaction in our community. So igrodel - this is what we will definitely do. Every day, one of us says: "And let's do ...", where instead of a triple-point, an idea about creating an interesting game project.
However, everything takes time. First we will finalize Pyatigor. Let's add some interesting pieces to the gameplay, and then, we will surely take on the new project.
Well said. "The Tale of Pyatigor", albeit with some shortcomings, still went into "free" swimming. Good luck to him and thank you for your time.
From myself I will add that The Tale of Pyatigor is a truly unique project entirely created using Open Source programs. Let the plot be flawed somewhere, the animation “floats” and there are some brakes in the browser, but the work itself and the scale of the accomplished deserves at least attention. Almost 500 mb of source code (blend files, sounds, textures, scripts) laid out under the GPL v.3 license on the developer’s website.
Nevertheless, this game is colorful and saturated with three-dimensional graphics, it demonstrates the possibilities of WebGL, both positive and negative. I propose to "listen" to a small conversation with its main creators.
First I want to congratulate you on the release of the game. I know that this is the first major game project from the developers of Blend4Web. The game caused an ambiguous reaction of users, but we will return to this, but for now let's get to the sources.
')
Mikhail Luzyanin: Yes, it was nice to read a lot of different reactions. Especially negative :)
We will return to the reaction a little later, but for now I have my first question. Work on the project began, if I am not mistaken, in 2014. Why was this particular genre chosen, where did the idea of ​​lava golems and a man jumping with a sword come from?
Mikhail Luzyanin: We have chosen the arcade in order not to bother much with the gameplay. Our goal, above all, was to demonstrate the suitability of the engine for creating games, that is, to show the capabilities of the API and graphics. In the arcade, you can get by with some minimal means of building game logic. Of course, there are different arcades, but we wanted to somehow minimize this part.
Evgeny Rodygin: I will add that the project is very spontaneous. At first, we were not going to make the game. Just wanted to make a third-person programmatic example.
M.L .: The story began with the idea that Yura, our manager, had an idea to create a series of articles for game developers, such as “where to start”. Zhenya came to me with this task, and we began to think.
A lot of things were planned: the flying dragon, and some complicated bonus system with points depending on time. But then they stopped on several islands and golems that climb out of the lava. I did not want to make a bloodthirsty game in the manner of modern handicrafts, so I chose inanimate creatures as objects for shredding.
The game has very stylish, colorful graphics for my taste. A lot of small details, you can see a lot of man-hours spent, and how many people actually were involved in the project?
ML: At first, as an artist, I worked on it alone, then I hooked up a concept artist who painted golems, but practically the whole first level was made only by me. When working with the second level, one more our artist, Eugene, came to the rescue, and made the process a bit easier by working on various small objects. But the introductory scene, we have done almost the entire team especially at the end, and we should not forget about our student during the practice of Pierre Merval.
The most cool thing that meets the user is the prologue or the “beginnings”. The most ambiguous is a screensaver with a balalaika on a cart that goes somewhere for a long time. Admit it, who invented it?
I actually looked through the entire path of the cart movement twice, until I realized that it was going in a circle!
YR: This is all a flight of fancy from Misha. He is a screenwriter, director, and orchestra.
In general, about ambiguity - this is true. The greatest number of bugs in people arose with this screensaver. One flying balalaika is worth something.
ML: Well, 90% of this occurred in my head. Then someone else suggested something. But basically, everything matured at home on one sleepless night, and I immediately began to translate ideas into a project.
I wanted to create the atmosphere of the screensaver, cozy and peaceful, so that one could just meditate contemplating it for some time.
It turned out. I have long contemplated ...
Let's go back to the “conception” ... Very long, beautiful, good camera work - a whole cartoon with a plot. But it would be much easier, perhaps, to render the scene and show the video. Why was chosen such a real-time "cartoon"?
ML: I really didn’t want to make some kind of video. I wanted to show that this is not a simple menu, but the fact that it is tightly connected with the game and the game world, even if it is not very big here. A kind of imitation of the living interactive world. And of course, I wanted to demonstrate that on our engine you can make very complex interweaving and interpenetration between scenes, animation and a variety of content.
Let us turn to the technical part. At first glance, the game uses a lot of all sorts of developer stuff to attract the player’s gaze. Trees sway with grass, leaves fly, i.e. the particles. And so, what interesting and unusual decisions would you single out in this game?
E.R .: Pumping trees, grass, particles and other effects - this is what was already in the engine. Specifically, we did not work on them additionally. If we talk about the software part, then the most difficult thing is the golem's intellect, for which I spent the most time. There both physics and ray tracing and decision making (albeit in a relatively simple form) If we talk about graphics, then perhaps the most interesting thing was to make it work on the GTX-980 and on the old iPhone. We had to dynamically adjust the parameters for different devices. Actually, here, too, much fell on the shoulders of Misha. Because even at the design stage of materials, our artist decides where to make simplifications for mobile phones.
M.L .: As far as I remember, many effects appeared in the engine, just in the process of developing Pyatigor, for example, the same animated world (environment) - before this was not the case. Animation of the light source type Sun and a lot more on the little things.
We smoothly move to the sore subject - performance. A lot of comments on the network that the game shamelessly slows down on different systems. Unfortunately, I have not found any requirements for iron anywhere. Although, personally, my game was launched on Ubuntu, and on Windows on different configurations. But many even with top-end video cards had a slideshow. What are the reasons?
E.R .: In general, the main reason is that WebGL is still a relatively new technology for the web, and as a result, browsers do not behave perfectly on all hardware / driver combinations. For example, a large number of problems arise for users with mobile cards, since the system needs to be “explained” that the browser will now draw not two-dimensional web pages, but will show the most natural realtime 3D.
There were still problems with godless memory consumption. Is this a feature of the engine or WebGL in general as a whole, or maybe something third?
E.R .: Yes, there is such a moment. This is primarily manifested in FireFox, which has problems with leaking memory. On this issue, we have already written to the guys from Mozilla. Well, Pyatigor itself uses quite a lot of resources. There are tons of textures, meshes and other weighty data. Users are not confused that many modern games require 8gb of RAM?
I agree. Modern games are resource intensive, but is it possible to expect a full game for mobile platforms?
ER: Now you can run on both locations, if you have a fairly fresh smartphone. On my HTC, the game works very well.
As for the "intro", we decided to turn it off, because it is still too heavy a scene for mobile phones.
The game is positioned as Open Source, but tell us a little about your working tools. Rumor has it that everyone in your company uses exclusively free applications?
E.R .: It is. This is part of our ideology, so to speak. We all work in Linux. Artists and 3D modelers use Blender, GIMP, Krita and other open utilities. I think Misha can tell more about this, because my main “hammer” is the text editor Vim.
M.L .: All artworks, and not only artworks, we perform in open source programs. In terms of our scope of work and tasks, these programs do an excellent job with it. Blender on its head still surpasses its fellow Open Source (this is my opinion), which are not always suitable for commercial use, although I also love and use them. But Blender stands out, he is quite mature and I started using it in previous work to visualize new developments in the bus industry. In principle, no one even knew about it, that I switched from the well-known three-letter program to Blender and LuxRender. For our own tasks, this Blender property as “all-in-one” is very tempting: modeling, baking, sculpting, and even exporting to the engine takes a few clicks. So, while designing something, I am already at the very earliest stages driving the scene to the engine and looking at how it will look there. Very comfortably.
Gimp and Krita do an excellent job with their tasks, especially I liked the last time Krita for preparing textures. Audacity is great for creating and editing audio files easily.
Earlier you said that at first the game was positioned as a “demonstration of the engine's work”, but, as it seems to me, the project turned into something more. How is her future planned? Create a community, introduce social functions. What awaits the game next?
ML: In our team (from the sending of the leadership), ideas are about to create a separate community around the game. A start has already been made. We released the game not in the form of an application among other demo scenes on the site of our engine, but as a separate full-fledged application with its website and positioning it, first of all, as a full-fledged game made on WebGL. If there is interest from people in this project, we plan to create a community with our own forum. It is possible, with the involvement of people on an ongoing basis who will be engaged in the further development of the game, to organize various competitions among the community. From the results of these contests and simply the suggestions of users and their content, a further continuation of Pyatigor will be created. Maybe the next level, or maybe it will already be a game with a more open world and complex mechanics! But this is still only in the plans and the fate of Pyatigor is not finally decided.
Plans to create a completely open game from the community and for the community. That everyone could participate in its development. Perhaps this will be a basic platform for creating your own game. The Internet often lacks full-fledged examples from which one could push off.
In due time, when I started playing igrostroi, it was very difficult to find some impressive and even adequate open examples. I would like Pyatigor to become such an example for newbies.
Y.R .: Actually, we have already created separate groups on Vkontakte and Facebook dedicated to Pyatigor, in which we will cover news related to it, and attract interested people.
As they say, "wait and see." I can't help but wonder if there are any ideas in the plans of Blend4Web developers about creating new games?
ML.: A year ago, we announced the development of an even larger Capri gaming application, and as I understand it, management still has plans to bring this project to the end.
Y.R .: Pyatigor has caused, though not a definite, but nonetheless a very hot reaction in our community. So igrodel - this is what we will definitely do. Every day, one of us says: "And let's do ...", where instead of a triple-point, an idea about creating an interesting game project.
However, everything takes time. First we will finalize Pyatigor. Let's add some interesting pieces to the gameplay, and then, we will surely take on the new project.
Well said. "The Tale of Pyatigor", albeit with some shortcomings, still went into "free" swimming. Good luck to him and thank you for your time.
From myself I will add that The Tale of Pyatigor is a truly unique project entirely created using Open Source programs. Let the plot be flawed somewhere, the animation “floats” and there are some brakes in the browser, but the work itself and the scale of the accomplished deserves at least attention. Almost 500 mb of source code (blend files, sounds, textures, scripts) laid out under the GPL v.3 license on the developer’s website.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/392527/
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