Game difference
Dzwinel’s love of entertainment in the 80’s inspired him to design combat with exciting counterattacks, a variety of weapons, a brutal (and sometimes entertaining) finisher, and a unique multi-directional combat system. But what makes this game really unique is how Dzwinel and Jacobus worked together to achieve an action style.
Match played in Humble
Jacobus has been monitoring the progress of the game long before joining MFE through a series of posts by Dzwinel showing the core loops of the gameplay engine. Jacobus told his business partner and executive producer Zac Swartout: Let’s contact this guy. The problem was that Jacobus gave up hunting because Dzwinel, the only developer in Poland, seemed almost unreachable. But one day, Humble Games contacted Jacobus and asked if he was interested in doing motion capture on his publicly available games. When it turned out to be the Midnight Fight Express, Jacobs jumped at the opportunity.
Motion capture during session
After the referral call, Jacobus and Dzwinel decided to shoot a four-day motion capture. In the meantime, the team will perform 300 planned shots, including combos, parry, finishers, environmental attacks, and enemy movements. As the shooting date began, Jacobs and Zwinel realized that there was a misunderstanding. Each move had to be carried out against enemies in the north, south, east and west. There were no 300 shots. 1,200 shots were made in 4 days. “It doesn’t matter,” said Jacobs, a longtime stunt associate and co-star with his friend Fernando Jay Huert. “Jay and I have been working together for decades. We need to get every shot on the first take.”
In the course of four days of intense motion capture, the team narrowed down the 300 shots they needed each day.
Action design process
Dzwinel organized the battle with loose parameters. The hero engages the enemy, the hero finishes, and the enemy dies. Jacobus and his team were allowed to fill the rest. Dzwinel took part in the shoot on Skype via a laptop, keeping the motion capture team within range of the combat system. When designing the action, Jacobus knew that the tone had to be fun. “Audiences have enough super-serious action games and movies. MFE can be the release of the catharsis they need by focusing on ridiculous movements as well as physically exciting movements. There is sex. “Jacobus and Huerto suggest their ridiculous idea, and Dzwinel says it’s too long, too short, crazy, or (more often) crazy enough. prize.
Mocaping 300 action shots per day
Jacobus and Huerto knew they were busy with time. With a goal of 300 shots per day, we completed shot list confirmation, movement choreography, movement confirmation by Jacob, shot slate, motion capture execution, take execution, and cut in just 1.6 minutes per shot. They speeded up the creative process by creating a system for the Cardinal’s direction: the north included a brawl because it was head-on. To the west was Eric’s first martial arts style, taekwondo. The south side was Muay Thai, which was suitable for attacking with blind shots. And on the east side, another style that Eric knew, Hapkido, was mixed with Wrestling, a specialty of Welt.
Know your combat engine
After the first four days of motion capture shooting, Jacobus and the team were asked to perform an additional 40 finishers with the game’s pistol and shotgun weapons. This time, with 4 hours of motion capture, it took 6 minutes to complete each shot. Despite a more relaxed schedule, Jacobus devised more than 50 finishers in advance to complete everything from cool pistols, acrobatic disarmament, and flashy melee shotgun attacks. did.
Unfortunately, Jacobus soon discovered another unexpected curve ball. The MFE engine fixed the weapon in the right hand, but all Jacobus finishers involved the weapon moving away from the right hand. So once again, Jacobs thought quickly on his feet, and he and Jacob reconsidered all 40 finishers and completed earlier than planned. What are the important points? Know the combat engine before you previs!
Put everything together
Due to the end of the motion capture process, Dzwinel had to integrate all motion capture animations into the MFE. Dzwinel had hand-animated combat movements, but now he can play with over 1200 animations. When integrating animations, Dzwinel says it was a simple process. “The process of integrating all the animations in a motion capture session was so easy that I was able to put them into the game, cut the animations to the required length and get them working within minutes. Had a lot of them, so I was able to choose from the best takes and give the combat system a lot of variation. “
A bright new future for action games
Jacobus considers games like MFE to be a sign of a sea of change in game development. “Until now, developers haven’t given much control to the action team. Now we’re integrated into the project like a development company. In fact, our action team is more than the entire development team. It was big! “
Dzwinel points out the importance of the diversity of Midnight Fight Express. “Midnight Fight Express is very exciting because of the number of animations. It was a great experience for me to have the opportunity to work with Eric and his team. Without his help, where I am now. We did something special together. We hope people will enjoy the many things they can do with Midnight Fight Express. ”
Jacobus describes how Dzwinel laid the foundation for a collaborative experience. “He created a process that allowed us to come up with as many ideas as possible, and the better it is, the better. After the main shoot, I secretly combo with miscellaneous movements. I captured and sent it to Jacob. I didn’t want to end the motion capture process. If Humble didn’t ask me to stop, I would be mocapping this game today as well. “
Midnight Fight Express will be available on PS4 on August 23rd.
