User Info

silicon-knights collection | wishlist Blog Posts: 23
Comments: 474
Blog Created: Apr '06

Blog Tools

» Most Recent Posts
» Add Friend

New Post

Friends

CraigMurda-IGN Last Post: 1/23/07 View Notes

docmongo21 Last Post: 1/23/07 View Notes

anihl8r Last Post: 7/26/06 View Notes

oldinuitwoman Last Post: 11/21/06 View Notes

mariostoadstool Last Post: 9/29/06 View Notes

LazyPlanetSlayer Last Post: 1/15/07 View Notes

Jehuty20xx Last Post: 1/26/07 View Notes

lbuchanan Last Post: 1/24/07 View Notes

fenixazul Last Post: 1/27/07 View Notes

Ottsel Last Post: 1/27/07 View Notes

the_triz Last Post: 6/18/06 View Notes

riskbreaker Last Post: 1/27/07 View Notes

big_E24 Last Post: 1/27/07 View Notes

ScOtTiLeS Last Post: 10/17/06 View Notes

Comrade-Mongoose Last Post: 8/9/06 View Notes

View All

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Blog #22 - The Ice Bucket

Denis Dyack
Director

Being the voice of Silicon Knights can really expose you. I really like interacting with gamers over forums. Many co-workers often ask me, “Why post in forums? They can be so ugly.” It is true that posters on forums can be nasty. However, for all the bad there is always some good to be found. I feel the pain is worth the gain.

Last year’s E3 was very painful. I am glad it is dead. I am going speak about E3 for the last time in these blogs. In order to do this, I am going to tell you a personal story that happened many years ago so you can at least get some insight into my character and the people at Silicon Knights.

I have 3 degrees. I have a degree in Computer Science (H. B. Sc) and a Masters Degree in Computer Science (M. Sc.). The degree that might surprise many is my degree in Physical Education (B. Phed). Believe it or not, I was extremely athletic before I started Silicon Knights: I was a full contact Canadian Tae Kwon Do champion; studied Jeet Kune Do, various styles of Karate, Kung Fu, and Savate; and was a varsity wrestler. Actually, Brock University, where I wrestled, has probably the best wrestling team in Canada and some of my wrestling friends have gone on to the Olympics and fight in the UFC. The guys at Nintendo used to get a kick out of this aspect of my “former” life.

My three degrees displayed on what I call “The Wall of the Industry”: Creativity, education and warfare. All necessary tools of the trade…

Many people ask me why I took Phys Ed and the answer is quite simple: I wanted to wrestle at Brock. Phys Ed made sense – I could work out like crazy, wrestle for the varsity team, and take classes where physical activity was part of the package. I excelled in this area, so it was a natural fit. As all you eager students and alumni know, during university you often have to volunteer for experiments or studies. I did many of these for psychology classes, but the one I remember most was a kinesiology study I like to call “The Ice Bucket”.

1988 picture of the Brock Team. That’s me 3rd from the far right. On the right in red is Richard Deschateletes – the coach then. Richard beat the world champion (Russian) the year Canada boycotted the Olympics. 1st middle left is Marty Calder, also good friend and current coach of the team. He also went to the Olympics a few times. Brain, Kenny, Fergus, Joe, all good friends. Dave, Paul, Jeff and Kimin are missing from this picture but can be seen in several others on the site. We are all very close friends today.

Rewind to 1989:

I walk toward the study area, a varsity hockey player walks out of the room. His exposed arm is a very deep red. It looks severely sunburned. He looks at me and says, “Man, that was brutal. I’ll never do that again.”

I walk into the room somewhat perplexed. (It happens to be same room where I train for wrestling. Mats are on the walls and rolled up on each end of the room.) In the center of the room is the experimenter. He is a professor of Kinesiology. He is sitting on a chair beside a very large bucket of water filled with ice. Actually, a bucket might be the wrong word, a barrel is more appropriate, as it is about the size of a large keg of beer. He takes the temperature of the water and asks me to sit down in a chair beside the ice bucket. I sit.

He looks at me and starts the typical study introduction. He has likely done this many times before. Usually the introduction tone is pretty flat from boredom, but in this case he makes careful eye contact and says, “If you feel extreme pain at any time, do not hesitate to pull your arm out.” The hockey player’s red arm instantly makes more sense.

He looks at me and asks if I am ready. I reflexively answer, “I was born ready.” It was a wrestling thing. I know, what can I say, I was young. He says, “Ok, please roll up your sleeve and put your arm in the water past your elbow as far up as you feel comfortable.”

I laugh as I put my arm in the bucket. The shock of cold is sharp and the chill runs so deep that I feel the wave of cold go through my chest and head.

He looks at me inquisitively, “How do you feel?”

I respond, “It is very cold”.

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes, very much so.”

“If it hurts too much, do not hesitate to take your arm out.”

“I’m fine for now.”

“But you said it hurts.”

“It does, quite a bit.”

He smiles and looks at some notes and does not bother to say anything for another 30 seconds after staring at a stop watch. These intervals of questioning are planned carefully and timed.

“How does your arm feel?”

“It is cold and hurts a lot,” I say with a smile.

“Does it hurt more then before?”

I pause for a second and say, “Yes, the pain seems to be increasing.”

“If it hurts too much, do not hesitate to take your arm out.”

“I am fine for now.”

This continues for 5 minutes. Same questions, same answers and the cold and pain does not let up.

“How does your arm feel?”

“It’s cold and it hurts…”

10 minutes and then 15 minutes go by…

Finally, he says, “Please pull out your arm. We do not want you to get any tissue damage.”

I pull my arm out and it hurts from the shock of the warm air. I look at my red skin and now fully appreciate its significance. He looks at me and shakes his head and smiles to himself. “Ok, I must remind you not to talk to anyone about this, or you risk losing your credit for doing this study.”

I respond, “No problem. I know the drill. I have done many studies before. However, I really would like to know what you are testing besides making my arm very cold”

He laughs and says, “Sure, I would love to talk to you about it, but you are going to have see me in a couple weeks after the study is complete to insure that you do not bias the study with what I tell you.”

“Sure,” I say, “I’ll catch up with you in a few weeks.”

One month passes and I happen to see the professor of Kinesiology in the hall of the Phys Ed complex. “Hey there,” I say, “Remember me?”

“Oh, I do indeed. The inquisitive wrestler. Are you still interested in the study?”

“I am,” I respond.

He dives right in with excitement, “Well, we were doing a study on pain receptors and pain thresholds. You see, there are some schools of thought that believe that the highest caliber athletes can perform better because they do not feel pain like average people and can therefore push their bodies harder to perform. We wanted to test if this was true. So, we tested athletes and non athletes with this ice bucket to see if the athletes felt less pain than the non athletes.”

This was not what I expected. “What did you find?” I asked.

“We found that athletes and non athletes generally seemed to feel the same amount of pain. The results do not support the hypothesis that athletes perform better because they somehow do not feel the same amount of pain.”

“Furthermore, although athletes felt the same amount of pain, they are more willing to tolerate more pain for extended periods of time then non athletes. Actually, you wrestlers were surprising. Not a single wrestler on your team would take his arm out of the bucket until we told them to. The hockey player who came in before you didn’t last 2 minutes.” This last part did not surprise me at all.

Skip forward to E3 2006:

It is a week before the show, and we already know the Too Human E3 demo is not what it should be going into E3. We are disappointed and tired. So many technical problems, so many sleepless nights trying to fix so many of these problems, but they never stop coming. I remember speaking to Ray from Bioware the night before the show. He asked me my thoughts on tech and I respond, “We are going to take some damage.”

Why did we go to the show given this scenario? There are many answers, but I’ll respond simply with we did, and we can’t take it back. I guess we went in with the hope that people could overlook some of the technical issues and see the potential for Too Human. It is, after all, only a demo. We certainly thought that EGM would look on us favorably after seeing the game in a better state previously when they gave us a cover. Ultimately, we were incorrect.

Too Human EGM Cover from the result of seeing the game in February.

When you present at E3, you often schedule time for the press and time to look around at the other games. It is exhausting for everyone. I was originally scheduled to do 1.5 days of interviews out of the full 3 days, which is a lot of interviews and demos. However, once we saw the new trailer for the first time the day before E3 and the boards starting lighting up with thoughts on Too Human, James O’Reilly (Director of Technology), Ken Alguire (Assistant Lead Designer) and myself decided that we would do interviews for all 3 days. James and Ken played, while I talked.

Why? To get every bit of information and feedback we could out of the demo. I would ask what people thought of Too Human after seeing a demo, knowing the response would not likely be favorable. Many people were polite (thank you), some lied and some were blunt. Some saw the potential, which made “the ice bucket” more tolerable. Hundreds of times we heard criticisms like “the camera is too far out”, “the frame rate is bad”, etc …” It was cold and it hurt a lot. Only this time, the cold didn’t stop for 3 days. We will never forget what it was like.

We knew well before E3 that we would have to go dark and would not show the game for a long time. We knew it would be painful, but in the end worth it. We felt the pain would be worth the gain. We will weather our “Ice Bucket” and do whatever it takes to make Too Human great.

Since E3 we have not only fixed all of the problems we had going into the show, but we have made sweeping improvements across the board – multithreading, rendering, significantly better textures, seamless loading – all aimed at putting the Xbox 360 into overdrive. We have conducted focus tests on the game play, control, art and cameras, all aimed at making the game better. Soon we will start to reveal the story. We went into a very cold place in order to insure that Too Human’s next showing would receive a burning hot reception. Soon you will see this for yourself and our “ice bucket” experience will be over.

After “The Ice Bucket”: A direct dump from the Xbox 360 frame buffer off a new build of Too Human. Those with keen eye will notice soft shadows, 4x AA, atmospheric scattering, cloth.... Frame rate, camera and seamless loading are no longer problems.

Click here for full size image

Category: Too Human

Posted: 5:06 am by silicon-knights Rating: 46 4 Views: 14233

Reply Permalink Mark as Offensive

Comments (57)

1/25 5:31am, Sabre20000 posted:

Cool story, reminds me of my days playing football and attempts at wrestling in school. Went through training at NC State while I was in High School(way to short for it..lol).

Really looking forward to this game. I'm one of your biggest fans and applaud all the hard work. Heck, if it weren't for you guys my Gamecube wouldn't have got'n so much love happy

.

I know you guys strive to take games to the next level.

peace

Reply Mark as Offensive

1/25 6:20am, daviddoel posted:

Easily the best blog post so far! Great incite into E3 and your background, and that screenshot at the end was a nice treat. I just can't wait to see the game in motion, and I hope that happens soon. Game is looking beautiful, keep up the great work.

Reply Mark as Offensive

1/25 7:17am, mwgiii posted:

Excellent post!

While I was disappointed with the E3 showing, I have never lost faith in what SK can do. That is why Too Human is still in the #1 spot in my Wish List.

Reply Mark as Offensive

1/25 7:48am, tyrant5911 posted:

So is there any chance we will get a demo soon? happy

Reply Mark as Offensive

1/25 7:58am, Jerkface24 posted:

Nice post. Excellent new screen.

I saw the crap you had to put up with on GAF despite offering insight into an industry which all of them are obviously interested in.

Oh and can I ask about the AA in UE3? I seem to recall Mark Rein saying it was somewhat counter-productive due to the way it handles lighting? Is that one of the things you had to rewrite for yourselves?

Cheers

Reply Mark as Offensive

1/25 9:38am, lord_vynos posted:

Woah! This is gorgeous! I never lost faith in you guys.

The split with Nintendo was a hard hit to take, and I've probably insulted Denis's PR responsabilities my share of times, but in my heart it was out of deception more than hatred.

Now I own a 360, and Too Human is definitely amongst my most anticiped titles of 2007 (as you can see by my top 10 on the boards). All we'd need now is a new trailer, because... well the game is set to release soon right? I need to be more hyped!

And make this game rock!

Reply Mark as Offensive

1/25 10:02am, mocheeze posted:

Great blog Denis! Thanks for the personal insight on the matter of E3. I'm sure a lot of us were wondering how that felt, and now we know it felt like hypothermia. wink

Reply Mark as Offensive

1/25 10:52am, rergie posted:

"Creativity, education, and warfare."

Awesome. You're my new hero, Denis. I've been ooking forward to Too Human since it was revealed last spring.

Reply Mark as Offensive

1/25 10:55am, MojoBox posted:

Just out of curiosity, even with my super keen eyes, how am I supposed to notice that Framerate and Seamless loading or no longer issues from a Screenshot?

Reply Mark as Offensive

1/25 11:27am, MthdDirector posted:

Dennis,

I attended one of the break-out sessions at the E3 press conference.

Man, my heart went out to you guys. The one thing I took from that session is that this is a designer who wants to get it right. I think we shook hands and talked briefly - I know that I didn't lie when I said the production design was beautiful.

One thing I wish that I did, was to tell you to hang in there. I knew you were in for a rough E3, but you had a vision for this game that's so much bigger than a demo, and if you keep pursuing that, you guys will come out on top.

I wish I said that.

I'm glad the company went dark for a while...believe it or not, the fans are still here, and we can't wait to get our hands on the game!

Best of luck!

MthdDirector

Reply Mark as Offensive

Reload

My Blog Send to a Friend Help