Developers are taking to social media to share weird anecdotes about how certain game mechanics work behind the scenes, including former BioWare developer Georg Zoeller.
In the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, “Explosive barrels are filled with shrunken invisible people, as only people are a valid source of damage,” Zoeller explains in a message shared on Twitter by Ubisoft’s Palle Hoffstein. “Yes, that’s right, someone gets blown to pieces every time you shoot an exploding barrel.”
Zoeller says that these invisible people were at first “complex models with transparency applied”, but that took the frame rate out of the game, leading to a search-and-destroy mission to replace them and save on performance.
On the Knights of the Old Republic, Zoeller Explain (opens in a new tab)“all global lookup variables on a certain planet were stored in a non-target ambient creature. Turns out AOE effects could still acquire the creature and kill it, breaking your game.”
BioWare used a similar trick with Mass Effect (opens in a new tab), also. Zoeller just says “oh my gosh. They’re invisible creatures everywhere that make everything work.” (I’m guessing this means the Guardians go way beyond the Citadel.)
Zoeller also has an extended note about how many features were combined in Neverwinter Nights, but it stands out a bit: in the DLC, “your horse is actually a cape.”
These kinds of anecdotes from game developers have been shared all over social media this week. We’ve learned how Fallout 3 was based on an illusory mansion that constantly explodes, and how the horses in the original Assassin’s Creed are “just fucking twisted human skeletons.”
the best bioware games they seem to rely on some pretty creative tricks, and it seems that sort of thing isn’t unusual in game development.
