Naughty Dog, Infinity Ward, and other devs praise Helldivers 2's stellar animations: "Give them awards

[Gamernyc78]

Naughty Dog, Infinity Ward, and other devs praise Helldivers 2's stellar animations: "Give them awards"

There's a lot of love for those ragdoll physics

www.gamesradar.com

Game developers are full of praise for Helldivers 2's character animations.

Helldivers 2 looks like a super tough third-person shooter on the surface, but it's got a wicked sense of humor, and I'm not just talking about its very on-the-nose satire. Players accidentally killing each other, getting crushed by dropships, and being sent flying across the ground by charging enemies combine for a game that's surprisingly funny in its actual combat.

In fact, that final point is what's got some developers talking about Helldivers 2 with glowing praise. Just below, you can see KindaFunny founder Greg Miller get sent flying backwards by a big bug, and this prompted Naughty Dog lead designer Michael Barclay to take note of its character animations, in particular the way Miller's character is sent flying backwards and then recovers.
Miller's Helldiver effortlessly passes over the top of the terrain, accounting for any outstretched surfaces as they go. There's no clipping, which means the entire character model collides passes over obstacles in its path instead of getting stuck on them and impeding progress.

The character's recovery from their "ragdoll" state is another point of praise from Barclay. The character finally comes to a stop almost in a sitting position, and from there they're able to stand themselves up on both feet, almost in one seamless transition like they'd planned the whole thing.

Other developers have also chimed in with praise for Helldivers 2's animation. "Yeah, they have a really nice transition from dive > ragdoll, based on the height in which you leap from," writes People Can Fly principal game designer Jamie Smith. "That is pretty cool," chimed in Infinity Ward game designer Steve Holmes.

 

[Alabtrosmyster]

If Naughty Dog praises your animation you know you are up to something.

 

[Gamernyc78]

If Naughty Dog praises your animation you know you are up to something.

I love this game coming out of nowhere and just being praised by gamers and professionals. It's a AA budgeted game thts only $40 but going against a beating bloated 100 plus million budgeted games. And it isn't bs this game is legit addicting and fun.

 

[Yurinka]

I love this game coming out of nowhere and just being praised by gamers and professionals. It's a AA budgeted game thts only $40 but going against a beating bloated 100 plus million budgeted games. And it isn't bs this game is legit addicting and fun.

8 years of development, many support teams resulting in a total staff of over 1000 people isn't a AA budget. This is AAA territory.

Maybe the environment art doesn't look like top tier because the terrain its procedurally generated and the game started to be developed a ton of years ago, but there's an insane amount of quality work and polish included here in many areas:

In terms of game design it has a top tier level design, missions design, weapon design, enemy design, gunplay / combat design, economy design, rewrads and progression design, economy design, many coop related mechanics, dynamics and features, the quality of the jokes included even in the store, gameplay and mission balancing. In the audio the composition, music, voice acting, foley, audio design is top tier too. In terms of art the character art, weapon art, enemy art, animation greatly combining mocap and physics, vfx art (those nukes and volumetric fog!) is top tier too, also the many combinations they have with the weather plus vegetation and day/night cycle for each biome.

And well, pretty likely they already have many other biomes, enemies types and races, features, mechanics, mission types etc. ready to be added in the future as post launch content, even if at launch it already has a shit ton of stuff

And well, how the high polish in many of these areas achieve the pure fun and addiction to go back and play more. It required a shit ton of work from a shit ton of people.

 

[Gamernyc78]

8 years of development, many support teams resulting in a total staff of over 1000 people isn't a AA budget. This is AAA territory.

Maybe the environment art doesn't look like top tier because the terrain its procedurally generated and the game started to be developed a ton of years ago, but there's an insane amount of quality work and polish included here in many areas:

In terms of game design it has a top tier level design, missions design, weapon design, enemy design, gunplay / combat design, economy design, rewrads and progression design, economy design, many coop related mechanics, dynamics and features, the quality of the jokes included even in the store, gameplay and mission balancing. In the audio the composition, music, voice acting, foley, audio design is top tier too. In terms of art the character art, weapon art, enemy art, animation greatly combining mocap and physics, vfx art (those nukes and volumetric fog!) is top tier too, also the many combinations they have with the weather plus vegetation and day/night cycle for each biome.

And well, pretty likely they already have many other biomes, enemies types and races, features, mechanics, mission types etc. ready to be added in the future as post launch content, even if at launch it already has a shit ton of stuff

And well, how the high polish in many of these areas achieve the pure fun and addiction to go back and play more. It required a shit ton of work from a shit ton of people.

We know what it could mean but tyt doesn't necessarily mean tht. I look forward to hearing about the budget.

 

[Yurinka]

We know what it could mean but tyt doesn't necessarily mean tht. I look forward to hearing about the budget.

What do 'tyt' and 'tht' mean? English is my 3rd language, sorry.

P.S.: The game credits can be seen in the pause menu when you are in the ship.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

8 years of development, many support teams resulting in a total staff of over 1000 people isn't a AA budget. This is AAA territory.

Maybe the environment art doesn't look like top tier because the terrain its procedurally generated and the game started to be developed a ton of years ago, but there's an insane amount of quality work and polish included here in many areas:

In terms of game design it has a top tier level design, missions design, weapon design, enemy design, gunplay / combat design, economy design, rewrads and progression design, economy design, many coop related mechanics, dynamics and features, the quality of the jokes included even in the store, gameplay and mission balancing. In the audio the composition, music, voice acting, foley, audio design is top tier too. In terms of art the character art, weapon art, enemy art, animation greatly combining mocap and physics, vfx art (those nukes and volumetric fog!) is top tier too, also the many combinations they have with the weather plus vegetation and day/night cycle for each biome.

And well, pretty likely they already have many other biomes, enemies types and races, features, mechanics, mission types etc. ready to be added in the future as post launch content, even if at launch it already has a shit ton of stuff

And well, how the high polish in many of these areas achieve the pure fun and addiction to go back and play more. It required a shit ton of work from a shit ton of people.

Length of development doesn't always indicate a AAA game; HiFi Rush was in development since 2017 and is squarely a AA-sized game. A small team working on a game while juggling other projects could lead to 6-8 year team sizes.

Also regarding this game's total team count, aren't most of the 1,000 people contract & outsourced? In that regard it could be AAA in budget but that doesn't mean it's nearing TLOU Part 2 or HFW budget counts. I'd like to think not, anyway; a major success for this game (aside the strong sales and player counts) would be them achieving this on a reasonably modest budget for a high AA/low-mid AAA type game.

I'm thinking anything between $65 - $100 million would be great in total dev costs.

 

[Gamernyc78]

What do 'tyt' and 'tht' mean? English is my 3rd language, sorry.

P.S.: The game credits can be seen in the pause menu when you are in the ship.

Thts a typo.

 

[Gamernyc78]

What do 'tyt' and 'tht' mean? English is my 3rd language, sorry.

P.S.: The game credits can be seen in the pause menu when you are in the ship.

Tht just stands for "that".

 

[Wraith Phantom]

Length of development doesn't always indicate a AAA game; HiFi Rush was in development since 2017 and is squarely a AA-sized game. A small team working on a game while juggling other projects could lead to 6-8 year team sizes.

Also regarding this game's total team count, aren't most of the 1,000 people contract & outsourced? In that regard it could be AAA in budget but that doesn't mean it's nearing TLOU Part 2 or HFW budget counts. I'd like to think not, anyway; a major success for this game (aside the strong sales and player counts) would be them achieving this on a reasonably modest budget for a high AA/low-mid AAA type game.

I'm thinking anything between $65 - $100 million would be great in total dev costs.

This is also their own engine. To build it and get it up to this level.Means they put in the work and grew organically. The games incredible people are playing on easy. So don't see the amount of enemies and effects that go on screen.

Incredible work from the team. It took years because they put in the time and delivered big time.

 

[Gamernyc78]

You can tell it was a labor of love and they put alot of focus on details as well.

 

[Yurinka]

Length of development doesn't always indicate a AAA game; HiFi Rush was in development since 2017 and is squarely a AA-sized game. A small team working on a game while juggling other projects could lead to 6-8 year team sizes.

In that regard it could be AAA in budget but that doesn't mean it's nearing TLOU Part 2 or HFW budget counts. I'd like to think not, anyway; a major success for this game (aside the strong sales and player counts) would be them achieving this on a reasonably modest budget for a high AA/low-mid AAA type game.

I'm thinking anything between $65 - $100 million would be great in total dev costs.

Hi-Fi Rush is also a AAA game. AA games are those normally made by aprox. several dozen or a few hundred people. Examples:

Stray 281
Sifu 290
Kena 371
Super Mario Wonder 435

AAA games can be split in 3 groups: the average/smaller/common/normal AAA games, where Hi-Fi Rush and Helldivers 2 are included, games with aprox 1000-2500 people:
Apex Legends 773
Dead Island 2 1,208
Returnal 1,365
Zelda TotK 1,408
Hi-Fi Rush 1,491
RE4 Remake 1,516
Ghostwire Tokyo 1,554
Gran Turismo 7 1,639
MLB The Show 23 1,658
Elden Ring 1,668
Ratchet Rift Apart 1,731
GoT 1,796
Street Fighter 6 1,847
Miles Morales 2,194
TLOU2 2,335

Then there are the very big AAA games, normally with aprox. 2500-3500 people:
GoWR 2,709
Star Wars Jedi Survivor 2,717
Mortal Kombat 1 2,764
BG3 2,944
Horizon Forbidden West 3,446
Hogwarts Legay 3,464
Spider-Man 2 3,820

Then the retardedly huge AAA teams of aprox. over 4000 people (also known as AAAA):
Starfield 4,037
AC Mirage 4,267
Overwatch 2 5,330
Fortnite 5,783
Diablo IV 9,169

Most people only works during a limited part of the development: some in a very short part, other ones in a larger part and some work in the entire development. But obviously to pay someone the salary of 1 year costs less than to pay that person 6 years of development. So yes, for the budget the amount of years is very important, as it is the amount of people. And in the case of marketing, the marketing budget which in case of big games is around half of the total budget. These are the 3 biggest points to calculate the budget of a game.

The amount of years and people needed to make a AAA game increases every generation. In the PS5 gen the typical was around from 1000/1500 to 2500 aprox. This generation we'lll see pretty likely a shift to 2500-5000 being the new normal and over 5000 people for the very big AAA games.

Also regarding this game's total team count, aren't most of the 1,000 people contract & outsourced?

Yes, like in almost all AAA games the lead dev studio has less than 10% (or around 10%) of the total people that appears in the game credits.

Being a Sony game, it means several internal support studios (Sony Cretive Arts teams are one of them plus everything related to publishing, marketing, localization, qa etc) and several external studios (typical outsourcing studios from any AAA game).

Thts a typo.

Tht just stands for "that".

Ah, ok thanks xDD

 

[Gamernyc78]

Hi-Fi Rush is also a AAA game, these are the amount of people in the game credits the typical for a AAA in recent years has beeen around 1000-2500 people.

There are three groups of AAA games: the average/smaller/common/normal ones, with approx 1000-2500 aprox., then the very big ones with 2400-4000 aprox. and then the retardedly huge ones (let's say AAAA ones) with over 4000:

Apex Legends 773
Dead Island 2 1,208
Returnal 1,365
Zelda TotK 1,408
Hi-Fi Rush 1,491
RE4 Remake 1,516
Ghostwire Tokyo 1,554
Gran Turismo 7 1,639
MLB The Show 23 1,658
Elden Ring 1,668
Ratchet Rift Apart 1,731
GoT 1,796
Street Fighter 6 1,847
Miles Morales 2,194
TLOU2 2,335
...

GoWR 2,709
Star Wars Jedi Survivor 2,717
Mortal Kombat 1 2,764
BG3 2,944
Horizon Forbidden West 3,446
Hogwarts Legay 3,464
Spider-Man 2 3,820

...

Starfield 4,037
AC Mirage 4,267
Overwatch 2 5,330
Fortnite 5,783
Diablo IV 9,169

AA games instead are made by several dozen or a few hundred people:
Stray 281
Sifu 290
Kena 371
Super Mario Wonder 435


Yes, like in almost all AAA games the lead dev studio has less than 10% (or around 10%) of the total people that appears in the game credits.

Being a Sony game, it means several internal support studios (Sony Cretive Arts teams are one of them plus everything related to publishing, marketing, localization, qa etc) and several external studios (typical outsourcing studios from any AAA game).

AAA/AA are characterized by budgets not the amount of ppl working on it. Just happens to be that usually the more ppl you have working on a game the higher the budget for obvious reasons. Budgets for all games including AA games have sky rocketed so the definition budget wise of a AA game ten years ago is definitely not the same now. Helldivers is definitely not AAA budget status but more like in between AA/AAA.

 

[Yurinka]

AAA/AA are characterized by budgets not the amount of ppl working on it. Just happens to be that usually the more ppl you have working on a game the higher the budget for obvious reasons. Budgets for all games including AA games have sky rocketed so the definition budget wise of a AA game ten years ago is definitely not the same now. Helldivers is definitely not AAA budget status but more like in between AA/AAA.

Yes, AA/AAA distinction is normally about the budget. But outside exceptions, around half of the budget is marketing and the amount of years needed tto do it are often the same range. The amount of people is where there is more difference in the AA/AAA/AAAA titles.

So unless it took exceptionally longer than average, the thing that varies the most from one to another the amount of people.

 

[Gamernyc78]

Yes, AA/AAA distinction is normally about the budget. But outside exceptions, around half of the budget is marketing and the amount of years needed tto do it are often the same range. The amount of people is where there is more difference in the AA/AAA/AAAA titles.

So unless it took exceptionally longer than average, the thing that varies the most from one to another the amount of people.

We will know what it was when and if the budget is made available.

 

[anonpuffs]

8 years of development, many support teams resulting in a total staff of over 1000 people isn't a AA budget. This is AAA territory.

Maybe the environment art doesn't look like top tier because the terrain its procedurally generated and the game started to be developed a ton of years ago, but there's an insane amount of quality work and polish included here in many areas:

In terms of game design it has a top tier level design, missions design, weapon design, enemy design, gunplay / combat design, economy design, rewrads and progression design, economy design, many coop related mechanics, dynamics and features, the quality of the jokes included even in the store, gameplay and mission balancing. In the audio the composition, music, voice acting, foley, audio design is top tier too. In terms of art the character art, weapon art, enemy art, animation greatly combining mocap and physics, vfx art (those nukes and volumetric fog!) is top tier too, also the many combinations they have with the weather plus vegetation and day/night cycle for each biome.

And well, pretty likely they already have many other biomes, enemies types and races, features, mechanics, mission types etc. ready to be added in the future as post launch content, even if at launch it already has a shit ton of stuff

And well, how the high polish in many of these areas achieve the pure fun and addiction to go back and play more. It required a shit ton of work from a shit ton of people.

Eh weapon design could use work. Some of them aren't very useful compared to others. I'd like there to be a balancing pass to flesh out some of the different weapons because right now some of the weapons aren't very useful and some of them kind of power creep the others.

 

[Yurinka]

Eh weapon design could use work. Some of them aren't very useful compared to others. I'd like there to be a balancing pass to flesh out some of the different weapons because right now some of the weapons aren't very useful and some of them kind of power creep the others.

I assume each one has a role, or that some players may prefer one vs another. I assume they'll keep adding different weapons of each type, in addition to new types.

Something I'd do would be to be able to allow players to choose the visual appearance of one and the stats of another one. And in addition to this, to allow us to get colors to paint the weapons, armor, helmet and cape.

 

[anonpuffs]

I assume each one has a role, or that some players may prefer one vs another. I assume they'll keep adding different weapons of each type, in addition to new types.

Something I'd do would be to be able to allow players to choose the visual appearance of one and the stats of another one. And in addition to this, to allow us to get colors to paint the weapons, armor, helmet and cape.

You would assume wrongly, they did attempt to give each weapon a role but the numbers need work

 

[Yurinka]

You would assume wrongly, they did attempt to give each weapon a role but the numbers need work

Some players prefer shotguns, some other ones an assault rifle. Other ones may prefer to get a jetpack to reach higher positions and play as sniper. This is a fact, and what I meant for the roles of the weapons.

Aside from this, the default weapon has to be decent enough since they most players will play many of their first missions with it. And it is.

Regarding the other ones, some will be ok and other ones not, some slightly better or slightly worse. They obviously won't put here the ultimate weapons of each type, because they will keep adding content periodically for years. So he best weapons will be added way later. If they are smart they will slowly introduce sligthly better weapons over time, to make you want to grind for this or that other one. And then some time later, to grind for other new one that they just introduced later and is better.

It would be stupid to include top tier weapons day one because then you wouldn't want to get new ones.

 

[anonpuffs]

Some players prefer shotguns, some other ones an assault rifle. Other ones may prefer to get a jetpack to reach higher positions and play as sniper. This is a fact, and what I meant for the roles of the weapons.

Aside from this, the default weapon has to be decent enough since they most players will play many of their first missions with it. And it is.

Regarding the other ones, some will be ok and other ones not, some slightly better or slightly worse. They obviously won't put here the ultimate weapons of each type, because they will keep adding content periodically for years. So he best weapons will be added way later. If they are smart they will slowly introduce sligthly better weapons over time, to make you want to grind for this or that other one. And then some time later, to grind for other new one that they just introduced later and is better.

It would be stupid to include top tier weapons day one because then you wouldn't want to get new ones.

No, not slightly. Some weapons are almost useless. The revolver in the premium battlepass seems ok, until you realize it takes over 10 seconds for a full reload... for 6 shots. That's longer than it takes to reload the machine gun.

Meanwhile most people are running around with the Breaker (auto shotty) because numbers wise it gives you almost double the damage capacity compared to every other primary weapon. As for specialty stratagem weapons, the anti-materiel rifle is straight up powercrept by the autocannon.