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Non-Andean BirdJanuary 5th, 2010 |
Some of you long-time blog readers may recall a little public project of mine called Andean Bird.*
But that is not what I am writing about. Instead, I wanted to call your attention to this!
That’s a prototype by Michael Wilson, who writes
Hello there. I enjoyed your playing with your ‘Andean Bird’ prototype three years back, which was a concept I’d wanted to explore myself but never had time. I was sad to see that you didn’t continue the project. However I’ve recently had some free time to learn XNA, and I’ve made a 3D bird flight simulator that is perhaps a spiritual successor. It still needs some elements to be a playable game – sound, a ‘flight path’ to follow etc – but the simulation mechanics are working well.
I’ve traded some emails with him since, and it’s evolved in some different directions than Andean Bird, especially as regards the controls. He’s using an Xbox360 controller, and has the wings on both the sticks and the triggers.
Andean Bird focuses on the specific experience of flapping, is very easy to pick up and is more
representative than realistic. Even with the flight path challenge it is quite serene and relaxing.I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted when I started the project, so I started by making a procedural bird
model generator and a realistic physics model, with the assumption that I could morph that into
some sort of game later. After playing with it for a bit I decided to target a somewhat different
experience to your project; the dynamic feel of flight; the balance of forces, the instability and
energy of it – and to some extent how difficult it is. Though in actual fact my physics model has
considerable extra damping and some artificial stabilisation – real birds have a much harder time of it!
He also says he is still considering possible gameplay concepts, and looks forward to seeing what readers here suggest.
* Andean Bird was basically a public game prototyping experiment where I messed about with a game about flapping. It got BoingBoinged, generated several blog posts with interim versions (one, two, three, four), got talked about a decent amount as an “indy art game”, and was apparently even used by Ian Bogost in class, probably as a bad example, and culminated (for now, anyway) in presenting the game in a GDC 2007 session entitled “Nuances of Design,” in which several designer/programmers showed off prototypes and games and the attendees played them while we talked about them.
If you want to try it, you can grab the latest version (0.5) here. PC .zip file (Mac version runs behind, it’s only up to 0.3 I think) or go through the posts in order to try it in its stages of evolution. I have heard that it does have trouble running on some video cards after version 0.4 because of how it handles the motion blur (basically a non-standard hack that relies on the backbuffer’s video memory staying consistent between flips, or something).
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Certainly there are three ways to go with this; putting in conventional gaming elements (as in Pilotwings), trying to simulate natural animal behaviour, or doing something very abstract and artistic. Andean Bird already has #3 covered and while #2 sounds cool I suspect the appeal of it would be limited to a very niche audience. However, if I put in some easily understood game objectives such as checkpoint racing, maybe that will get people interested in the experience enough to try some more naturalist challenges. I’m still not sure if it’s possible to make them both realistic and fun to play.
Cool video Martijn! I am going to steal your idea of illustrating the force vectors.
I did finally fix the tree rendering code today, and also implemented a night sky dome. I think that made a big difference in atmosphere;
I also think there’s great potential for fun here in this “raptor sim”. (Full disclosure: I am an unabashed fan of both the railroad and ship sims out there, so I doubt that I’m a representative gamer.)
One idea for handling the “swoop” mechanic would be to have “bird time” (like bullet time) where, when the player spots a potential target time is slowed down. The benefit might be that the player has greater control over tracking the target manually (birdually?), but perhaps at the cost of overall flight control. (ie – the player is better able to steer towards the target, but maybe cannot pull out of the dive at the appearance of a larger predator). And maybe the player also has to time the talon grasp to ensure the prey is actually captured.
I have no idea how often a bird of prey needs to eat — not often, I would think — so this would probably be a small part of the game (or maybe meta). The game could be in the lifecycle of the bird, as Martijn suggested. Maybe after the “tutorial” (from hatching to flight) you must move on to another area to establish your own territory as an adult bird. Compete/fight for a mate and have chicks. There are any number of “gamey” things you could insert.
Overall, though, I have to agree that there could be something very Zen in soaring over different terrains in different. I’m thinking of “Flower”, “Endless Ocean”, or other such “games” where I could easily lose hours just being in that world.
Awesome!
I’ve been working on a similar project: Wingsuit flight. Though the mechanics are somewhat different (no flapping, obviously), I very much share the same goals, regarding: “the dynamic feel of flight; the balance of forces, the instability and energy of it – and to some extent how difficult it is.”
I’m currently working on individually adjusting body posture and wing orientation using muscles. Those muscles will only have limited force available to do their work, and will be fighting against the lift force working on the wings. My goals for the controls are somewhat different: Almost all movement should be controllable with one stick, meaning the muscle control will have to dynamically alter its behaviour depending on the context.
Here’s a video of a very early prototype: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a0QVBgFso0. It’s still not nearly as dynamic as I’d like it to be, but I get a little closer each day.
As for a game about actually being a bird, I would probably go for simulating other parts of the bird’s life, while keeping flight as a core mechanic. You could start with the player being pushed out of his nest by his mother, still young and completely inexperienced with flying. The first flight would be really rough and dodgy. As you play, you get more comfortable with the controls, and your bird develops. Day to day life: You hunt, and you are hunted. There’s small, easy prey, and bigger, more dangerous prey.
Good luck! It’s good to see that other people still dream of flying.
I know it would require plenty of time, but in the long run it could be a great game by implementing different birds with different flying methods. As some of them are easy to control and some are very hard, you could make levels featuring the different species, with quests such as searching for food, building a nest, escape from a predator, etc. on each level. There could even be some quests where the male tries to seduce the female by amazing flying tricks. These kinds of quests also have the potential to be used in online, multiplayer environment for later.
I think a subtle “soft lock” that will fine tune the motion when you’re “close enough” would do, or simply automate the “snatch”, if the player is close enough with the talons towards the target, *wha-bam*, lunch. Or maybe less subtle, acting more towards the end, with more “points” for not being needed.
It just seems like the critical gameplay experience is getting the flight right in terms of being careful enough (and subtle enough, say by attacking from near but not quite *in* the sun) to get the *curve* of the stoop right so you don’t forcibly eat the dirt. Perfect timing for the actual talon strike would be too fiddly.
Also, without an explicit “snatch” moment, you can more easily model other birds predatory actions, like that of a pelican or one of the ducks that go from airborne to submarine.
–Dave
Thanks for the mention Raph. I hope to have a beta version ready for people to try in another month or two.
Stooping on a target would need a lock on mechanism – at minimum a ‘soft’ lock on that corrects minor positional errors. It would just be too hard otherwise; raptors have amazingly fast reactions! I think it would get boring pretty quickly as the main point of a game, but it could be a fun side activity.
I enjoyed Pilotwings 64 a lot myself, back in the day. It’s a real shame that the rumored Wii sequel hasn’t appeared.
probably as a bad example
Aww, c’mon. It was a good example of a non-standard method of movement control, which was one of the topics we covered.
It seems like it would be interesting to model the predatory behaviors, the mid-air stoops of a raptor or owl, the surface-skimming strikes on fish or rodents. Just flying through interesting terrain could definitely be a very “Zen” thing as well, I remember the Andean Bird sim as well.
It brings back memories of the best part of Pilotwings 64.
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