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Files from 30 years of work at 3DO found!
We learned from Michael Mendheim’s Twitter account that there are a series of files on paper and, possibly, on some digital medium, of Army Men, as can be read in one of the photos. We’ll keep you posted if any of that ever comes to light.
30 years of work being archived by @frankcifaldi and @kelslewin at the Video Game History Foundation @GameHistoryOrg. Design docs of Mutant League games, Army Men, Battletanx, Four Horsemen and a treasure trove of never released designs. @DigitalDreamsE @MutantFootball pic.twitter.com/rQrPUA6UNn
— Michael Mendheim (@mmendheim) June 21, 2022
Heroes may die, but plastic lasts forever. By Zoey Handley – destructoid.com – including some words from Michael Mendheim – Jun 27, 2021
Original source
Army Men: Sarge’s War: The eulogy for an entire series
It’s a complicated subject, the Army Men series. The 3DO Company released somewhere in the realm of 25 games between 1998 and 2002. When you consider some of the ports were made from the ground up and entirely distinctive to the platform they were released on, the actual number of unique games is probably around 35 or more. I’m sure you can already see the problem.
“The problem was with all the early success of these Army Men games, the executives at 3DO thought they could ship an Army Men game (or bundle) every quarter and be successful,” Michael Mendheim, creative director of Battletanx and the Sarge’s Heroes subseries, told me. It’s obvious. The output was stunning, putting even history’s most prolific market spammers, like Guitar Hero, to shame. What started as a promising series with a few hits on its hands quickly declined into one that was treated with scorn and derision by players and the press.
The result is that the Army Men games are poorly remembered. I’ve previously compared the series to a shotgun blast: a sudden and abrupt spread, sometimes causing a lot of agony. Few mourned the loss of the franchise, but I still visit to place flowers on its grave.
The 3DO Company was founded by Trip Hawkins, who previously founded Electronic Arts years earlier. Hawkins dreamt of a console that would become the universal medium for games. Licensing fees would be almost non-existent, so developers and publishers would jump aboard with little risk, abandoning frontrunners Nintendo and Sega. Hawkins left EA to pursue this dream, but by 1996, the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer flopped under the weight of FMV game ports, and the company had to pivot to purely making software. Hawkins even took on a creative role to help out his teams.
Army Men started out quietly enough in 1998. The first game on PC, merely titled Army Men, was a reasonable success. Early the next year, Army Men II came out alongside a PlayStation remake of the first game called Army Men 3D. Again, these were pretty successful. By the end of 1999, however, a second PC title, Army Men: Toys in Space, the 3D action title Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes, and the top-down helicopter game Army Men: Air Attack were all released. Five titles in its second year, and the snowball had only just begun rolling.
That’s where Michael Mendheim comes in. In 1998, he was creative director on Battletanx, which was a hit for 3DO. He was then given creative license on his own Army Men title and envisioned a character-driven game with more of a story, and that became Sarge’s Heroes.
Once again, Sarge’s Heroes was a hit. If I can wade into the story for a moment, it’s where I was introduced to the series, and it’s one that still holds a place in my heart. It had its rough spots, but a lot of its design, especially when it came to its levels, was fantastic. I remember following it through Nintendo Power up to its release and playing the hell out of it.
While I’ve trudged through a great deal of the Army Men series since then and could give you the full and detailed history, that’s quite a detour. We’re going to hurry the story along here.
The important fact is that not only did the quality of Army Men titles start to plummet almost immediately, but the public’s appetite for the games declined just as fast. I’d say that the four PlayStation Army Men: World War games are pretty consistent fun, but by the release of the last two titles, the press was practically ignoring them.
It became something of a laughing stock. In 2001, Portal Runner was released to harsh reception. After a particularly scathing review in Gamepro Magazine, Trip Hawkins even went as far as writing to the Editor-in-Chief to defend the title in an almost comical fashion. He described the staff as “angry young men” and threatened to reduce their advertising. I can understand him wanting to defend his creation, but the letter wasn’t a good look.
Around 2002, the pace of releases from 3DO had slowed and the writing was on the wall. “We already had a round of layoffs; everyone was nervous about the company’s future,” said Mendheim. He had a team working on a game called Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. “It was an edgy, gritty, post-apocalyptic nightmare, based on the Book of Revelation.” Mendheim also believed this to be the best chance at saving 3DO, but it wasn’t to be. “I was called into a meeting and told that I could keep a small team working on Horsemen but everyone else, including myself, would need to make another Army Men game. That Army Men game would be Sarge’s War.”
Sarge’s War would be the last 3DO developed Army Men game, put together in haste as the company took on water. “Honestly, it was like developing the game on the Titanic and it took 9 months for the ship to sink,” described Mendheim.
If you’ve played Sarge’s War, you may have been stricken with how tonally different it was from previous games. The series’ standard features were there, but a lot of the color was washed out of it. In its place was a grittier veneer, even over its more cartoonish elements. The entire supporting cast of the Sarge’s Heroes sub-series–all of them–were killed in an explosion, sending Sergeant Hawk into an avenging rage.
This was the sound of a series dying. There are plenty of franchises that have disappeared from the face of the planet, never to be heard from again. Jazz Jackrabbit, Top Gear, F-Zero; there are many easy examples of games that have just…gone away. Sarge’s War was a game on its deathbed, one last defiant scream before the embrace of oblivion. It was a deliberate move to put the final nail in the coffin and bring closure to the series.
I think Michael Mendheim put it best. “There are certain games that you just put your heart and soul into because you love the content, they are your babies. Sarge’s Heroes was one of those games for me. Every character in the game was developed with love and passion. Sarge’s Heroes was fun, positive, and hopeful. It was a game that made you laugh and feel some magic.”
“Sarge’s War was the opposite of that. It was grim and dark. The story in Sarge’s War was about loss. Losing everything that you love and care about. In the plotline, the entire cast and crew – Sarge’s Heroes died with 3DO. Everyone except for Sarge.”
“When I killed off Sarge’s Heroes, I also killed my desire to ever design another Army Men game. I designed the first and last game in the Sarge’s Heroes product line.”
By the end of development, 3DO had already breathed its last, and Sarge’s War wound up getting released by Global Star Software, a subsidiary of Take-Two and the new home of the Army Men license. Some sources credit Tactical Development for completing the game, but according to Mendheim, “Our orders were to finish the game and that is what we did…the game was delivered completed as the ship went down.”
In comparison to the Army Men games that came before it, Sarge’s War was less rickety. It’s obvious that some of 3DO’s best remaining talent had worked on it, though under less than ideal constraints. It doesn’t reach the height of the series, but knowing the story behind it underlines it with melancholy. It’s a surreal experience.
“There are no bad guys in this story; everyone did their absolute best to try and keep the company alive,” explains Mendheim. “No one sets out to make a bad game. No one worked harder than Trip Hawkins, who even put his own money on the line to try and save the company. Unfortunately, not every story has a happy ending.”
Global Star made a token effort at continuing the Army Men series. Their first attempt was Team 17’s Army Men: Major Malfunction in 2006, which I’ve previously covered, and it’s awful. Later they’d try another reboot with Army Men: Soldiers of Misfortune in 2008, which is similarly terrible. There was a mobile game for pre-smart phones, and then that’s it. Aside from a few re-releases, the series has been left to rest peacefully.
Whether or not it deserved that fate is a matter of opinion. On one hand, it was unwise and intrusive to flood the market with those titles. Releasing games of questionable quality to bank on a brand should never be commended. But on the other hand, they weren’t without merit or appeal. The best games were just buried under the worst. It could have been straightened out. It didn’t have to end this way.
Or, as Michael Mendheim put it: “I always look back at my time at 3DO and think what could have been if we had managed the brand better by releasing only one Army Men game a year and each year releasing a different type of Army Men game with cool innovations and game mechanics…maybe, just maybe Army Men and 3DO might still be alive.”
The Making Of: Army Men – RetroGamer magazine. May 16, 2019. By Hareth Al Bustani
Exclusive interview with Trip Hawkins and Keith Bullen
During the mid-to-late 1990s, as video games began branching out beyond traditional genres, a surprisingly simple idea sparked the birth of one of gaming’s most memorable franchises. That spark was to bring the iconic green plastic toy soldiers (the Army Men) to digital life. What followed was a mix of action, strategy, and tongue-in-cheek satire that would grow into a universe of its own: the early foundations of what we now call the Toyverse.
The project emerged from The 3DO Company, founded by industry pioneer Trip Hawkins, who had already changed gaming history with Electronic Arts. At that time, 3DO was primarily focused on software development and searching for its next big concept… something that could blend strategy, humor, and accessibility. The result went far beyond expectation, shaping not just a game, but a world of plastic warfare and nostalgic imagination.
Origins of the Idea
It all began in 1996, when Keith Bullen, an art designer from Electronic Arts, was hired by 3DO to direct the visuals for a new project, then tentatively called War Sports. The goal was to create something in the spirit of Return Fire, 3DO’s popular vehicular shooter, but with stronger squad-based mechanics. Marketing wanted an “E for Everyone” rating, an idea ironically tied to the ESRB system that Trip Hawkins himself had helped establish.
“I remember various marketing meetings when ideas like green blood and making the soldiers robots were brought up as ways to get the game a friendly rating. I didn’t like any of these ideas.” – Keith recalls
At that time, that’s what was done with Half-Life to sell it in Germany: making the human enemies… robots.
Months passed without a clear direction, until Bullen had a eureka moment. He thought back to his childhood days, setting up tiny armies in the backyard and taking turns throwing rocks with his brother to knock them down. That memory (of creativity, chaos, and fun) became the emotional core of Army Men.
The toy soldiers had long been a universal symbol of imagination. From the Louis Marx playsets of the 1950s to Toy Story in 1995, these little green figures had stood the test of time. By centering the game around them, Bullen found a way to capture both nostalgia and originality, something fun for players who wanted a break from the gritty realism and machismo of other war games.
Building the Plastic World
Once the toy soldier idea took hold, Keith’s role evolved from art director to lead designer.
“Once the soldiers became plastic, we had to come up with a universe with real terrains and plastic soldiers,” he says. “We wanted the world to feel serious to the Army Men characters’ point of view but fun and nostalgic for the player.”
This is key: “The (plastic) world had to feel real and serious for the Army Men.” With these words, coming from Keith Bullen himself, we can cement this as a fact, dispelling any doubt or denial: For the inhabitants of the Plastic World, war is not a joke… it’s serious. That’s why Sarge’s War isn’t excluded from the equation (as many fans wish), because whether we like it or not, it respects this original principle of the idea behind Army Men.
The team paid careful attention to the way plastic behaved in real life, how light hit its glossy surface, how it bent, shattered, and melted.
“We paid close attention to the physics in the animations. It was very important to me that the plastic pieces reacted to the world as if they were made of the same light plastic as the original figures.”
But turning that idea into a finished product wasn’t easy. The small team of six soon grew to more than ten as Bullen became creative director.
“It was very challenging convincing the team to adopt my new gameplay ideas… It took several months to finally get everyone on board.”
Executives were another obstacle. Early pitches for Army Men were dismissed as childish, “too young” some said. RTS fans, they argued, wouldn’t take seriously a game about toys. Yet Bullen persisted, finding clever ways to win people over.
“I then bought a 3D model of a generic Army Man and brought in some classic toy green and tan Army Men to use as pose references,” he remembers.
“For several weeks, many people from every department in the company would stop to discuss the posed 3D model… Soon after, the momentum switched from the product being perceived as too juvenile to being an awesome nostalgic experience.”
This is key: “I then bought a 3D model of a generic Army Man”. This is a direct confirmation of the source of the classic Army Men 3D model: it was purchased, obtained from 3D model packages, in this case the ViewPoint DataLabs ones (and it’s not the only 3D model from third party sources).
That was the turning point. Nostalgia had done its job.
From the Backyard to the Battlefield
The next challenge was translating the tactile world of toy soldiers into an interactive one. The developers recreated classic units like riflemen and bazooka troopers, while experimenting with how plastic would melt or break apart.
“We destroyed many plastic Army Men in the 3DO parking lot for the sake of realistic plastic physics,” Keith admits.
“The enhanced fear of fire when you are made of plastic was a theme we relied on throughout the series.”
To tie everything together, Army Men adopted a satirical tone. The game opened with a mock newsreel showing the totalitarian Tans preparing to invade the Greens.
“We watched many hours of authentic old reels… The Tan leader gesturing like Mussolini was one of my favourite segments.”
Originally planned as a real-time strategy game, Army Men evolved into something more direct and personal. Players would take control of Sarge, a Green Army hero.
By the way, it was the RTT (Real Time Tactics) videogame, not a RTS. At least we called it that way today.
“I’ve always preferred arcade-like action games over strategy games,” says Keith.
“So I redesigned the game around the central character of Sarge… as in games like Ikari Warriors.”
The final product blended tactical movement with fast-paced action.
“The gameplay became more about tactics, rather than strategy,” Bullen notes, crediting Crusader: No Remorse as an influence.
Trip Hawkins’ Perspective
One of the concept’s earliest champions was 3DO founder Trip Hawkins himself.
“Toy soldiers were my dominant play pattern as a child and I’d always invented strong storylines and adventures around them,” he says.
“Besides all the World War soldiers, I had Swoppets from the Wars Of The Roses, Roman centurions, and others – including cowboys, of course.”
Hawkins immediately recognized the blend of nostalgia, humor, and design potential behind Army Men.
“It inspired me to do something more central with humour in the genre and a stronger narrative.”
To him, the plastic theme wasn’t just an aesthetic choice: it was a creative platform.
“We were focused on the US market… nobody cared about them, because they’d not grown up with those toys.”
Despite the game’s playful tone, Hawkins insisted that warfare and destruction were essential to the experience.
“Creatively, we also wanted to have fun repeating some of the famous play patterns from childhood… It allowed us to cast our villains with a bit of sadism, that is still funny because… they’re just toys.”
A Legacy Beyond Plastic
The development cycle lasted just over a year, despite several restarts. Once the formula clicked, Hawkins knew they had something special.
“This is what we live for in game development and publishing… to do something we really believe in and love.”
Across three themed terrains (desert, alpine, and swamp) Army Men culminated in a memorable twist: Sarge crossing into the Real World, a scene that would directly lead into Army Men II. The franchise quickly exploded, selling over 7 million copies across every major platform and generating more than $300 million in revenue.
Looking back, Bullen reflects on the impact of that first title:
“I never would have imagined that it would spawn 23 sequels and spin-offs… My goal was to create a game that I would want to play and not a clone of a game I had played before.”
Indeed, Army Men defied easy classification. It was part shooter, part strategy, part parody… a digital sandbox that reimagined childhood battles through the eyes of living toys. Beneath the surface, it captured something universal: the creative spirit of play itself.
From Sarge’s Heroes to the ever-expanding Toyverse, the legacy of those little plastic soldiers continues to march on.
Sources for this article:
Original source: Retro Gamer (2019), “The Making Of: Army Men” by Hareth Al Bustani.
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/retro-gamer/20190516/281672551382117
Edited and adapted for armymen.com.ar
Behind the scenes: Army Men: Major Malfunction
Original sources:
This proves that canonically, Sarge died.
The first very revealing article was Team17’s recalling history of their first 100 games, when celebrating the release of game number one hundred, PLANET ALPHA. In this chapter, they’re heading to 2005 & 2006, a time of both 2D and 3D Worms games and their first foray into work-for-hire projects on both Lemmings and Army Men.
In an unexpected twist, Team17 was granted creative freedom while working on the Army Men franchise. This allowed them to introduce a new main character and even eliminate the recurring character, Sarge, in the opening sequence (Sarge or Sarge Hawk. In any case, it seems they never knew, they really confused the franchise canon). This bold move highlights the unique creative liberties Team17 enjoyed during the development process. You can read the complete article in: https://team17.com
1. Team17’s 100 Games – Part Nine: 2005-2006 (Published: Nov 7, 2018)
(…)
48/100
Army Men: Major Malfunction
When Team17 was founded in 1990 it was entirely possible, thanks to open platforms like the Amiga, for a small group of programmers and artists to make and release their own game. But times changed. As next generation consoles took over, team sizes grew and budgets ballooned. Releasing a game was virtually impossible without publisher support and this meant you had a limited number of ways to get a game made. Either own a best-selling IP or develop for somebody else’s. In this climate, Team17 found itself pitching to publishers for “work-for-hire” projects. Sometimes this led to us working on a game like Lemmings, other times it led to Army Men: Major Malfunction… Perhaps the most surprising game in our entire history.
Recruited to Team17 after a 10-year stint at Rare, Gavin Hood found himself in command of the Army Men project and worked on the pitch. “I had literally only joined the company a few months before and was sitting opposite the head of design,” says Hood. “I remember most of the designers were working hard on a Worms title as it neared the end of production so I was asked to come up with something to pitch. I guess it went okay because we got the deal and I got the chance to lead it.”
Working on someone else’s franchise, you’d think that the publisher would have final say on any creative decisions but actually, as Hood explains, Team17 were given free rein on Army Men and even got away with a few unexpected choices. “We wanted to use a different main character to many of the other Army Men games and not only did we not meet resistance to this, but we even microwaved recurring main character Sarge in the opening sequence to set up the introduction of our own character. I’m actually proud that we were able to melt a series character in the opening of a game and everyone concerned be okay with that!”
Every game has its unique challenges and for Army Men it was designing a 3D world in the era before off-the-shelf game engines made the process more streamlined. “The programmers wrote a set of tools that, because of the limited time we had, were made to work on development kits using the Xbox Controller,” Hood explains. “We had to place enemies, assign A.I. to them and set their patrols all using an Xbox Pad, even the cutscenes were done in the same way. Using those tools was a nightmare but the advantage was we could throw a load of stuff into a level and just hit play. It was awful to use with a pad but the speed at which we could test ideas and get something into each of the environments is probably the only reason we hit deadlines.”
“It was an interesting game to work on,” concludes Hood. “I remember having grand ideas about what the game would end up being and although it might not have exactly reached those heights there are some things I think we got right. There are a lot of pop culture references in there that I still think we handled well .” Even the subtitle, “Major Malfunction”, was a reference to a line from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket!
“Looking back, the game obviously wasn’t a masterpiece but everyone on the team got everything done in a very short development time with makeshift tools! It probably won’t go down as Team17’s finest hour or be the game I’m proudest of, but I did at least get to buy a lot toy soldiers and put them all over the office!”
(…)
Making the Microverse, Part 1: Miniaturization secrets on Cinema!
Before 3D design and video game design, other talented artists had to face the challenge of making small beings look realistic, and showing giant environments from their perspective. In this first part of this series, we will reveal some of its ingenious secrets, knowledge that will help improve the experience of the small world of Army Men: Revolution
An article and interview made by VFXBLOG (https://vfxblog.com) December 19, 2017
Films like “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids”, The Indian in the Cupboard, Ant-Man, Fantastic Voyage, Inner Space, Willow, Hook, among others, are all movies that have used different techniques of visual effects to do large things smaller, or show how the world looks from the perspective of a plastic soldier.
The visual effects supervisor, Eric Brevig, has worked on this type of films, including one of our favorites, “The Indian in the Cupboard”, which presented visual effects by the ILM of George Lucas, a visual effects company created by “The Creator of Star Wars” to be able to make Star Wars.
These techniques have varied, from the forced perspective, large sets, filming on green or blue screen and, of course, digital media such as 3D.
But before reading this text we copied and pasted, with our opinions interjected, we ask you to go first to read it in the original source, attached below!
Original Source of the article:
Eric Brevig interview by VFXBLOG
vfxblog: What had been your experience with any miniaturisation effects prior to The Indian in the Cupboard?
Eric Brevig: I had done certain short sequences in other projects. I did a 3D, double 70mm Disney EPCOT film for the theme park around 1980. It was like a dream sequence for a pavilion that they built there about imagination. And part of the dream sequence had the little boy, who was the main character, imagining that he was looking at a miniature circus, maybe three feet across, filled with tiny clowns a few inches tall and so forth. Then later on he shrunk down to fit into somebody’s hand.
And so that was the first time I had to really wrap my head around how you shoot mixed scale characters like that so that the perspective is correct and so forth. And since that was a 70mm 3D, meaning stereo 3D, project, there was much less tolerance for cheating things like scale and perspective.
I also did work on the Honey, I Shrunk the Audience for another Disney theme park several years later and just continued the same sort of things. I was on Hook at ILM as well with Tinkerbell. It was very familiar territory for me by the time The Indian in the Cupboard came up.
vfxblog: What is the major thing you think you have to get right with any kind of scale or miniaturisation work?
Eric Brevig: You have to be able to have the tiny element look like it was photographed from the same camera as the large element. And that means all aspects of photography – depth of field, shadow size, obviously camera position and camera motion and lighting. In Hook, because most of the time Tinkerbell was a fairy character that was glowing, the lighting became a combination of casting her light onto the background.
I remember we had a scene that I’d actually proposed to Steven Spielberg because I loved it in the Peter Pan animation, where the little Tinkerbell character walks up Peter’s shirt. Robin Williams was wearing a shirt and we had the character, Tinkerbell, walk through an ink pad so she left tiny little footprints. And it was just a lot of fun to work with Robin and getting him to, in a very tight close up, track his eyes where I was going to composite in the Tinkerbell character, and I gave him a little guide to follow. And then on overscale piece of blue screen set, we shot Julia Roberts following the same path.
But one thing that’s kind of fun when you’re doing little characters like that is that you can speed up the action because little things can move quickly. So I was adjusting the timing so that, at the rate that an adult Julia Roberts, full size, could walk up a set that looked like somebody’s blue chest, laying down of course, that her character, composited in, would track exactly where his eyes had been looking.
vfxblog: With Tinkerbell in Hook, and in several other films like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, one of the main methods was to build over-sized sets. And then there’s also shooting the actors against bluescreen and compositing them in, and there were some forced perspective shots. But was that kind of the idea, to mix it up a bit, so that audience isn’t really quite sure how you’ve done it?
Eric Brevig: Yeah, I think that’s the most fun. We did one or two forced perspective shots, which I love to do and I kind of, growing up really was enamoured with the work that the Disney studios had done on Darby O’Gill and the Little People, which was all essentially forced perspective. There’s maybe one or two composited shots in the entire movie, but most of it was very sophisticated forced perspective and mirror shots, where a front surface mirror is partially removed, revealing a background set that’s painted and lined up precisely to match the foreground.
When I was a student in college, one of my student films, because I had no technical equipment to do anything sophisticated, was basically a mixed scale student film, where I bought $1 mirror tiles at the local construction supplies store and carefully scraped off the silver from the back and lined it up with the foreground set and the background set. So that was all stuff that I loved to play with and experiment with as a kid. And then, because I think on Hook Steven really wanted to do that the old school way, my art director and I set it up for him, so we could make it look like Julia was in the doll house, and the doll house was in the foreground, and she was on an oversized set in the background.
But the reality is, it is so cumbersome to take the time to do that in front of camera, and so much faster and easier to use compositing and CG that we did it one time and they said, ‘That’s great, let’s not do that anymore, let’s just go back to the way you want to do it,’ which is using multiple photography elements.
vfxblog: Hook came out in 1991. By the time Indian and the Cupboard came along in 1995, had digital compositing moved on to a point that was even more beneficial for pulling off scale shots?
Eric Brevig: Well, it didn’t necessarily help with scale, because both the large scale and small scale characters were played by actors, so you’re obliged to photograph them both. If you have a small character in a fantasy world or in a CG world, life is much easier. But if you’ve got both characters, large and small scale on screen together in a photorealistic world, you’re obliged to come up with a way to photograph them both so that they both look like they’re in the same environment. And also, for the actors and performers, you have to come up with a way for them to interact and act together.
So a lot of the work on Indian in the Cupboard was to facilitate that kind of emotional relationship that was the core of the movie. It wasn’t a fantasy – well, it was a fantasy, but it wasn’t a spectacular visual effects extravaganza that was showing off, look what we can do. It was an intimate tale of two characters from different worlds and different scales who developed this emotional bond. So it was really important to allow the actor, his name was Litefoot, who played Little Bear, to be able to hear and react to, as an actor, this giant boy. And similarly I had to help the boy, who was played by Hal Scardino, find where to look and so forth and be able to act with the Indian actor so that there was this genuine sense of two people communicating.
vfxblog: I’m curious if going from optical compositing to digital compositing made any difference at all?
Eric Brevig: Well it didn’t really make a big change because essentially we were just replacing the clunky, mechanical, optical printer phase with the equally clunky, primitive digital compositing stage. But it gave me the opportunity to do some fun, nuanced enhancements. I remember there was a shot of, I think it was a cowboy, he’s supposed to be two inches tall and he’s walking across a bed with a comforter on it, and I had a big uneven surface that was blue and shot David Keith, who was playing the cowboy, walking across that.
And my director of photography is a fella named Chuck Shuman, who I worked with on a lot of movies, from Total Recall to The Abyss, and he’s one of the most precise and brilliant directors of photography in understanding how to match the lighting between a small set and an oversized set. And he would actually match the size of the lights, scaled up, when we shot the actors portraying little people, because that’s the way the light wraps around you, is the relationship between the size of the light source and the size of you. And so, when we would shoot the normal set, we would have normal sized lights, whatever size they were, a foot across, and he would rig, for bluescreen miniature people, I think the scale was like 24:1, 24 foot wide illuminated surface that would cast the matching shadows.
In any event, we would shoot these, but there really wasn’t a way to puppeteer how the footsteps would move the fabric because oversized fabric never looked convincing. One of the things that I learned early on was, if you can always shoot the non-miniature stuff on real sets with real cloth, like you would normal macro photograph, it adds a verisimilitude to the scene that you can’t get with oversized props and so forth, which are very difficult to pull off and not have them look a little bit like oversized props.
In any event, as our character walks across this blanket, we were able to digitally put in little divots and depress the cloth wherever his foot stepped, which just sort of locked him in, in a way that you could never had done without digital. Because we’re essentially just warping, or morphing a little bit, some of the background imagery as his foot is making contact. So there were really nice little enhancements like that, as well as just the ability to perfect the compositing edges and so forth, in a way that photo mechanical compositing did not allow us to do.
vfxblog: You mentioned a really cool thing there, which was matching lighting for when a character is shot big and when they’re shot small. What about camera movement, did you use motion control to match up small and large shot plates?
Eric Brevig: I would decide based upon the needs of the shot, which camera – because we had to photograph foregrounds and backgrounds with cameras because they were both real environments – which camera would lead the shot. Let’s say it’s the little boy and he picks up this tiny Indian and he moves across the screen with it in his hand. I would photograph that with a traditional camera, tracking the boy. And he’d have just a little tiny object, I think I used something that looked like a bent paperclip, so that he had something in his hand that was showing him where to put his eye line and kept him honest about how he was holding it, but was easy to paint out.
And then after we had shot that, we would analyse the footage within the duration of the shot that was intended to be used in the movie and we’d say, ‘Okay, here at the beginning we’re one foot away from his hand and six inches above that. Okay, well that’s equal to 24 foot back and 12 feet above.’ And so we would design a camera move, using a very big crane arm, so that we would, as the boy moves through the shot, the camera’s now six inches from the character and one inch above his head, well, that equals 12 feet back and six inches would be six feet above his head.
So, we would basically plot out in the real world what we were doing in terms of matching that camera. And because you have a lot of space for leeway when you’re moving a camera 50 feet through a sound stage, it doesn’t matter if you’re a little bit to the right or the left of where you’re supposed to be, because then by tracking the two and using digital compositing to lock the two together, you’re able to make the perspective of one non-motion control shoot fit the other one by sort of locking them together afterwards.
If instead the shot is driven by what the little characters are doing, well, there was one very nice shot where the camera’s creeping across the little boy’s bedroom, and we can hear the Indian is singing some sort of traditional song. And the camera peers over this toy box that’s in the foreground, and we see that the Indian’s sitting on top of this little half-built structure that’s going to be his home. So what we did is, we figured out the total distance needed at the scale of our adult actor, and it was like a 100 foot camera move, and then we’d come down and we’d peer over where the box would be and then we boomed down, basically into a close-up of him, and we shot that first.
And then by tracking it and using a motion control system to shoot the same move on a bedroom set, we were able to lock them together precisely in photography and really get that sense of no hindrance to the camera wherever it went, because we were shooting on a genuine bedroom sized set, rather than a little bluescreen of the Indian. All the depth of field and focus and all that stuff was exactly as it should be, so it felt like you’re crawling, you know, the camera sort of creeping through this room and peering over a little toy box and there, in shallow depth of field, on this half built house, we’d find the Indian character.
Once again, my director of photography, being aware of what we were doing, would take incredibly precise notes on, for example the bedroom set. Including colour temperature from each of the lights and positioning, and we’d really create that on the giant scale of the screen stage and the two fit together really, really precisely.
First post ever
This is the first post in the whole website. Hope you can enjoy the future of this community and going back to this post you will remember.
“There is no better place than the one we are going towards, the future.”
How 3DO Creates Video Games – By: Jeff Tyson
Article from howstuffworks.com – Nov 17, 2008
Original source
3DO is one of the top video game companies in the U.S. with dozens of popular titles. Go behind the scenes and learn how 3DO creates a new game!
Lots of us play video games. In fact, the number of people playing video games only seems to increase — the number of consoles in American homes exploded in 2007, rising more than 18 percent [source: Cheng]. If you’ve played video games before, you may have wondered what goes into making them. You may even want to get into the business yourself. Here are some of the questions that you may be wondering about:
Where do game ideas come from?
- How many people are involved in making a game and what do they do?
- How is a game developed?
- How does a game get to my local store?
The video game industry, like most technology, moves quickly and rarely looks back. It seems like every few years brings a fresh new batch of video game consoles, each vying for a place at the top of every gamers’ heart. And over the years, gaming has become enormously popular all over the world, bringing in more than $1 billion in revenue and even surpassing the music industry in retail sales [source: Fritz].
To understand the entire process of video game development, we went to the folks at The 3DO Company. Also known as simply 3DO, the company was both a console developer and a third-party publisher of video games, with several titles for the Nintendo 64 and other game consoles, as well as PC and Mac computer systems. 3DO was founded in 1991 and released the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer (also known as simply the 3DO) in 1993. After poor sales and reception, the company dropped the console and shifted focus to developing video games (similar to what Sega currently does for the Nintendo Wii). 3DO declared bankruptcy in 2003, however, and no longer makes video games.
When 3DO was still around, we followed the development of Portal Runner, a game 3DO made for the Nintendo 64. In the process, we looked at the development of the game itself, as well as the process of getting a game off the ground and onto the shelves. On the next few pages, you’ll learn about basic game technology, how an idea is developed and how a game is distributed.
Where the Game Comes From
All games start with an idea. But where that idea originates can be traced to one of several sources:
- An original concept presented by an employee
- An original concept pitched to the company by an outsider
- A sequel to an existing game
- A spinoff based on a character from an existing game
- A game based on an existing character or story (such as movie, TV or comic characters)
- A simulation of another game medium (such as board games and card games)
- A game targeted to a specific demographic
- A simulation of a real world event
- A game designed to take advantage of a specific game platform (such as the Internet or an advanced interactive game system).
Once the idea is accepted by the company as a viable game, then a preproduction team is assembled to begin developing the idea into a fully realized game. How the game develops depends greatly on what type of game it is. The story line and design of a game based on an existing movie or comic character are going to be much more restricted than those for a completely original game concept. Likewise, a simulation based on a real world event, such as a baseball game, usually has definite boundaries in what can be done.
Video games can be vastly different from one another. And while there is a huge variety of games available, most fall into certain broad categories:
- Sports (Madden NFL, Tony Hawk)
- Strategy/Role-playing/Adventure (Zelda, Final Fantasy)
- Fighting (Mortal Kombat, Soul Caliber)
- Puzzle (Tetris)
- Shooter (Halo, Call of Duty)
- Platform (Super Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog)
- Racing (Mario Kart, Tokyo Xtreme Racer)
- Conversion (American Arcade Pinball, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?)
Of course, a lot of games include aspects from more than one of these categories, and a few games are in a category all their own.
In the case of Portal Runner, 3DO took a character from one of its more popular franchises and gave her a spinoff title of her own that falls into the platform category. The character, Vikki Grimm, has figured prominently in the company’s Army Men universe. Portal Runner is not considered a sequel because 3DO took one character and built an entirely new game universe around her. As you learn about the development of Portal Runner, remember that many of the steps in the process can change significantly for a different title based on the nature of the game being developed.
Planning the Game
The preproduction team generally includes each of the following people:
- Director
- Designer
- Software Engineer/Programmer
- Artist
- Writer
Sometimes a team won’t have every one of these people and other times it will have more than one person in a particular category. Another person assigned to the game from the outset is the producer. While the director provides the overall vision and direction for the game and is in charge of managing all the team members, the producer is in charge of the business side. For example, the producer maintains the production and advertising budgets and makes sure that the game stays within the limits of those budgets.
The first thing that the preproduction team does is develop the story line for the game. Think of this like writing the outline for a novel. The story line identifies the theme of the game, the main characters and the overall plot. Also, areas in the game where a full motion video (FMV) sequence would help the story along are established. An important part of developing the story line is knowing the nature of the game. This means that the game designer is typically involved from the very beginning; he or she is responsible for things like:
- Identifying traits and features of the game
- The type of gameplay and user interaction that is developed
- How the game will use the technology available on a particular platform (video game system or computer)
Portal Runner is a linear game. This means that you follow a predetermined path and accomplish specific goals to complete the game. The pattern of the game is: FMV1, Play1, FMV2, Play2, FMV3, Play3 and so on until the end. Each play portion has a different look, theme and goal, all of which combine to form the game world. Linear play makes the story line much easier to create than it would be for a game that branches or has multiple endings. Branching games can contain a series of paths that all lead to the same ending. Even more difficult are branching games that can result in one of several different endings, depending on the path taken. Of course, the type of game largely determines what the story line and style can be. A puzzle or sports game would not require as detailed a story line as a 3D action or role-playing game.
Once the story line is developed, the team creates a set of storyboards. A storyboard is a collection of still drawings, words and technical instructions that describe each scene of the game. These include storyboards for the FMV sequences that introduce the story and continue it between the periods of actual gameplay. Here’s an example:
In addition to storyboarding the game, the designers will map out the different worlds, or levels of play, within the game during the preproduction phase. The attributes of each world and the elements contained within it are pulled directly from the story line.
Developing the Game
Once the storyboards and overall game level designs are complete, the game enters the production phase. The preproduction team expands as needed to include additional artists, programmers and designers.
3DO’s artists began developing the 3D models that will make up the worlds of Portal Runner using a software application called 3D Studio Max. Richly detailed texture maps were created for each object. While the game developers at 3DO created the actual game environment using these models and textures, another division of the company, PlayWorks, used the same models to develop the animated full-motion video (FMV) sequences for the game.
Meanwhile, the programmers wrote custom code in C programming language that provided the framework for the game objects. A lot of code was pulled from the company’s library, a bank of predeveloped code that could be repurposed for different games.
Some of the code for a game involves the 3D engine, an application that generates all the polygons, shadows and textures that you see. Another piece of code is the artificial intelligence component. This is the logic of any game. It establishes the physics of the game, detects interaction and collisions of objects and controls movement of the characters. Development of the game code is done using a special development version of the particular game system that has increased memory, an SVGA monitor connection, a network connection and a hard drive.
All the bits and pieces — objects, textures and code — are fed into a special utility called a tool chain that combines the pieces into one big piece of code. The tool chain makes code that is executable on a specific platform, which basically means that the game code will actually run on the game system that it was designed for. To test the game, Portal Runner director John Salera used another specialized game console built for debugging games.
The Game World
If you can find a copy of Portal Runner and play the game, you’ll see that it used an over-the-shoulder perspective. When you’re playing, you seem to be hovering in the air slightly behind the character you are controlling. As your character moves around, you see the world of the game stretch out into the distance. But what you are really seeing is a very clever illusion reminiscent of the backlots of Hollywood.
The world that the character actually interacts with in Portal Runner is a very defined area. If you could pull the camera view up in the air, you would see that the play area is completely self-contained. Other parts of the world that you can see in the distance are actually two-dimensional images mapped onto a flat surface that surrounds the play area like a barrel. The sky was created in the same way, by mapping the sky image onto a large dome or cylinder that fits over everything else. Look at the example below to get a better idea of how this works.
A production team constantly looks for ways to add realistic effects without degrading the performance of the game. A good example of this is the reflections of objects on shiny surfaces, like the chess board in the medieval world of Portal Runner. The chess pieces and characters moving around on the chess board appear to have detailed reflections on the polished surface of the chess board. What’s actually happening is that a second version of each object is positioned upside-down just below the semi-transparent surface of the chess board. The upside-down version moves in concert with the “real” version of the object, providing an illusion of reflection.
Polygons and Shading
The vast majority of 3-D objects created for computer games are made up of polygons. A polygon is an area defined by lines. To have a polygon, you must have at least three lines.
The lines connect a series of coordinates in the three-dimensional “space” the computer creates. The point where the lines connect is known as a vertex. Each vertex has X, Y and Z coordinates.
- X determines the position relative to right or left in the virtual space
- Y determines the position relative to top or bottom in the virtual space
- Z determines the position relative to front or back in the virtual space
Once each polygon has a set of vertices to define its shape, it needs information that tells it what to look like. There are four common ways to do this:
- Flat shading
- Gouraud shading
- Phong shading
- Texture mapping
Flat shading simply assigns a single color to a polygon. It is very simple and fast, but makes the object look artificial. Gouraud shading is more complex. Colors are assigned to each vertex and then are blended across the face of the polygon. Since each vertex is typically associated with at least three distinct polygons, this makes the object look natural instead of faceted. Look at this example:
You will notice that the ball with Gouraud shading appears much smoother than the flat shaded one. But look closely at the outlines of the two balls. That’s where you can tell that both balls have the exact same number of polygons.
An even more complex version of shading, Phong, improves upon Gouraud shading. Whereas Gouraud shading interpolates colors by averaging between the vertices, Phong shading averages each pixel based on the colors of the pixels adjacent to it to create smooth surfaces.
Another common technique for determining the appearance of a polygon is to use texture mapping. Think of texture mapping as wrapping a present. Each side of the box you are wrapping is a blank polygon. You could paint the box, but it would be very difficult to make it match all the designs on the wrapping paper. However, if you take the wrapping paper and tightly cover the box with it, you have completely transformed the box with just a little effort.
Texture mapping works the same way. Mapping requires the use of another image. Essentially, this other image is stretched over the object like a skin. Most video game consoles and computer graphics adapters contain a special chip and dedicated memory that store the special images used for texture mapping and apply them to each polygon on the fly. This allows games such as Portal Runner to have incredibly detailed 3-D environments that you can interact with in real time.
Character Skeletons
The characters in a game have skeletons. Similar to our own skeleton, this is a hidden series of objects that connect with and move in relation to each other. Using a technique called parenting, a target object (the child) is assigned to another object (the parent). Every time the parent object moves, the child object will follow according to the attributes assigned to it. A complete hierarchy can be created with objects that have children and parents. Here’s an example for a human character:
Once the skeleton is created and all of the parenting controls put in place, the character is animated. Probably the most popular method of character animation relies on inverse kinematics. This technique moves the child object to where the animator wants it, causing the parent object and all other attached objects to follow. Another method that’s popular for games is motion capture, which uses a suit of sensors on a real person to transmit a series of coordinates to a computer system. The coordinates are mapped to the skeleton of a game character and translated into fluid, realistic motion.
Each character’s range of motion is programmed into the game. Here’s a typical sequence of events:
- You press a button on the controller to make the character move forward.
- The button completes a circuit, and the controller sends the resulting data to the console.
- The controller chip in the console processes the data and forwards it to the game application logic.
- The game logic determines what the appropriate action at that point in the game is (move the character forward).
- The game logic analyzes all factors involved in making the movement (shadows, collision models, change of viewing angle).
- The game logic sends the new coordinates for the character’s skeleton, and all other changes, to the rendering engine.
- The rendering engine renders the scene with new polygons for each affected object, redrawing the scene about 60 times each second.
- You see the character move forward.
Finishing Touches
After the basics are in place, the production team begins to refine the game. Part of this refinement involves optimizing the game code, polygon count and logic, including adjusting the clipping planes and culling. The polygon count (number of polygons on screen at the same time) is a major factor in the smooth rendering and quick response of a game.
Clipping planes determine whether or not polygons in the field of view will be rendered. This depends on how close to the camera the polygons are. Typically, the near clipping plane will not render polygons that are close enough to intersect the plane of the camera. This keeps your viewpoint in the game from intersecting another object and thus blanking out. And the far clipping plane is normally set at the point where the screen resolution causes the details to become impossible to see. There is no need to render objects that you cannot see.
This leads to another area of optimization. While the far clipping plane does not render entire objects that are too far away, culling means that the video game system does not render the parts of objects that are outside your viewing area. For example, when you look at a building, you normally only see one or two sides of the building. In a game, you can increase performance by not rendering the other sides of the building until you move around to the point that you can see them. And as you move, the game can stop rendering the things you can no longer see.
One of the refinements that John Salera said 3DO wanted to make to Portal Runner was to determine where they could eliminate polygons through culling in order to increase the polygon count for Vikki, from 1,500 polygons to 3,000. They want to do this without increasing the overall number of polygons onscreen. By increasing the polygon count of a specific object (like Vikki), the object can be made to look smoother and more realistic.
Periodically during the development of the game, 3DO sends builds (partially complete versions) of the game to the game console maker. This is done to keep the console maker informed about how the game is developing and to ensure that there are no surprises that the manufacturer might take issue with.
As the game nears completion, it enters the post-production phase. This phase has several parts:
- Game versions
- Product testing
- ESRB review
- Marketing and advertising
- Distribution
Once the game is done, an alpha version is sent to designated game testers. This preliminary version is a first pass meant to find any major flaws in the game. The problems are identified and the game is released again in beta form. The beta version is tested exhaustively to find any bugs and discover ways to further optimize the game. After the items found in the beta version are fixed, the final candidate is released.
Sometime during this period, the game is sent to the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) to be given a rating. If the game is released before a final rating is set, it will have an RP (Rating Pending) in the rating box.
Distributing the Game
During post-production, the marketing engine begins to ramp up. The game is advertised in print, on the Web and oftentimes on TV. Quite often, a game that is a hit or has a very memorable character provides the company with opportunities for merchandising and licensing. Comic books, cartoons, movies and amusement park rides have all spun out of the popularity of certain video game characters. Products such as clothing, toys and board games often display characters from the game. A popular video game character can be a marketing gold mine for the parent company.
A major difference in creating a video game for a console versus building a game for a PC is the approval and distribution process. Console manufacturers normally require strict licensing agreements between themselves and companies that wish to develop games for their systems. We will outline the process that 3DO goes through with the game console makers they work with.
Every company that develops games for a video game system manufacturer is considered a third-party licensee. Here’s how it breaks down.
A third-party developer:
- Develops the game idea
- Creates the game
- Tests the game
- Markets the game
- Distributes the game
Console maker:
- Approves the game idea
- Tests the game
- Reviews and approves the game
- Manufactures the game
When a developer submits the game to the console maker, the testing and review process can be very rigorous. The game may be sent back to the developer with requests to change certain parts before resubmitting it.
Many people mistakenly assume that the cost per game to the parent company is minimal and the profit huge. This is seldom the case. While the actual material costs for the game duplication, box and manuals may only be a few dollars per unit, there are a lot of other costs incurred:
- Console licensing royalties (about $3 to $10 per unit for the console maker)
- Game development costs (typically several millions of dollars)
- Advertising (anywhere from $1 million to $4 million for most games)
- Salaries for the production team (a typical game might employ 40 people for a year or more)
- Other licensing fees (particularly in sports titles, where the professional sports organization and any featured athletes tend to receive royalties for each unit sold)
- Operational costs (the costs of running the company must be split between the various games sold)
Game companies also have to take into account the short lifespan that most games enjoy. Since the technology that video games thrive on is continually improving, the games that are cutting edge today will seem slow and outdated in just a year or two.
Test: Army Men: Sarge’s War by Jens Bischoff. 4players.de August 24, 2004
Original source
https://www.4players.de/4players.php/dispbericht/Allgemein/Test/2916/3074/0/Army_Men_Sarges_War.html
Anyone who thought that after 3DO’s bankruptcy would finally have peace and quiet before further Army Men games was rejoicing too soon. Take 2 seems to have found an almost finished plastic soldier shooter in the bankrupt vulture’s licensing dump, which they now want to sell at a budget price as Army Men: Sarge’s War. You can find out in the test whether it is the usual hazardous waste or a surprisingly good bargain.
Cry for Vengeance
It’s hard to believe, but the green and beige armies finally make peace in Sarge’s War and all disputes are put to rest. But the suddenly pacifist toy soldiers have reckoned without the renegade Lord Malice and his henchmen.
Unscrupulous: The renegade Lord Malice has all your plastic comrades on the conscience (PS2).
As soon as the peace treaty is signed, an insidious bomb attack turns the entire party into a lump of plastic. Only Sarge, who returns late from a mission, survives the toy massacre. You can imagine everything else: Sarge wants revenge and doesn’t want to rest until he has hunted down Lord Malice.
To the weapons!
To do this, you fight your way through twelve linear levels divided into tiny sections and use a total of eight firearms and grenades to blast everything that stands in your way to a pulp. If you are initially solely dependent on your carbine, which is equipped with unlimited ammunition, you will soon be able to use more interesting calibers such as shotguns, bazookas, heavy machine guns or sniper rifles as the game progresses, with which you can literally tear apart your opponents.
That’s where the plastic flies
All of the plastic soldiers are extremely tough and sometimes even continue to fight with severed limbs, holes in their bodies or half of their head missing. It’s just a shame that you can’t achieve the same result with a flamethrower as you could with a magnifying glass in the sandbox…
Swiss cheese: With such major gunshot wounds, only a plastic soldier can fight on bravely (Xbox).
But even without plastic warriors melting together, the damage model can be quite impressive and its detailed hit zones will make you grin maliciously – especially if you’re playing against one (PS2) or three (Xbox) friends.
Multiplayer on the back burner
Nevertheless, the multiplayer mode is extremely poor: there are just four maps, no switchable CPU bots and no sensible online use. Xbox users can only play scheduled duels against friends from their Xbox Live contact list, while PS2 owners cannot go online at all. Alternatively, there is also the option of competing against each other via split screen, but since you can see all the opponent’s positions, ambushes or surprise attacks are virtually impossible, which significantly reduces the fun of the game – especially on the PS2, where only duels are possible anyway. On the Xbox you can go into battle with at least four people and also play other modes such as team progression (taking and defending positions) and capture the flag.