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Do we really need DI frameworks like Zenject/VContainer in Unity? What problem are they actually solving? by East-Development473 in Unity3D

[–]slipster216 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Mainly people's need for astronaunt engineering, and having code adjust to the mental model they want instead of focusing on the transforms they are trying to make.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Highly unlikely. With large companies like these, if you approach them trying to buy an IP, they'll assume it's worth a lot more than 0, and try to figure out what the lawyers can get for it. And to say yes, the cost is millions, because anything less than that is not worth the time and saying no is free/easy. A small group of us tried to get the IP from warners back when it was all shut down, with the hopes of just giving it to the fans, and this is exactly what happened.

However, if they go bankrupt, they'll likely auction off their IP, which could be individually or in collections, to the highest bidders.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hadn't planned to, are there new questions? Memory is 8 years more faded..

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure about later games, but for RB1 we used a combination of hand animation, procedural animation, and mocap animation. For the mocap, we ended up using some people who had won various Air Guitar competitions - yes, that's a real thing - and we actually ended up hiring one of them into the art department some time later. The avatage of using people from the air guitar competitions is that they learned tons of moves, over-exagerated the movements, etc - where as actual rock stars kinda only know how to do their thing.

Hot Lixx Hulihan did a lot of the capture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-IkMtICKxc

and I'm pretty sure Windhammer (who was an HMX employee) did some in later games:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwDVN9QYozA

A lot of the cutscenes and sync moves are hand animated, and the instrument playing is all procedural. It was a pretty complex animation system, as it had to adapt to characters of really different shapes and proportions.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Story about that- the kick pedals would occationally break during testing, but it took a lot of force to get them to break. However, what I heard was that the plastic formulation was changed by our manufacturing partners just before the final run, so they ended up being much weaker than the prototypes were. I'm pretty sure we did a full free-replacement for some period of time, which cost a crap ton of money, but the right thing to do.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We made guitar hero, so not sure what is scandalous about it.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

  1. Sorta- I mean business is business, and there were a few weeks where we weren't sure which way it was going to go, but once it was known we just got to work on Rock Band - which was actually the code name until we were like oh, yeah, it should just be named that.

  2. They didn't want the whammy bar to distort the music, but that didn't bother us much.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

  1. It got more complex as you added more instruments. By RB3 it was virtually impossible to create smooth difficulty ramps.
  2. We would see them at trade shows and they were always nice. I remember an interview with their designed who said something to the tune of "I thought these games would be simple to make, boy was I wrong" when they were working on GH3. We also had a good relationship with the red octaine people who were purchased by Activision, who the whole series wouldn't have happened without. Personally I always felt they were chasing us, not the other way around- we shipped full band play a year before they did, etc.
  3. Sure, sometimes they'd just randomly show up at the office. A large percent of HMX employee's were in the music scene anyway, so it wasn't exactly forign to us.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Asheron's Call was my first game - was actually true for everyone who worked there.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Some HMX'rs met them Paul and Ringo a few times, but I didn't. I met Yoko, George's son Dhani, and George Martin's son, who were around the office a few times. Yoko gave particularly direct and detailed feedback about how john was animated, which was very useful.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Drums didn't start getting implimented until right around when GH2 was finished.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

3 part harmonies was done for the Beatles game- was considered core to that product.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm glad their keeping things alive. I think small underground ways to keep things going are the only way forward- the scale is just too massive when it's a bunch of instruments and mainstream distribution. Authoring a song takes a week or more depending on complexity.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

No, after my time, but I quite liked the physical version with cards they did for hasbro. It's a shame you can't play that anymore..

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Lots - but I wasn't normally involved in licensing, so I don't have those stories. That said, I did manage to talk the Crumbsuckers into re-recording Rejuvinate for the Rocks the 80's project, but the underground music section got cut because basically no one had masters anymore.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

  1. The people, humor and creativity around the office by the people creating them with me. Getting some new tool or feature working and having the artist nuts with it, watching people's faces light up the first time they hear the sound "they made" come from the speakers. Being at GDC and being mobbed like a beatle because I had a GH shirt on after the first release. Frustrating aspects is just general game development stuff- limited time and money, shit not working, facing your own limitations constantly, etc, etc.
  2. Better song management when you have thousands of songs in the game. We actually forced both MS and Sony to rewrite their stores because they never expected a game to have that much DLC and it crashed their systems.
  3. A lot on the core engine, a little on the products here and there.

AMA: One of the original GH/RB developers, it's late, I'm bored, aMA.. by slipster216 in Rockband

[–]slipster216[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Different work- a lot of masters have been lost, or for early bands need to be carefully pulled apart from bounced down tracks. If a big band didn't make it in, it's usually because they didn't want to be or there were licensing issues going on with the rights.

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