Today is a special day - a lot of people took a long weekend and the offices are rather empty. Even Tanuki-Sempai isn’t around to supervise us!

So I’ll take this opportunity to talk about my life… and for instance, hmm… my soup! What’s wrong with soup? It tastes really good! My colleagues always look at me strangely when I heat up my pack of soup, while they are there with their noodles from the day before or their ready meals which can give you cancer, by the way… Seriously, I don’t understand! You can find these delicious fresh soups with broccoli or asparagus in any supermarket! And in summer, there’s nothing more refreshing than a cool and spicy gazpacho!

Besides, I’m not the only one who appreciates soup around here… a few days ago, it was the annual festival of the “Golden Ladle” with its famous open-air soup contest and free tasting. I participated a few years ago with a nettle soup and a coral lens soup with ginger… but that’s another story :)



But I’m still surrounded by soup, because these days, I’m busy creating recipes that will help you create potions, poisons, sweets, small dishes… in Wakfu. And of course soup! To do so, I have different vegetables, plants, cereals, mushrooms, but also flowers, fruits, Ergot Concoction (yes, that exists!), pollen and spores, vegetable essence...

What about you? Do you have any good soup recipes to suggest? If some of them inspire me, you might even find them in the game… ;)

Okay, Aduline succeeded in forcing me to write a few lines about level design. Since Yamato introduced the editor we use at Ankama in a previous post, I’m not going to go over that again. I’m going to try to make an exhaustive list of everything the mystic title “level designer” encapsulates.

Stage one: map creation.

Be it for an MMO an FPS or an RTS (or any game for that matter), maps and what happens on them is conceived at the beginning of the process by the game designers (Tanuki-sempai must have spoken about them already. If not, he’d better hurry). Level designers then closely study these details, which are accurate enough to give a general image of the area and of what the game designer wants.

The first thing to do is to make a list of any graphical elements, which are then given to the lead graphic artist in order to ensure that all ‘Pics’ will be ready before the creation of the map.



With a sufficient foundation of pictures, construction begins. The first phase is straightforward, but it takes some time. The (magnificent) pictures that were provided by the (talented) graphic artists are positioned coherently. The most basic images are those that make up the terrain, but the process quickly gets complicated when we move onto buildings, some of which require one week. The second phase concerns having the maps checked by the game designer(s) and the graphic artist(s) for aesthetic touch-ups. The world begins to take shape but the level designer isn’t out of the woods yet!

After this preparatory work, we are left with a blank map, which is pretty, but void of any game play. A nice picture, but a useless one. The aesthetic touch-ups continue with the addition of shadow and shade. Since Wakfu is not in 3D, all those shadows are not automatically projected, but have to be individually placed by the nimble, overworked hands of the level designer (it’s a job for ants, this one). Every tree, every rock, every house, every house’s shadow and any deterioration to houses have to be positioned by hand.




Stage two: dynamic elements.

The scene is now a little prettier. But as you might have guessed, there are a good number of elements that still have to be added. You’d be right! Next, the particles (moving graphic elements such as insects, light or fish under water). This will make the picture less static and a lot more enjoyable. This part of the process is done with another tool. Since the particles (which we call APS here) are generic, they must be adapted and placed on the maps manually. It’s exacting work.


Stage three: sounds.

The scene is finally complete. Visually! In order to perfect the player’s immersion in the world, however, we’re now going to add some sounds and music. What should players hear when they go into this Inn on walk near that waterfall? What should the background music be when players step into a boss chamber? Level designers have to answer all these questions and accordingly ‘position’ sounds (with hearing distances, frequency of repetition, volume etc.) on maps.

Stage four: Genesis.

Now that we’ve created a world, we have to breathe life into it. The first task is to position the elements that players will interact with most frequently. That means resources and monsters. If you’ve been following the first principles of Wakfu, you’ll know that all we have to do is position monsters and resources, because the world will then evolve according to the actions of players (that means you, reader, and future player). The positioning process can be fairly quick because it concerns “generic zones” of resources. All that remains after that is to correctly manage the frequency at which elements appear and in which quantities etc. On the other hand, there are particular areas where all resources and monsters are completely controlled. In these cases, monsters and resources are positioned by hand.



Stage five: evolution.

So life is now present in our world, and we have a good idea of what it’s going to look like. But not all monsters and resources are completely passive. These rare intelligences react to the actions of players. Monsters, resources and other elements therefore have to be scripted. Script is a simple programming language which allows particular elements which are independent of the game motor to be managed. The possibilities are therefore enormous. Every element that makes up the world (such as creatures, interactive objects, sounds and lights) can be scripted.

Stage six: Scripting.

At this stage, we have a game that more or less holds its own. Granted, it still resembles a “hack and slash” like Diablo more than an MMORPG and since Wakfu will be an MMO we’ll have to add a few touches to set it apart from the other power gamer games where what matters most is the size of your “sword”. What I’m talking about is the quests or missions, what we call the challenges, which involves giving players (and their characters) more or less complex or difficult objectives, thereby taking them through the world in which they evolve. These challenges may have several themes: commerce, combat, exploration, dialogue etc… These generic themes are composed of sub-categories which culminate in the primary objective of each of the missions. For example in commerce quests, players will be asked to plant, harvest, transport and sell resources. Rewards will then be accorded to players when they complete missions. So not only does the level designer have to come up with missions, dialogues, objectives and rewards, but also the monsters, objects (interactive or otherwise) which will form the substance of the missions. All this has to be scripted in minute detail. This phase is what will earn an MMO it’s stripes (one each for R, P and G!) because this is exactly what will involve the players in the roles they have chosen for their characters and in this way, they will become immersed in the world of the game.


Stage seven: completion and follow-up.

By now the (exhausted) level designer has constructed the maps, positioned the pictures, houses, sounds, particles shadow and shade. Monsters and resources have been put in place, bosses and dungeons scripted. Hundreds of missions have been written and scripted. But the torture will soon be at an end because all that has been created will soon be placed into the bosom of the world at large. This stage consists mostly of testing the creations in order to weed out bugs, possible loopholes for cheaters, spelling mistakes and other errors that spoil the gaming experience. Then all that remains is to follow-up all this once the testers (before the official release) or the players (through the forums and Support) have given feedback.



Well those of you who haven’t fallen asleep by now might have a better idea of what it’s like to work as a level designer. Now they can put others to sleep with the news that you have to be very patient and indulgent for this protracted and exacting job, and that although it’s not as straightforward as you may have thought, it’s all the more enriching for that.

I might as well take this chance to tell you that we’re looking for level designers (with experience in the area). Go here for details: http://jobs.ankama.com/.

I’ve nothing much else to say really. Just that we’re in the Chinese year of the rat. I like rats!

Registration for the beta opened a few weeks ago and some fan websites had already started having contests offering beta registrations, everything seemed to indicate that we were about to start the first beta phase. And yet, we have not. It's time for an update on the situation!

We were ready to put the first version of the game online, but we preferred to test it one last time among ourselves. In the end, what came out of that last look at our game is that we weren't quite satisfied with our work. The game is well on its way, but the content isn't polished enough. Players are dropped in Wakfu without guidance, they’re confronted with functionalities without knowing what they’re supposed to do. A zone rich in information and content is missing, in which the player could progressively discover the wealth of gameplay that Wakfu provides... it's this game's beginning area that we wish to finalise before we let the players roam at their will around the world of Wakfu.

Thus, the first beta test phase that was initially planned this month will not arrive until the beginning of February. Yet another delay, yes, but a delay that will allow us to make sure that the game we have been working on will please us in the end. Not to mention all of you!

Thanks to all Wakfu fans for your patience and your support, and see you very very soon in the World of Twelve!

Note to Fibojo: Thanks for your help with the translation.

Since the devblog's creation, many aspects of the progress of Wakfu have been addressed. Music, development, game design... But for the first time, we'll talk here of animation.

Animation is that exciting job that consists in giving life to the game's monsters and characters. And yes, it is a job, and not the easiest there is, either! We'll see here together what it means to be an animator on Wakfu.

We animate with the Flash software. We build a sort of "kit" for each character containing different views and all the elements that comprise it (arms, head, feet, legs, etc). We then get a puppet that we can modify, transform, decline, to give it all the poses we wish.



Once the puppet is done, we can move it around. For this, we proceed by "key frames", which is to say that we create the main poses through which the character must pass to make its movement.



At this stage, it's already possible to test the animation and to check the timing and accuracy.




On the other hand, it's still a bit jerky. We must then create the intervals, the intermediary pictures that occur between the keyframes. In most cases, Flash allows us to make those easily through the use of interpolation. But this is a somewhat capricious process, and it isn't uncommon to have to do the "inters" by hand.
Once the inters are made, the animation is much smoother.




Next, all we have to do is the animation for all the different viewpoints. One view is far from adequate! A monster only moves diagonally, so four views are sufficient (see the Gobball above), but it must be able to do its animation in all four directions too. Luckily, both front views are symmetrical, so we only have to do the animation once and flip it around to obtain both front views. Same for the back view. So for a monster, we only have to create two animations (one for the back views, one for the front) for it to work in all cases taken into account by the game.
For a player character, it's a little more complicated. A player can move in eight directions!



And here, we can't cheat, since these characters can have asymmetric elements (shield, shoulder pads, armbands, etc) it's impossible to simply flip an animation, it will have to be made eight times for anything to do with movement (walking, running, jumping...) and four times for anything to do with attacks, "emotes" and other animations, those being diagonals only.

That's it for the technical aspect of Wakfu animation. But animating isn't just moving a character about, those movements must also be credible and in accordance with the creature's look. Wakfu monsters aren't real, it's our task to imagine how they'd move if they were. Quite often, we can simply find inspiration in existing animals. The Tofu, for instance, is a sort of hybrid between a chicken and a sparrow, its movements will therefore be at once quick and clumsy depending on the action it has to do. When a monster doesn't have an equal in the real world, we must call upon our imagination and this is where the job becomes the most creative. It's up to us to imagine a walk, an overall appearance that will express the personality of the monster. A Crackler, for example, will have a heavy and slow gait where its head will shake with each step, to make the impact and the weight noticeable.




The coolest part of our job is when the time comes to imagine the attacks of monsters! As at that point, almost anything goes. We can imagine the most fantastic movements, using the physical characteristics of the monsters to the greatest degree, and there is room for imagination there! For a Whirligig, we'll use its wing as if it were a blade, a Crackler will use its head as a projectile, which will regrow afterwards... Wakfu creatures show such morphological originality that we rarely have to think for long before coming up with an attack animation.




So this is what the job of an animator is like on a project as brilliant as Wakfu! Of course, as for everything else, there is a dark side... For us, it's the technical restrictions imposed on us by the engine and our lovely devs... but shush, that's a subject that will certainly be the object of another article...

Tiko

Note to Fibojo: Thanks for your help with the translation.

To follow up on my first post about the map editor, I'll introduce you this time in more detail to the way scenery is created in Wakfu.

The most observant will have certainly noticed that the graphical elements never jut out laterally from the cell they belong to, but that they can vary in height.
Although it isn’t a problem to display the majority of landscape elements (trees, flowers, etc.), it creates an important constraint for larger elements, namely: they must be cut in smaller blocks.

If we take the example of a building, rather than display a single big texture that represents it, we display a pile of bricks, roof tiles and other various props (doors, windows, etc.).
Level designing can easily be compared to a game of Lego!


The advantage of this system is two-fold. First of all, it enables us to create dozens of houses using the same small textures and therefore to reduce the size of the game considerably. This also allows us to easily create an isometric world where every object has a 3D volume defining the way a character can interact with it (collision, movement, etc.).
In theory it is therefore possible to walk on the roof of a house, or climb a mountain as long as we can find a path that allows us to get there.


We also realised that it would be essential to be able to place the same building in different locations without having to completely rebuild the stacks of blocks that make it up. That's why we created the notion of group, which allows us to save a group of blocks so that we can re-use later, and most of all enables us to make modifications so that it's taken into account wherever we might have placed that group in the world already.


Furthermore, we wanted the size of the inside of buildings to be consistent with their exterior to avoid small houses being as large as cathedrals on the inside. We've thus created a layer system that allows us to group some blocks within a given cell together.
The elements that make up the inside of a house and its outside are grouped in separate layers. So, by hiding one or the other, we get a "perfect" transition when we enter an edifice.


Besides the graphical elements, it's also possible to add other elements to embellish the map, such as casting shadows on the ground or giving a tint to an object to create a special atmosphere.
Finally, particle systems can also be placed on a map to add some dynamism (the flame of a torch, hovering butterflies, atmospheric effects...), but who knows, this might be the subject of a next post? ^^

Note to Fibojo: Thanks for your help with the translation.

Dear Readers,

I won't tell you about Daryl's dubious schemes to misinform you… Since we have nice and new toilets, he spends his time there covering the walls with cock-and-bull graffiti about etheric movements and other nonsense… I won't tell you about the sabotage attempts we've been victim of lately with unruly power cuts which made us lose hours of work… I won't tell you about those who cover their desks with post-its "Don't forget to save", or those who patrol in the corridor with a giant inflatable baseball bat! No! Let me tell you about something concrete, something serious…

Do you want to see on what we're working? Let me show you a screenshot of my computer screen while using our main tool. For the last few days our team in charge of creating the interfaces has been working on the connection and character creation phases. And they need to provide great efforts on these since the first impression of the game you'll get will start here! There are lots of things to think about and to set up… We would like to put at your disposal some sort of program that will help you name your character while avoiding names that won't be appropriate and will ruin the atmosphere of the game. We also thought about the color palette that you’ll have at your disposal to customize your avatar.
There won't be like thousands of colors available, like in DOFUS, but a large choice of nuances, with a few particularities according to the class, this way we'll prevent pink-haired Smurfs… and those who wish to have a funkier look, will have to discover how to change their style in game! ;)



You can spot a group of Iops on the screen that helped me testing the color palette for the skin color. This tool will also enable you to dress and equip your characters to preview what it'll look like. Some of us had fun creating 2-meter high Iops with piggy tails during their lunch break!!!
Another work document which comes in really handy is a view of the island on which the level designers are working on. This way, we can see where everything is and quickly move around when we need to test animations, items, movements or even just check that the atmosphere we wanted to create in a specific location comes out well.

Alright, time to get back to work and check the color codes for the Osamodas hair color!

Hello Everyone!



[* Coucou = Hi]

I’m going to explain to you the very beginning of the development of Wakfu, and the design of its map editor.



One of the first things we wanted to add to Wakfu was the Scrolling. This quickly implied the necessity to create the world differently. Indeed, it could no longer be created map by map but had to be created in its global nature so that we wouldn’t have to worry about map connections and therefore work faster on the different areas.

After a few reflections about which technologies we should use, we decided that the combo C# / DirectX would offer us interesting perspectives to conceive a quick and ergonomic editor.
We had first set up our technical hopes on the latest version of Flash and of its Action Script 3 since the game client had been started in Flash. But one of the first problems we came across was that we couldn’t use the sprites made under Flash by our graphic artists with a DirectX display…



We therefore tried to schematize each sprite in the editor with symbols and colors, but it ended up being unusable since we didn’t have a real preview of the map. We eventually succeeded to use the Flash generated files and display them as Bitmap in the editor, which was a lot better…

Once we fixed this problem, we (Julien and I) started to work on the design of the editor’s core, while Bo was doing his best to create a flowing Flash scrolling and another part of the team started to rewrite a game server in a stronger Java.
When the editor started to run properly, we noticed that even if the Flash scrolling of the client was working, the editor had better performances because it benefited from the 3D acceleration and had a rendering close to that of produced by vectors.
That’s when we decided to rewrite the game engine in Opengl to have performances close to that of DirectX and then keep the portability towards Mac and Linux.



During several months we added new functionalities to the editor, one of which was to enable us to work in collaboration on the map. Therefore, we had to write a server to manage the transactions between the different instances of the editor then creating some sort of "Online Sim-City", where the graphic artists in charge of the map designing were messing around destroying their neighbors’ trees and chat thanks to bushes…

This type of entertainment didn’t last long as we had a lot to do to end the first island of the game!
Even today, Julien is often being harassed to add new tools to the editor (Copy/Paste, Color, reduction of the differences in height, etc.) and we can tell you for sure that’s it’s not over yet!



-Yamato