Game Freak to present at CEDEC 2022 about Pokemon modeling

[Zowayix]

Front-loading the bad news:

• CEDEC (Computer Entertainment Developers Conference) is a paid-tuition conference for developers formerly held in an in-person venue in Yokohama, Japan. It's going digital this year because Covid, but a conference pass still costs ~$385 and events can only be viewed live.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1541270325027287043

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1541294739923898370

Game Freak (CG Technology Director Keiichi Maezawa) is one of the lecturers this year and will be holding a 60-minute lecture on August 25.

セッションの内容

『ソード・シールド』までのポケモンモデル制作は、タイトルごとに仕様を定め、それに応じたデータをMaya上で構築していくフロ―になっていました。マテリアルはShaderFXで作成し、ロケータもMaya上ですべて仕込み、タイトルと同じ環境で納品チェックを行う流れです。
しかし、ポケモンモデルの総数は累計1000種を超えており、毎タイトル作り直していくのも限界を迎えつつありました。

『アルセウス』と『スカーレット・バイオレット』、ゲーム性もルックの方向性も異なる2つのタイトルを同時に開発するにあたって、環境・フローの見直しが急務でした。
この状況の解決のため、我々が行った取り組みをご紹介します。

I'd appreciate a fluent translation, but the pessimistic part of me wonders if not much interesting is going to show up here.

• Game Freak is also holding another lecture on August 23 that's just about "how we switched to remote development in between SwSh and LA".
• The primary topic of the lecture seems to be "how we developed models for LA and SV simultaneously, and how our work environment has changed since Sword/Shield to allow this to happen".

 

[R_N]

I hope someone does watch these and give a good translation, technical talks like these tend to be pretty fleshed out.

 

[Worldie]

So they're finally admitting that the dexit was indeed caused by the unsustainability of the constant porting model.

Took them a while, they could have just been upfront about this right away with SwSh instead of trying to hide it and cause the shitstorm that happened.

Also agree with R_N , i really hope serebii or someone else does a proper translation cause I love actually technical talks.

 

[KaenSoul]

So they're finally admitting that the dexit was indeed caused by the unsustainability of the constant porting model.

Took them a while, they could have just been upfront about this right away with SwSh instead of trying to hide it and cause the shitstorm that happened.

It would have been a shitstorm anyway, you shouldn't need to watch an hour long conference to understand that working with over 1000 different characters isnt easy especially on a tight schedule as your boss expect something new every year, there is a reason no other big company even bother trying something like that.
It still sucks, tho.

 

[Worldie]

It would have been a shitstorm anyway

Possibly, but part of the shitstorm reason was because they kept piling out random reasons instead of just saying they didnt manage to.

Trying to make it pass as a conscious balance choice when you created Zacian and included Incineroar in the same game didn't exactly work out did it ;)

you shouldn't need to watch an hour long conference to understand that working with over 1000 different characters isnt easy especially on a tight schedule

Is it, according to large majority of this forum, it's unthinkable and GF is just being lazy :)
(yes i'm being antagonistic on purpose, love you all anyway)

 

[R_N]

Honestly I'm most curious about their porting tools, because my running theory is something happened such that it caused a bunch of problems that required them to do far more fixes than probably normal.

The pokemon in the protos we have were extremely janky, if yo ustart comparing models (in the final game, to their 3ds counterparts) you'll find random splotches of polygons that seem like they needed to be repaired, and some animations are "new" in the sense that they're the same as the 6-7 animations but like...the animation broke and they had to re-rig it.

That's gonna have knock-on effects through the entire process.


Also interested in hearing about their transition to WFH. All things considered it seemed to go well, and seems they're still doing it even today, so I wonder how that all worked behind the scenes. Was it an easy transition, did they get lucky at being between games, did morale improve, maybe work improve etc etc

 

[Zowayix]

The pokemon in the protos we have were extremely janky, if yo ustart comparing models (in the final game, to their 3ds counterparts) you'll find random splotches of polygons that seem like they needed to be repaired, and some animations are "new" in the sense that they're the same as the 6-7 animations but like...the animation broke and they had to re-rig it.

Do you have images/videos of this happening in the prerelease builds?

 

[R_N]

Do you have images/videos of this happening in the prerelease builds?

these are three separate thoughts and unfortunately none of them have I actually saved over the years
in first one you can see it in some of the screenshots in our thread here (...somewhere) of just like, textures being borked and some of the rigging seeming off iirc. Some of that is of course just like engine, but there was jsut enough jank to make you think it was more than just "this is early days with an early engine"
I wish i saved photos of the splotches, because they were really fasicnating. Like Arcanine seemed to be about 1:1 until you have this random like chunk of one thigh that had a bunch of new tris put there. Or Clefable was about the same except it had a few extra tris put onto the base of the wings. There was literally one model, of a Pokemon I can't remember, where it was exactly the same except two entire tris were put on. If all the little extra tris had just been on like, a specific consistent part across the models, or on all the models, I wouldn't have thought much but it was a random selection on a random set of models. iirc some like Bulbasaur & SIlvally were completely unchanged.
The third one I remember clear as day with of al lthings Wingull. People were comparing animations and model work and at one point they showed Wingull's attack animation side by side (the ranged one, i think, also used for its encounter animation) that was clearly the same animation just...tweaked, in a way you would only notice if yo usaw them side by side.

 

[Felis Licht]

Honestly I'm most curious about their porting tools, because my running theory is something happened such that it caused a bunch of problems that required them to do far more fixes than probably normal.

The pokemon in the protos we have were extremely janky, if yo ustart comparing models (in the final game, to their 3ds counterparts) you'll find random splotches of polygons that seem like they needed to be repaired, and some animations are "new" in the sense that they're the same as the 6-7 animations but like...the animation broke and they had to re-rig it.

That's gonna have knock-on effects through the entire process.


Also interested in hearing about their transition to WFH. All things considered it seemed to go well, and seems they're still doing it even today, so I wonder how that all worked behind the scenes. Was it an easy transition, did they get lucky at being between games, did morale improve, maybe work improve etc etc

Sounds like that one screencap I came across on vp.

 

[Worldie]

Sounds like that one screencap I came across on vp.

Well it does look like that screencap ended up being wrong though, as they already announced Dexit is continuing in SV

 

[R_N]

Well it does look like that screencap ended up being wrong though, as they already announced Dexit is continuing in SV

I think that screencap is years old now so purely hypothetically it could have been true at the start but they changed their minds on how to handle things.

Even in my scenario where the tools were broken, if they fix their tools (because if they don't that will raise the work a lot more per title regardless) I saw them just...not...doing anything about dexit for one reason or another.

 

[MrHands]

Considering 95% of Pokémon since gen 6 have a handful of attack, fainting, running / walking, and idle animations and NOTHING ELSE ADDED in the past ten years it's safe to say the strain of maintaining the entire Pokedex is overblown. It's not like Pidgey gets a handful of new animations each gen, it's basically the same as it was in gen 6. If all they're doing is retexturing each Pokémon between gens that could easily be contracted out to a different studio. Anyone can look at screenshots comparing SwSh to Sun / Moon (or XY) and see that other than some minor texture and lighting changes between games the models are virtually the same.

The only way I can even vaguely understand their decision making here (to cut Pokemon, instead of contracting to other studios) is what R_N said, that somewhere there was an issue porting the models / textures to the Switch. But then those same models are in Home, BD/SP, and Pokemon Go, so what is it exactly? Did they just want to sell them back to us in the DLC?

Maybe they will explain a bit in this conference but none of this makes sense to me. But Gamefreak logic doesn't really make much sense a lot of the time so who knows.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

But then those same models are in Home, BD/SP, and Pokemon Go, so what is it exactly? Did they just want to sell them back to us in the DLC?

Reminder that they're not selling "back" anything in DLC. Either you have the Pokemon already, in which case you can transfer it up without buying the DLC, or you don't have the Pokemon already, in which case they're just regular selling it to you.

 

[BlizzardHero]

Honestly I'm most curious about their porting tools, because my running theory is something happened such that it caused a bunch of problems that required them to do far more fixes than probably normal.

That was the running rumor when Dexit was first announced. That GF had broken the importing tool so they couldn't automatically/systematically import the Gen 6 models and had to import each by hand - leading to the culling. Whether this rumor was started beacuse people desperately needed to find some reasonable explanation for why Dexit was implemented is unknown, but I find it unlikely that GF employees are actively spreading rumors like that as most of their information leaks come when they give data miners everything but the kitchen sink every new game.

It's certainly a logical possibility however. I don't know who actually does the importing as we don't really know a whole lot about the relationship between GF and Creatures Inc (other than that Creatures basically got bought out by Nintendo and GF wasn't too happy about that). But, the model imports are functionally identical to the Gen 6 ones, except for some new cells in the polygon mesh in a few of the Gen 6 models. Some changes were linked back to LGPE changes, but that could be a case of convergent modeling evolution rather than them actually using the few updated LGPE models.

I doubt GF is ever going actually to spill the beans on their potato programing skills, as there's nothing to be gained from making themselves look worse than they already do. But, it will be interesting to see what new excuses they come up with

 

[MrHands]

Reminder that they're not selling "back" anything in DLC. Either you have the Pokemon already, in which case you can transfer it up without buying the DLC, or you don't have the Pokemon already, in which case they're just regular selling it to you.

You still need Home and Nintendo Wifi to transfer those Pokemon so yes part of the DLC helped draw some sweet money into Nintendo / Gamefreak's pockets. A big part of the appeal of the DLC was returning Pokemon. Can anyone say otherwise? The DLC was pretty bare outside the returning mons.

Of course they weren't locked out of games that don't have the DLC, that would cause major compatibility issues with VGC and correctly label SwSh as pay to win (which they are anyway, due to tutor moves). But one way or another you need Home, Nintendo Online, and / or the DLC to get the returning Pokémon. Yes technically you can get them by trading with a friend who has the "new" mons face to face but... come on lol. They're 99% locked behind a paywall. It's a shitty business practice especially when past games had all the mons in the game from the start, and for free. Don't excuse this behavior.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

You still need Home and Nintendo Wifi to transfer those Pokemon so yes part of the DLC helped draw some sweet money into Nintendo / Gamefreak's pockets. A big part of the appeal of the DLC was returning Pokemon. Can anyone say otherwise? The DLC was pretty bare outside the returning mons.

Of course they weren't locked out of games that don't have the DLC, that would cause major compatibility issues with VGC and correctly label SwSh as pay to win (which they are anyway, due to tutor moves). But one way or another you need Home, Nintendo Online, and / or the DLC to get the returning Pokémon. Yes technically you can get them by trading with a friend who has the "new" mons face to face but... come on lol. They're 99% locked behind a paywall. It's a shitty business practice especially when past games had all the mons in the game from the start, and for free. Don't excuse this behavior.

Paying for home and nintendo online is stupid but it's stupid independent of dlc.

 

[doipy hooves]

Today (August 23rd)'s live presentation about the remote development is going on (in Japanese).
Here's a thread with brief translations (most info not translated), there are some interesting notes about efficiency and such.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1561904706699628545

 

[Magcargo]

Today (August 23rd)'s live presentation about the remote development is going on (in Japanese).
Here's a thread with brief translations (most info not translated), there are some interesting notes about efficiency and such.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1561904706699628545

Damn and here I am getting pissed off at the relatively short build times of the simple games I have worked on. 40 minutes build time seems a bit wild, since you might build the game and the graphics might look way shittier on the switch than they did on the PC due to some issues with the build or the effects not working properly (has happened to me a few times in the past when I tried making a simple 3D game for the Android). I'd imagine GF's staff might handle issues like this more professionally though, but IDK the process that professional game devs go through. I am making a wild assumption here, but I would imagine that the shorter build time for Legends Arceus and SV would let them make more touch-ups to the graphics and lighting to make those look better.

 

[DreamPrince]

What’s a cloud based pipeline?

 

[R_N]

God going from a 40m to 10m build time must have felt incredible. Though Lewtwo has a point that while parallel development of SV & LA going so much more smoothly was impressive from their timeline and production standpoint it sure leads to things about LA likely not making it into the "main" games until at least the next game lol.

also

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1562004319586615298

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1562011295960137730

extremely funny to me

looking forward to the cliff notes of the second presentation focusing on their model assets in a few days


I really wish these things would be translated, though. Aren't GDC talks usually translated? Feels like the same should be applied here.

 

[Cornflakes1717]

Did anyone record the live stream? The video is no longer available (they made it private)...

Or is there an alternative location to watch the presentation?

 

[doipy hooves]

What’s a cloud based pipeline?

This LINE developer in the tahko replies gives a pretty succinct explanation. The gist of it is that they used to build assets on a local server in the office and switched to having the job done on Amazon cloud servers, which helped them save costs from money, time, and maintenance/hardware issues as the project scale got higher, though as said the 1000 models thing is just an assumption from the description of the next presentation and wasn't mentioned in this one specifically. Such is the nature of twitter and the spread of misinformation.

Did anyone record the live stream? The video is no longer available (they made it private)...

Or is there an alternative location to watch the presentation?

Apparently lewtwo is going to reupload it.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1562053003686838273

 

[Siggu]

Today (August 23rd)'s live presentation about the remote development is going on (in Japanese).
Here's a thread with brief translations (most info not translated), there are some interesting notes about efficiency and such.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1561904706699628545

Well, no wonder they couldn't manage to make enough content in time if they were using outdated release management practices...

 

[R_N]

Well, no wonder they couldn't manage to make enough content in time if they were using outdated release management practices...

hardly the only ones, i imagine. Many business are very slow on the up take.

 

[doipy hooves]

The second presentation (on model production) is going on, with the same deal of live tweets from Lewtwo. I will edit in a link to a twitter thread when it begins.
https://cedec.cesa.or.jp/2022/session/detail/61

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1562660116159008768

Did anyone record the live stream? The video is no longer available (they made it private)...

Or is there an alternative location to watch the presentation?

As an update to this, it seems like it has been uploaded as part of his pokemon footage archive on Google Drive (the one named .CEDEC... at the top of the list) and that they will make efforts to fully translate the presentations at some point in the future.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1O1QCTCBhJOg0uryxHb-qeT3vCoaL4DsT