Mass Effect News Thread

Casey Hudson @caseydhudson
Had an event to check out BioWare's future location in EPCOR Tower, downtown Edmonton. Will take a year to build out our space but can't wait to move in!

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That' why I only listen to non-fiction audiobooks.

^^ Hey....I thought of it first!

That was the Dantius towerr if I remember correctly dosen't really have the same ring to it compared with Elcor tower

She who Tweets first, Tweets best.

BioWare‏ @bioware
Ten years ago. #teN7





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Jonathan Cooper @gameanim
Another anniversary! Mass Effect 1 shipped in North America 10 years ago today. I was in Istanbul at the time crammed into a tiny internet cafe excitedly reading reviews. Here are 10 fun facts about the game - all animation-related...

1. Mass Effect comprised my first ever mocap shoots, back in 2005, flying down here to LA to Giant Studios in the Culver Studio lot. We shot the initial gameplay actions on the same sound-stage as was recorded Gone With The Wind - perhaps inspiring the romances?



2. During this climactic scene of Anderson punching diplomat Udina, cinematic lead Shane Welbourn, (suited up as Anderson), accidentally clocked the Udina actor on the jaw. I had to work with the poor chap shortly afterwards and he was less than impressed



3. The very first breakthrough in the facial animation/customization system, spearheaded by former Olympian @haroldballs, was when we were able to create then-US president George W. Bush.

4. The close over-the-shoulder camera style I used for conversations in Mass Effect was inspired primarily by Ricky Gervais's The Extras. This is not a joke - that entire series was built on awkward, close conversations.



5. It was a fight to get design to stick with long-lenses as they were accustomed to framing characters against interesting backgrounds rather than close-ups on the face alone. They were eventually convinced after this first proof-of-concept: E3 2006 demo



6. Procedural generation of conversations allowed for a great base-line conversation that included facial, body and camerawork, leaving them to only be improved by cinematic designers. ~70% were touched by hand, leaving 30% procedural only, like this one:



7. BioWare traditionally used black bars to denote interactive conversations, but we won a heated argument to remove them for Mass Effect to blur the line between interactive dialogue and cutscenes. This allowed us to seamlessly weave interactivity into dramatic cinematic scenes.

8. Every gameplay animation in Mass Effect had the eyes constrained forward by default to overcome the dead stare commonly found in games. This detail afforded design access to all 1200 anims for the conversation system, applying additional eye motion on top per line as required.

9. Puppetshop, the animation/rigging tool developed for and used by the entire trilogy by @lumonix was stealthily made available for free to the public after the first game. (Sadly it's no longer supported or available anywhere - but you could have made all the aliens you want).



10. In perhaps a first - Mass Effect had fully localized lip lip-sync in all languages, possible only because the systemic lip-sync was entirely procedurally-generated. (I only learned this after my later Quebec colleagues enthused about the French version).



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Origin‏ @origininsider
Awesome deals on great games. Sale ends 10AM PST November 28. bit.ly/2hsr3TU

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Some very choice nuggets in these tweets. Nice look behind the scenes.

Mark Meer‏ Gekrakel (Mark)_Meer
Happy 10th Anniversary, @masseffect! Congrats to all @bioware.

SYFY Wire: An oral history of Mass Effect: 10 years later, here's how the legend was born
www.syfy.com/syfywire/an-oral-history-of-mass-effect-10-years-later-heres-how-the-legend-was-born

www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/1140x640/public/2017/11/masseffect.jpg



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Youtube: "Anyone else holding on to the idea that this kind of content on their various social media pages means ME isn't dead?"


*prays*

Give it time Bioware might just start selling it.