Learning Cinema 4D From Scratch | 004 Viewport Navigation 

2D intro template free download | Sony Vegas & After effect

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Learning Cinema 4D From Scratch | 003 Cinema 4D Manager 

Scripting
Learn about programming from scratch, then progress to create detailed code for your projects.

Beginner Gameplay Scripting
 
Scripts as Behaviour Components
 What are Scripts in Unity? Learn about the behaviour component that is a Unity script, and how to Create and Attach them to objects

C#:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class ExampleBehaviourScript : MonoBehaviour
{
    void Update ()
    {
        if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.R))
        {
            gameObject.renderer.material.color = Color.red;
        }
        if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.G))
        {
            gameObject.renderer.material.color = Color.green;
        }
        if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.B))
        {
            gameObject.renderer.material.color = Color.blue;
        }
    }
}

JS:

#pragma strict

function Update ()
{
    if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.R))
    {
        gameObject.renderer.material.color = Color.red;
    }
    if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.G))
    {
        gameObject.renderer.material.color = Color.green;
    }
    if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.B))
    {
        gameObject.renderer.material.color = Color.blue;
    }
}

BOO:

import UnityEngine
import System.Collections


public class ExampleBehaviourScript(MonoBehaviour):

    private def Update():
        if Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.R):
            gameObject.renderer.material.color = Color.red
        if Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.G):
            gameObject.renderer.material.color = Color.green
        if Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.B):
            gameObject.renderer.material.color = Color.blue

Learning Cinema 4D From Scratch | 002 Details of Interface of Cinema 4D 

Rockstar recently released this jaw-dropping gameplay trailer of GTA V.I'd like to know the process and the complexity involved in developing such an open world game, including all the technical aspects. Please focus on the technical details in depth including the technologies/softwares/algorithms used.Please elaborate the working of game engines as well.

Answers;

I do not work for Rockstar and or am affiliated with Rockstar games and their affiliated companies responsible for the GTA franchise, intellectual property, and or GTA:V. This is just some insight to how the process typically works.

I'm passing this along to those that are my friends who are currently working at large game studios including Rockstar. This is my opinion and not representative of how Rockstar's internal process actually works (it's along the lines), and yes this post will be littered with grammatical errors and mistakes, sorry. This post is pretty long, but it covers how AAA games are made both from my experience working in the industry, and from friends who are currently building games.

How the process typically works in a AAA game.

"Grand Theft Auto 5 is an incredibly complex game for any studio to handle, let alone produce."

The estimated cost for developing such a game of this grandiose scale is in the hundreds of millions with hundreds if not thousands of employees building such a product in a collective tandem.

Along with a collective hundreds of thousands of man hours, millions lines of code, QA testing, many years, and sleepless nights. It's no easy task to build a game that is filled with a wealth & breadth of depth and scale.

So why make a game this big? The return on investment can make or break a studio. With Rockstar investing millions if not a few hundred million into a game that hasn't even hit market-shelves proving that the concept had worked is extremely risky in todays volatile video game market, yet alone economic market.

However, if the product is successful; for example opening up with a launch day of 9.5 million sales at a base retail price of $60 (USD) with some fluctuation between $60-$90 for the collectors edition, this then can net extremely profitable returns for the publisher and developers.

So what comes first?

Rockstar has already proven that the "GTA" concept is successful with previous GTA releases. That being said, GTA is a proven concept that works, so building a prototype / and story around the GTA universe is relatively simple in terms of continuing the GTA ip (intellectual property).

With an already established and existing market with consumer demand for open world sandbox games, GTA5 will fare pretty well.

They don't need to build a sci-fi universe with a cowboy running around gunslinging aliens from the ground up. Which in the end may or may not work. The GTA franchise has been proven to work, and the sandbox genre is currently in demand, so GTA:V will most likely succeed.

So, the challenge for Rockstar is keeping the genre of fresh and innovative while keeping the players interested and staying current in leveraging current & next gen platforms, and pushing the game industry forward. Albeit, with all the preparation of making sure the game works, and is fun during consumer testing there's a lot of luck if a game will succeed. Many of these variables include; timing of the product's release, the current demand, the interest from varying demographics, and whether or not there are socio-economic influences at play where as whether or not many consumers don't have available discretionary income at their disposal.

These are all factors that need to be considered ahead of time to minimize a failed launch, bottleneck in production, and so that at the end of the fiscal year the company can pay employees and recoup loses without too high of a burn rate with returns in the red.

Then comes the game's many "engines".

With that being said some of the past technologies used to develop old GTA titles can be retrofitted for the new asset pipeline for developing GTA:V.
 
Internally, Rockstar is still going to have to build new pipelines for artists to deliver their content to multiple teams, engineers to push new builds, and so on. The technical team and the content makers will most likely be using Perforce, or Alien Brain. If they are using Perforce, then they'll most likely be integrating it with Shotgun, Helix, and Swarm. Perforce is used to manage assets on a server. Perforce is a VCS and is used typically across all AAA companies whether they adopt Perforce or utilize another Version Control System. VCS is at the heart of ensuring coherence and stability in AAA games development.

The pipeline system would most likely fall under "tools development" which a team of engineers would be responsible for. Afterwards, there's going to be a custom scripting language added on top of an existing language used to build and script GTA's world, gameplay programming, missions, and events.

The game most likely will be written in C++, and the game is made together in Rockstars RAGE engine. On-top of using C++, Rockstar will leverage scripting languages such as LUA / Python to manage gameplay scripting so that game designers can edit game play and test for game feel.

- "Sandboxes":

For the sake of brevity, let's say they'll be using lots of sandboxes to build the games many features before putting all that content into a release master build.

- They're going to need multiple sandboxes to build things in. When everything is built in these different sandboxes, everything then will be merged into one sandbox.

- An engine that houses the game. This would be the release branch of the game internally.

- There's definitely a level editor that allows content creators (level designers, environmental artists, etc) to build the game quickly.

- A cutscene team. This typically will fall to the VFX and Art department.

- Animation coherence / testing sandbox.

- An internal gameplay testing white room for testing out various gameplay mechanics, and game feel. (how a car drives, shooting enemies, etc) "the debug engine essentially".

- A sound engine / branch. Here the foley effects will be placed into the world, tested, along with sound effects, and music.

- A sound system for voice actors.

-  Story tree engine / narrative engine.
 
- Multiplayer sandbox along with its network testing counterparts (pay loading, smoke tests, etc)


- They're going to be using a ton of mathematical computations that predict what a player will do against the AI, an objective, or whether or not a player has met a certain criteria for X.

- Most of it will be behavioral AI algorithms
.
- A lot of will also be 3D rendering.

- Rendering assets will also be done with an algorithm to utilize the most memory efficient usage of the game so that the console / pc is not being over-clocked. With that being said, they'll probably use a 3rd party tool to help condense assets.

- Calculating objects with objects inside the game world.
- Running searches in the background to see what x player is doing and how to predict the next outcome.

They'll be using some sort of system to manage things.

Inside they're also going to be using AlienBrain / Perforce or some sort of equivalent system (most likely a private enterprise system) to house builds and backup all assets, for collaboration. This is used for "source control" on a larger scale. AAA studios have millions of files to manage, and in the event that the game breaks during development, the technical team can rollback. Though costly, to rollback two-three days work, is much easier, than losing an entire projects length of work if shit really hits the fan.

- Systems:

-  Perforce: Or a private enterprise software (most likely this).

- An enterprise task software

- Server storage for housing builds, and backing stuff up.

- Game analytics system (they track what you do in the game). Services such as Kontagent which is very pricey.

- Custom scripting language built on top of a pre-existing system (mostly used for gameplay scripting, hotlinking objects, think LUA on top of C++)
- Some sort of enterprise employee system for inhouse purposes

For managing the design of the game and so that milestones are met, Rockstar is either using trickle down SCRUM or AGILE SCRUM with SCRUM masters. They are also probably taking advantage of using working methodologies such as MoScOw and SWAT to make decisions.

For the art tools:

More than likely, they're going to be using Zbrush, Maya, or Mudbox for 3d modeling. The artists are then going to be getting their hands dirty with a variety of tools including, Photoshop, Sketchbook Pro, Illustrator, After Effects, and what not.

For the engineers:

For coding, it's going to be a mix of Visual Studio, and or some other SDK + IDE that isn't available on the market. There's also going to be a version control system (VCS) in place and a chain of senior engineers that oversee the code from junior engineers before it goes into the release branch. Here juniors and non-senior engineers will work on forked branches that they checkout before submitting them for a vetting process before integration.

Rockstar also leverages Autodesks new game development tools such as Scaleform, Beast, Kynapse, HumanIK.

Sound is going to be using either Logic Pro, or Pro Tools, Ableton live, and possibly AVID.

They're also going to be shelling out a lot for analytics measurement for seeing what players are doing in the game with a lot of telemetry.

Still reading? One person, yet alone 20 people can't build GTA:V.

There's going to be a lot of math involved in GTA:V.

There's probably a whole team just of programmers responsible for handling the physics of the game. Geometric meshing, physics, handling vectors, the friction of a car against the slope of the road in the Hollywood hills, the force of a car running into an object, etc. Just calculating the math on paper is difficult enough, having to program it in is even more so! However, a lot of this math will be handled by the engine itself at runtime; math is still a crucial component.

There's going to be a lot of animation involved in GTA:V.

Along with all the physics, there is going to be a lot of animators, riggers, and programmers working in tandem so that the games animations look fluid and play well. This being calculating the frames for managing when an animation plays, handling cutscene animation, rigging the bones and steps to the game with controller input. The list goes on and on.

There's going to be a lot of gameplay scripters.

Someone is going to have to write the gameplay scripting. So that when you press fire on say an Xbox One controller, it fires back and shoots. Along with all the other actions needed for a games mechanics / actions.

There's going to be a dedicated team of AI scripters.

Someone has to write the path finding and math behind what an NPC does against a player. The projectiles fired at a player and X, and what it should do if the actions are met and or not. This involves a lot of math, trial and error, and solid programming skills.

Here's a great book on writing AI. Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI: Dave Mark: 9781584506843: Amazon.com: Books

There's going to be that team of producers, senior devs, senior designers, etc.
With all thats going on someone is going to have to oversee the production of GTA:V.

To make sure that it is up to par and that they can report back to the people funding the project with a product that is up to quality. Remember, someone has to shell out around a hundred million or more to make this game work. These people are responsible for ensuring that the game comes to fruition, meets milestones, and ships.

There's also going to be a team of marketers!
Someone has to make sure we hear about GTA:V! This can be both internal and out sourced to agencies who build advertising campaigns for the game.

There's also going to be a team of tools developers!
From building the internal asset pipeline, to ensuring that the assets are loaded into the engine properly, there will be someone dedicated to keeping the engine and tools greased up and oiled.

There's also going to be a team of network developers!
Someone has to develop a system to handle packets, make sure the servers work, and that the multiplayer functions.

There's also going to be a team of game designers, writers, etc!
Who comes up with the story? Who builds the game mechanics? Who comes up with the missions? Who writes the narrative?

There's also going to be a team of artists, animators, ui designers!
Someone has to make the art for the game?

There's going to be the legal department.
Everything has to be analyzed by a legal department to make sure that GTA:V doesn't come under suit for breaching something that was unintentional.

There's also going to be a team of voice over actors, sound designers, and sound developers!
Get that sound in the game! Someone is going to have to produce the music, foley effects for the game, and then someone is going to have to handle coding those sounds into the game.

There's also going to be a team of mocap'rs, and other people too!
Time for the green screen action in Hollywood. People are going to have to dress up in Skeltor suits with balls stuck all over them to get the most realistic rendering and capture of walking animations, combat punches, and what not.

There's also going to be someone at Sony, Microsoft, ESRB.
Someone has to make sure the game is up to compliance with their next gen and current gen software. That Rockstar has met there guidelines for mastering the game. For every infraction made against compliance, Rockstar can be fined by ESRB, and or Microsoft. During this period, mastering falls to the lead producers.

There's also going to be a team of Quality Assurance testers!
It's time for a bughunt! Typo spotted in the French translation of the game? Game stops loading after Xbox One's middle button is pressed and switched to profile 2? I fell through the worlds geometry and am now floating in space. There is going to be a large team of QA tester and several QA leads who will ensure that severe bugs are not shipped when the game hits release.

There's also going to be a team of Translators, ESRB compliance testers, etc.
Since the game is going to be distributed worldwide there's going to have to be a team for translators, voice actors who speak in different languages, and localization personal. There will be people responsible for the compliance testing for certifying the game in certain regions.


There's going to be a team for something I missed.
If you've got the gist of all "There's going to be a team of______". There's a lot of people and teams who have to work together to make something this big. Teams that specialize in coding, tools coding, art, concept art, sound, localization, ui, ux, game design, etc.

In conclusion.

As you can see there's a lot that goes into producing a game. Whether you're making a small game, or large game such as GTA. There's a lot involved from handling code, to visual design, all the way to good UX through game feel, emotioneering, etc. There's a lot that goes into producing games.

With a plethora of teams in which I'm positive I've probably didn't mention above, along with some other resources that I've skirted around. Building a game the scale of this magnitude is no easy task. Plenty of teams and a collective hundreds of thousands of man hours just to make a game for our enjoyment is what goes into building a game this large. So, the next time the credits roll up in any game you're playing, -please don't skip them-, take a moment to thank the people that made that said game possible and just remember how hard it is to make any game whether small or large.