Putting doors on video games is a nightmare, say developers

Putting doors on video games is a nightmare, say developers

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It turns out that putting something that looks as simple as doors in a video game is really difficult, even for big studios like Naughty Dog. A Twitter conversation today about doors started when Death Trash developer Stephan Hövelbrinks tweeted the following on the implementation of ports in games:

To summarize: doors push players into small areas, block their paths, but, unlike walls, they have many other potential problems, such as being locked or unlocked, being able to be destroyed (and therefore not being there anymore) and much more. And to be clear, Hövelbrinks is specifically talking about doors that can open and close and players can pass without loading into a new area, instead of doors that are static or act as portals.

Damion Schubert, design director of Boss Fight and former designer of BioWare Austin also weighed, describing in more detail what these problems can entail: for example, NPCs may not be able to find their way through a space because of how the doors interact with their paths, or if they try to use the door at the same time than an NPC or a player. There are also visual problems, related to doors locking through other objects or locked, or related to the animation of a player reaching out to open that door.

The Last of Us 2 co-director, Kurt Margenau, also joined the conversation note that Naughty Dog had its own difficulties with the doors.

“We knew that doors in a stealthy setting would add some level of authorship of the player to the space and give more opportunities to escape from situations. They block [line of sight] and slow down enemies. This was in line with the player’s desire to restore stealth more often.

“But we are also an incredibly polished game in terms of animation. If a player is going to open a door, it cannot just magically fly, the character has to reach for the handle and push it open. But what about closing it? him behind you? How do you do this while running?

“We played around with several prototypes to allow the player to manually close the door behind them. They were not good. We tried to hold buttons, all kinds of strange schemes. So, how do you animate this? Player in an animation while escaping.

“To sum up the story: in combat tension, the doors will close slowly and automatically. This is what favors the player the most, since opening the player’s door slows you down very little, we don’t even take control off, but they block the AI more effectively. “

Margenau added that effectively, Naughty Dog had to create a new physics object (the door) that players can push, but which can also push the player – a huge challenge for any studio.

Many other developers had things to say about ports. Medicine gameplay designer Sergey Mohov, for example:

“I don’t know exactly how many man-months went through the door system in Control, but more than most skills and weapons, for sure,” he said.

Other developers also commented on the problems with the ports, including Naughty Dog audio leader Neil Uchitel saying that door sound design is also a big challenge, and Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer, who said that doors are “one of the first things that we implement in any of our games”.

Rebekah Valentine is an IGN reporter. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

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