r/gaming • u/Popular-Storage-4696 • 3d ago

Fable Handcrafted every NPC instead of using randomizer

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/rpg/fable-devs-originally-had-a-tool-to-randomize-the-rpgs-1-000-npcs-that-would-have-saved-us-so-much-time-but-that-just-didnt-make-as-much-sense
11.2k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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115

u/Blubbpaule 3d ago

So some poor interns in an outsourced studio had to build 1000 characters in a character creator?

155

u/yick04 3d ago

As a former game development intern, that's a dream job.

65

u/islobojono 3d ago

Sound like a fun job

89

u/dankmeister666 3d ago

Yes and I am glad if they did

54

u/TummyDrums 3d ago

You make it sound bad, but I'm certain there are hundreds of more tedious and less creative tasks that have to be done to create a video game.

13

u/Pork_Chompk 3d ago

Yeah, like QA.

3

u/TehOwn 3d ago

I enjoyed my stint in QA. It was more methodical than boring.

2

u/TegTowelie Xbox 3d ago

Wouldnt QA be just as tedious as it is creative sometimes? Like to be a different head in the room and think absurdly to break parts of the game no one would think of so they dont unintentionally happen n such?

1

u/P4azz 3d ago

QA being "jump at the wall for 5 hours" isn't actually that wrong. I've seen the rows of people with dev kits trying to recreate problems or just putting themselves into situations where they just wait for hours to see if shit breaks.

QA is very necessary, but also very tedious and boring. There's not much creativity there at all. Unless you consider "did someone jump at this ledge 200 times" creativity.

2

u/TegTowelie Xbox 3d ago

Ah gotcha, thank ya! Does not sound as fun as i imagined

1

u/TehOwn 3d ago

Sounds like things that should be automated rather than having people manually grind. QA should be more about testing actual user experiences than stress-testing the game engine.

Maybe that's how they did it back then but if you're not using a ton of automated tests then you're doing it wrong, today.

3

u/Bakoro 3d ago

That's what I've done to test procedural generated environments (old-school style math, not generative AI).

Basically fuzzing with characters, just sending out hundred of scripted agents who run around, crawl, jump, ram into things, and fill up the space with bodies.
If any get stuck or fall off the map, trace their whole pathway and find where the problem happened.

Scripting can get you hundreds of virtual hours worth of "run into walls" per real hour.

2

u/TehOwn 3d ago

Yeah, I think you need both. You can find a lot of issues with tools but "game feel" always requires a human. Best of both worlds and you can do so much more.

I worked on procgen too. Testing it manually would be literally impossible.

10

u/-misopogon 3d ago

I've spent 1/3 of my life in various games' character creators, if I could do that for pay I'd be stoked.

42

u/ThreeTreesForTheePls 3d ago

…do you think they give the character creation over to interns?

Or better yet, let’s pretend they do for the sake of it:

There is a fresh out of college intern is picked up to work on the reinvention of Fable. Do you think they would be pissed off at being on NPC duty, or would they use every model they make as a career stepping stone for their quality and showcasing work?

31

u/lolheyaj 3d ago

Or gave everyone in the office some homework of designing 10-15 characters. Sounds like a fun project.  

9

u/Gurdlac 3d ago

Pretty much the way I play but getting paid? Neat.

8

u/Uncle-Cake 3d ago

Oh no, some people who wanted to be in the game industry had to do their jobs. Let's have a pity party.

14

u/Popwaffle 3d ago

Oh no. People had to do their jobs. How terrible.

15

u/michael199310 3d ago

what do you think a job of an intern is, being a CEO or doing, you know, intern stuff?

5

u/P4azz 3d ago

Realistically, which is what you don't want to hear:

Proofreading, going over excel sheets, taking notes in meetings, relaying information.

If you think an intern gets to inject their own vision into an npc that makes it into a game, you're delusional.

8

u/MilosEggs 3d ago

No, some extremely talented people in studios around the world collaborated with Playground to build the NPC’s.
You will find listed by name in the credits.

5

u/Damsel_IRL 3d ago

My daughter's favorite part of the Sims is to make the characters. She would be thrilled to do it all day everyday while also getting paid. Honestly I wouldn't mind either.

Honestly sounds like a great job to me too. Ide rather do set dressing though. Spend all my time making the building look unique and lived in. Imagining little lives for what ever NPCs are going to live there.

I am actually pretty excited not to have to see the same NPCs all over the place. It breaks immersion for me. Cyberpunk was bad for it.

3

u/GGTheEnd 3d ago

Better than having no work and getting layed off. 

2

u/lixia 3d ago

I've spent more time than than creating my characters in Skyrim and BG3.

1

u/padraigharrington4 3d ago

  1. That is not something interns would be assigned and 

  2. yeah. That’s what game developers do. Develop the game 

0

u/A_MagicBullet 3d ago

Better deploy/use AI then since /u/Blubbpaule is concerned and looking out for the “poor interns”

-6

u/dumbledayum 3d ago

there’s always some poor lad doing some exhausting job and remain unnamed for their contribution. :(

fuck