Whether for PS3, PC, or 360, Assassin’s Creed is going to do a lot for gaming technology. The most important thing Assassin’s Creed has going for it is the all-new engine designed exclusively for the game. Ubisoft Montreal has been very close-mouthed about the engine, which must be tough because the developers have been working with it from the ground up for nearly three years. In an interview, Assassin’s Creed Producer Jade Raymond said the phrase “next-gen” had to be banned at the office to keep the developers focused on creating a quality engine from scratch, rather than trying to manufacture something that would “live up” to the PS3 or Xbox 360. The tactic appears to have paid off as Assassin’s Creed demos, previews, and trailers all show a dynamic and moody setting with intricate A.I. interactions.
The programming approach to gameplay and A.I. is an important point of development for the Assassin’s Creed team. The gameplay depends heavily on the environment and NPC interactions with Altair as he moves through cities and towns, gathering info, eliminating targets, and fleeing when the guards come after him. Through procedural programming, each and every NPC (and we’re talking crowds of them in the hundreds) thinks and behaves uniquely. For those of you who don’t program, procedural differs from random appearance approaches (like FaceGen) in that it determines appearance and behavior based on an algorithm that can be reused throughout the game, without ever copying itself. Thus no two NPCs will look alike or react in the exact same way. As Assassin’s Creed Lead Engineer Mathieu Mazerolle says, Nothing is canned. Over 10000 animations have been rendered for the NPCs alone (never mind the main character). Thus, this won’t be like Superman Returns; Assassin’s Creed NPCs can and will react to Altair jumping on rooftops or shoving a peasant, staring, pointing, and even shouting. The crowd also reacts to other NPCs, avoiding bumping into each other as they go about their business (yes, they each have business instead of a random pre-mapped path to follow) and avoiding obstacles.
Vertigo Is Not An Option
As far as A.I. goes, we can’t tell you too much about bosses or active NPCs (like the horse seen in the Microsoft X06 demo); but we can tell you more about the ground up programming approach. Mazerolle explained, in a recent interview, that in an effort to make the game as free-form as possible in conjunction with the rock-climbing gameplay, no pre-mapped paths were laid in the levels. Normally, level designers throw down buildings and construct a critical path that determines what a player can and cannot do when progressing through the game. For Assassin’s Creed, the designers threw in the buildings and the game detects anything that juts out more than two inches, flagging it as climbable. The A.I. then directs the character on how to move and what animation to display based on which handhold or foothold the player has activated.
All this free-roving sounds great, but it does make some people nervous about physics. Reports of collision issues with the E3 closed demo and the X06 show demo reveal some of the kinks with the new engine and the “new approach.” From the early build, it seems that if Altair is too close to a handhold or foothold, his character model will jerk towards it rather than moving naturally against it because instead of his model telling him how to move, the building is telling him how to move. No doubt these tiny things and the falling-through-the-roof bug will be fixed in the final build; Ubisoft has always been committed to quality in its final releases.
The control mapping for Assassin’s Creed is pretty nifty and will no doubt lend itself to smooth ports to the Xbox 360 and PC. Instead of predetermined combos, or frantic button-mashing tactics, Altair’s body is mapped in sections to each of the PS3’s control buttons. Thus, the X button controls all of his leg movements (running, jumping, etc.), the O button handles his arms (pushing NPCs, grabbing handholds, etc.) and when used in conjunction with the R buttons, simple actions such as pushing can become much more violent (think slamming peasantry into walls). The idea behind this control scheme was to make Assassin’s Creed as intuitive as possible; thus it’s easy to see how O will become B and Triangle will become Y. PC controls might be a bit more difficult; players might consider shelling out for the Xbox 360 controller to use in lieu of W, A, S, and D keys. This isn’t an MMO, after all.
Nothing is true; everything is permitted