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Sunday September 05, 2010

where do you put the blood splatter?

It's just one of the questions the developers over at Guerrilla Games have found themselves trying to answer as they've worked on "Killzone 3," a first-person shooter for the PlayStation 3 that gamers will be able to play in stereoscopic 3-D.

Sony announced at the Penny Arcade Expo this week that "Killzone 3" will be hitting store shelves Feb. 22, 2011. It is among the first in a new wave of stereoscopic 3-D games scheduled to hit stores in the coming months.

But being among the first ain't exactly easy.

At the PAX video game conference taking place in Seattle this weekend, I had a chance to play a bit of "Killzone 3" in 3-D as well as chat with Steven Ter Heide, senior producer at Guerrilla Games.

Ter Heide said that when it came to making "Killzone 3" from the ground-up in 3-D, there have been a number of "simple things" the team initially didn't think about having to deal with ... things that soon turned into important design problems that had to solved.

For example, Ter Heide said he and the "Killzone" team have been busy trying to sort out where the player character's blood splatter should appear on the screen in this 3-D game.

that is, 3-D is all about making the viewer feel like they are looking right into a world – it's about making them feel like they could simply reach into the game and touch the objects that exist in the world there.

But what do you do about the objects and items that a gamer needs to see – objects and items that aren't supposed to exist as real physical objects in that game world?

your gun's cross hairs, for example.

when playing a shooting game, cross hairs often appear on the screen to help the player aim and shoot enemies. But these cross hairs aren't supposed to be an actual physical object a game character could touch or run into. Ter Heide said the "Killzone 3" team has had to spend time figuring out at what depth to place those cross hairs within the 3-D world and how to make them move across the varying levels of the world's ever-changing environment in a way that isn't jarring to the player.

the same goes for other elements of the "heads up display" – a set of menus and items that gamers often see on the screen that give them important bits of information about things like ammunition levels, directions and the state of the character's health. Ter Heide said they've had to figure out where these various informational devices should "live" in the game.

which bring us to the question of the player's own blood splatter. Blood splatter often appears at the edges of a game screen to let a player know their character is taking damage and losing health. In a standard first-person shooter, the blood just sort of sits there on the surface with everything else. But when you're looking at a world in 3-D, it doesn't look quite right to have blood floating there amongst the scenery.

"With the 3-D effect, there's so much information for your eyes to take in," Ter Heide said. And so sorting out these small but vital visual issues is key to helping players quickly and intuitively figure out where to focus their attention.

It's these kinds of details that Ter Heide says the folks at Guerrilla have been working on to make the "Killzone 3" 3-D experience a good one.

And from the time I spent with "Killzone 3," I can say the 3-D sucked me right in. Slipping on a pair of black glasses and diving into the game is a bit like doing a face plant right into the war-torn world of Helghan where "Killzone" takes place. the sense of depth and immersion in the world is truly remarkable.

At the same time, it's also a bit overwhelming and I could easily see the 3-D exhausting my eyeballs after a while. to that end, Ter Heide says "Killzone 3" players will be able to easily and quickly switch in and out of stereoscopic 3-D while playing. (Of course, you'll only be able to play the 3-D version of this game if you can afford the a pricey 3-D capable HDTV and the 3D glasses required to see it.)

when it comes to the new frontier that is 3-D gaming, Ter Heide points out, "It's still the very early days. We're still figuring out what we need to do to make it a better experience for most people."

Winda Benedetti writes the Citizen Gamer column for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things right here on Twitter.