Undead Labs

Last month in our Q&A Ragdolls, Land Mines, and Tentacles, we promised to reveal the composer for Class3.

Today we’re excited to announce we’ve signed BAFTA award-winning composer Jesper Kyd to the project. Jesper is perhaps best known for scoring the Hitman and Assassin’s Creed series, both of which earned him numerous industry awards. Now Jesper’s capturing the Faded Americana style of Class3 in a dark cinematic score mixing live acoustic performances.

Undead Labs Audio Director Kevin Patzelt has been working closely with Jesper over the past few months. Kevin shares his thoughts on the musical goals for Class3, and why Jesper is the ideal composer for the project, in the article Scoring the Apocalypse.

Welcome to our world, Jesper!

Jeff

Happy 2012, fellow survivors!

After a well-earned break for the holidays, Team Zed is back in the Lab and pounding away at the code, art, sound, and design for ‘Class3′.

To celebrate the new year—and, okay, because we haven’t updated you in a few weeks—I took some “spy cam” footage in the Lab today with my trusty iPhone. We’re not quite ready to post official trailers at this point, but I snuck up on Foge as he was testing out some ambush functionality on the Lab TV, so you might catch a glimpse of some early-alpha Class3 gameplay goodness.

Or maybe more than a glimpse…

As we jump into the new year we also bid farewell to Emily, who took point on our website and kept in touch with our community and fansites such as MMOZed.com. Emily is off to new adventures, and we wish her well. Don’t worry—we’ll be keeping you up-to-date on our progress here on the Undead Labs website, and we’ll also be announcing plans for a more robust community site soon.

We had a tremendously productive year in 2011, and we’re anticipating an even better 2012. I’m happy to say that Class3 is on schedule and looking great. We’re excited to show it to you and the rest of the world officially—assuming I don’t get my ass kicked for leaking unofficial gameplay footage…

Jeff

Update: It looks like our comment system is biffed. We’re working on it. For now you can leave comments for the dev team on the Lab Facebook page.

Update 2: Comments fixed. Thanks Liz!

This week, Phinney, Reid, Kevin, and Scott (who you’ll get to meet soon) piled into a car and took a trip to Vancouver, Canada. Their destination? Animatrik, a company that specializes in motion capture animation. If you’ve ever seen behind the scenes footage of people running around in tights with little reflective balls all over them, that’s mocap, and it’s been used in movies for years. As it’s evolved over the past fifteen or so years, though, it’s also become an important tool for game developers.

To give you guys some insight into what motion capture is, how it works, and how it’s going to apply to Class3, I sat down with Reid to learn more about what our recent session was like. Read on to see what he had to say!

What is mocap and how is it different than traditional animation?

Motion capture records the movements of a live actor onto a set of controls called a rig. The rig controls the movement of the character model. You know those tight suits the actors wear, covered with a series of markers? The markers are what actually gets recorded and through a lot of crazy math, gets translated on to the rig.

Mocap is a great way to get realistic motion in a short amount of time. While hand-created keyframe animation can create realistic movement, the process is really consuming, and you still wouldn’t capture all the subtleties that you can get from mocap.

Traditional keyframe animation is very good for stylized movement and stylized characters, and for the “realistic” motion of fantastic creatures like dragons. Obviously, you can’t mocap something that doesn’t exist!

A lot of people recognize the mocap suits that actors wear, but how does the process actually work?

A bunch of cameras track the position of the little white markers on the actors’ mocap suits, which are used to triangulate the position of the actor’s actual joints. The data is then converted into rotational joint information that’s put on the skeleton. (A lot of markers and a lot of math are involved because they haven’t figured out a way to put the markers inside the actors yet. ) Once this  motion is on the skeleton, we translate it again to the character’s animation controls (which we refer to as the “rig”).

In the end, the animation ends up on the character in the same format as it does when I keyframe it. The only difference is that mocap data puts a key on every frame (that’s 30 keys per second of animation), which requires different animation techniques and tools to edit the dense amount of data that motion capture gives you.

For cinematics, if you plan correctly, get a good performance from the actors, and get good motion from the mocap studio, the animator shouldn’t have to edit much. Gameplay motion is a whole different thing — that requires a lot of editing.

What do you look for in a motion capture actor?

Since we were shooting both cinematic and gameplay styles for this session, we were looking for people that were both good actors and had strong physical and athletic skills.

For our cinematic shoot, the actors just ran through the scenes like they would if they were on stage performing a play, and we captured their motion in large chunks. For these sequences we’re primarily looking for acting ability.

On the other hand, the gameplay part of the shoot required the actors to perform specific actions in small pieces, which can feel pretty counterintuitive or unnatural. For example, if a character picks up an object and then throws it, the acting sequence might be broken up like this: the character is standing still (one shot), the character picks up an object (second shot), the character stands with the object in their hands (third shot), the character throws the object (fourth shot), and finally, the characters returns to a casual standing state (fifth and final shot). For an actor who’s used to following typical stage directions to just pick something up and throw it, that can be a jarring experience!

It sounds like mocap is pretty specialized. How do you go about finding the right actors?

Well, in our case, one of the actors we used was highly recommended by Animatrik and the other was recommended to Animatrik by someone who had worked with him in the past. Most mocap studios will know talented local actors from past projects, and they’re usually happy to recommend them. When that approach doesn’t work, you can hold casting calls where actors and their agents can send you resumes, demo reels, and things like that.

Once you find someone that looks good, you typically hold auditions to make sure they’re a good fit for what you need. (Since our guys came highly recommended from people we trusted, we actually skipped this step.)

What’s a mocap session like? Tell us what you guys did when you were up there!

The session started out with breakfast provided by the studio. While we ate, we got acquainted with the team and the actors. We also went over some of the scripts for the acting portion and some of the action for the gameplay portion. Once the actors had their suits on and everything was calibrated, we had them go right into the acting.

Phinney and Kevin took turns directing the storyline scenes. Before each scene was recorded, they prepped the actors on things like where to be on stage, how the characters they were playing should behave, what their personality and state of mind should be during the scene, and how intense or subtle the scene should be. I chimed in a little bit on some logistical things, like the placement of the objects they were interacting with. The actors also had some great ideas and added a lot of personality on their own.

After the acting section of the session was complete, it was my turn to direct gameplay stuff. I coached the actors on the speed and strength in which they should perform an action, judging the motion on if I thought it I could easily make it loop or not. I also tried to get them to start out in an idle pose, do an action in place, and then end the motion in the same idle pose. That will make the animations blend much more smoothly when you actually put them in the game.

How long do mocap sessions usually take?

Our day consisted of two 3 to 4 hour blocks. In both cases, we started with cinematic scenes and moved on to action sequences.

The morning session started with breakfast, paperwork, and studio and actor set-up at 8:00 am. We started shooting at 9:30, then broke for lunch at 12:30. After talking zombie games, guns, and Skyrim with cast and crew, we went back into shooting at 1:30 and were scheduled to start wrapping up at 5:30. Things went quicker than we’d expected, though, so we finished our full list — plus some bonus recording — around 4:30.

Since we have a lot to do back at the Lab, we drove back to Seattle the same night. We were a bunch of zombies the next day, but hey. It fits, I guess.

When we get back mocap data, what format is it in?  How do you get the finished characters into the game?

We get video first so we can choose the takes we like best. Once we’ve picked these, we send the details back to Animatrik, who  cleans up the files we requested and sends them to us as skeletons with the motion attached to them.

The animations we get back are in a lot of different pieces, so to get them ready to use, Scott translates the motion from the skeleton to the rig. When he’s done, he sends them to me to do the necessary edits and get the pieces organized and exported. Once we’re finished, they are usable for the designers to put into the game.

Thanks for giving details about your trip, Reid!

I hope you guys liked this inside view of how our characters are being built! Next week, we have more game information coming your way — Phinney is preparing a design article on multiplayer in Class3 to close out 2011, so be sure to check back in on Friday.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Emily

From the first time I saw Night of the Living Dead when I was 13, I was hooked. That stark, black-and-white photography, the unrelenting brutality of the walking dead, the pressure-cooker intensity of the conflict between those few desperate survivors, and that ending! Zombies had their hooks in me and never let go. Dawn followed Night, of course, and from there the rest of Romero’s works, Fulci’s Italian giallo zombie movies, anything I could get my hands on. I devoured the movies, dragged my Dungeons & Dragons group kicking and screaming into games of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, and generally watched, played, and read just about anything zombie-related I could get my hands on.

Still, just about any fan knows that all things zombie aren’t created equal. It’s a polarizing genre, encompassing classics of cinema like my old friend Night of the Living Dead, modern blockbusters like Zombieland, and, let’s face it, some pretty cheesy (but still fun) low-budget schlock-fests. Now that I get to do this for a living, I find myself analyzing the zombie stories I’ve loved for more than half my life, asking myself: What separates a fun zombie story from a great one?

Well, I’ve got a theory about that…

At the heart of the matter, good zombie stories aren’t really about the zombies at all. Zombies are a catalyst for story, the fuel that makes the engine run. But just like fuel without an engine can’t take you anywhere, zombies without the core foundation of story can’t move you. Sure, it’s fun to brain them with a tire iron, but by themselves zombies are just monsters to be killed.

Characters, and the conflicts between them, are that core foundation. They’re what the story is really about. They give context to all the zombie-killing, supply-scrounging, base-building action and make your decisions mean something. When you can see the impact your choices make on the world as a whole and on these few scared, scattered people who are your fellow survivors, those moments stick with you.

Picture this scenario: Your friend Ed is sick, maybe dying, and nobody wants to risk him turning in the middle of the night and eating everyone in their sleep. If you can’t get him a doctor, the others are going to throw him out onto the street — assuming they don’t just put a bullet in his head and be done with it. You know of a doctor who survived this whole thing, but he’s not feeling charitable. He’s got expenses, he says, and the meds he needs aren’t easy to come by. He wants more than you can barter, and more than you can hope to scrounge before Ed’s too far gone to save. Maybe you’ve never drawn a gun on a man in anger before, or maybe you have, but the question is: How desperate are you to save your friend?

Here’s another one for you: You haven’t found any food in several days. Your stores are running dangerously low, and you come back from a scouting run to find that one of the other survivors in your camp has been caught stealing from the storeroom. That’s the difference between life and death out here, not just for you but for the whole community that trusts you and relies on you. When Jeb mutters “Somebody get a rope,” what’s the call you’re going to make?

These are the kinds of stories we want to tell — stories that dig down into the people who survived the zombie apocalypse huddled together in makeshift habitation. We want to examine the conflicts that arise in these pressure-cooker situations, whether they’re related to long-term survival or the stresses of post-apocalyptic life or folks who just plain don’t like each other. We want to use the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor, to examine the human condition the way all the great zombie films do.

I have a little trick when I’m writing for Class3. Everything I write, whether it’s a character (like crusty old Doc Hanson or those trouble-causing Wilkerson boys), a plot element, or a chunk of dialogue, I ask myself: “Would this still be awesome if it didn’t have zombies?” If the answer is anything less than a resounding “yes!”, it goes back to the drawing board. Zombies bring the awesome to just about anything, but I don’t want to give you folks “just about anything”. I want to give you the awesomeness of zombies on top of the awesomeness of a compelling story full of interesting characters with nuanced, believable motivations.

Everything I’ve learned in my career as a writer and every project I’ve worked on has prepared me for writing Class3. Alpha Protocol taught me about forcing the player to make hard choices with no clear right or wrong answer, and making the consequences of those decisions have a lasting impact on the game space. Fallout: New Vegas taught me to build a believable post-apocalyptic society, and the tricks and techniques for writing a coherent story in an open-world game where any character can die at any time. My years of writing tabletop gaming books for World of Darkness were all about creating moments of evocative, intense horror and emotional conflict between characters.

So, there you have it: My philosophy on writing zombie games. Take the zombies out of the equation and be damn sure you’ve got a rock-solid story full of interesting, well-developed characters and exciting action.

Then put the zombies back in so those characters can smash their heads in with tire irons.

Travis

(Emily’s note: If you just can’t get enough Travis and would like to know more about him, be sure to check out Jeff’s introduction.)

Frank: So, how many are you holding back?
Joe: How many what?
Frank: You know… bullets. For just in case.
Joe: Jesus, don’t even start that shit with me, man!
Frank: What? You know it’s better than some of the alternatives. You ever seen a person starve to death?
Joe: No, and neither have you.
Frank: Okay, but I have seen what those things can do to a person. And if it comes down to that or a bullet…I got three. One for me, one for Millie, and one for Peter.
Joe: I think I’m gonna be sick.
Frank: I know it’s ugly, man, but you got a wife and kids too. You ought to think about it. It’d be kinder.
Joe: Just…go away, Frank.

This isn’t Shakespeare. It’s also not Stephen King. It’s sure not Emily Post. Hell, it doesn’t sound like book or movie dialogue at all.

And that’s exactly why we asked Travis Stout to join Team Zed to write Class3.

I often have a hard time with dialogue in movies and games, because it sometimes just doesn’t sound like the way real people talk. Like most of you, I didn’t grow up around Oxford professors or jet-setting, poodle-toting socialites. I grew up in a “normal” town in Texas, surrounded by real people—college graduates, high-school dropouts, doctors, farmers, cool people, jerks—and real people don’t say, “Joe, I think it’s time for us to discuss the number of bullets you are holding back as a hedge against the worst-case scenario.” They say, “So, how many are you holding back?”

We want to make a game that feels real—like a place you could actually be, doing things that could actually happen—and one of the most important aspects of that is finding a writer who understands how to build a believable world and fill it with believable characters.

In August we posted a job opening for a writer to our website that began, “If you’re a passionate, professional author or game writer who loves horror, knows your zombies, and wants to tell the story of the struggle to make it in a ravaged world, there may be a spot for you on Team Zed.”

That’s how we found Travis, an industry vet who’s been writing professionally in the game industry for a decade. He’s contributed heavily to Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks and campaign settings (notably the 4th Edition Dark Sun campaign setting), White Wolf Game Studios settings (particularly the World of Darkness products), and most recently, extensively to the writing and design for Fallout: New Vegas and Dungeon Siege 3. And, fortunately for us, he’s also a hardcore zombie fan.

After sorting through hundreds of applicants and subjecting the final ten or so to an arduous three-month interview process, we knew that Travis was the guy we wanted, and were able to convince him to join us to helping us to build the very real world of Class3.

Welcome aboard, Travis!

Now, how many are you holding back, man?

Jeff

P.S. Don’t forget to check out Travis’s welcome to his fellow survivors!

A little over a month ago, we completed our final pre-production milestone for Class3. To celebrate, we took an afternoon adventure to Seattle’s iconic Experience Music Project (EMP) to check out an exhibit that was right up our alley — “Can’t Look Away: The Lure of the Horror Movie”.

Read on to learn what it’s all about and to see some awesome shots from our trip!

The first thing that hits you about EMP is just how big the place is. It’s huge. Like, 140,000 square feet of music and pop-culture goodness huge. Appropriately, our destination was in the basement of the museum. Another nice touch: the stairwells featured wallpaper consisting of screaming faces (which we’d later recognize as shots from the scream booth, but more on that later).

Once we got down into the basement proper, the ambiance just kept on delivering. The entire room was bathed in red light, which gave a nice, eerie cast to the replica sculpts of classic Roger Corman monsters on the walls (“It Conquered the World”, anyone?). Even the ceiling got in on the act with some creepy, octopus-looking sculptures – made entirely out of Hannibal Lecter masks!

These guys obviously put a lot of love into crafting this exhibit, and it was great to see that passion on display. You want some more highlights? Here you go!

Movie Memorabilia

I’m a prop and makeup geek, so getting to see famous pieces from some of my favorite horror movies was pretty amazing. The most impressive was definitely the xenomorph from Alien, but there was one of the original facehuggers on display, which was cool too.

They also had one of the original zombie suits from Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2, Freddy’s glove from A Nightmare on Elm Street, Jason’s mask from Friday the 13th, one of the critters from Critters, and, for a real blast from the past, the creature mask from Creature From the Black Lagoon.

When I asked the team what their most memorable moments were from the trip, Gronk mentioned Jeff’s… intense… expression when he was standing by the axe from The Shining. See for yourself.

Classic Horror Timeline

One wall had a massive timeline of horror movies, cataloging decades of films, complete with replicas of a ton of movie posters.

We walked down the line, pointing out which movies we’d seen, and since I’ve spent years of my life watching horror movies, I was at the top of the pile.

Doug was up there, too, though. He loves him some classics…

Horror Movie Pods

A bunch of “pods” scattered around the center of the room were showing clips from some horror classics, along with commentary from various famous directors. For me, the best thing about this part of the exhibit was watching people get their first taste of movies like Dario Argento’s Suspiria and Takashi Miike’s Audition.

The Scream Booth

The last thing we checked out was the interactive scream booth. You’d step inside this little soundproof room, and you’d be prompted to scream — either a “terrified” scream or an “angry” scream.

As an added bonus, when you were finished screaming, your face would pop up on a wall outside the booth for everyone to see. For some reason, I just looked angry all the time, but Jeff’s “Jack Nicholson in The Shining” impression definitely came in first. Unless you count Brant’s “eek” face…

After we’d checked out “Can’t Look Away,” some of us went to see the other two exhibits hosted at the museum: Avatar and Battlestar Galactica.

I’m not a huge fan of Avatar, but I have to admit that the full-scale AMP suit and the creature models were pretty cool. I also liked the interactive tree spirit display.

Over on the Battlestar side, they had three massive replica ships: the Cylon Raider, the Viper Mark II, and the Viper Mark VII. Pretty freaking awesome!

If you’re a Seattle native, or if you have the chance to take a trip to our rainy city, I definitely recommend taking an afternoon to swing by the EMP. If you do, post a comment and let us know what your favorite part was!

Emily

PS: I’ve added a bunch of photos from the trip to our Flickr gallery, so head over and check them out!

I first met Erik Schmidt during our trip to the firing range last summer. He was our instructor, the guy who stood next to us in our firing stalls and taught us gun safety, proper stance, and all of those other things we needed to actually hit our targets while not shooting ourselves in the foot. You know those times when you meet someone and you’re immediately amazed by how much they know and how much they genuinely love what they do? This was one of them.

As it turns out, Erik loves zombies almost as much as he loves guns, and he’s put as much thought into his own hypothetical survival plan as any of us. So much thought, in fact, that he’s become Brant’s unofficial firearms consultant (and personal training instructor).

In celebration of Veteran’s Day, I sat down with this bad-ass former Marine to learn a little more about his career and to get his thoughts on everything zombie — from his opinion on which caliber is best for taking out zeds to how he’ll be contributing to Class3.

Read on to see what he had to say!

First off, tell me about yourself! What’s your background?

Well, my professional history with weapons goes back to the eight years I served in the Marine Corps, where I was a combat engineer, a rifleman, and a machine gunner. During my time as a Marine, I participated in the first Gulf War (Operations Desert Shield/Storm).

After the military, I went to college for criminal justice and was hired as a Federal K9 Enforcement Officer soon after I graduated. A few years later, I moved into local law enforcement with specialty assignments such as mountain bike officer, riot squad member, firearms instructor, defensive tactics instructor, and more.

Currently, I’m working in the private sector as a contractor for maritime security (specifically anti-piracy and counter-terror operations) off the Horn of Africa. I also do firearms and defensive tactics training, consultation, private investigations, and executive protection for Fortune 500 clientele, heads of state, and media personalities. I was the Firearms Training Director for a local firearms range for the last several years, and I also teach martial arts at a local karate school. (I’ve been a martial artist for 25 years and still really enjoy it.)

I met you wonderful folks at Undead Labs when you came in to our range to learn about guns, and now here I am!

What made you want to work as a law enforcement officer?

As cliche as it sounds, I wanted to do something about the violence in our communities. I was watching TV one Saturday morning and saw a news story about a woman that was kidnapped, horribly abused, and left for dead. She was paralyzed as a result of the attack. I thought to myself, “Things like this are going on out there and I’m sitting in here on the couch eating Corn Flakes doing nothing about it.” It bothered me so much that I went out that same day and bought several books on passing the law enforcement entrance exams. Then, I went to college to study criminal justice. Two years later, I was running with a narcotic detector dog and participating in middle-of-the-night raids on drug dealers, smugglers, and gun runners. From that point on, I was hooked.

What’s your favorite firearm?

Wow…that’s a tough question. It’s kind of like asking who your favorite kid is, especially since I’ve been collecting firearms for decades. All of my firearms have their own charms and I love them all, but if my house was on fire and I could only pick one weapon before jumping out the window, it would have to be my newest “baby” —  the FN SCAR16 with all the goodies on it.

I’d be really bothered about losing all the others, but at the end of the day, I really dig this monster. I mean seriously. Even Dracula got nuthin’ on my SCAR.

What’s the strangest or most unique weapon you’ve ever shot?

Strange and unique? One weapon stands out in my mind — the Grim Reaper’s Pit Bull, an MK 19, Mod 3 40MM belt fed grenade launcher. It’s a machine gun that hurls grenades out past 2000 yards at an approximate cyclic firing rate of +/- 350 grenades per minute. Fun fact: Each one of those little jewels digs a 15 foot crater on impact.

Nothing quite says “home defense” like a belt fed grenade launcher.

Why zombies? What do you like about them?

They get to me at a real, visceral level. When I was working on the street, I’d encounter all kinds of living people ACTING like zombies, whether it was caused by mental illness or chemically induced insanity. I’ve even seen people in such a degraded state due to their drug habits or other health conditions that they LOOKED like zombies.

I’ve also encountered large-scale riots like the WTO ones in Seattle. Imagine HUGE throngs of people — what felt like the entire city — coming after you in non-stop waves for five days, hurling everything from water bottles filled with urine to marbles and ball bearings. They were even rolling manhole covers down the hill. It was terrifying.

With the very real issues of our world, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine something like a zombie apocalypse actually happening. We look at zombie movies or games and know that they’re  just make believe, but deep down I think zombies are something we can all relate to and fear in some way. We don’t have to survive a riot to get the picture.

In the last year or so I’ve had some pretty intense conversations with captains of industry, celebrities, and regular folks about what they would do if “the zombies” came. These discussions are awesome because the topic is so engaging — especially if it inspires people to think about how they’d take care of themselves if there’s an emergency. Very frequently, these conversations segue into things like earthquake preparedness or civil disturbances. Just watch some of the videos out there and tell me it doesn’t look like something from a zombie movie — throngs of hungry, frazzled, angry people freaking out. Government thugs putting the smack down on helpless civilians. How many zombie apocalypses have aired on the nightly news in the last 15 years? I lost count.

So I guess the thing that makes the zombie genre appealing to me is that it has a certain amount of plausibility. Any one of us could become a zombie in the right (or wrong) circumstances.

Isn’t THAT a thought?

What’s your zombie-killing weapon of choice and why?

Well that’s another great question, but I can’t stop at just one!

I really like the utilitarian nature of tomahawks and kukris. Cold Steel is currently making a kukri blade on the end of an axe handle (no joke). This.might seem a little weird, but something like that would definitely take care of someone’s Excedrin headache…if you catch my drift. I love my SOG tactical tomahawks too,  so if I had to go all ninja-sneaky, I’d use one of those two weapons.

In close quarters, I’m a HUGE fan of the .45 ACP cartridge. And while I loves me my 1911′s, I’d want more rounds in the weapon than just 8 +1, so I’d be inclined to use a Springfield XD as a sidearm. The typical loadout with a 1911 would be 25 rounds, but my.XD gets me 40 rounds of crowd-pleasing forty five on my belt and in the weapon. Also, because the .45 is such a big, slow bullet, it’s among the best rounds to suppress. I guess a threaded barrel and a quality suppressor would also be on the menu.

From my own inventory, I would prefer to run my SCAR 16 (along with it’s AAC suppressor) and play whack-a-mole with the zeds from 300 to 500 yards out. (Yes folks. Marines QUALIFY in boot camp with .223′s at 500 yards…with IRON SIGHTS.)

Of course, I couldn’t run a can on it* and still get that kind of accuracy at distance —  the bullet has a lot to do with it. Personally, I prefer Hornady TAP hollowpoint rounds in 75 grain. Shooting those through wet phone books and paint cans filled with mud leaves cantaloupe-sized holes coming out of the test media…

That’s good to go.

For long distance dedications, again from my personal inventory, I’d have to go with my HK91 with the PSG-1 aftermarket goodies on it. With that weapon, I can hit targets at 800 yards with confidence, but I’d probably have to walk the rounds in a bit beyond that. The scope I have on it is SICK — you can see into the future with that thing. I call it the “Eye of Sauron.” No hobbits want to be in the eye. Evar.

Anyway, the .308 cartridge is my very favorite as an all-around heavy lifter. When that round grabs you, it’s got you, and the ballistics are really constant and easy to work with. That HK91 would be a great weapon as a perimeter or watch rifle, especially when it comes to reliability. The weapon platform is really over-engineered and I have NEVER had a malfunction in 15 years.

Did I come even come CLOSE to answering your question?

* “Running a can” is gun lingo for adding a silencer. -Emily

If you were facing a lone zed, what weapon would you use? What if you were up against a big horde? Would you want to use something different?

One zombie by itself? A tactical tomahawk or a kukri…. or that Filthy McNasty kukri on the axe handle dealio. (Ok, to be honest, I really just want to try that thing.)

I wouldn’t want to make excessive noise to draw out other zeds. I’ve seen the movies…you know there’s never…juuuuuust …one.

If I was up against a big horde of zombies? (cringe) Can I bring that automatic belt fed grenade launcher? If not, I’d go with my SCAR. It’s suppressed, so I would hope it wouldn’t attract ANOTHER horde. (Because that’s just a bad day at the office, ya know?) It’s also pinpoint accurate from 0 to 200 yards, and is just so adaptable I can do anything with it.

Well, almost. I would really like a bayonet on it, but they don’t make ‘em. It’s a Marine thing… I LIKE bayonets.

How did you meet Brant? What are you doing to advise him?

I met Brant when you guys came down to the range several months ago. He had some follow-up questions about different guns, and filled me in on what you were doing with your game. After your trip, he came back to the range a few times and I showed him several different “common” and exotic weapons. Then we got to talking about different dynamics of how bullets function, human anatomy when in close proximity to said bullets, and even different techniques of shooting different weapons. (Yes, it IS possible to accurately shoot Mozambiques, on the move one handed…if you do it right.)

We’ve spent many hours on the range firing different handguns, submachine guns (full auto, baby!), and rifles. We’ve also spent many more hours discussing things like tactical lights, lasers, optics, and everything under the sun when it comes to real firearms and the firearms you find in the gaming world.

Brant really wants to introduce some firearm realism, which is a breath of fresh air to me. The article you wrote after the company day at the range was VERY insightful and accurate! Shooting a real weapon is a very real, perishable skill, and.the people who have that skill are really something to see. Anybody that’s ever watched Jerry Miculek fire a revolver like a machine gun can see that.

So as Brant and I got to know each other, he came down and took a few of my classes and learned about the ancillary equipment too, like different holsters and slings and how to clear the weapon from them and still get shots on target quickly and efficiently. He also learned how to do reloads under stress without hurting himself or others, which is actually a pretty tough thing to do. During his training, Brant evolved from a good shot to a GREAT shot, even under under stress, which is cool. But then comes the task of how to translate this “real world” firearms handling into a gaming experience. As I’m learning, it’s not as easy as one might think.

While I’m not sure if any gun nuances will make it into the game, it IS something we’ve talked about a lot. I’ve been helping him try to vet the different kinds of weapons that would be realistically found in the gun lockers and closets of the average small town American, discuss their differences, and try to whittle down every bloody gun in the world into a list of things that can be realistically expected.

As an example, let’s look at that SCAR 16 of mine. I know maybe three people in all of Western Washington that own one. Since I worked at a gun range for three years, that says something about the availability of finding one of those, especially equipped with a suppressor and night vision. But what you WILL find are AR-15′s, hunting rifles, and shotguns everywhere. While my circle of friends is probably a lot different from most other people, nearly every guy (and even a few gals) I know own and operate an AR-15 variant of some kind.

As another example, I think I read somewhere that someone wanted a Dragunov in the game. That’s something you definitely won’t find in some farmer’s closet, and you probably wouldn’t find one at a typical gun store either. Never mind trying to get a hold of 7.62 X 54R ammunition — it’s as highly specialized as that SCAR of mine. (That’s not to say that exotics won’t find their way into the game of course, but they just won’t be easy to find.)

Does this level of details even matter in a video game? I’m not sure, but I do know that the Undead Labs team is putting a lot of effort into finding the right mix of the funky nuances that exist with guns and making sure the game is just plain fun.

Anyway, it’s been a lot of fun to be able to consult on a project like this because it’s unlike anything I’ve ever been involved with! Most of my family is like: “There goes Uncle Erik blabbing about the war again.” They don’t really want to hear it. Then along comes Brant, and he’s throwing me curve ball questions about guns that make me have to go back and read the technical manuals. I really DIG that!

What are you looking forward to the most in Class3?

Well, I’m starting to get on in the years, and watching my nephews play video games just feels like a constant kill/die/kill/die kind of deal. There are no tactics, no thought, and no finesse…it’s just runnin’ and gunnin’, which gets kinda boring and frustrating for me because when I play I actually do stuff like pie corners,  use cover and concealment, and daisy chain explosives together. They’re always like “Uncle Errriiiikkkk…. Just SHOOT him!”

Kids these days. Where’s the ambience?

I guess what makes video games fun for me is the ability to do things that I otherwise couldn’t, shouldn’t, or can’t do in real life. I’m such a geek about this stuff that I actually use movies and games and books as visualization for real world scenarios — I view them as opportunities to train and have fun.

As an “old guy” I really like story content, and I like open ended options with more than one way to approach things. I’m looking forward to Class3 because it’s going to give me a way to visualize a scenario that challenges me to think on my feet or react to something. I’m also looking forward to being able to interact with other survivors and solve problems. And, of course, I’m also excited about a good amount of running and gunning.

Of course, you fine folks don’t share all the game goodies with me, so I don’t fully know what to expect or what the story arcs will be about. The suspense is KILLING me, but that’s part of the fun!

What’s the best all-around zombie killing caliber and why?

There’s really no delicate way to say this — the way bullets work is that they make holes in bodies.

If we’re talking handguns, I’d want to use something that throws trash can lids at the bad guys, so I’d go with some kind of .45 (be it a 1911 or a Glock or a Thompson). These firearms are more likely to deliver because of their size, weight, and moderate velocity.

I think another gun that would open up a can of serious whup-a$$ is the KRISS Vector SMG. That thing hits all the high notes out to 100 yards — maybe farther in the right hands. But at typical handgun distance…yeeesh. That’s a wee bit too close for my tastes, and I would prefer to hit ‘em far enough away that the icky-sticky doesn’t get all over me. In Western Washington, a .223 of some kind would be just ducky (25 to 200 yards), but in Eastern Washington (where it’s more wide open), I’d prefer a .308 to keep the zeds well away from the perimeter. Preferably, I’d like to keep them out past 300 yards or so.

From a gunfighter’s perspective, the edge always goes to the bigger bullet, and I always want to stack the deck in my favor. A larger bullet is more likely to sever blood-carrying vessels and damage or destroy vital organs (many times, several of them). Then there’s velocity. The large bullet should be of sufficient velocity to, for example, penetrate the natural body armors of the skull and sternum. The downside of these kinds of bullets (like my crowd pleasing .45′s), are that they’re bigger and they take up more space, so you can’t carry as many as smaller caliber bullets. They’re also consequently heavy, so it’s a burden on the operator.

While I like the .40 and 10MM a lot, firing them suppressed and/or finding the bullets to feed them could be a problem. If sound and ammo resupply isn’t the big driver of what to use… the 9mm, .357 Sig, .40 S&W, 10MM and .45ACP’s would all work just great.

If I HAD to pick my personal favorite caliber, it would be the .45 ACP, just like in real life. Options like penetrating natural body armors, accuracy, low muzzle climb, the ability to easily suppress the noise, and plentiful ammunition to tear Mister Zeddie McNasty a new one makes the .45ACP my best “all around” zombie killing caliber.

Of course, we’re talking about the undead here. As a rule, you have to put one in the snot locker and blow out the back-side of his melon to give that zombie a permanent dirt nap. All you have to be able to do is penetrate the skull. In that aspect, virtually any bullet in modern defensive handguns will do the job, methinks.

What are your thoughts on handguns versus rifles?

A rifle is far more powerful than a pistol, but it takes two hands to use.That’s difficult if you’re trying to do things like grabbing or pushing people out of the way, opening doors, or even using a flashlight. Personally, I prefer handguns for clearing rooms and rifles for outdoor activities.

What are your thoughts on the importance of using different weapon types for different situations?

It’s all about the finding right tool for the job. I usually come down on the side of accuracy and heavy hitting firepower over other options, but as a Marine, I believe in the concept of “One Mind, Any Weapon.” I’ll fight by throwing an angry cat on your face if I have to.

Do you have any tips for people looking to try out shooting for the first time?

A lot depends on the state or country where people are from, of course. Here in Washington, we still have a bit of the frontier mentality, so gun ranges are plentiful, safe, and fun.

I’m a strong advocate for training. If you can’t find a local range, there are lots of awesome schools that provide weapons for rent. Thunder Ranch, Yavapai Firearms Academy, The Lethal Force Institute, Valhalla, and Gunsite are some of the big names. I’m a big fan of the Insights guys here locally. The NRA is also an excellent resource. You can say what you like about the politics or the organization, but at the end of the day, nobody does gun safety like them.

Thanks for chatting with us, Erik! It’s great to hear your thoughts on this stuff.

Any time! Thanks again for the chance to offer my two cents on the project. I’ve really enjoyed the chance to meet everyone and see this cool game come to life.

I hope you guys enjoyed learning more about Erik! We’re thrilled to have someone with his expertise giving us advice, and I’ll tell you what — if the shit ever goes down, I’m really hoping it happens on a day when he’s paying us a visit.

All of us here at the Lab would like to extend our sincere gratitude to every single current and former member of our armed forces. Happy Veteran’s Day, and thank you for your service.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Emily

PS: The images in this article are in no particular order, so if the guns don’t match with the stuff around them, you can blame me.

Years ago, my future mother-in-law was curious about what I did for a living and asked me a question about being a game animator, “So do you have to draw every frame?” I thought to myself, “Thank God I don’t have to create 30 drawings for every second of gameplay.”

How could I explain it all? Sometimes what I do is technical, like when you adjust the weighting on a rig so moving a character’s wrist doesn’t make his shoulder flex in a weird way. Other times, it’s a form of acting, creating personality and mood with a stance or a movement. Often, it’s simply about getting the motion right, adjusting how a foot eases into or out of a pose, or showing kinetic energy transferring from one part of the body to another.

Working on a game, you use the same techniques as movie animators, but you often have extreme timing and movement restrictions to fit game balance requirements, and you rarely get to build an animation with just one camera shot in mind. You try to make things look great from every angle. It’s challenging, but when it all comes together, you take a beautiful, static model created by the art team and make people see it as a living, breathing being.

This is what I do.

As a kid, I always liked to draw, but the thing that really inspired me was animation. I would watch Looney Tunes and Disney classics no matter how many times I had seen them before. I loved old Ray Harryhausen movies like Jason and the Argonauts from 1963, and all of his Sinbad movies. Early on, I knew I wanted to be an animator.

As I got into my late teens, though, I learned that opportunities for animation schooling and jobs were few and far between. So when it came time to go to college, I looked for something more practical. A year of drawing bolts and geodesic dome houses taught me that architectural and mechanical drafting was not my true calling. I moved to graphic design next — first at the University of Washington, then transferring to Cornish College of the Arts to finish my BFA. It was interesting, but not inspiring.

Then I got lucky. In 1989, the last semester of my senior year, Cornish added a brand-new class to its curriculum: computer graphics. It probably sounds funny now, but back then things like PageMaker, Freehand, and Macromind Director were cutting edge. These weren’t just new pieces of software; they were entirely new ways to do things. Having access to Director let me try my hand at animation — I still remember that first experience of putting together a series of images and making it come to life.

That was my way into the field. In 1991, a buddy at Microsoft was looking for someone who knew Director to create animations for a new application called Cinemania. I didn’t know how to animate very well yet, and I barely knew the software, but I was in the right place at the right time. I knew this was the chance to do what I’d always wanted, and I wasn’t going to let it slip away.

Over the next few years, I used every free moment to get better and looked for learning opportunities wherever I could. Through a friend at work, I managed to get after-hours access to an expensive SGI computer running Softimage, a high end 3D program. I stayed late every night and taught myself how to model and animate in 3D.

My timing couldn’t have been better, because a game development boom was just starting in Seattle. I felt like I’d landed my dream job when I went to a little studio called Sucker Punch, where I got the chance to animate all of Sly Cooper’s moves in Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus. Up until then I had only done small pieces of character animation, so this was the first time I was ever responsible for fully animating a character — especially a cartoony one with a personality like Sly.

During my time at Sucker Punch, I learned a ton about how animation affects the responsiveness of a character in a game. Animators are trained to have the character anticipate action, but in games, anticipation tends to go out the window in favor of getting the immediate response players expect when they press that button on their controller. With little to no anticipation, you start to learn little tricks that help sell the animation and direct the viewer’s eye.

Until this point in my career, I’d been primarily animating characters by hand. I didn’t have much experience with motion capture (mocap) animation, but this changed when I started working on MAG. While I was responsible for hand keying all of the first person and weapon animations, I also helped direct mocap shoots and modify the mocap data to match the game’s animation style. This experience helped me with my work on SOCOM4, where I was responsible for not only hand keyed character, vehicle, and cinematic animations, but also for character mocap.

I first found out about Undead Labs from my friend and old co-worker, Steve. When I learned that he and two of my other old colleagues, Foge and Shaun, were there too, I knew I had to be a part of the team.

I think that third-person action games are the most fun and challenging to work on as an animator because they really let you put a lot of personality into the characters. Animating combat is also one of my favorite things, and zombie combat is especially appealing to me because you gotta animate over the top!

It seemed like the Lab had everything I could want in a company and a project, and I feel very fortunate to be here.

Class3 presents a great opportunity to do things in animation and in games that I’ve never done before. At this point, I have been animating for games for nearly 20 years, but I’m still hungry to learn new things. As an animator, you can always improve — you’re always learning and there’s always more to learn.

I look forward to the challenge.

Reid

(Emily’s note: If you just can’t get enough Reid and would like to know more about him, be sure to check out Jeff’s introduction.)

Earlier this year we posted an open position for a talented animator to join Team Zed. A few short weeks later, we deleted it. Since it was rare for us to post a position on our website in the first place — most of us at the Lab have been working together for years — we immediately received questions about why we had removed the job post.

Simple: Reid Johnson had found us, and we’d found Reid Johnson.

Reid is a talented industry veteran who has been animating top-tier video games for more than a decade. Reid is most well-known as the animator responsible for animating Sly Cooper in Sucker Punch’s Sly Cooper and the Theivius Raccoonus, for which he won a “Best Animation” award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Before joining us at the Lab, Reid was at Zipper Interactive for six years creating the more realistic animation for the SOCOM and MAG franchises

Creating  motion-captured — or “mocap” — human animation for military shooters like SOCOM and MAG is one thing, but Reid made a freaking raccoon look fluid, graceful, and full of larcenous intention. And he did it all by hand. Turns out, they don’t make mocap suits for raccoons. They do make mocap suits for zombies — and we’ll be putting them to good use in Class3 — but Reid’s got the talent to inject that just-over-the-top coolness you get from hand-built key-framed animation, so we’ll get the best of both worlds.

I can’t wait to see what he can do with a zed horde, a desperate survivor, a lead pipe, and a proper dismemberment system.

One final note: Reid is the coolest character I’ve ever met. I don’t mean cool like celebrity-snowboard-god cool, or hipster-coffee-snob cool, either. I mean cool as in, well, chill. I just don’t think the guy can be rattled, stressed out, or even surprised. He just exudes a sense of “Relax people, I got this shit.”

When Z-Day comes, I’m with Reid.

Jeff

P.S. Don’t forget to check out Reids’s welcome to his fellow survivors!

Halloween is finally here and, as you can probably guess, it’s our favorite holiday! People cruising around in sweet costumes, horror movie marathons on TV, carving pumpkins, stocking up on copious amounts of candy (mmm…peanut butter cups)…

Best time of year? Yeah, pretty much.

While we can’t be there to give you a hand with the zombie makeup you should be rocking this weekend, Doug did whip up a new wallpaper to help you get in the spirit. Check it out!

Fullscreen:	800×600 | 1024×768 | 1280×960 | 1280×1024 | 1600×1200
Widescreen:	1280×720 | 1280×800 | 1440×900 | 1600×900 | 1680×1050 1920×1080 | 1920×1200

Enjoy, and have an awesome and safe Halloween weekend!

Emily

PS: If you end up dressing up like a zombie this weekend, we’d love to see your costume! Post a comment and show us what you came up with.