Bare Butt Boxing uses procedural animation to bring its characters to life. You have probably heard of the term "ragdoll" before, one of the most common use of procedural animation. It's a satisfying physical reaction that usually occurs when a character dies or gets knocked out. The character will switch from a normal "animated state" to a ragdoll state and fall down in a physical way, based on the position of their limbs and the force of the impact.
Bare Butt Boxing uses a different kind of procedural animation called "active ragdoll". This technique uses the same principle but keeps the character in this ragdoll state permanently, not just during death. Various forces and constraints are then used to keep the ragdoll upright and animated while still reacting to all physical forces.
Early active ragdoll prototype.
Constructing the Ragdoll
The ragdoll is constructed from primitive objects like cubes, capsules and spheres that approximate the dimensions of the body and limbs. These primitive objects are then linked together in a hierarchy so that motion of one can affect the other. For example, if the upper arm moves, the lower arm will follow.
Primitives are also constrained so they don't exceed certain rotation angles and maintain desirable properties like stiffness and bounciness.
Fishy's ragdoll setup, 13 main primitive shapes are used to construct it.
Active Ragdoll Benefits & Compromises
Compared to traditional animation, the active ragdoll approach provides some unique benefits. Animated characters require a wide variety of animations that blend between each other for a character to feel right. In contrast, characters in our game require no animation at all! All motion is derived procedurally and the physics engine of Unity takes care of the rest creating endless possibilities.
Such a degree of automation introduces unique challenges, however. A lot of careful consideration is required to create stable, relatively predictable behaviour because physics can produce unexpected results. Luckily, surprising behaviour is often part of the charm of physics based games like Bare Butt Boxing!
All characters and bodies in the example above are procedurally animated with physics and they all constantly react to each other. This kind of complex behaviour is impossible with traditional animation.
Physics and Multiplayer
Physical simulations add many unique challenges when creating a multiplayer game. For an enjoyable multiplayer experience, low latency is required. Any delay between a player pressing an input and seeing the effect of their action in the game can impact the experience negatively. This delay happens due to the players' computers (clients) requiring to "talk" with each other and exchange data. When player A presses the jump button, this data needs to travel to all other players to see player A perform the jump on all their screens.
Active Ragdoll characters exacerbate this problem by vastly increasing the amount of data that must travel between clients. Technically, all the rigid bodies (the primitive objects we've covered before) need to be shared between players. If we do some quick math, let's assume 13 rigid bodies per character, in a match between 6 players, that's almost 80 unique objects to track just for our characters!
In Bare Butt Boxing we solved this problem by only passing a limited number of key rigid bodies between clients and simulating the rest on each client locally.
Multiplayer is an incredibly deep and technical topic so this only scratches the surface. Under the hood, advanced techniques such as client-side prediction and server reconciliation enable very low latency multiplayer that keeps everyone happy!
One of the most common and frustrating examples of latency is players existing at different levels of delay between clients.
Hope you enjoyed this brief technical dive into the active ragdoll technology at the heart of Bare Butt Boxing!
Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more! Tuatara Team
DEV LOG 02 - LEVEL CREATION PROCESS
The different levels are a key factor for Bare Butt Boxing's gameplay to work. As such, we spend a lot of time and effort to make our maps as engaging and polished as we can. We want our levels to feel unique from each other, while still fitting within some general criteria.
They must have roughly the same size, which we feel is optimal for games with 4 to 6 players. We usually want different layers of heights to create interesting gameplay situations, a few areas where players can fall off the map, etc.
Layout & Playtesting
Making Bare Butt Boxing levels is time consuming, so we must ensure each level we create will be worth the effort we put into it. This is why we segment the level creation process into individual parts.
Everything starts with a crude layout of what the level will look like. At this stage, we figure out the placement of goals, define which areas should be more or less dangerous and ensure that every part of the map feels interesting.
Short timeline of typical changes we might make during playtesting iterations.
This rough process is fast, like building with lego blocks and allows us to start playtesting the level quickly. During and after each playtest we discuss what could be improved for the level to feel balanced and fun. We move walls around, we might add a barrier or readjust the position of a goal. We play again and find more ways to optimize the layout until we're confident it's a great new addition to our existing lineup.
Level Theme & Concept
We think about the theme of the level early during the layout phase. By the time the layout is done, we have made our mind on the theme and are ready to begin the concept art phase. Once again, we are aiming for variety. But we are also taking into consideration how long certain types of maps would take. For example, a jungle would take longer to model and texture than a urban environment.
At this stage we hand over the layout to our talented concept artist who uses it as a guide for required level dimensions.
Above you can see the completed concept stage of our Skatepark level.
Creating the 3D level
After the concept phase is complete we pass over the level to our amazing 3D artist who interprets the concept art and translates it into 3D. This final part takes the longest, but it's also one of the most exciting as we slowly see the level take it's final form. Creative solutions and tweaks are usually required on the way to make sure the level works in a three dimensional space and still holds true to the layout we validated. Modelling is followed by texturing and finally by lighting. Bare Butt Boxing uses a combination of baked lighting with global illumination, this creates a rich and believable feeling, and dynamic lighting for dynamic objects and shadows.
A near final look of the skatepark level with some polishing still remaining.
We can't wait to make many more levels once the game hits Early Access, and we look forward to involving you, the players in this process.
You can expect polls in which you've be able to vote for level themes.
So as always, stay tuned for more! Tuatara Team
DEV LOG 01 - PAX WEST
In September our team traveled to Seattle to present Bare Butt Boxing at PAX WEST 2022! It was the first time we've attended a game industry event as a team and it was an unforgetable experience! We loved meeting and playing the game with so many of you and returned home equipped with lots of new action items that will help us make the game even better.
Local Multiplayer
At PAX, we were showcasing the Local Multiplayer mode where players compete to punch each other into goals on the same screen, couch multiplayer style!
Local multiplayer feels a bit different from the main game mode, which is online with up to 6 players. The biggest difference between the 2 modes is how the camera follows your player. In local multiplayer, the camera is further back and encompasses all of the action so everyone can see their player properly. It's a simple change but it affects the experience quite a bit! We hope you'll enjoy playing both online and local multiplayer.
The Pax Experience
It's hard to put into words how electric and exciting Pax is so we made this montage of our experience for you to get an idea!
Swag
Besides handy informational leaflets we had pins available at our booth. There was one model available for each of our 6 aliens. The pins were made out of wood. Sturdy and eco-friendly!
The pins were super popular, we came to the event with 600 and left with just a handful! We'll make sure to produce and bring more to our next convention.
Hope you enjoyed our first dev log. We plan on sharing more about the game in the coming weeks, leading up to our Early Access launch in Q1 2023!
