christmas season is upon us so here are my fav christmas vines

Following The Eye

Eye-Trace For Games

When the camera in a game is done well everything feels just right, everything just flows. It’s the reason why Journey, why Inside, why Mario Kart 8, and just about every Nintendo game feels just as if anyone could play them.

Knowing how to deal with the eye not only helps you make your game more accessible but it also makes it easier to follow in the most hectic of moments.

From: PlayDead’s INSIDE

My goal: Is to explain how to design the game around the eye’s limitations and create experiences that are more comfortable for our users. I will start with the simple yet effective concept of Eye-Tracing.

An example:

From: Mad Max Fury Road

Follow the red circle: We can immediately read where the motorcycle is between shots and we see the barrel on the shotgun, each shot takes less than a second, yet we read every beat, and that’s because the eye is directed so well here.

Eye tracing is an editing technique used to direct where the eyes of a viewer will be across several shots, in other words it’s strategically moving the eyes of your player to a specific point in the screen and using it in different fun ways.

Create an environment in which you know which part of the frame your player is most likely to be looking at, this can be performed a number of ways but I wont get in the details of composition, color theory, photography or animation. I will only talk about the eyes.

Now, how does something from cinema world, a world where everything is scripted, and there’s a cut every 5 seconds or so apply to an interactive medium? Well the answer is simple it does so in a completely different way.

I will jump back and forth between games and movies but this is a game focused article.

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Do Your Eyes Follow?

What does the player see? What do you as a creator want them to see?

Do those 2 align? Can they?

Eyes have a 5 degree central vision, this is where we read books, if our target moves outside of the near-peripheral section of our eyesight the eyes will have to change positions.

TVs tend to hang in the mid peripheral, it feels as if it covers the whole vision but it really doesn’t. Close one eye and make a frame with your hands observe how much your monitor or your TV takes of your vision space.

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My rules are: 

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The Screen Is A Plane Not A Window

The screen is a flat surface, not a window to another world.

The key word here is Planar space! This is the basis of eye tracing, and designing moving media in a way that is easy to read for people. Even 3D movies need to compose in planar space.

Maintaining the focus in a slowly moving point in planar space makes it easier on the eyes because your eyes have to move way less.

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Eyes need a home

Even when there’s nothing to be seen, the eyes should be directed to a point on the screen.

From:Mario Kart 8

In hectic game-play, having one direct point to return to is imperative as it makes the gives the eyes a simple point to return to as they jump from object to object during the action.

In games like Mario Kart the player doesn’t have to worry where the character is, but where the obstacles are.

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Eyes Are Slow

Eyes are freaking slow, if you bring motion to a target and this target moves too fast the eye will unhook from it, this occurs because of something called Saccadic Masking a mechanism in our brain so we don’t see our eyesight motion blur.

This means things on the screen need to move at a slow pace but not in any space but in planar space, remember the first rule The Screen Is A Plane Not A Window, as long as the characters move slowly through planar space the characters will be easy to follow, we are aiding the player to follow the character by moving it as little as possible.

If something moves slowly across the screen the eye has an easier time reading it.

Speed of movement in planar space matters, if you move to quickly the eye gets lost.

For example this is easy to follow by the eye.

This isn’t.

From: Playstation All-Stars

Now on this.

From: Super Smash Brother’s Ultimate

Unlike PlayStation All-Stars, Super Smash Brother’s camera is designed around the philosophy of making the action as easy to follow as possible.

Game camera attempts to make the characters move smoothly through planar space, it will even sometimes hook characters if they don’t move for a bit.

This philosophy means everything, this philosophy created this marvel of technical prowess. Regardless of how it was engineered the camera in Smash Brother’s is superbly created.

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Up And Down Before Left To Right

It’s easier for the eyes to follow vertical motion than horizontal motion.

This is why magazines design text in small columns, and entire languages are designed to be read vertically. Eyes find moving up and down more comfortable.

(Read on a large screen)

Up to down

Left to right

This also helped Journey’s devs to create a smoother camera that otherwise would have wobbled inelegantly.

Vertical motion will still cause Saccadic masking if motion is too fast, vertical motion just happens to be slightly more comfortable to follow than horizontal motion.

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One Thing At A Time

One thing at a time, and only one thing at a time.

I’m not going against the laws of composition nor framing, you can do amazing things with multiple characters, and crowds. This rule here talks about how even in highly composed shots we still only see one face at a time, one item at a time, or one enemy at a time.

Eyes can only see one thing at a time. Crazy huh? You have to literally stop looking at one thing to look at another. Hell it’s even scientifically proven we can’t multitask. So don’t force people in your supposed-to-be-entertainment product to attempt things that we aren’t biologically designed to do (unless it’s multiplayer, or if you figure it out, who am I to stop you).

From: Super Mario Odyssey

Make sure that if something is happening on the screen that only one thing is happening that requires the player’s full attention, now this may go against the idea of action game-play for a lot of people, specially in games with a lot of AI going at you, this is easily remedied by having only one AI attack at once, think, and ask yourself the question, What is the main focus at this very moment? and make it immediately readable. Yes, even if it’s outside the screen.

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Solutions

I will give some solutions to improve your game on the engineering side.

1) Create the camera system backwards.

Engineer the camera system to respect the points in planar space first and then calculate to it.

2) If you know where the eye is, use it.

Dynamically determine where the eye is right before the next shot, or right before elements are to be displayed.

We can create things that only games can do, we can dynamically adjust the camera, the next shot, or item position for our users.

3) Guide the eye.

It’s your job to guide the eye, figure out ways in which you can do it the most effectively.

Things like the opening in Journey are just brilliant. The eye follows the character to the top of a hill just to bring an even bigger from the horizon.

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The Future

I hope this gives people an understanding of how the eye works in games and helps us understand the one issue that I think plagues entertainment software the most, we think of the camera as a dual state either it is a “Game Camera” or a “Movie Camera”, that just has to stop, I think we can embrace cutting and create something that is neither Game nor Movie camera.

With a better understanding on how to handle eye-tracing we can do things film can’t even imagine, so I hope this article helps you learn something I noticed. And helps you realize that one thing that only your game can do that will blow us all away.

Cheers,

-Fern.H.W.

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Wreck-It Ralph: Ralph Breaks the Internet, post credit scene. No spoilers.

Please……. go see this movie guys….. 🅱️lease

These vines are my life

i am on the fucking floor DYING

Let us watch as this man’s life devolves

This video reads like this man has been placed under a curse and he is physically incapable of resisting the cup shuffle

#me and my mutuals logging in

I’m the guy in the back screaming it

Owl needs a hug. (via babapaku8889)

What a weird-looking cat.

this made me emotional ;-;

kabutops stares death in the face

CHAOS CHAOS

My last braincell during an urgent situation

Talk fantasy prosthetics to me.

An elf maiden dances on feet of living wood sung into shape, planted in soil and watered when she takes them off. Every year she plants the old ones and sings a new pair. (Incidentally, the pair of peach saplings from three years ago have produced an excellent crop- She makes preserves from them, and despite the inevitable jokes about “toe-jam”, they are appreciated.)

A dwarf king has a metal fist, all tiny gears and fine wires, kept wound by a mischievous mine-spirit bound to the spring as punishment- the more it struggles, the tighter the spring. 

An orc chieftaness is regularly asked for the story of how she earned the name Wyrmthrottler- she boasts of how she strangled the dragon that ate her arm, and had her shaman make a new arm from its bones, with its fangs as the fingers.

A necromancer simply re-attached his old leg bones- Sacrificing a few mice each day keeps it going.

A pirate captain lost her arm to a shark attack: a passing selkie saved her, and gave her tattoos of kraken blood. Now she has an arm made of salt-water, that grows and wanes with the tides, and swings a cutlass as well as the original. (She doesn’t sail as far these days though: she doesn’t want her wife to worry.)

A wandering swordsman was broken at the waist- his ancestral armour allows him to walk again, as long as he keeps it polished, and burns incense to the ancestors regularly.

A high priestess has an eye made from a crystal ball- to predict the future, all she has to do is wink.

A bard was struck deaf by illness- he struck a deal with the god of music. Now he wears hearing-trumpets made from his old pipes, and dedicates his every song to the god of music- the better he plays, the better his hearing. (It is said his music could make statues weep, and he can hear a mouse fart at 60 paces.)

A princess has the arm of a golem, enchanted clay with mystic words carved in- her music tutor despairs of how her harp playing has become even worse, but her calligraphy tutor is ecstatic over her handwriting.

A goblin pickpocket has an arm made of whatever he steals- no-one feels his fingers, and even if they did, they couldn’t find their possessions amongst all the rest.  

A witch has eyes made from shadow and starlight, given to her in a game with a demon. Nobody dares to ask what she wagered- they aren’t even sure she won.

A warg was born deaf and blind- his people learned of his power when the nearest birds started staring at them, and dogs pricked up their ears as he walked past.

Happy first birthday Knife-Wielding Tentacle..👍

dear god, it lives still

Save the date folks, Knife-Wielding Tentacle’s second birthday is November 16th.

HAPPY SECOND BIRTHDAY, KNIFE-WIELDING TENTACLE!

happy birthday knife wielding tentacle

tfw

My mom kept all our baby teeth but she didn’t separate them so there’s just a box she had with like. Three sets of random teeth mixed around

Okay I’m so sorry this isn’t actually funny but it’s like. Really funny. I’m so sorry

wtf dogs lose their teeth. also who the fuck keeps baby teeth that’s horrific

My mom kept my baby teeth. And then my second set fell out so I kept those in a little bag and now we both have a set of my baby teeth.

wait what. how many teeth do you have im so confused.

I had 3 sets of teeth. So did my older brother. It was weird cause I’d had them for a few years and then they all started coming out all at once. Had a full new set in like 2 weeks. My dentist said it was fine since nothing grew out of place so idk.

I’m sorry what you grew teeth like a shark? What?

When i was younger I watched my babysitter take a plastic bag containing all her baby teeth and crushed them all into powder under the leg of a chair bc she was bored

Cursed post

The official ad for Sans’ hoodie is fucking hilarious how am I seeing this just now (x)

jokes that i’m sure ppl have made already lol

goty

IMMSCREAMINF

obligatory meme in response to toby fox’s latest contribution to the undertale canon. thank god for deltarune