“We wondered if we should do another US take, or go more international with it. And the choice of going to Prague meant that, while again, we respect the past, we could have our own take. Also, a lot of the people working on the project had just finished a game based in New York, so we wanted to do something else! “Prague was like the
perfect choice, because it has a lot of vampire lore built in. It’s a modern city but the look is very gothic – more gothic than you would see in other games that are US-based.” Prague might have been the perfect choice, but
“Prague was like the perfect choice, because it has a lot of vampire lore built in. It’s a modern city but the look is very gothic – more gothic than you would see in other games that are US-based.”
recreating it is another question. Bloodhunt’s adaptation of the city is a realistic one, though not a direct 1:1. Don’t expect to treat it as a vampire-ridden tourist destination, but those familiar with Prague are sure to see a number of familiar sights. Recreating so much of an entire city is a big ask,
especially when the team is aiming for a truly triple-A experience. Add on the relatively small team size for such an ambitious game, and it increasingly looks like an insurmountable task.
THE GREAT HOUDINI That’s why the team have become so enamoured with 3D procedural software Houdini, which features a set of procedural generation tools that have allowed Sharkmob to create a Gothic setting worthy of a triple-A title with relative ease. Danial Rashidi steps in to explain. “When we started working on this game, there were
much fewer people at the company,” says Rashidi. “It was a very ambitious plan to build up Prague. We didn’t know how big it would be, but we knew we needed some sort of tools to be able to manage building the city without a huge art department. So we invested quite early on in procedural tools, and we evaluated several different approaches, including Houdini. “We didn’t end up using Houdini from the start, we
started out using our own tools. It was fun to explore and to build up the systems for how to build the city. There was a great collaboration, we worked heavily on that. “And then later on we started using Houdini in different areas. So for instance, the sky in the game is
March 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 49
simulated and generated in Houdini. It was quite fun to sit with an art director and have them say ‘I want it a bit more cloudy!’ and we’d simulate a cloudy environment, move the moon around a bit, and then render it all down and put it in the game.” As Rashidi explains, the tech Sharkmob has built up
during the development of Bloodhunt is one that should serve them well long past the game’s launch. “We use Houdini quite a lot now, and we have built
a photogrammetry pipeline. We have several different avenues of tech that we’re investing quite heavily in. One is photogrammetry, both for Bloodhunt and future games as well. And another is mocap. We have a really nice, large mocap studio where we can record all of our stunts and cool animations.” As part of the company’s photogrammetry push,
Rashidi shows us a scan of one of the many statues found
Below: An example of one of the game’s many statues, which the team are able to make game-ready faster than ever
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