Source: Vox.com
Author: Joss Fong (based on an interview with Brian Singh)
Publication date: September 8, 2021
One of the things I appreciate most when playing video games is incredible mechanics. Swinging between buildings with webs in Spiderman: Miles Morales feels completely natural, while in Fortnite, you can destroy almost anything and build a wall with a few intuitive actions. However, The Last of Us Part II impressed me with something subtler and more ordinary: Doors.
This everyday, ordinary task is actually one of the issues developers spend the most time puzzling over. As the game’s second director wrote on "Twitter (x.com)": “Damn these doors!”
Why are doors so difficult?
The Last of Us Part II is an extremely realistic game, and the team knew that if a player was going to open a door, it couldn’t simply open magically on its own. Even in games with less emphasis on realism, such as Fortnite, creating doors requires significant effort and time.
Brian Singh is a game developer, and apparently he really loves doors. Brian worked on Journey, Uncharted 4, and The Last Of Us series. His job was to make doors function from a technical standpoint.
"Opening a door in the real world seems simple because we’re used to it. But in a video game, you have to consider everything: every situation, every system, every object and character that might interact with the door." - Brian Singh.
Door difficulty levels
The doors you see in games can be divided into several difficulty categories:
Level 1 (Simple): Used in games such as Halo. When you approach, the door opens or closes automatically. They do not physically interact with anything, simply sliding into the wall. They are either open or closed, with no middle ground.
Level 2 (Medium): They should resemble real-world doors. In real life, doors opening in both directions is rare, but it is very common in games. Usually, the character does not physically touch the door, and sometimes the “contact” is merely imitated with a hand gesture.
Level 3 (Maximum): The character must physically interact directly with the door to open it. Having the hand fully reach the doorknob and starting the animation without taking control away from the player is a very complex “dance.”
Why are doors huge in games?
Have you ever noticed that doors in games are larger than those in real life? There are two reasons for this:
- Navigation: The movements behind the controller held by the player are not identical to the character’s movements. Passing through narrow doors can frustrate the player.
- Camera: The game camera is usually positioned slightly above the character’s head. If the door were low, the camera would hit the ceiling or lose visibility.
Artificial Intelligence and War Conditions
The problem doesn’t end there. If you add NPCs (computer-controlled characters) to the game, things become even more complicated. The artificial intelligence has to understand: Is the door locked? Should it break the door down, or find another way? If an enemy is behind the door, should the door hit and push them back?
"The Door Problem"
In 2014, game designer Liz England shared a post titled "The Door Problem." It showed how every department of a game becomes involved with a door:
- Concept artists design it.
- Composers write music for the door.
- Sound designers create the sound of the door opening.
- Writers write dialogue related to the door. Conclusion: Doors are difficult, and game development itself is difficult in general. When the goal is realism and keeping the player immersed in the world, every small detail, even an ordinary door, becomes an engineering marvel.
