Interviews
Weather or Not: Dynamic Environments in Zombie MMO ‘H1Z1’
Written by T. Blake Braddy, @blakebraddy
On the surface, H1Z1 might look like another DayZ clone, but the development team at Sony Online Entertainment – which includes veterans of Planetside 2 – are pushing some features that distance it from such comparisons. Senior Designer Jimmy Whisenhunt and Graphics Programmer Ryan Favale took the time to provide some insight into how weather patterns will change dynamically within the game.
I saw a YouTube video of you switching between a variety of weather patterns and times of day, but can you talk about the dynamic in-game weather system?
Ryan Favale (RF): The dynamic part of the in-game weather system is controlled by the server which sends out various weather conditions throughout the days in the H1Z1 world. This allows players to experience different temperatures throughout the day, precipitation levels, cloud formations and wind patterns, and so on. Currently, we have a ‘starter pack’ of weather in the game, and we’ll continue to expand to different weather conditions as the game continues to mature.
Speaking of in-game occurrences, from how far away can other players see emergent events, like falling trees that you’ve chopped down? Is it standard, or area-specific?
Jimmy Whisenhunt (JW): If you can see the tree, you can watch it fall! You could be at the top of a mountain and see a tree fall in the fog way out in the distance. It’s actually quite frightening sometimes to see them fall in the distance. When you first jump into the game you have that ‘I’m alone in the apocalypse’ feeling, and then suddenly a tree falls and you’re like, “Oh god, I’m not alone out here!”
RF: Visible changes in the world, like trees chopping down, can be seen from within a few meters up to hundreds of meters away. The range depends on which type of action you are seeing. For example, you might not be able to see a player moving or chopping down a tree when they’re a couple kilometers away, but you may see a building blow up or something on the larger scale from that distance.
I like the idea of finding your undead self in the game to get your stuff back. Could you talk a little bit about how that works?
JW: If you die and a player does not interact with your body (IE: you die to zombies in an unpopulated area), eventually your body will turn into a zombie and the items you had on you at the time will go with the zombie ‘you’. You’ll have to hunt the zombie down to get all your stuff.
To take that idea a bit farther, will players be able to play as zombies in certain game modes?
JW: We’ve talked about this to some length, and we’ll see what the future holds. It could be fun for some game modes.
Do you plan on including a variety of in-game vehicles?
JW: Yes, we plan to have a variety of vehicles in H1Z1. We’ll have the off-roader available in-game when Early Access launches and it’s a great passenger utility vehicle. We’ll add more vehicles as we find the gaps that need to be filled in vehicle gameplay.
How much more complex do you plan on making the systems within the game? Are you still thinking of ideas that will fundamentally shift the way players look at the game?
JW: We’re constantly weighing new features against the systems currently in game and evaluating how systems affect each other. We’re looking for opportunities to add content that can and will change the way you survive, especially after Early Access. We truly want this to be a dynamic experience for players.
RF: We’ve talked a lot internally and with the players about what we’d like to implement after Early Access, such as features that alter how you will play the game, who you can be, different levels of immersion, the effect of various environments and rule-sets, etc. As for the weather, we plan on adding many more dynamic features throughout that will impact gameplay, immersion, and enhance “life” within the game.
H1Z1 is coming soon to Steam Early Access, but no firm release date has been set.
Exclusives
‘Tarot’ Filmmakers Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg on Practical Creature Effects and ‘Insidious’ Inspirations
An evil curse gets awakened in Screen Gems horror movie Tarot when a group of friends recklessly ignore a sacred rule: never use someone else’s deck. Writers/Directors Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg unleash a variety of Tarot card-inspired entities on the group through practical effects, and create an unexpected connection to Insidious along the way.
The film comes exclusively to movie theaters on May 3, 2024.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Cohen and Halberg ahead of Tarot‘s release, where the pair shared more about the film’s practical effects-driven horrors and revealed how Tarot drew from Insidious in a specific way.
To start, though, the filmmakers reveal just how closely their horror movie sticks to the source novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams. The short answer is, well, it doesn’t at all!
Cohen explains, “It’s so different. We never even read the book and took nothing from the book. The only thing, the studio had a title that they liked, and so that’s why there was an association. Then we changed the title. So, now there’s literally zero connection to the book.“
“Sony had come to us wanting to make a horror movie about astrology, but there’s nothing that’s inherently scary to us about Zodiac signs. So, we came up with the idea of combining tarot readings and tarot cards with astrology, and that’s what ended up becoming the movie. There’s such incredible iconography in these cards that we really had a plethora of amazing characters to choose from,” Halberg adds.
Adain Bradley ‘Grant’ and Jacob Batalon ‘Paxton’ in Screen Gems TAROT
With a group of seven friends, expect to see their fates sealed by a number of cards. In other words, expect to see a wide variety of Tarot-inspired creatures tormenting the protagonists. The filmmakers stressed the importance of practical effects for their creatures.
Cohen tells us, “From the get-go, we said every creature is going to be practical. We were thinking of [David] Cronenberg, of Alien and The Thing, and we want our actors responding to real things, not a tennis ball. It always just looks better. You get better performances. With the designs themselves, if you look at the tarot cards and these specific characters, there’s nothing inherently terrifying about them, even though we associate the cards with being supernatural and terrifying. And [it’s] why we partnered with Trevor [Henderson], who was the only designer we met with. We were like, this is our guy because he has this ability to make the familiar feel unnatural.
“His designs are really grounded. I am sure you’ve seen a lot of his stuff where it’s like a hallway, and there’s something there, and something’s off about it, but it really feels like it’s in the space. We knew that he has a special brain for creating unique creatures, and he hadn’t done a movie, which is just shocking to us. Then, we knew that in order to pull that off, we would need a design team with equal skill. That was Dan Martin and his amazing team who worked hand in hand with Trevor to bring those to life.”
Larsen Thompson ‘Elise’ in Screen Gems TAROT
Great designs and practical effects are one thing, but it also falls to the performers to infuse these monsters with personality to make them memorable. That was also at the forefront of the filmmakers’ minds.
“In order for the creatures to translate, underneath all the prosthetics, you have to have great actors,” Cohen confirms. “We met with a lot of people. We were looking for people who were talking to us about the psychology and the movement and how they could move in a way that we hadn’t seen before or incorporate dance. We were looking for those outliers, and basically, everyone we hired approached the part as if there were no makeup or prosthetics. It’s like, ‘I am the Magician, so this is what I want to do. I’m going to have a limp. My body’s going to do this. I feel like my head is hunched.’ And we would watch these actors just embody these roles. It was really just picking great people, honestly. It’s hard to act through prosthetics and create emotion and fear and other things. You have to have an incredible control to be able to do that.”
Halberg elaborates,” Even though we enhanced some of the creatures with visual effects, we didn’t want to rely on that. So we needed people, like Spenser said, who each brought their own unique feel to these characters. They were just as important as all of the other actors in the movie and are so crucial to making sure that these sequences are scary and believable.”
Humberly González ‘Madeline’ in Screen Gems TAROT
One of the many Tarot creatures in the film is the Magician, who comes with an original song by the film’s composer, Joseph Bishara. While Bishara has delivered no shortage of great contemporary horror scores, including The Conjuring and Malignant, horror fans are likely more familiar with Bishara as the Lipstick Demon in the Insidious franchise. Cohen and Halberg can be counted among Insidious fans, so much so that they wanted an original song from the Lipstick Demon himself.
They explain, “We actually, in prep, we called Joe, and we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do some kind of an old-timey song there.’ We knew something creepy, very Shining-esque. Then we had the idea to do a song called ‘I Saw You’ to be a pun on that whole thing. And actually use saws as the instrument. We found these YouTube videos, and our DP, I think, Elie [Smolkin] had found these videos of someone playing a saw. We were like, that’s terrifying.
“So we called Joe, and we said, ‘You know Tiptoe through the Tulips, how that’s like in Insidious?’ That’s the thing you leave the theater thinking about, and it gets under your skin. We were like, ‘Can you do that for us with an original song?’ He said yes. What you hear in the movie is basically what he played for us the first time. He was just like, ‘I have an idea. I’ll talk to you guys in a week.’ And then that was what we heard, and it was amazing.”
With so many entities and horror sequences, Halberg can’t pick a favorite. Instead, she offers one last tease, “I hope people come away with the realization that each of the sequences is so unique and different, and that each of the creatures is so special because we took a lot of time trying to craft each of these kills or scares to be their own thing and to feel different.
“Hopefully everybody can choose their own favorite.”
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