Making Two Types of Random (Patreon)

(Pictured above: an alternative thumbnail design that didn't get used)

Hello!

So this week I released the first episode of 2020. It’s a big investigation into randomness in game design, and looks at input and output randomness, plus the different ways randomness is used.

It's actually done amazingly well! It's gained half a million views in less than a week, which is a 144% increase on my typical view count for this period. The video also got cited on Kotaku and on Polygon. I'm very pleased and it sets a good precedent for the year ahead.

It was, of course, a big project with lots of research. And it was also a big editing project. So I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about how I achieved some of the different effects in the episode. Let’s take a look!

RNGesus

The best depiction of RNGesus comes from the Twitter user Dinsdale. To make it more video friendly I added a white halo effect, and various backgrounds (heavenly god rays, clouds, and a sunburst). The original artwork has RNGesus flipping the bird, and so I plonked a YouTube monetisation sticker over that to censor it.

 It’s not really for YouTube’s benefit - but more so the video is suitable as an educational resource.

King Dice

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to use the dice house level of Cuphead as a sort of visual motif to tie the episode together. And for the main event: a part where King Dice himself would make the logo appear.

In the game, he normally claps his hands together to reveal a pink die. I used masks to hide Cuphead and the die, and separate his hands from the background layer. Then I could have the episode’s title appear as he moved his hands. 

I edit in 60 frames per second, but when you try to match 60fps graphics to 30fps gameplay it looks really off - which is something I learned when trying to track text onto Uncharted: Lost Legacy a few years ago. So the secret is to use hold keyframes (i.e, no transitionary frames between keyframes) on every other frame to replicate the framerate of the game.

Finally, I used a Cuphead mod to remove the film grain and chromatic aberration effect - and then applied my own versions of those to the complete video, so that my title graphic would seamlessly fit into the style of the game.

Into the Breach Information

I wanted to make a section where I show Into the Breach with zero information, and then reveal bits over time. This was really tricky and basically involved making a complicated pile of different masks to hide the enemies, their intentions, etc. 

Then I could fade out my mask to reveal the information underneath.

Deadpool 2

Thanks to the Patron on my Workshop who noted that Deadpool 2 has a scene where Deadpool writes “No Need For 3rd Act” on his detailed plan. It beautifully showed why perfect information can be boring.

Input and Output Randomness

This was a really difficult effect to get right. There’s a stage in Cuphead’s dice house where you flip over cards (Memory style) and if you get a match, the cards all draw up to reveal a different background and a new phase to the boss fight. I wanted to have it so the words Input Randomness and Output Randomness appear behind the cards.

I won’t go into the tedious process of getting this right, but it just involved lots of stitching stuff together, figuring out how to stagger the left and right sides of the card screen, and even ripping the sprites out of the game’s Unity file. This is so I could make the monkey whizz off screen, and have bits of the foreground layer sit in front of the Input and Output logos. 

I think the effect looks good but it just took a large amount of time to get right.

Podcast Visualisers

This was just a nice way to make the podcast quotes look cool. The background comes from one of the boss fights in Cuphead’s dice level and once again involved stitching and access to a debug mode to help me hide Cuphead and keep the boss still so I could remove it from the scene.

The visualiser is an effect in After Effects, and the little podcast controls are from the podcast app I personally use on my iPhone, Overcast.

Lootboxes

Nothing strenuous here, but I just wanted to note that I actually paid for a lootbox to get this footage (and also a card pack in Hearthstone) and now I feel a bit icky.

Spelunky Graph

This graph was a pain in the neck to make. Mostly because the graph has this huge gap between ropes and bombs (which each have a 34% chance to drop) and everything else (which mostly has less than 1% chance to drop). Here's the full thing:

The first thing to do was to create an axis break to remove some of the dead space. I also wanted to show the entire list of items but it was very hard to read on a small screen so I opted to just show some key items. A bit of a bummer, but it did mean I could make a cool effect where the rope in the game becomes the rope on the bar chart.

Pandemic

Oh Pandemic. So this is the first time I’ve truly covered a tabletop game on GMTK, and I wasn’t 100% sure how to show it. I actually started by filming some live action card shuffling action, but I struggled to make it look good. I’m a complete amateur at actual video production, and it simply wasn’t up to the same level of quality as you might expect from GMTK.

So instead I opted to do it as motion graphics. The first bit isn’t too bad as it’s just card backs and Epidemic cards, and it just took a long time to get all the actions (like removing the epidemic cards and shuffling them back in) to look right. A tiny bit of rotation on the cards helped them look more natural.

The second bit, where I show the resulting card deck, was a lot tougher. My dad, very kindly, took the time to photograph every Pandemic card. I could then import them into After Effects and stack them in 3D space. I then used a camera and moved the cards past the camera’s lens (complete with some depth of field) to create the effect of the cards marching past.

Tetris Randomiser

Nothing too tough here. I made the Tetris blocks myself in Photoshop and then created a little randomiser animation that cycles through the blocks. It looks cute and I’m pleased with the effect. By and large I use motion graphics to help better explain complex topics and this was a perfect example of that.

...plus lots of other little bits and bobs. It's a packed episode. But overall, it came together nicely and should hopefully set the tone for 2020! Here's to another year of awesome videos, yeah?

Cheers!

Mark