Ghajini - The Game Development

1. Confidential(c) 2009 FXLabs Studios. All
rights reserved.

2. Making of Ghajini: Stretching
Torque to its Limits
Imran Khan K
FXLabs Studios Pvt. Ltd
NASSCOM Animation and
Gaming Summit - 2009
Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.

3. Opening
• Ghajini – The Game is 3D PC Action-
Adventure Game made on Bollywood
Movie title.
• My Role in the making of Ghajini – The
Game
o Producer and Tech Lead
• Sales of the game – 25K to 30K copies
sold
• Team effort of FXLabs and Intel.
Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All rights reserved.

4. Agenda
• Talk about the making of Ghajini - The Game from
Production, Development and Art point of view
• Present FXLabs approach to developing games on
Garage Games Torque* Engine.
• Discuss the TECH and ART decisions that were taken
early on in the making of Ghajini.
• Explain the workflow and development methods that
were adopted to optimize the game for Integrated
Graphics.
• Uday(Intel) will present the IGP tool.
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5. India Facts
Market reality of India that swayed the game
• Challenge to define the market in terms of
o Demographics – Impacts on the gameplay design
o Hardware profile – Impacts the graphics and art
quality
• Piracy – Impacts the price point (Ghajini – Rs.199)
• Distribution - Finding a distributor that would market and
distribute the game. ( Ghajini distributed by EROS )
• Competition from AAA games.
• Learning - Most people in India do not have 3D
accelerated cards, this brought Intel into the picture.
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6. Game Production Cycle
• Pre-Production – 2 Months
o Select engine, create art pipeline, create style guide, put together
basic design.
• Design / Prototype – 2 Months
o Create basic tech systems and test gameplay mechanics
• First playable – 2 Months
o First working version of gameplay and Levels.
• Alpha – 2 Months
o All levels done, all gameplay mechanics working.
• Beta / Play testing (External) – 2 Months
o Bug fixing, game balancing and final polish.
• Final Release – Nov 2009
o Apply Security and SHIP!
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7. Pre-Production (Tech)
• Figure out the limitations of the engine to set game
design boundaries.
• Listing out broad tech and gameplay feature set
required for the game which is not provided by the
engine.
• Write Tools to automate Art production pipeline.
• Making the Game Engine stable - Fixing memory leaks!
• Adding core features to the Engine – Audio, AI, Camera
system, Collision, etc.
• Standardizing on the development tools and processes.
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rights reserved.

8. Game Development Tools
• Production toolset
o QA - JIRA
o Art tools
 3DS MAX, Photoshop
 Level Editor and Animation Browser supplied by Garage
Games
o Development Tools
 Visual studio, SVN, nVidia PerfHUD and Intel
Graphics Profiler.
o Design – Word and Excel sheets.
o Project Mgmt – SRUM and Excel sheets.
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9. Pre-Production (Art&Design)
• Collecting reference for Game Art
(References)
• Create Art Style Guide
• Creating ART Tools pipeline for the game
o Textures and lighting
o Standardizing on Poly count for levels and
characters on min spec machine.
o Figuring out the Animation pipeline.
• Figuring out game design tenets
o Game design that will gel with the movie story
o Game design that will complement the movie noir
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11. Modelling
Steps on modeling
- Reference images matching the feel

12. Textures

13. Final

14. Textures and Lighting
• During the pre-production phase we
figured out that lights are going to be
costly in Torque so we made a decision to
burn the textures with the light
information.
• The turn around time to edit lighting
information with DIFF files in Torque is
huge.
• Used Photoshop to burn lights onto
textures.
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rights reserved.

21. Video

22. 3DSMax Export Tool
• The Torque Editor is not the best when it
comes to editing the levels and
coordinating work between artists. So we
created an export tool for the artists to use
3DSmax as the main editing tool and
export out the level to a Torque mission
file. This increased our productivity many
times over.
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23. Level in 3DSMax
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24. Level in Torque Editor
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25. Feature set
• Creating Systems
o 3D Main UI Menu system.
o Comic book style Cutscene System
o Weapons and Combat system
o Audio – Object and material based audio.
o AI behaviors with State machines, Shortest path algorithms for
path-finding
o Platform gameplay – Ropes, Ladder, Ledge and Planks.
o Messaging system for broadcasting events.
o Inventory System for player.
o Integration with Graphics Profiling tools(PerfHUD and IGP) to pin
point issues and help with optimization.
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26. 3D Menu System
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27. Game UI
• Consistency and coherency in style is
important for
o Main UI elements
o In game menu
o HUD
• Flow charting the UI before putting down
code or art is important to figure out the
design and usability issues.
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28. UI Layout
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29. Comic Book Cutscene
• The comic book cutscene is something we
decided we would do for the entire game
to bring out the dark style of the movie.
• We felt making a comic book style
cutscene with Aamir Khan narrating the
story of the game would bring the connect
to the original movie property.
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rights reserved.

31. AI
• Implemented Shortest path algorithm for
AI navigation
• AI behaviors using state machines
o Combat - Dodge, Evade, Defend and Attack
o Navigation – Patrol, Ambush and Chase
• Gameplay for AI defined with events using
Torque Scripting language.
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32. AI Path Nodes
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33. Platform Elements
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34. Collision
• Collision is one of the module that usually
takes up a lot of processor cycles and
causes FPS drops.
• Torque internally used OPCODE collision
system.
• To optimize on the collision code we
created low poly collision primitives to
provide collision in the level.
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35. Level without Collision
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36. Level with Collision
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37. Profiling Tools
• Early on in the life of the project we decided to integrate
the graphics profiling tools like – perfHUD and IGP into
our work flow. We also made it mandatory for artists to
check levels for stable FPS on min spec machine (i.e.
Integrated Graphics).
• Benefits
o Level artists were optimizing art while making levels.
o We saw less frame drops because of the GPU choking up.
o Optimizing level became an inherent step in level editing work.
o Not only the assets but the textures were also optimized.
o This resulted in overall stability in the frame rate and less FPS
issues.
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rights reserved.

38. Intel IGP
• Uday to present IGP!
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39. Omitted features
• Full screen shaders for XRAY vision
• Full screen shaders for Night vision
• Stealth Meter
• Player dialog system
• Maps for traversal between different locations for non-
linear gameplay
• Ranged weapons for player. (To be true to the story of
the movie)
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40. Game Balance
• Game balance:
o AI : Game balance of the AI’s – balance
sheets.
o Levels: We added time as a parameter to
increase the difficulty of the level in hard mode.
This is turned off in normal mode.
Dodge Roll
Difficulty Health Dodge Percent Defend Percent Evade Percent
Percent
Easy 100 5 0 5 10
Minions Normal 120 10 0 10 20
Hard 140 15 0 15 30
Construction
Easy 150 10 10 20 40
Boss Normal 200 15 15 25 55
Hard 250 20 20 30 70
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41. Ghajini Audio
• Theme music created for Ghajini game
keeping in mind the dark style of the
game.
• Sound design done while level editing to
add depth to the experience of the game.
• Voice over by Aamir Khan in cutscene
brings a connect with the game character.
Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All
rights reserved.

42. Production issues
• Production issues - Working with movie
house on IP has its own issues.
o Getting concepts for Aamir.
o Getting time with the production team to
discuss ideas.
o Maintaining absolute secrecy on the project.
o Getting shoot material from the Movie house.
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rights reserved.

43. OS issues & Security
• Readying the game for distribution and
Game Security, Windows OS
compatibility.
o Vista OS issues (Right way – Game Explorer)
o Adding security to game
 Security for game Script – Torque binary conversion
 Security for game exe – 3rd part security
 Security for game assets – Encrypted compressed package
o Adding a game launch application
 Tackling windows right and security model
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44. Embed QA!
• Ghajini success was because of QA team.
• QA embed into development from
prototype phase to provide feedback on
gameplay.
• QA feedback during play testing was
crucial for balancing the game.
• Many of the ideas provided as a feedback
by the QA team made it into the game.
Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All
rights reserved.

45. Thank You.
Q&A!
Imran Khan K. FXLabs Studios.
Imran.khan@fxlabs.com
Confidential 2009 FXLabs Studios. All
rights reserved.