The Feature That's Apparently Really Hard To Put In A Video Game
Players might think that huge boss battles or lush landscapes are the most difficult to animate, however game designers recently spoke out about the true villain in the animation process: doors. That's right, doors reportedly trip up developers more than any other in-game object.
Stephan Hövelbrinks, the creator of Death Trash, commented on doors via Twitter on March 9, explaining that they are a particular source of grief for developers because they block pathways and cut off character interaction with certain objects or settings. After Hövelbrinks' initial comment, developers for all sorts of games chimed in to declare their detestation of doors.
Kurt Margenau, the co-director of The Last of Us 2, jokingly said, "Don't know what everyone's up in arms about. We added doors in combat to TLOU2, took like a day. Just gotta have good talent I gues... LOL JK IT WAS THE THING THAT TOOK THE LONGEST TO GET RIGHT WHAT WERE WE THINKING." Mangenau continued discussing the topic, providing lucky players with the opportunity to get a peek behind the curtain of Naughty Dog, which is especially interesting as fans suspect the team is working on a new game. "There pretty much wasn't a department not affected by adding doors in combat," Mangenau tweeted. From AI systems to animation sequences and the need to allow players to stealth easily, The Last of Us 2 team struggled to include doors.
Damion Schubert of Boss Fight Entertainment elaborated on some of Margenau's points about doors, noting, "frankly they're more trouble than they're worth." Schubert explained that poorly crafted doors create all sorts of additional problems in-game, like clipping through characters and objects. Players might recognize some of these glitches in recent games like Cyberpunk 2077. When things go wrong in a video game, it's noticeable, especially because it breaks immersion. Schubert commented that immersion is one of the most important aspects of a game, and doors often shatter the fragile reality they've crafted by not working how they're supposed to.
Even Control had issues with doors. Sergey Mohov, the lead gameplay designer at Remedy, commented on the problem, tweeting, "I don't exactly know how many man-months went into the door system in Control, but more than most abilities and weapons, for sure." Considering the gorgeous graphics and mind-bending abilities available in Control, fans might be surprised to hear that doors provided a struggle for the team.
Game development is much more difficult than some players give creators credit for, and even the small act of opening a door can turn into a bigger issue if developers get it wrong.