EA Buys Euphoria? (as seen in GTA IV and Force Unleashed)

Is it true? According to the inside word gameplayer got at E3, Electronic Arts may have already bought NaturalMotion, the developer behind the Euphoria Engine used in GTA IV and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

"Imagine if Activision, or Ubisoft, bought NaturalMotion and begun challenging everyone of EA's sport franchises on a year-to-year basis with the most realistic A.I and animations in gaming. That is too big a risk for a company in the process of rebuilding its reputation, and its bank balance."

[NO_PUDding]

Natural Motion said they were going to stay independant. So if EA has 'bought' them. It's ONLY the rights to use it's technology, and not the company itself.

If it was a takeover, there would have been soem news. No matter how small.

[kevnb]

but 100 million dollars has been known to change people's minds.

[SlappingOysters]

Then someone throws $100m on the table and those people start thinking about buying their own tropical island.

[kevnb]

But if it were me, I would do the exact same thing.

[TOSgamer]

Anyone that buys NaturalMotion is going to license Euphoria to any company that want to buy it. It's called business. So this is really not a issue for the end users, namely gamers.

[SlappingOysters]

EA has gone and bought a whole bunch of middleware solutions and isn't sharing any of them
- see below link

http://www.gameplayer.com.a...

[titntin]

Well if this is true thats the end of 'Euphoria'.

you saw what happened to 'Renderware when the bought it? At the time they vought it it was the only middleware engine anyone planned on using, but they destroyed that and it dies - just like every company they ever buy!
If I sound bitter its because I was part of Bullfrog and had to watch them destroy it! :)

[kevnb]

just most of it.

[N4g_null]

WOW bullfrog that was painful man. I remember telling my friends beware of EA but they just wanted in to the game biz. It's been rough for them in the beginning. I hope you found a good company to go with. What type of work do you do any way? New developers are always forming and lots of jobs are not posted online these days. Well you know that!

[titntin]

I was artist animator at bullfrog, worked ona lot of titles there, but hen EA squished all the IP's, took us to some huge horrible building in chertsey and had the teams disbursed amoung stpif football and sports titles. Real waste of a talented studio....

Still, that was 8 or more years ago now!

[kevnb]

Im surprised ea doesn't release a console, they could be really dangerous.

[Funky Town_TX]

That could come true in the future. I think EA is setting things up become a console maker. Just think if they partnered with Samsung or Toshiba that could be a hugh for in the gaming world.

[N4g_null]

About as dangerous as the 3do right? no one in their right mind would develop for EA and even though EA has a lot of great companies with in their ranks they are not great to work with unless you are big or well known.

[Funky Town_TX]

I don't know what dev want because I don't dev games. Hardcore gamers hate EA but I never heard bad things from devlopers. I'm sure there are dev that hate Sony and ones that hate M$.

[Rich1631]

What is so great about the Euphoria engine? GTA4, while a great game, had mediocre A.I. and piss poor graphics (admit it fanboys!). The animations were okay but nothing to write home about. I could care less about a Star Wars game so I don't know how it looks in there. The Star Wars franchise just needs die. It had it's time in the sun and it was great. All these shameless games, that new cartoon movie, the prequels etc. have destroyed the once great series.

[N4g_null]

WOW you hate the Star wars things so bad... I'm not that much of a fan any more also but this engine would be sweet.

This is the engine that let the AI figure out what to grab on to in order to not get thrown around. Now apply that to a NFL game. Then imagine being able to tell your runners to use certain cradle techniques. Yes I know some are the only right ways but some people run faster with certain tucks. I mean you could simulate strips way better and catching the ball could be a really hit the helmet acrobatic display again that is totally random.

People would understand even more about the game making it that much more of a selling tool for EA and even a training tool for the NFL if they invested the right amount of money.

At least learn about stuff even though it's attached to things you hate. You'll be less pi$$ed about things and people will react in a less pi$$ way to you. You get heard and respect also.

I understand you going at star wars though but hey give it a chance right?

[CViper]

Its just the packaged and developed Software development kit that developers can easily use without spending that extra month of overhead developing to tools manually.

Recent and upcoming titles like Uncharted/Killzone2 still blend key framed animation and Motion capture with dynamic physics to pull off a variety of animations.

This will mean that all of EA's generic developed titles though, will run on the Unreal Engine, and have smooth physics. But knowing EA, they are just buying it to force other developers to license it from them :)

[N4g_null]

This is more than a key frame and motion capture blending tool. This is Ai generated animation almost completly. We really need a section here to explain to the fans of gaming what the tools actually do and what they don't. There is actually some very cool stuff out there. But maybe that would be too dorky for the hardcore.

[CViper]

Hi. Ive worked with it, and you can blend Keyframed animation with it, thats why its so amazing. Because it solves the in betweens\forces with physics. Did I say thats all it does? no.

It is not MUCH MORE than blending keyframed/mocap with *accurate* ragdoll physics. its a BIT more, but nothing that any decent developer couldn't do if put in a corner to develop this for their game -if- they had the time. You are lying if you are sitting here pretending that its much deeper than having a start/end of motion capture data\keyframed animation, an event, and the solution to match the start or end. You can interfere with the animations at any time with forces, its great.. but done before.

I'm saying its not going to affect any game development at all in the future. EA can buy it all they want. But Games will still have the feature without it.

But hey, what do I know. I'm just a td.

[N4g_null]

So your going to claim to have worked with this huh? Hey maybe you have. Hell lets say you used a very early version even. Your dead wrong though. And you need to get up to speed. I'm fine in maya and 3d studio max and this app mirrors maya pretty well. I'm not the lead animator but I know my sh!t.

So why do they say you can't set up animations with out key framing and why can you set up targets for the rig to reach for and grab on to and turn them off in game with a simple script? I've seen it set up with a start stance and every thing from there was generated on the fly? This is some thing you can drop in the game also. Maybe you worked with endorphin but we are talking about euphoria. You can just keep rolling to different behaviors to produce an animation if you really wanted to. That would be showing off though.

Hey but I'm not here to argue with you. I though it was Key framed mo capped also. I mean have you tried giving it behaviors yet, in game or in your engine?

Hell you can download the learning edition if you need that much proof?

http://download.naturalmoti...
This is the PDF from the site it tells you how every thing is generated and they clearly say you don't need canned animation. You where shown a bad demo then if you are telling the truth.

If you tried this out but could not buy this tool I understand but seriously it is worth having and morpheme is going to be even better.

I just hate people passing up stuff because they just didn't research it. Hey but it's your loss if you do work on key projects. All the heavy lifting is done. If you have another reason for not liking the set up you should say so.

I know some of the bugs in GTA4 where the cause of bad behavior set ups. If you know how the thing works you could produce more glitches.

[MIAMIFROST]

they are becoming like Microsoft and bullying the rest of the developers. They have a monopolistic mind set and it will end up hurting gamers in the end.

[ape007]

guys,your thoughts on euphoria engine please

[N4g_null]

Go through how to set up an animation rig for MAYA and 3d studio max. Or go check out some great motion capture tech. Then go here...

http://www.naturalmotion.co...

In a normal game you can actually morph between motion captured keys which also need to be reduced and hand keyed animation. Hell some game tools let you do this with in the tool package. Motion captured animation can be a pain unless your actor is top class but the problem is you can never get every possible way he would react to some one diving at him.

Yet with this you could set it up where he always puts his head down or stiff arm on the fly and randomly based on what he see coming at him. You can not motion capture that and if you hand key frame objects that do that they you just created AI animation just like this engine which is not an easy task let along running it on a console.

Imagine having an actor and telling him to dive into a wall randomly and realistically while the head continues to talk to you realistically even with motion capture animation?

It would be hilarious and is some thing the really high end animation houses have started using or have been using for a while. Gaming is late to the part due to the power involved with the out put and live effects.

This will also cut down on a data stream for the PS3 and xbox 360. You can also use this to fake realistic physics in some objects.

It's a great tool but if you don't need it then you should skip it. Gamers only pay for the game not the tools. If you can get this done with some keyframing magic and some nice scripting thing good for you. Every thing is going procedural sooner or later.

[OOG]

well honestly this maybe be awesome if true all the EA sports games could be a lot more realistic and improved with this tech