Products
Examples
Interview
Simultaneous Release On Three Platforms
The Role of Middleware in The SOULCALIBUR II Project.
Platform
Products Installed
CRI ADX / CRI Sofdec / CRI Clipper
Clipper and SOULCALIBUR II.
Oshimi: I heard that you used Clipper for the arcade version of SOULCALIBUR II?
Yotoriyama: Yes, we did. And for the most part, this has been transferred to the console version.
Oshimi: I saw scenes where characters were speaking, but that didn't look like raw Clipper-produced data. You must've made a lot of adjustments?
Hata: No, actually there were hardly any alterations! We made some slight adjustments, but over 80% is raw Clipper data.
Oshimi: Is that right!? You know, Clipper was originally developed as a tool geared toward 2D games, so I was surprised to see it applied so well to polygonal characters.
Also, I was really surprised by how Clipper was used not only for characters that spoke English or Japanese, but for characters like Necrid who only make sounds like "Groowl!" and "Hgraah!" I guess it's strange for us, as the developers, to say so, but we really were blown away.
Hata: Data playback with Clipper is just so easy - we found it very useful.
世Yotoriyama: You know what? On the Dreamcast version, I designed the mouth movements by watching my mouth move in the mirror!
Oshimi: Wow! You're kidding!?
Yotoriyama: I'm totally serious. I did it all manually. But then, when I started working on it with the members of the project team, people would say to me "Are you sure this is right?" (Laughs.) That task was just too difficult - not something a human should be expected to do. So, I thought, there must be a tool for this. What I found when I searched around was Clipper.
Oshimi: And you know, the people who do lip-synchronization at most developers end up quitting. It's a repetitive task, and recent games have an enormous quantity of dialogue. It's a thankless job.
Obama: But even when we were doing it manually, people were happy to work on the characters they liked.
Yotoriyama: Yeah, and I did all the characters that nobody liked.(laughs).
