University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Super Opera Squad

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Super Opera Squad

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Content
Super Opera Squad

by

Caleb Bladh

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS (INTERACTIVE MEDIA AND GAME DESIGN)

May 2020

Copyright 2020 Caleb Bladh
Acknowledgements

I’d like to acknowledge all the individuals who volunteered their time and talents to the
production of Super Opera Squad. The work that you have done is amazing and I’m extremely
proud of all that has been accomplished. A special thank you is offered to my MFA cohort, the
faculty of USC, and my thesis Advisors, without which none of this would have even been
possible. Finally, I must acknowledge my family for all of their support and patience
throughout this journey, particularly my wife who pushes me to be more than I think I am and
without whom I would never have grown into the person I am today.

ii

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................................ii
List of Figures..............................................................................................................................iv
Abstract........................................................................................................................................v
Prior Art.......................................................................................................................................1

Process: Production Pipeline of Super Opera Squad..................................................................3
Preproduction...................................................................................................................3
Production........................................................................................................................6
Alpha...............................................................................................................................11
Beta..................................................................................................................................12

Reflections...................................................................................................................................15

References...................................................................................................................................18

iii
List of Figures
Figure 1: Early screenshots of prototype shared ……………………………………………..4
during recruitment presentation.

Figure 2: Character design concepts by Tyler Rodriguez…………………………….………5

Figure 3: Game screen mockup by Tyler Rodriguez…………………………………………6

Figure 4: Work in progress shots of “Stoutman” …………………………………………….7
the main player character model.

Figure 5: Final “Stoutman” model in a singing pose.………………………………………...7

Figure 6: “Hand of God” Pointing, giving “OK” sign, …………………………………….…10
and telling players to stop.

Figure 7: Before and after some drastic art polish changes.……………………………….…13

iv
Abstract
Super Opera Squad is a game designed for 4 to 5 players to enjoy cooperatively on the PC.
Gameplay is handled via gamepad input. As a goal the game aims to create highly chaotic and
humorous moments, while remaining low stakes enough to be enjoyable for players of varied
skill levels and ages. Players run an understaffed opera house and must fulfill the role of both
stage hands and opera performers, managing the set piece arrangements and singing in real time
during the show’s performance. The intended target audience can be separated into 2 categories.
The first is families (i.e. parents and children of various ages). The second category is groups of
close friends gathering together for social gaming. Super Opera Squad is designed to provide an
outlet for players where they can cooperate together and, as cooperative games have been shown
to relieve players’ stress (Ferguson and Roy 2016), reduce their overall stress levels.

v
Prior Art
Having a well of prior experiences and art to draw from serve to strengthen any creative
endeavor. I’ve been playing games for many years, it would be impossible and tedious to list
them all, but there are a few games in particular that had a clear influence on the design of Super
Opera Squad.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
I followed Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetimes’ development while I was an undergraduate and
released in 2015. I was particularly drawn to the way they were blending 2D animation with 3D
by using Maya in unconventional ways to animate and rig characters to achieve their 2.5D effect.
It unlocked ideas and possibilities for me about game art in general, but being drawn to their
artwork got me invested in their game’s design as well! 4 players man a spaceship with more
“stations” than available players. Each station serves a singular purpose; a steering station, a gun
station, a shield station, etcetera. The concept of having to “keep multiple plates spinning” by
having too many space stations to man, and having to multitask and cooperate with a group of
friends to make everything happen; that is very core to my thesis game. While our games are
thematically very different, I have drawn inspiration from this game frequently during
development.

Overcooked
Overcooked originally released for the PC, Xbox One, and Playstation 4 in 2016. It’s a 2-4
player game and players take on the role of chefs in crazy, chaotic kitchens. Much like Lovers in
1
a Dangerous Spacetime , there are an overwhelming number of tasks that need to be tackled,
which encourages players to plan together and cooperate on the fly while approaching challenges
during levels. What I really like about Overcooked is how it naturally draws players to speak to
each other and callout problem areas. Players tend to vocalize when and where they need help
while playing, and that’s something I’d aimed to emulate in Super Opera Squad . In addition to
sparking ideas about what I could do, Overcooked also gave me inspiration on things that I
wanted to do differently. I played Overcooked together with my wife and I noticed the levels of
stress she was experiencing were enough to detract from fully enjoying the game. There was
very little positive feedback, we had no indication of whether or not we were near accomplishing
each level’s goal, and the stakes seemed very high. While I wanted to create a game with a
similar chaotic energy, I also wanted to reward players with clear positive feedback, and lower
the stakes of failure to increase the enjoyability of Super Opera Squad.

2

Process
Preproduction
Preproduction on the project began in Spring of 2019 during a class focusing on thesis ideation
and preparation. In preparation for the coming Fall and following Spring semesters, I whittled
down eight game ideas to five. I then designed five mini prototypes of those ideas. Following
trusted student and faculty feedback and after self-evaluation, I settled on Super Opera Squad as
the project I would focus on for the next two semesters.

I chose Super Opera Squad for many reasons. I wanted to make a game that was fun for fun’s
sake. I love getting people playing together and the camaraderie that they build. I loved the
over-the-top nature of the theme and the gameplay. If I was going to be dedicating this much
time and effort into a single game, I wanted to be sure that it was something that I was excited to
make and play.

For the remainder of that Spring semester I expanded the prototype, striving to find the “spirit”
of the game to use as a recruiting tool to potential student collaborators and volunteers. I
explored different art styles and called on Tyler Rodriguez, a friend and concept artist, whom I
trust and respect, for input. Through late night online discussions, we swapped art references
and Tyler drew up some characters for the game, and an interpretation of a camera angle of the
stage during gameplay. The characters and camera mockup really helped build and direct the art
style, and married well with the game’s tone.
3

At the end of that Spring semester I pitched Super Opera Squad to a large lecture hall full of
potential student volunteers. I prepared a slide presentation and shared the current state of the
project and my vision of where I wanted to take it during production.

Figure 1: Early screenshots of prototype shared during recruitment presentation.
4

Figure 2: Character design concepts by Tyler Rodriguez.

5

Figure 3: Game screen mockup by Tyler Rodriguez.
The presentation yielded several interested student volunteers and among them fortunately, was a
composer as well. As music was a major potential roadblock, I was relieved to have found a
solution to that problem early on in the project.

Production
With the semester ended I found as much time as I could during Summer between family time
and an internship to work on the main character’s 3D model. By the time the Fall semester
started I managed to finish it, and I quickly rigged and animated it in the first few weeks of the
semester.
6

Figure 4: Work in progress shots of “Stoutman” the main player character model.

Figure 5: Final “Stoutman” model in a singing pose.
There was a short grace period at the beginning of the semester where my volunteer team was
still figuring out their school schedules so we were not meeting yet. This gave me a few weeks
to get some of the work I had wanted to finish during the Summer done. The original prototype
7
was done rapidly and was not really suitable to build upon for a long term project. The code and
artwork was all temporary and the scale of the scene was inaccurate. I took this opportunity to
rebuild the project with the new art direction in mind. I brought in the new, appropriately scaled
3D model and built a simple placeholder stage for him. I decided to convert my gamepad input
system to use the popular Unity store asset “Rewired” and also purchased a clean and clearly
coded baseline rigidbody controller system called “Character Movement Fundamentals” by Jan
Ott off the Unity asset store as well. There were pros and cons to this controller, but ultimately it
allowed me to separate the player character’s physics from the physics of the rest of the
environment. It also was extremely easy to expand on and adjust for my particular needs. This
saved a ton of production time and made the process of getting a satisfying-feeling controller
much simpler. It took a few extra days of learning the ins and outs of the code to set it up, but I
had a playable sandbox ready with the new camera angle and character model before we had our
first team meeting.

As students’ schedules settled, and some dropped off the project, it became clear who would be
able and willing to move forward working on Super Opera Squad; one producer, one 3D
modeler, one 2D texture artist, one game designer, one composer, and one engineer. Delegating
work to others took some adjusting to. I needed to learn to clearly communicate tasks to others,
but also to allow people to experiment on their own when possible. I believe allowing some
creative license helps others to grow and also feel a sense of satisfaction and excitement about
their work in the project. All of this was overwhelming in the beginning! Fortunately my
producer really helped me with organizing where the production was headed and we created a
8
master task list and burndown chart to help assign tasks to team members, track our progress,
and keep our production on track. It was my first time working with a producer, and it truly
opened my eyes to how important they are to a project! 3D assets that I previously would have
had to have made by myself were delegated to our 3D modeler, our texture artist began painting
backdrops for the opera house, we set up a weekly design meeting for the game design volunteer
and I to talk level design and ideas, and assigned the bones of the scoring coding system to the
engineer.

This freed me up to work on the systems underlying the core loop of the game. I programmed a
system for audience reactions to player successes; when a player sings in the appropriate
spotlight in time, random audience members will toss coins and roses at said player. I wanted
the throwing to be physics based to provide some procedural unpredictability and so had to
integrate a trajectory system that would calculate, given a random angle, the force necessary to
hit a spot on the stage. Soon our engineer turned in a preliminary version of the score tracking
system. I integrated that with the audience reactions and made a randomized spotlight generator
that randomly pointed stage lights at positions on stage to test gameplay and code. In order to
implement carrying stage set pieces I began creating a system to pull objects along the stage
using handles. Multiple players could grab different handles on an object and they could carry it
together, or pull in opposite directions to interrupt each other. This system ended up becoming a
major bottleneck down the road, but was working (with problems) for the time being and was
good enough to leave in at that point.

9
Unfortunately, our team’s sole volunteer engineer (who had begun our scoring system) at this
point began to get very sick. Their doctor suggested it could be a chronic condition. In interest
of their mental and physical health they requested to be taken off the project. I was sad to see
them go, but of course wished them well, and am very grateful for the work we were able to
accomplish together.

We had enough to begin testing with players and at the end of the Fall 2019 semester, we held an
open house to show off our MFA cohort theses. It had become clear that we needed to direct
player attention to tasks so I experimented with a “Hand of God” feature. I made a floating hand
to float above objects that needed to be moved and point in the direction that they needed to be
placed. The result was visually comical, but caused gameplay to focus almost completely on
moving things to an unknown destination. Players had to drag objects along staring at the
floating hand and it pulled their attention away from enjoying other aspects of the game like the
singing, or possible narrative beats that the opera might be trying to portray. Ultimately it was a
distraction, so it was scrapped.

Figure 6: “Hand of God” Pointing, giving “OK” sign, and telling players to stop.
10
After processing feedback received during the open house, I decided to cut some planned
features and reduce our goal of three playable levels by the end of graduation to one playable
level. Instead of creating new mechanics, we would expand on mechanics we already had (like
the singing in spotlights mechanic) to be able to create a solid level in the time we had left for
production.

The Winter break came and went and the Spring semester of 2020 arrived. This was the final
semester we had to finish the game. Set pieces were really obscuring player characters whenever
someone ran behind them. This really detracted from the experience so I began reading through
shader code and giving myself a crash course in shader programming. After 2 days I managed to
cobble together a “Punch through” shader that detected when a player was obscured by set pieces
on the stage and cut out a circle around that player that “punched through” the blocking
geometry. At this point roughing in the narrative and gameplay beats of our level was the
highest priority, so I manually added events to placeholder music so players could play through a
whole first level “opera”.

Alpha
It was at this point that we officially hit our alpha milestone of the project. Most game systems
were in place and we began testing the systems a bit more and discussing level design and
simplified narrative design elements for our level. The composer finished a rough pass on the
level’s music and began work on the finalized orchestrated version using 3rd party audio
middleware Wwise. I replaced the placeholder music with the rough pass music and we began to
11
replace the “roughed in” level events with more appropriate events to coincide with the new
music. After discussion with my game designer, they began work on a tool to use in the Unity
editor to streamline creating level design “events”, (such as pointing a spotlight on stage at a
given time for players to sing in). I then began creating social media accounts a logo for the
game to begin generating interest in the game prior to the USC Games Expo. I also spent time
submitting Super Opera Squad to some festivals and expos. Soon after implementing the rough
music version, our composer sent the final, fully orchestrated versions of the game’s music.

Beta
After discussion with my thesis advisors, we officially entered our beta milestone and began
focusing efforts on polish; both in gameplay systems, and especially in art. Our placeholder
empty stage was beginning to look like an eyesore that belied the amount of systems working
under the hood. We built an opera theatre environment and filled our game scene with it. Props
began to get final textures done for them and 3D geometry that was inefficient was cleaned up.
In general, the visuals got a major upgrade and the game started looking really great.

12

Figure 7: Before and after some drastic art polish changes.
It was about this time that Covid 19 really began changing working conditions in California. I
cleared out my thesis space and many on our team had to move to new lodgings. It took a few
weeks for everyone to settle into the new online working routine. During this time I took the
13
opportunity to go back to our handle-dragging system and try to fix the problems that remained
with it. I really wanted to polish the game feel and stabilize the unpredictabilities in the system
as well. I approached it from about 3 different ways, each way failing to solve the problem
satisfactorily. My next attempt would require altering the character controller code drastically,
so I thought I would reach out to Jan Ott and ask if he had any advice on how best to approach it.
After a series of emailing back and forth, Jan helped me finally resolve all the issues in a much
cleaner and simpler way!

After that the team got back up and running. Our weekly meetings were back on schedule and
we all began getting work in again. I implemented the Wwise middleware into our project and
have begun swapping out the old audio for our final versions. All that remains now is creating
the main menu of the game and some user interface work before the USC Games Expo.

It has been a long journey, but I’m proud of what has been accomplished with Super Opera
Squad. The game is fun, cooperative, and brings people joy in a time where anxiety is high and
people are stressed with the uncertainties of life. While the goal of making something humorous
and fun was simple, it’s one that I’m happiest with. I had to reduce scope and features out of
necessity and time constraints, but the smiles and laughter generated made it all the way through
production. That’s enough for me.

14
Reflections
Throughout the production of this thesis I had the opportunity to learn many things. Knowing
these before production would have saved me time and effort. There is value in reflecting on
them in this section.

Physics
Using game physics is a mixed bag. You can get procedural and dynamic moments “for free”,
but they are unpredictable and difficult to control reliably. Many times where I wanted to use
physics to solve a problem I ended up creating a system instead that allowed me greater control
over it. I’d then create a fake equivalent of physics for visual effect. The ragdolling in Super
Opera Squad, for example is a randomized list of animations made to look like a ragdoll. I spent
a good amount of time trying to work a popular ragdolling Unity asset into the game, but it
created many problems with the physics built into my character controller (it would cause
characters to fly infinitely upward). Rather than wasting more time rewriting the systems and
making the two repositories work with each other, I took a step back to realize what I really
wanted. Yes, dynamic ragdolls would be nice, but I really just wanted to create a humorous
moment when players are being tossed off of a boat due to a storm. It was much faster to author
a few funny animations and call them manually with total control than to spend more time
putting out fires in the code.

15

Delegating tasks
Delegating tasks was a relatively new concept as well. I had worked in small teams before, but it
was either 1 or 2 others, or I had been receiving tasks and working to achieve someone else’s
goal. This was the first time I had a group of people that I needed to direct to achieve my goals.
At first this was a bit strange, but soon I realized how much more my efforts could be multiplied
with the proper help and providing them with direction. There was an initial period of
adjustment. Having worked on the idea alone for a while, I felt a natural resistance to giving up
tasks to others. Ultimately I would say this is a selfish impulse, and should be moved past
quickly. You can make a game by yourself if you want to and take credit for everything, but is
that the kind of life you want to lead and do you really think that the game wouldn’t be better
without someone else’s input? Moreover, are the games that you can make alone the kind of
games that you would like to make forever? I think those are useful questions to ask one’s self
to put things into perspective.

Fortunately, the impulse was fleeting and I soon began to make use of team members as best I
could. I will say that I got better at this over time. As I learned the strengths and interests of the
team, I was better at not only giving them tasks, but also knowing how and when to give them
freedom over their particular task. Challenging team members to flex their creative muscles
gave them moments to take mental ownership of their portion of the game and I saw tremendous
growth as they stretched themselves to achieve their tasks. Honestly, I found this very satisfying
and I feel as if it strengthened the commitment of members to both the project and each other.
16

Reaching out for help
It’s okay to ask for help. I try to solve problems on my own as best I can. I don’t want to waste
other’s time, and if I’m being honest I think there is an element of pride at play that discourages
asking for help; like admitting you’ve failed or are wrong makes you look bad to others. That is
ultimately a foolish affair that slows personal progress and development time. On multiple
occasions throughout this process I had to step back from my attempts and reach out to others
that I knew were more experienced and better suited for the tasks at hand. Our industry is a
collaborative community. We rise together. Much like I have felt joy and satisfaction seeing my
teammates grow and succeed, others are happy to help me when I reach out. There is no shame
in asking for help!

These are lessons that I wish I would have learned before beginning this thesis production. I
hope future readers can glean what wisdom they can find from my production experience, take
that knowledge, and use it to go further. We are all standing on the shoulders of those who went
before us. It struck me as appropriate that Super Opera Squad is a game about cooperation and
bringing people together. We are a community of game developers, and if I can lift up anyone
(player or developer) with the production of this game I will count myself as fortunate and
grateful for the opportunity.

17
References

Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime. Asteroid Base, 2015. Computer Software.
Overcooked. Team 17, 2016. Computer Software.
Roy, Amanda, and Christopher J. Ferguson. “Competitively versus Cooperatively? An Analysis
of the Effect of Game Play on Levels of Stress.” Computers in Human Behavior , vol. 56,
2016, pp. 14–20., doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.020.

18

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Super Opera Squad is a game designed for 4 to 5 players to enjoy cooperatively on the PC. Gameplay is handled via gamepad input. As a goal the game aims to create highly chaotic and humorous moments, while remaining low stakes enough to be enjoyable for players of varied skill levels and ages. Players run an understaffed opera house and must fulfill the role of both stage hands and opera performers, managing the set piece arrangements and singing in real time during the show’s performance. The intended target audience can be separated into 2 categories. The first is families (i.e. parents and children of various ages). The second category is groups of close friends gathering together for social gaming. Super Opera Squad is designed to provide an outlet for players where they can cooperate together and, as cooperative games have been shown to relieve players’ stress (Ferguson and Roy 2016), reduce their overall stress levels.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Bladh, Caleb (author)

Core Title Super Opera Squad

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 05/06/2020

Defense Date 04/16/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cooperative,couch coop,design,game,game design,Games,Interactive Media,lessons,local multiplayer,multiplayer,OAI-PMH Harvest,opera,Players,postmortem,production,video games

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Wixon, Dennis (committee chair), Fullerton, Tracy (committee member), Lemarchand, Richard (committee member)

Creator Email bladh@usc.edu,caleb@calebgames.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-298396

Unique identifier UC11663773

Identifier etd-BladhCaleb-8439.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-298396 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-BladhCaleb-8439.pdf

Dmrecord 298396

Document Type Thesis

Rights Bladh, Caleb

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA