Readers of this section should be well aware that games are little more than a cocktail of illusions, and nowhere is that more prevalent than in the dance of a wrestling move. What you dismiss as "something I've selected from a dropdown menu" is actually not one but two carefully choreographed animations - intertwined to look right and programmed to feel right. And that's AFTER I've got my head around the mind-boggling physics that make a move work in real life, and done the painstaking dog work of setting up those hundreds of frames of animation! Prepare to delve into the most overlooked part of my wrestling work...

The Blueprint
I'd like to claim that each move begins with a comprehensive artist's impression - but with hundreds of animations on the agenda, that's simply not an option. Nor is it true (the above scribble dates back to Federation Booker). After years of viewing wrestling moves in action - and indeed recreating them in previous games - I'm qualified to dive into most manoeuvres with a great deal of confidence. However, there is a subconscious process of thought that's vital to getting the job done. I have to envision the several basic positions that make up a move. How and where it grabs, how it lifts, how it drops, how it ends - and how it gets from each of those stages to the other. That may sound straight forward, but even something as simple as a "Headlock Takedown" can get complicated once you try to break it down. Can you envisage the exact physics that take place between grabbing the head and ending up on the floor? It happens in a split second when Bret Hart does it, so you've got to pick up the spare! More importantly, I've also got to consider how my close approximation of a human can recreate those demanding poses. Lest we forget, those solid models are not flesh and blood - and nor do they bend as such...

Man Of 1'000 Frames
Once I've got a battle plan in mind, all that remains is to get two models to recreate each basic pose - one playing the perpetrator and another playing the victim (colour-coded in purple for my sanity!). In theory, this is as easy as playing with a pair of plastic toys - bending each one's limbs into position and locking them together for a snapshot. However, when you're talking about "toys" that have up to 30 separate limbs each, that game soon loses its appeal! Fortunately, the "key frame" nature of 3D animation helps to fill in the gaps from one posture to the next - very much like autopilot for animators. It's not foolproof though, and certainly struggles to make sense of wrestling moves. Hands lose their grip on the opponent, legs fail to find the floor, and the physics of rising and falling go out of the window. I have to step in the middle of each such automated sequence and help to keep things flowing naturally. The result is that even the most basic of moves can consist of dozens of carefully choreographed phases...

Going Separate Ways
A player could be forgiven for thinking that animation sequence is all there is to it, but the reality is that a game couldn't care less about a 3D Studio MAX scene! Those intertwined animations are merely there to help me make sense of the move. Before they can be used in a game, the victim and the perpetrator have to be separated and exported as 2 different animations. Each character involved in a move can then look to their respective file and play out their side of the sequence. If they do so at exactly the same time (and in the same orientation), the illusion should be perfect. The only problem, which you may have encountered during play, is that there's no way to compensate for different sized bodies - so the grasps of taller wrestlers can sometimes look out of place on shorter victims, etc.. 

License To KIll
All that graphical work is just half the story. Once I've got access to the animations, I have to tell the game what to do with them. A whole page of code is dedicated to each move, and determines how quickly the animations are displayed, when and how they end, when and how they effect the victim, and when they're likely to be reversed or broken - not to mention every little sound effect that accompanies the movements! This process can be just as important as the animation itself, because the wrong effect at the wrong time can make the entire move feel unnatural. Follow the above link to see a whole move's code from start to finish - and then imagine having to do that 100 times over!

The Moment Of Truth
And it doesn't stop there. Having taken my first stab at the animation and the programming, I obviously have to load it up to see the move in action. It's at this juncture that you find out whether you've spent the past 2 hours making a masterpiece or a waste of time! Unbeknownst to most people, there's a difference between games and 3D scenes - and what looked good in 3D Studio MAX isn't guaranteed to translate to game. Afterall, we're talking about a different frame rate and a different graphics engine - which tends to produce the slow "floaty" feel that many players are critical of. Upon seeing for myself what those inconsistencies are, I then have to return to the animation and make a few changes. Some things might have appeared too slow, some might have been too fast, and some movements might not have reached a satisfying height or distance. That fine-tuning goes for the programming too. Certain sounds and effects will have no doubt occurred at slightly the wrong time, and they have to be knocked into line. After a few return visits, I'll have come to terms with the move (whether it's good or bad) and it can finally take its place in the selection...

A Rock And A Hard Place
In addition to programming each individual move, there are core principles that keep the system working properly. By default, the game doesn't know what's happening when a wrestler suddenly embarks on these unusual animations that could end up anywhere in 3D space. All it knows is where the move started, so it's not prepared for movements that spill over into the scenery! These gaps have to be filled in by an extremely complex piece of programming that originated in The MDickie Show. That game was my first to use 3D moves, and had to come up with solutions to the problems that they can cause. It kept them within the scenery by using an ingenious system that monitored the position of the character's hips, and then forced the move backwards when either one conflicted with the outside world. As long as the victim and the perpetrator stayed together at all times, it appeared as if the move was simply rubbing against the side of a wall...

Hold That Pose
All of the above is just for the standard moves. When it comes to submission holds, there are yet more twists on the concept that keep things ticking over. Unlike an attacking move that plays out once, a hold could last for any amount of time and be broken in any manner - be it deliberately or accidentally. This changes the whole way the move system works. The simple one-way animation only applies to the beginning of a hold. After that, there needs to be a separate animation that loops perfectly. And theoretically, there even needs to be a third set of animations for releasing the hold (although most moves get away with reversing the applying animation!). Given that each animation needs to be provided in terms of the perpetrator AND the victim, just one simple hold can consist of at least 4 files - all of which need to be held in memory should any wrestler need to use them...

Attack Of The Clones
Although they're the most simple of all moves, the impact attacks have to work within a similar set of circumstances. Once again, it's all an illusion that the game has to make sense of. The animations alone tell us nothing about how long a motion lasts, exactly where and when it connects, and what impact it has on the victim. As with the moves, all of those details have to be painstakingly filled in by yours truly. A key difference with attacks, however, is that none of the movement can take place in the animation itself. In order to preserve the characters true location, the animations have to take place on the spot - with the travelling added later by the programming. This is especially true of aerial moves, which could fly from anywhere to anywhere at any height or speed! When there are that many unpredictable factors on the scene, the science and the art have to compromise in order to adapt to the action...

Final Thought
A lot of people criticize the range of moves in my games, and now you know why things are so limited. I have to be the artist that carefully draws up the animations in the first place, then the programmer that tells the game what to do with them, and finally the designer that keeps those thousands of files swirling around your computer without it exploding! The next time you're watching a smooth "Gutwrench Suplex", remember that I animated every inch of that move. The next time you're feeling the impact of a "Stunner", remember I carefully programmed it to feel that way. And the next time you're browsing through the move selection, remember I dedicated a morning of my life to put each one there - and taught your computer how to execute them without breaking its back. All while single-handedly working on every other aspect of the game! It's in mastering all of those pieces that Wrestling Encore earns the right to be subtitled "The Masterpiece"...