We all know them: bugs and errors that spoil our fun while playing and sometimes even block or destroy our progress. But what we’re experiencing is nothing compared to what the developers go through in the production of our favorite games. Because the code often behaves completely differently than expected and sometimes problems arise that nobody expected, as this story by a Skyrim developer shows:
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
How bees almost destroyed the famous intro
In such or similar cases, creative solutions often have to be found, which then appear completely absurd. For example, the Titan Quest developers called in a squirrel for help when they encountered problems with their quest system. Here you can find out what it is all about and how the rodent saved the role-playing game.
Ghost Squirrels help with quests
Joseph Hobbs, who works as a developer for the Ubisoft Annecy studio, shared on Twitter a s tory by former Titan Quest developer Arthur Bruno
It was late in development and time was short. It is therefore unthinkable to develop a completely new feature. A quality assurance employee finally came up with the crucial idea after helping out with the scripting. Apparently it was possible to use animations as a timer and delay an event by the length of one or more animations.
Squirrels, who populated the world of Titan Quest as purely decorative creatures, were perfectly suited to this task. Because their idle animation lasted almost exactly one second. So the employee created an invisible version of the squirrel and had it take a stand wherever a timer was needed.
This is how squirrels became a central quest mechanic in Titan Quest. You can imagine what the development team said: I need a rest of three and a half squirrels here.
The person behind the squirrel trick even ended up getting a promotion for their creative problem solving.
Although more because of its latest expansion and less because of its squirrels, for Sascha Penzhorn Titan Quest is still a role-playing game that can compete with Diablo:
Titan Quest
The new addon is just the icing on the cake
In the development of games, absurd problems and solutions also arise elsewhere. In Fallout 3, the developers left about players a subway vehicle as a hat wear to simulate a train ride. And the developer of a keyhole mod for Skyrim got around the engine’s limitations in a particularly creative way.