The Making Of: Dog’s Life
As Frontier Development celebrates its 25th anniversary we revisit one of its most interesting games
Before Thrillville rocked the Playstation Portable, Kinectimals gave gamers a reason to finally buy a Microsoft Kinect, Elite Dangerous ventured back to the stars and Jurassic Park Evolution let players manage their own dinosaur theme park, developer Frontier Developments covered ground that was arguably even more unique: the life of a dog.
Founded by David Braben in 1994, the studio’s first title was Frontier: First Encounters, the third game in the Elite series. David, who is the cocreator of the Elite series itself was, and still is, the heart of Frontier. He has always gotten his hands dirty during development, as Jonny Watts (Dog’s Life head of production) recalls, “When I joined Frontier, the first thing I remember – and don’t forget David is a legend of the games industry to me – on my first day, the first thing I see in the studio is David sitting in the corner of studio making ‘bocboc-boc’ sounds for the chickens that would become part of Dog’s Life. You see your idol like that, it was a strange first day!”
Dog’s Life lets the player take command of man’s best friend as he digs, runs, jumps, swims, plays and sniffs his way across a selection of open world areas and missions in the attempt to save his love Daisy, who at the beginning of the game is snatched by dogcatchers. It’s a simple story, but it sets up some fantastically inventive possibilities, and as soon as the player begins to control Jake, Dog’s Life begins to reveal its charms rather quickly.
Championed by Sony in an era in which it was encouraging games to be different, instead of offering one large open world that was commonplace at the time, Dog’s Life gives the player multiple small hub worlds to explore. As Jonny explains, “We had three main hubs – a village, ski resort and city, which themselves are divided in multiple play areas. We wanted to give three flavours of environment, with a nice progression where the game becomes more and more populated. Dogs are very at home in the
technically there’s a lot of animation to make it look and appear alive Jonny Watts
countryside, but a city can be quite a hostile place when you’re only knee-high. It feels more dangerous and makes the dogs feel smaller as you progress. It’s a journey and the peril increases throughout.” Sam Denney (artist on Dog’s Life) echoes Jonny’s thoughts. “Having lots of variety of levels gave us the opportunity to create more varied gameplay moments, from throwing snowballs on the ski slopes, to the platforming in the town. It gave the game a less repetitive feel and challenged the players in a more interesting way. It also gave the game a sense of journey and momentum.”
Visually, the game drew from rich sources of inspiration such as Pixar, Aardman and classic Disney films. Sam explains his approach, “The visual style was interesting in that we wanted to create a fun, colourful world but also to have a level of reality to the animals to ground the game and give the player a sense of connection to the characters. This was the earliest example of the kind of crossover of styles that Frontier Developments has embraced and nurtured over the years. You’ll see it very clearly in Planet Coaster, where very realistic rides meet highly stylised characters.”
However, one of the Dog’s Life’s most impressive visual flairs is its animation, namely that of Jake and the other playable breeds in the game. From simply running around, jumping into lakes, playing fetch with yourself, being able to urinate in two different directions and even having the ability to defecate and then throw it at people, there’s an unbridled sense of play in the game, from the wholesome to the downright juvenile. Controlling these canines throughout a myriad of missions, minigames and activities makes for a highly playable and rewarding experience.
But behind this sense of effortless wonder, the team at Frontier found it difficult to nail the movements of the dogs in the game. “Technically there’s a lot of animation to make it look and appear alive before you even get to the challenge of controlling a quadruped in a game,” Jonny explains. “Remember that at the time there were very few animals in games; even in the early PS2 era the benchmark would have been Epona in Ocarina Of Time from the N64. Spyro played with quadrupeds, but they didn’t plant their feet the way we wanted our dogs to. Back when I started at Frontier, Dog’s Life was still a Playstation game, and it was a long time in development. On my first day with Frontier I saw tests with our dogs running around the V2000 landscapes. Dog’s Life actually uses some of the Inverse Kinematics tech we developed for V2000 to power the mechanical spiders running around the landscape. The dogs were able to move really organically around the landscape, planting their feet correctly on uneven terrain thanks to us developing that V2000 tech.” In fact, a single dog in Dog’s Life uses more than half a dozen techniques at once. From blending, layering, inverse kinematics, lipsyncing, looped and single-shot sequences to boned animation, Frontier Developments used all of these techniques in unison to portray a believable quadruped. Jonny continues, “Players are very good at spotting repetitive movements and canned animation. You never see the same performance twice. We gave
a lecture on the game at Bournemouth University and I remember one student asking us, ‘Are those dogs alive?’ I was stumped by the question at the time, but I think there’s something to it – the dogs are so convincing at times that you have to look twice. They certainly look like they’re alive! That pedigree carries through to this day. Frontier still excels at animal animation, and there’s a little bit of Jake in Jurassic World Evolution’s T-rex.”
The game expands its playable canine roster far beyond Jake, as over the course of the game the player must utilize a total of 15 additional dog breeds, with each one serving a specific purpose based on their own unique skills. As Jonny describes it, “To me it’s very basic game design, but it works beautifully; you see it and you immediately understand it. In many ways it’s very similar to what TT’S Lego games do with character abilities and attributes.” The level of game design simplicity works remarkably well in Dog’s Life. The chihuahua can access tiny areas, the St Bernard can move heavy objects and the border collie can round up sheep, and as soon as the player unlocks a dog breed their use becomes immediately apparent. Simple, fun and rewarding.
Though the game is incredibly lighthearted, it does contain a reveal during its final level that still often pops up online as one of gaming’s best, and darkest, twists. During the last level, Jake discovers that all of the dogs that have been taken by the dogcatchers are being turned into cat food by the games villain. Sam dishes out the origins of the level, “There was one level that probably shouldn’t have made it in and that was the final level. When I joined the game had been in development for a long time but we still didn’t have a final level. Back then roles in the games industry weren’t quite as formalised as they are now, so the line between art, design and writing wasn’t so clear, and I was asked if I had any ideas for the game’s finale. I wanted there to be a bit of an ironic twist at the end, so we came up with this idea. I drew out a very basic sketch of the cat food machine and Andy Gillett (designer) just really went with it. I think his sense of humour was a lot like mine. Those sketches are actually in the game, in the final level. When you see the diagrams (‘dog goes in, catfood comes
out’) those are the very first concepts for the final level.” Though the game got a PEGI 3 rating in Europe, in the US it was upgraded to a T rating from the ERSB. But it wasn’t because of this final grisly reveal. Instead, it was because if the player stands next to the Grandpa character as he sleeps, he’ll mutter some very innuendo-laden dialogue about his youth.
back then roles in the games industry weren’t quite as formalised as they are now Sam Denney
looking back at Dog’s Life, it’s easy to overlook just how important the title was the evolution of Frontier Developments, as it set the groundwork for some of its more recent titles. Sam looks back at his time on Dog’s Life fondly, “It was an invaluable experience for someone who was new to Frontier, I was able to be one of a few artists that were finishing the game which offered me a lot of opportunity to not only make a big impact on the visuals but also to prove my worth to my new studio. It was also the beginning of something that’s become a real speciality for Frontier: bringing animals to life. Dog’s Life is where we began developing the techniques that have made games like Kinectimals and Jurassic World Evolution possible. You can trace a 15-year-long line from A Dog’s Life’s dogs to Jurassic World Evolution’s dinosaurs”. Jonny chimes in with his thoughts on the experience, “This game was for a broad audience, but especially for my children, so it has a very special place in my heart. I can also say it’s the most bizarre game I’ve ever worked on, but I remember it very fondly. We definitely tried to do something very different in a number of ways, but I think it all feels quite coherent. It’s a game that’s mentioned frequently by players when we meet; I think it was a part of a lot of people’s childhoods”.
With Frontier Developments very successfully bringing back the Elite franchise with Elite Dangerous, and Jake himself declaring to the player at the end of the game, “See you next time!”it begs the question; will we ever see Dog’s Life 2? Jonny explains, “We would all like to do a sequel, even now. Dog’s Life is a game that’s still really close to our hearts. We often talk about how good we could make Jake and friends look with today’s technology”.
As a footnote, Sam recalls a moment from development that nicely sums up the carefree mischievous nature that the game conjures up, something that was quite evidently present during the creation of the game itself, too. “Dog’s Life is also the only time I’ve ever been tasked with modelling a poo,” he tells us. “I struggled with it for many hours to get the animation just right, because I knew it would come under a lot of scrutiny. I remember sitting with the lead animator and watching a dog pooping with his knees trembling, and then watching the animation played in reverse, back and forth for our amusement.” Indeed, we think it’s high time for a sequel.