Here goes this weeks assessment of progress, planning and such. I haven't actually managed to do all that much for the project due to a load of work in other courses, but things are moving forwards. For one, I've discovered an easy way to do techy textures for our vehicles and ruins, which looks better than my previous approach and is much faster to do. I've retextured the main player vehicle with this method and it should be ready to go into the game.
I've also done a few concepts for the mobile garage and some of the minor characters, and I've started experimenting with character models in Maya. There's really no quick way to do those, but I think they're still perfectly feasible, since I don't have to do binding (except with the heads, I guess) and I can get away with projected textures, saving me the pain of UV wrapping. But of course, if we're going to use these in cutscenes, we'll need some environmental stuff too. But much of this can be very simple or done in photoshop. Plus, I don't think we'll end up having all that many cutscene frames. Then again, I may be dangerously underestimating the size of the workload.
I haven't seen that much of what everybody else is working on, but things seem headed in a promising direction. Lawson has found a flying starter kit, so he won't have to build the flying mechanics from scratch - a definite plus. I haven't heard any of Dan's sound work so far, but he looks like he knows what he's doing. Matt is working on level design and upgrade mechanics, though I'm not quite sure what exactly that involves at this point. And then of course, Cody is busy with our story development and whatever team coordinating has to be done.
I'm sure more pieces will start clicking together in tomorrow's meeting (again four hours long!) but somewhere I've gotta find some time to work on 355!
Sigh...
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Critiques on the First Round of Paper Prototype Presentations
Alright, here's my verdict on the four paper prototype presentations seen so far. Hopefully we'll go through more than four tomorrow or these presentations will never get done. Anyway, here goes:
Antlion
I have to say I didn't particularly like this presentation, and got very little sense of what the game or prototype was about. The teams's initial research and revision slide seemed unnecessary and an overly elaborate way of saying 'making an RTS was too hard, so we're making something else.' Also, the presentation never made it clear what type of game the team was working on, and what aspects of it they were trying to test. It seems that either escaping from an antlion or trying to catch an ant is the object of the game, but it remains unclear what game mechanics are used to represent this, either in the final game or the prototype.
As a final point, the game also seems incredibly simple, and indeed rather underwhelming for a full-semester, four-person project. But it is difficult to suggest ways to expand the game when I have essentially no idea what the gameplay is like.
Fins of Fury
Once again I was a bit unsure about the nature of the game at first, but eventually realized it's an action-adventure game, possibly with rpg elements and done in 3D. Once I understood this context, the presentation made more sense. Not much was mentioned about the paper prototype but it did seem like a good representation of an adventure game/rpg, as many of the core mechanics (point collecting, fighting, avoiding enemies, leveling, etc.) were accounted for.
With regard to the project in general, this game does sound incredibly ambitious and I hope they can pull it off. With full 3D, animated characters, story, levels and a character that apparently grows up through the course of the game, they've got their work cut out for them.
Mizu
As I understand it, Mizu is intended to be a side-scrolling platformer like Mario or Sonic where the player plays as a water-creature, fighting the other three elements. It was rather unclear how the paper prototype presented these mechanics, as all I remember hearing is that it was inadequate in many respects. This is understandable, considering that much of the fun in a playformer comes from the immediacy of jumping around and hitting enemies.
Untitled Game (previously known as School'd)
First off, I think this game needs a name, at least a working one. But with that said, the paper prototype seemed quite successful, even though the presentation was a bit crude. The game appears to be a medieval adventure/rpg with different character types, attacks and probably items. The testing approach for this game did seem quite interesting and very flexible, as new elements can be roughed in on this grid sheet on the fly.
Antlion
I have to say I didn't particularly like this presentation, and got very little sense of what the game or prototype was about. The teams's initial research and revision slide seemed unnecessary and an overly elaborate way of saying 'making an RTS was too hard, so we're making something else.' Also, the presentation never made it clear what type of game the team was working on, and what aspects of it they were trying to test. It seems that either escaping from an antlion or trying to catch an ant is the object of the game, but it remains unclear what game mechanics are used to represent this, either in the final game or the prototype.
As a final point, the game also seems incredibly simple, and indeed rather underwhelming for a full-semester, four-person project. But it is difficult to suggest ways to expand the game when I have essentially no idea what the gameplay is like.
Fins of Fury
Once again I was a bit unsure about the nature of the game at first, but eventually realized it's an action-adventure game, possibly with rpg elements and done in 3D. Once I understood this context, the presentation made more sense. Not much was mentioned about the paper prototype but it did seem like a good representation of an adventure game/rpg, as many of the core mechanics (point collecting, fighting, avoiding enemies, leveling, etc.) were accounted for.
With regard to the project in general, this game does sound incredibly ambitious and I hope they can pull it off. With full 3D, animated characters, story, levels and a character that apparently grows up through the course of the game, they've got their work cut out for them.
Mizu
As I understand it, Mizu is intended to be a side-scrolling platformer like Mario or Sonic where the player plays as a water-creature, fighting the other three elements. It was rather unclear how the paper prototype presented these mechanics, as all I remember hearing is that it was inadequate in many respects. This is understandable, considering that much of the fun in a playformer comes from the immediacy of jumping around and hitting enemies.
Untitled Game (previously known as School'd)
First off, I think this game needs a name, at least a working one. But with that said, the paper prototype seemed quite successful, even though the presentation was a bit crude. The game appears to be a medieval adventure/rpg with different character types, attacks and probably items. The testing approach for this game did seem quite interesting and very flexible, as new elements can be roughed in on this grid sheet on the fly.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Weekly Assessment #2
Yeah, I know this is coming in awfully late but I'm gonna do it anyway. To start, a lot of things have changed since the last posting. Our schedule is no longer as insanely rushed, and I've actually been able to think about other things these past few days. Even so, there is a lot of work to be done. While virtually all the conceptual work has been ironed out by now and I've gotten a start on the 3D modeling, there is still a mighty iceberg to be chipped away here.
Since our four-hour meeting last Tuesday, it's become pretty clear what assets we need. For in-game models we're looking at three vehicles and - according to Matt's count - 37 terrain pieces. I think some of those terrain pieces can be identical, or at least have only minor variations within a particular type. Such subtle differences are easy to do with multi-mesh objects.
In addition to that we need some bombs (which are very easy), effects (explosions, engine flare, etc), and of course front-end stuff (radio-chatter portraits, cutscene images, item images for upgrades, general UI stuff, and probably something I haven't thought of). At the very least I would like to get 3D character heads for the radio chatter, with at least some simple mouth-flapping animation. Ideally I would like to do full models for the four main characters, and do our cutscenes in 3D. But don't worry; these wouldn't be animated cutscenes, I'm not quite that crazy. Stills with voice narration is what we discussed last meeting, although I believe Cody is still planning to pursue 2D for these. But I happen to like my character modeling and think I could make them look quite a bit better in 3D. As an added bonus, I think 3D would even be easier, considering the amount of cutscenes and chatter we might want to have.
Guess I better get some modeling done....
Since our four-hour meeting last Tuesday, it's become pretty clear what assets we need. For in-game models we're looking at three vehicles and - according to Matt's count - 37 terrain pieces. I think some of those terrain pieces can be identical, or at least have only minor variations within a particular type. Such subtle differences are easy to do with multi-mesh objects.
In addition to that we need some bombs (which are very easy), effects (explosions, engine flare, etc), and of course front-end stuff (radio-chatter portraits, cutscene images, item images for upgrades, general UI stuff, and probably something I haven't thought of). At the very least I would like to get 3D character heads for the radio chatter, with at least some simple mouth-flapping animation. Ideally I would like to do full models for the four main characters, and do our cutscenes in 3D. But don't worry; these wouldn't be animated cutscenes, I'm not quite that crazy. Stills with voice narration is what we discussed last meeting, although I believe Cody is still planning to pursue 2D for these. But I happen to like my character modeling and think I could make them look quite a bit better in 3D. As an added bonus, I think 3D would even be easier, considering the amount of cutscenes and chatter we might want to have.
Guess I better get some modeling done....
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Weekly Blog Entry
Alright, this is my official blog entry for the week. Up to this point I haven't been doing much besides turning out conceptual drawings for our characters, terrain and vehicles. I've taken only the briefest of glances at the Torque Game Engine, and just last night tested out the exporting of Torque's dts format files out of Maya. That turned out to be a bit easier than I feared. Although the process is still somewhat technical and finicky, so I'm sure there are a number of things that can and probably will go horribly wrong at some point.
But of course this is nothing compared to the technical mastery that our game mechanics will require. The Torque editing environment itself is pretty sparse in terms of functions, so much of the work will have to be done outside of it in the console and in text files.
Fortunately, I won't have to understand all of it. Most of my time from here on should go into models, textures, GUI and possible cinematics & radio chatter animations. It is quite a lot of content though, and I'm not entirely sure if we should model my character designs or just make very basic 2D animations (or even static pics). Actually, for all I know at this point the whole radio chatter & story cinematics may prove too much on our constrained schedule, making it all a moot point.
I'm sure I'll have a much better idea of where this is all headed by the end of the day, and I may continue on this official posting later in the evening.
But of course this is nothing compared to the technical mastery that our game mechanics will require. The Torque editing environment itself is pretty sparse in terms of functions, so much of the work will have to be done outside of it in the console and in text files.
Fortunately, I won't have to understand all of it. Most of my time from here on should go into models, textures, GUI and possible cinematics & radio chatter animations. It is quite a lot of content though, and I'm not entirely sure if we should model my character designs or just make very basic 2D animations (or even static pics). Actually, for all I know at this point the whole radio chatter & story cinematics may prove too much on our constrained schedule, making it all a moot point.
I'm sure I'll have a much better idea of where this is all headed by the end of the day, and I may continue on this official posting later in the evening.
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