Last weekend I had two goals to accomplish for 'Fat Knight':
Get all enemy character models in, and make sure everything works for different enemy sizes and models.
When an enemy dies, their corpse should fade away.
Everything went wrong. I originally got all the enemy models in the game, but was having issues with both the largest and smallest enemy models. Then I broke the SVN. To fix the SVN I had to lose all the progress I had made so far with the enemy models. Once I finally got the models back in, I ran into a larger issue. Whenever I would call for an animation to play on our smallest enemy, he would move to coordinate 0,0,0. After learning that it was an issue with the model (so I couldn't personally fix the issue), I moved on to the fading corpses. Only to decide after 4 hrs that we were not going to be able to make that work either.
However, not all is lost. Today Damean figured out that baking the animations would solve the animation issue. After a discussion we decided to scrap the corpse fade out, and instead change it to a particle effect that will disguise the removal of the corpse. I also got the first couple pieces of our background.
Overall, things are looking better, I feel like I can now make some progress, and that we can definitely accomplish our new ideas.
Today showed off our first playable, and the good news is that we passed. After talking over our project in a group with Marty we have set a progress goal for next week.
Us programmers plan on getting animations working in game, and add the jumping for next Thursday. We will spent an hour and a half discussing how we should go about randomly generating levels, and plan to continue to work on that code to generate a castle with multiple levels. We still have a bug or two that we need to track down before we will be able to run multiple level castles, but there are several ideas on what is causing these bugs, so it is only a matter of time.
Overall, we are making great progress, and will continue to do so.
My how time flies when your having fun making video games. In four days our group has to have completed our First Playable product. At this point I still have slight hints of doubt that our First Playable will not be up to the quality that I would like it to be. From a programming stand point, all our features are in, all we have to do is tweak and play test a little before Tuesday. However, on the graphical side things are moving a bit slower. Our artists have retreated into their creative lairs, and are slowly but surely emerging with finished pieces of art. The only question is, will they emerge in time for Tuesday? One can hope.
Another sign that causes me to worry is the fact that at this point in time, our game doesn't seem that fun to play. Currently we have all our mechanics in place, but we don't have what I would call a game. Over the next few days we will make sure the game is working, and make it so that more than 2 enemies will spawn. So I truly believe once we change our variables to make it play like a game, that will add to the fun value. I am still hoping we can get some simple animations in, because right now it is confusing why things are happening, because the code is executing properly, but there is no graphical representation of the action.
So while all we have now is a sphere attacking 2 enemies, it can only get more fun.
As we continue to move forward our deadline comes closer. Our first playable deadline is 2.5 weeks away. We have already made significant progress on proving that our game mechanics are capable of being created using Unity, and our artists continue to pump out concept art. There is no direction to go but forward, and so future looks promising for the rampart team. We have setup our rallydev, and plan on assigning tasks and starting our first sprint later this weekend.
More to come soon, possibly even a short game mechanics video.
So now that the team has finally decided on our game concept, Fat Knight, it is time to start shifting our focus towards first playable. After having a programmer meeting me and Ron decided on the following programming goals for our first playable.
The Knight should be able to:
Move (walk and roll)
Attack
Have momentum while rolling
The enemies will:
have only one enemy type
have basic AI which will let them move to a door, attack the knight, and die
for first playable we will not have random spawning of enemies or ladders implemented.
After playing around this weekend I was able to get rolling working using a sphere and a xbox 360 controller. We will keep on trudging forward, and I will let you know when we get more of a game done.
A better week, a better concept. Our final game idea is much different than our others. We decided rather than create a defensive strategy game, we would make an action game. So wasting any more time head over to the team blog and check out our idea!
In class on Tuesday we came up with our third game concept. A puzzle game concept along the lines of eets or lemmings where you set items to help your character reach the end of the level. However, after leaving class the group succumbed to a lack of communication and work ethic.
Before I knew it it was Wednesday night and it was time for to create the one-pager for the pitch Thursday morning. Excited to see all the interesting steam-punk based character and level designs that our artists were able to come up with, I signed into email. But alas, my inbox was empty. As I stared at my inbox it hit me, how am I supposed to do a one-pager with no art? I immediately started a chat with my programmer teammate, Ron, to make sure that the artists hadn't forgotten to send the pictures to me. This was not the case, and after a couple emails back and forth a one-pager was scrambled together by one of the artists.
Presentation day came, our one-pager was not great, Marty informed us that we can't move to the next stage until we get this right. So once again we found ourselves at the whiteboard brainstorming. On Tuesday the enthusiasm was low, and we were having a hard time generating traction on an idea. Today things went better we came up with a great idea, that is much different than our previous three. I see a lot more enthusiasm in the group in regards to this project, so hopefully this will encourage everyone to actually do their assigned tasks this time.
To start off this post I would like to mention that after we came up with our first idea on Tuesday, we decided we liked it so much that nothing else we could come up with would be better than it. However, then we brainstormed today and I can tell you that we know think this second idea is awesome and there is no way we can come up with something better.
Do you see a pattern?
With our original concept our negative feedback was that the game would take too long to play, and that the game may be too complicated. With a new brainstorm comes a new genre. This time we decided to create an action game rather than a strategy game.
The core concept for this game is another defend your castle game. Instead of strategically upgrading your castle to defend it, you instead control a knight on top of the rampart. Attacking forces will try to climb to the top of the wall via ladders, and will try to run to one of your two towers (one on each side). Your goal is to prevent the enemy from entering the tower for as long as possible, by attacking them with a sword and destroying their ladders. There is a catch that makes this game unique, but I don't want to spoil it until our artists have the concept art done (sometime tomorrow).
The controls will be as simple (tilt to move left/right, swipe screen to attack) and should be much more fun and fast paced than our original concept. Also we shouldn't have to deal with the awkwardness of having almost the same concept as the RTS team.
Our first idea for a rampart game was a real time strategy game. In this game you have to balance creating troops (which then run to the enemies castle) while defending your castle from the enemies offense.
During class Thursday we split into groups and picked a game concept that we would like to make into a game. There were two catches though, the first being that we will create this game as if we are creating it for the mobile marketplace. The second catch was that we had to choose from 8 different game concepts that our overlord Marty Clayton had come up with.
There where several different concepts to choose from, some where based off a genre, others off an existing game, and one extremely weird concept for a balloon cargo game (best of luck to that group). In the end I ended up picking 'Ramparts'. When I picked Ramparts I had no idea what the original game was, but I know that ramparts is a defensive wall of a castle, and castles are kinda cool. So assuming that you also have never heard of 'Ramparts' here are two videos one showing the singleplayer and core gameplay, the other showing the multiplayer game mode.
Singleplayer:
Multiplayer:
Its a fun little game, but one that was released before I was born, and since I am not much of a retro gamer I have never played it. While my group does consist of some pretty cool kids, it turns out that none of us are really retro gamers, and only one of us had ever heard of it. So being the brash kids that we are watched a minute of gameplay and then immediately started brainstorming. During our brainstorming session Marty graced us with his wisdom and reminded us that our group was more likely than any other group to want to remake the original game, and that we shouldn't be doing a remake we should instead do something completely different. After taking note of Marty's wisdom and 30 more minutes of brainstorming we decided to split for the day. Everyone would come up with 3 concepts that we would then pitch to the rest of the group, at which point we would pick our favorite idea and run with it.
Fast forward to Saturday afternoon, I am at work and decide that it as a good of a time as any to start tossing around game ideas in my head (hell why not, I have to be there for 10 hours, might as well multitask for some portion of my shift.) Even though I was still not 100% sure what 'Ramparts' was, I knew that I wanted my 3 concepts to be something completely different from the game that we had brainstormed ideas for in class.
Each of the concepts I came up with has both positive and negatives to it, much like any idea. I can say for sure though, that my 3 concepts are nothing like 'Ramparts'. I decided that it would be okay to change the gameplay as long as the game revolved around a castle of some kind.
Concept #1:
Metroid/Castlevania like game.
Why: I have always wanted to make a metriod style game, they are extremely fun, and the world is so in depth and detailed.
Positives:
+A actual full game.
Negatives:
-A lot of work, as in too much work.
-This is the wrong kind of game for the mobile marketplace, a marketplace based on pickup and play for 5 minutes at a time, not sit down and play for several hours til completion.
-The touch interface will result in abysmal controls for a game like this.
Concept #2:
Hack n Slash
Why: During class we were talking about a defend the castle against hordes of enemies kind of game, I decide why not turn that around. Make the castle like a transformer, and instead of having to protect the castle, the castle goes out into the battle and kills everything hack and slash style.
Positives:
+The kind of concept that is completely different from what the original game was.
+Hack n Slash is a more viable gametype for the portable medium as it is mindless killing with no story.
Negatives:
-however, if there is any kind of progression in game, then it still won't work very well as a pick up and play for 5 minutes.
-The game will either be very repetitive, or will take a large amount of assets to have any kind of variation in environment/enemies.
-controls can still be muddy since this is an action game on a mobile platform.
Concept #3:
DOTA style game
Why: much more interesting than the basic defend your castle. We talked about a DOTA like game in class, but I think we should change it so that rather than having the user directly control their hero(s) the hero(s) will sit in the castle and their powers can be cast down on the field to change the battle. This will add some depth to the game without making it an action game that the player has to control in real time using a touch screen.
Positives:
+The only controls are clicking and scrolling, so the controls are simple and viable to use on a mobile device.
+Not as many art assets are required for this game.
+A game that can we can make as deep strategic wise as we want too.
Negatives:
-Still misses the casual market.
-Will have to deal with either AI or Networking for the game to work.
Obviously these ideas aren't fully formed, and still have to be fleshed out. But they are a couple of ideas that are very different from the first game, and are concepts that I think would be fun to make. It just depends on whether my teammates agree with me and if we have enough time.
So our first project in game development was to redesign an object along the lines of IDEO's work. We drew a fabulous item in the porta potty. Now you may think that is a horrible object to have to redesign, but I am glad to have it because I personally think there is no way not to improve the porta potty.
The last two days have been planning days meaning that we formed a group and brainstormed, determining ways in which the current object could be improved. After this brainstorm we came up with a list of about 20 ideas, we then grouped most of the ideas into 4 categories that we thought the were the most important to fix and assigned 2 people to come up with more ideas for each category.
The 4 categories that we wanted to improve were:
Smell
Safety
Disposal
Transportation
Now I took one for the team and picked the category that I honestly thought was the least exciting, but I feel like I came up with some good ideas anyway. I guess I will find out if my teammates think I had good plans tomorrow.
While doing some research on transporting porta potties I realized that the real issue was not transporting a single porta potty to a construction site, but rather the massive setup times required at larger events such as state fairs and festivals. For instance, during the 2009 Lollapalooza music festival they had 654 porta potties on the festival grounds. To set up that many porta potties it requires a lot of time, and a lot of trucks worth of porta potties. So I decided that my main focus would be to increase the effectiveness of transporting porta potties in large quantities rather than transporting 1 or 2.
Idea #1: The first idea I had to help increase transport ability was to reduce the size of the porta potty when not in use. The area where the toilet sits had to remain in tact, but the extra area around the toilet can be reduced.
Pros:
Reduces space.
Should be easy change the shape.
Con:
Doesn't actually offer that much of a size reduction.
Idea #2: My second idea was in the same vein of reducing the size, but in a direction that should be easier to accomplish and offers more size reduction.
Pros:
Reduces size by half.
Height locking mechanism also doubles at a way to effectively lock the porta potty when leaving the site.
Cons:
Porta potties are somewhat heavy, so they may be difficult to stack.
I am not sure if it is possible to build something like this.
Idea #3: For my third idea I decided to switch to a different concept of saving space. Instead of reducing the size of the porta potties for transport, instead make them fit together better. I took my inspiration from shopping carts on this one.
Pros:
Saves the most amount of space.
The wider base offers more stability making it more difficult to tip.
Cons:
Inserting one porta potty into another for transport is more difficult than reducing the size.
Is the least efficient way to transport in small quantities.
School is officially back in session. I know, I don't believe it either, but with two days of classes under my belt I have realized that I can't keep denying it. For one of the classes I am taking this fall I have to start and maintain a blog chronicling my adventures in Game Development 1. My initial impression of the class leads me to believe that it will be a very fun and creative experience for me (lets hope it is).
Now I have never blogged before, but I am familiar with the types of blogs you see today. From what I am familiar with there are three kinds of blogs: the developer blog, the 'let me tell me about my life' blog, and the opinion blog. This blog is going to be more similar to a developer's blog more than anything else, most posts will detail my weekly progress on projects in the class. Of course I was as excited as everyone else when I learned that our first assignment was to start a blog (I don't mean that sarcastically). So of course rather than creating a blog to let it sit blank I immediately had to write a post. So while this post doesn't contain much of a 'progress report' know that more are coming.
