Okay, so just for clarification, here's a run down of the design of level 1: the premise is that today is your first day training on the job for IBLOU. You are puttering about in outer space near the moon (Earth's moon), picking up trash and depositing it in specified locations. This training phase for the main character will serve a dual role because it will also instruct the player how to play the game. Once the player completes the tutorial, that is when 'space pirates' attack the facility(there's more to them than meets the eye- a later plot twist). Then the focus of the game changes- the player is thrust into a dangerous situation and forced to adapt the skills s/he just learned. The objective will then be to gather up some trash and clog the pirate mothership's engines, overheating the ship and blowing it up.
What we demoed this Wednesday was the latter half of level one, so it's no surprise that it might have seemed a little confusing without any prior explanation or background in the game. There's a pretty hectic battle scene taking place in the background that is no doubt very distracting. But we just wanted to exhibit all of the features that we had been working on up to this point. Here's a list of everything that works in the Alpha so far:
-Gravity physics
-Each object has its own individual mass
-Collision detection
-Art (player model, gun model, HUD, backgrounds, ships, trash, etc.)
-A functional minimap
-Light and shading effects
-Ability to pick up the gravity gun; gravity gun effects (recoil, shaking, etc.)
-Suction of trash/shooting of trash; player gains mass as trash is collected; player's backpack changes size based on how much trash is possessed
-Menu screen; option to change resolution
-Sounds/Music
-Other NPCs on screen: Friendly Mothership/fighter ships, enemy mothership/fighter ships
-Player HP (I think)
-Lasers that affect trash/hurt the player; the capacity to 'lose' the game by getting shot
-An objetive; The capacity to 'win' the game by destroying the enemy mothership
I think that's everything. What we're doing now is deciding what direction we want to take the game in. We've decided to give the game a puzzle/action focus with RPG elements. Features that we want to implement for the Beta release include (so far): Upgradable equipment/skills through training and purchasable items, an interesting plot progression (in the Alpha, the objectives were written in the corner of the screen; we plan to have all the level objectives be delivered to the player via in-game cutscenes), and more levels, obviously. We also need to start developing more weapons that could be used and figuring out how they would be applied to our gameplay. And just because Spring Break is coming up doesn't mean the progress is going to halt; Eric and Jack said they'll be hard at work tweaking the programing, Xuan said she's gonna whip up more art, and I'm gonna bang my head against my desk to try and come up with ideas for new guns, levels, characters, upgrades, and all that design stuff. It'll be nice to have time to work on JUST the game without having to worry about our other classes!
-Charles
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Hitting the Ground Running
The game has been making progress by leaps and bounds in the past week. For starters, much more of the art is finished. The main character has a gun that rotates wherever the player is aimed, and what's more, he has to actually pick up this gun first before it appears on his person. What's more, the gun comes with a backpack, and this pack gets bigger or smaller depending upon how much trash you currently have. The HUD has also been developed; in the lower screen shot on the bottom of the screen you can see the spaces that will correspond to weapon selection, and on the right you can see the space where the possible health/oxygen bars will appear. And taking up the upper right-hand corner of the screen is the fully functional mini-map, which shows the player location, nearby trash in grey, and planets in blue. The backgrounds also look beautiful and polished, as you can see from the pictures. And there are multiple different types of trash: papers, banana peels, etc. Oh, and the first spaceship has been put into Level 1, which will serve as the player's home base throughout the level of the game.
The game has also been advancing from a physics standpoint. The trash gun pulls things in faster and the shooting of trash has been perfected. Gravity has also been implemented; humongous planets have their own gravitational pull and attract nearby trash. Also, if trash is fired at a particular angle near a planet, it can be put into perfect orbit around said planet. This is another nifty feature that we might implement in a level design down the road, ex. Put enough trash around Venus to shield it from the imminent burst of deathly-hot Solar Wind! (Or something like that)
The menu screen that was posted in an earlier screen shot has also been put into use. The player can pick either 'New Game,' Options,' or 'Quit,' from menu screen. New Game launches into the present prototype of level one, and Options allows the player to change his or her screen resolution. Down the road, we intend to allow the player to mute his sound and/or music and perhaps even adjust the difficulty of the game.
Sound has also been implented into the gameplay; the trash gun makes a different sound when it's activated, when it sucks something up, and when it shoots something out. But we still need some ambient space sounds and a sound for radio chatter, which I plan to make as soon as I can.
Our current goals for stage one are to finalize the polish and implent enemies. Enemies can't be put into the level before we figure out how enemy lasers are going to demolish trash and hurt the player, but Eric said he had figured something out today that would make PEW-ing possible. The first level and menu screen need music, so I wrote a few tracks tonight that we might be able to use. I guess we also need to craft the cutscenes that will give the player his direction when he starts playing level 1; we need to figure out if we want to have out-of-engine cutscenes solely for plot purposes, or if we just want to run any plot developement that might occur in engine. I surmise that we'll have lots of questions for our mentors tomorrow.
-Charles
The game has also been advancing from a physics standpoint. The trash gun pulls things in faster and the shooting of trash has been perfected. Gravity has also been implemented; humongous planets have their own gravitational pull and attract nearby trash. Also, if trash is fired at a particular angle near a planet, it can be put into perfect orbit around said planet. This is another nifty feature that we might implement in a level design down the road, ex. Put enough trash around Venus to shield it from the imminent burst of deathly-hot Solar Wind! (Or something like that)
The menu screen that was posted in an earlier screen shot has also been put into use. The player can pick either 'New Game,' Options,' or 'Quit,' from menu screen. New Game launches into the present prototype of level one, and Options allows the player to change his or her screen resolution. Down the road, we intend to allow the player to mute his sound and/or music and perhaps even adjust the difficulty of the game.
Sound has also been implented into the gameplay; the trash gun makes a different sound when it's activated, when it sucks something up, and when it shoots something out. But we still need some ambient space sounds and a sound for radio chatter, which I plan to make as soon as I can.
Our current goals for stage one are to finalize the polish and implent enemies. Enemies can't be put into the level before we figure out how enemy lasers are going to demolish trash and hurt the player, but Eric said he had figured something out today that would make PEW-ing possible. The first level and menu screen need music, so I wrote a few tracks tonight that we might be able to use. I guess we also need to craft the cutscenes that will give the player his direction when he starts playing level 1; we need to figure out if we want to have out-of-engine cutscenes solely for plot purposes, or if we just want to run any plot developement that might occur in engine. I surmise that we'll have lots of questions for our mentors tomorrow.
-Charles
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Still very much a work in progress...
After last Friday's meeting, we set some pretty ambitious goals for features that would be completed by this week - namely, a working prototype of the first level and additional features (weapons, effects, NPC elements, user interface, etc.).
As usual, I did not complete as much as I would've liked, but we've got a rough title screen (that will be filled with random floating, rotating trash) and a screenshot of the basic UI and gameplay.
In an hour or so, we'll be meeting to throw to together what we all have and see what is still needed. Tonight's time will probably be spent drawing large spaceships and tiny guns.
As usual, I did not complete as much as I would've liked, but we've got a rough title screen (that will be filled with random floating, rotating trash) and a screenshot of the basic UI and gameplay.
In an hour or so, we'll be meeting to throw to together what we all have and see what is still needed. Tonight's time will probably be spent drawing large spaceships and tiny guns.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Screenshot 1
Here is a screenshot of the test build we are currently building. Eric did a great job creating the star effects (which actually rotate and create a nice aesthetic which you can't see from the screenshot). The "LOVE" circle is our current player ship which is controlled using the "WASD" scheme and the mouse is used to control which way it is facing (aim). The large rectangle is our current "ship" item which will most likely become and enemy. The two blue dots are what we are building our "trash" items from. The large circle represents a trash item that is too large to be "picked up" so there is a restitution factor that I added which makes the player bounce off of it. The smaller trash item is going to be able to be picked up by the ship since its radius is small enough, and therefore it has no restitution.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Mentor Meeting
Sorry about the delay in blog posts; I went back to my parents' house this weekend and they don't have internet access. But I'm back on campus now and I've got all the time/internet in the world to update this badboy.
Last Friday, we drove out to Hunt Valley to finally meet Michael Curran from Firaxis. Walking into the Firaxis office was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Games are actually made here! How awesome is this? And everyone is dressed in casual street clothing and everyone is smiling. The office itself was lavish but not gaudy; soft carpet and panelled walls that were inviting instead of intimidating.
But enough about the building. The meeting was the important part. Michael, who was a sound producer, had one of his programmer friends, Dom, sit in on our meeting. They were both very friendly and very knowledgeable. The first thing they asked us for was a general run-down of the game idea. I explained it to them best I could, with the rest of the team filling in the gaps that I missed. Then the two mentors started telling us about the design process and how Firaxis goes about it, and that segued into Dom giving what sounded like good advice to Jack and Eric about programming (they were both nodding and saying, "That's a good idea," whenever Dom said something, so I'm assuming the ideas were good. It's not like I would know the difference. Something about a Luau?). They suggested that we make deadlines for ourselves, even if we don't meet them. The idea is that having a direction/a goal will make the game get done more easily/earlier.
Then Dom left the room to go flag down another guy who was an artist. That left us alone in the room with Michael, so I took that opportunity to ask him about sound and music and such. He told me about the vast sound libraries that are available, and he even offered me samples from the Firaxis sound-base, which I thought was very generous. We talked a little more about audio editing software, but then Dom came back and took us to another office that belonged to someone who's name I forget. But I remember he was older (maybe 30's?) and had a green goatee. He was an artist and he gave us advice on how to build/construct game levels and enemies. He agreed with Dom and Michael that we should set deadlines for ourselves, and his agreement prompted Dom to challenge us to complete a working prototype of the first stage by next Friday. So that's where we are now- we're going to try and complete a prototype this week. We're closer than I thought; Eric showed me a model of the first stage and it looks great. He layered the stars in a certain way so that the 2-D level l looks 3-D. I'll try and post a screen shot here.
Last Friday, we drove out to Hunt Valley to finally meet Michael Curran from Firaxis. Walking into the Firaxis office was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Games are actually made here! How awesome is this? And everyone is dressed in casual street clothing and everyone is smiling. The office itself was lavish but not gaudy; soft carpet and panelled walls that were inviting instead of intimidating.
But enough about the building. The meeting was the important part. Michael, who was a sound producer, had one of his programmer friends, Dom, sit in on our meeting. They were both very friendly and very knowledgeable. The first thing they asked us for was a general run-down of the game idea. I explained it to them best I could, with the rest of the team filling in the gaps that I missed. Then the two mentors started telling us about the design process and how Firaxis goes about it, and that segued into Dom giving what sounded like good advice to Jack and Eric about programming (they were both nodding and saying, "That's a good idea," whenever Dom said something, so I'm assuming the ideas were good. It's not like I would know the difference. Something about a Luau?). They suggested that we make deadlines for ourselves, even if we don't meet them. The idea is that having a direction/a goal will make the game get done more easily/earlier.
Then Dom left the room to go flag down another guy who was an artist. That left us alone in the room with Michael, so I took that opportunity to ask him about sound and music and such. He told me about the vast sound libraries that are available, and he even offered me samples from the Firaxis sound-base, which I thought was very generous. We talked a little more about audio editing software, but then Dom came back and took us to another office that belonged to someone who's name I forget. But I remember he was older (maybe 30's?) and had a green goatee. He was an artist and he gave us advice on how to build/construct game levels and enemies. He agreed with Dom and Michael that we should set deadlines for ourselves, and his agreement prompted Dom to challenge us to complete a working prototype of the first stage by next Friday. So that's where we are now- we're going to try and complete a prototype this week. We're closer than I thought; Eric showed me a model of the first stage and it looks great. He layered the stars in a certain way so that the 2-D level l looks 3-D. I'll try and post a screen shot here.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Skeleton Engine
The team met at the DMC yesterday; while we were there, I unsuccessfully tried to get the SVN thing to work on my laptop. Jack and Eric were much more successful in their attempt to program a rough version of our engine. They developed a little program where there was a cirlce that could be moved using WASD controls relative to the direction the circle was facing (there was an emblem on the circle for the sake of keeping its); the circle's direction was controlled with the mouse. It was pretty wicked.
On the art front, I worked on more plot/level design and Xuan sketched some more concept art for planets and weapons. We plan to meet again tomorrow at 5:30.
-Charles
On the art front, I worked on more plot/level design and Xuan sketched some more concept art for planets and weapons. We plan to meet again tomorrow at 5:30.
-Charles
Monday, February 9, 2009
Idea Exchange/Mentor
We met again after class today to try and arrange time where we were all free so we could finally meet our mentor. We're shooting for Friday afternoon, but if that doesn't pan out, we're going to fall back on Thursday morning.
After we had that straightened out, I showed the team the ideas I dreamt up for different guns and such. Many of my ideas still need a lot of work (the elemental phase shifter, namely), but the good news is that now Jack and Eric can start actually programming our engine and Xuan can start sketching. We're meeting again tomorrow at 5:30; hopefully tonight I can polish my weapon ideas and maybe even draft a rough copy of the narrative arc.
-Charles
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