A Colourful Week for WASD

This week, WASD has been talking over more ideas to add to our game, as well as doing some work towards our game. We have decided on using a theme of colour, actively changing the colours of the environment depending on the state of the game, and also using different colours to represent different things in our game. We are still hammering out the exact details of how we will use this theme, but we already have some ideas we're excited about.

Our lead artist, Sedona, has been drawing out some concepts for levels this week, and our whole group has been talking about how we will implement all the mechanics we have come up with, as well as which from our long list of ideas we will actually keep to add into our game. The programmers in the group (myself included) are also planning on reading up on WildMagic++ this week to get a head-start on programming using this engine.

I have started modeling the boss in Maya that I drew a concept for so I can get this done as soon as possible. All of the basic shapes are there by now, besides the hands, but almost no detail has been added so far, so that will be my next task.

The 3D model for my boss character, the Totem Guardian. His lower legs look extremely bulbous because I haven't added detail yet to make them look like they do in the original concept.

We will be finishing our commitment document for Game Development Workshop this week, so this will be our first group task besides planning. After we are done this, and after our programmers have a general feel for WildMagic++, hopefully we can get started on actually putting together a game.

It's a New Year, and WASD is Back!

It's a brand new year, and so we are now working on making a new game. Team WASD is still together, with four dedicated members: Dan Stepchenko, Dan Cortens, Sedona Parnham, and myself. This year, we plan to make a game entirely different from our previous creation, Raptor Racers.

So far, we have a concept, but many details have not yet been hammered out. Our concept focuses around the idea of attraction and repulsion, specifically in the context of magnetism, in a "tribal" themed world. The player will be able to navigate a world (likely in 3D platformer style), fight enemies, and manipulate the world and metallic objects within it using magnetic powers. The main goal will be to fight enemies and solve puzzles in order to make it to each next stage in the game, where the main character may then gain more power to use in further levels. We also have plans for a multi-player mode, though this would likely be implemented next semester. However, we recognize that this concept could potentially cause problems for us due to its relative complexity, so we are planning on taking this one step at a time, completing the more important aspects of the game first, and then seeing what we are able to finish.

We have plans for the main characters (there will likely be 2 to select from), a friendly NPC, and a couple of bosses. A number of these have been sketched out on character design sheets in three poses for our 3D modeling class. My sketch, shown below, is of one of the bosses in the game. The bosses will likely be guarding an artifact or a power that the player must collect to advance, and they will also likely all be robotic or at least have a similar feel in order to fit with our theme. This boss is a robotic being that also resembles a totem pole in order to fit with our tribal theme.

Besides this character work, we have been discussing a possible story behind the game, but have been avoiding going too far into this before we are given our potential "themes" at the Game Development Workshop. I have also started on a particle system over the weekend, for sparks when metal hits metal. This is about halfway done or more, but there are a few visual issues I need to fix in order to make it more appealing to look at, and a few methods I'd like to compare. For instance, I have one version of the particle system using spheres, and another using lines and varying transparency. I am planning on comparing a few different ways of doing this particle system before completing it. I will also possibly need to adapt my code to work with WildMagic++ and Havok rather than OpenGL. However, I at least know I have a basis for the particle system so far.

 

Sparks particle system using spheres. Right now, the spheres fall in a fountain-like pattern.

 Sparks particle system using lines. The lines also fall in a fountain-like pattern, but have a shorter lifespan than the spheres, and become more transparent as the particles age.

Altogether, we haven't done a whole lot of concrete work yet because we are waiting to learn about WildMagic++, Havok, and to be given our additional theme, but we do have a solid concept and characters, and so we are hoping that this is starting us off on the right track for this year.

Raptor Racers 2.0 In Progress

               This week that has just passed has been very hectic and full of work on our game. In just one week we’ve come across a number of pretty big problems, as well as finding solutions to existing problems. The biggest problem that we’ve come across is assessing the feasibility of using Mudbox at this point in creating the game. Our artist has edited a couple of models using Mudbox already, but now we are beginning to question whether we will be able to implement the results of Mudbox editing in the code of our game. If we are unable to figure this out soon, we may need to scrap the whole idea of using Mudbox, which would be a big disappointment to everyone. However, we’re going to try our hardest to figure everything out and get it working with our game.

              

               We have made a big improvement with sound recording this week, since the sound guy of our group has shown us a few sounds he has recorded, and we have recorded a few additional sounds as a group. However, these have not been edited or implemented yet, so we are hoping this group member will come through for us and get these sounds polished and into our game.

HUD pictured in the bottom left corner with timer and space for placing and power-up, but placing has not yet been implemented

               So far, we have had a good deal of progress on menus and a heads-up display. We have a couple of menus mostly made and implemented by now, and the HUD is implemented though not completely functional since we don’t have some required features in our game yet (placing and power-ups), which the HUD will show. However, a timer works in-game, and is implemented to show on the heads-up display. In addition to the main menu, we now have the beginning of a character selection menu, and our artist is currently working on designing more.

Character selection screen so far, missing a title and picture of chosen raptor

               A new level has been created which contains more curves and a longer track than the level in the trial version of our game, and we are still working on implementing obstacles, collision boxes, and all other aspects of the level onto the track. However, most of the collisions are done for this level, so we have made good progress with it. We are hoping to have multiple levels to choose from in our final game, but we are not entirely sure if we will have time to implement this.

               We have also had progress with shaders recently, since our group member working on those has figured out the solution to some issues we’ve been having. For one, the normals on the raptor models appeared to be very screwed up, but it turned out that somehow, our model had six normals for every vertex, though we had no idea how this happened. To cut down on time, we averaged all normals on a vertex to give us essentially one normal per vertex, and this appears to work fine visually, so we will stick with this for now in case we do not have time to fix this properly. Our cell shader doesn’t work perfectly in our game yet, but we’re getting closer to having it fully functional every day.

               There are still a couple of issues that we are having that we are eager to fix. For one, “alpha” in our game still does not work with our particle systems and I have been working on other things (mainly user interface implementation and other assignments) so I have not yet returned to trying to figure out this problem. However, we’re boggled because everything seems to be set up correctly in our code for it to work. We are also having issues with the AI of our opponent raptors, which are currently still following Dijkstra paths, though we may end up changing this and completely redo the AI. We have been having some minor problems with lighting that we are eager to fix, and we were worrying about bump mapping until we learned that it is no longer a requirement, which is a relief.

               This week, we’re planning to add some more focus to written elements such as game design and business, as well as graphics and sound reports, which I will be dedicating a lot of time to personally. However, we’re still going to work a great deal on improving our game, and are hoping to finish all requirements, as well as make our game look appealing, by the time it is due. Hopefully we’ll have luck on our side and finish everything we intended to do, including Mudbox, by working on this for the rest of this week.

WASD’s Time is Ticking

               We (WASD) have been working on our game as much as possible this week. We have each been doing our own thing, but are also becoming increasingly worried about completing everything we’d planned in time. However, we’ve still made some more progress this week as a whole.

               For one, I have completed implementation of the main menu of Raptor Racers. I am hoping to also implement all other menus for the game, but they have not been created by our artist yet, so that will have to wait. All buttons of the menu have working states (normal, hover, and clicked) and outcomes. I have also made sure that to skip the opening cut-scene, the player can press ANY button rather than a specific one.

Raptor Racers main menu, with "Options" selected

               Collisions have been constantly improved so that now that rather than the raptor bouncing backwards when hitting an obstacle, it will glance off at an appropriate angle and continue to move. A group member has also been working on shaders, so we are hoping to get some of those in the game soon. I have been experimenting with text in OpenGL and 2D objects over a 3D world to allow for a HUD, which has been mostly successful so far, except for the fact that I haven’t been able to have text work with a 3D environment yet (only 2D) and I haven’t been able to figure out the problem yet, but hopefully I can fix that soon.

               We are concerned about sound, since our new group member in charge of sounds has still shown us nothing. He has some files available for us, but we can’t listen to them since they are in the wrong format, and we haven’t heard from him since. This is worrisome for us, so we are planning on making back-up sounds as a group if he doesn’t come through any time soon.

               Hopefully we will make even greater progress this coming week, because we are planning to work hard in an attempt to make our game great. We are worried about how little time is left, but if all goes as planned, we’ll still be able to scrape through for the due date of our game.

And the Hardest Work Begins

               This week is the first week that WASD is beginning to put some serious work into our game. Since we finally have time to spare without too much other homework nipping at our heels, we can dedicate a huge chunk of our time to working on Raptor Racers. Because of this, we have a few more goals completed, and some others well on their way.

               The first goal accomplished, one that I am personally proud of, is a now-working loading screen. Now that a start menu has been made with different art than we began with (our artist has been working away at making this menu from scratch) I decided to make the loading screen from the image that was previously our start menu, last semester before the menu was fully functional. The loading bar I made to be a sausage link just like our finish line is supposed to be, once we try to implement that again (we had it working last semester but then something messed up while implementing it into the game, so we’d scrapped it). Every 10% of the 3D models that are loaded into the game, another sausage will appear, with a total of 10 sausages making a complete bar. This now works in-game for all 3D models except for the obstacles for some reason, which still cause the program to crash if I call for them to be loaded while the loading screen is running. I will still try to figure out why that is and hopefully fix that problem, but for now I have moved on to other tasks, such as the lighting requirements and fixing up problems with the particle systems I made last semester.

               The other members of WASD have been working on fixing up the game in numerous ways too. One group member has been working on fixing up the animation system, as well as adding in more animations for the raptors, and has made decent progress, though he has had problems along the way that have delayed him. However, he is dealing with these well, and hopefully his work will be complete soon. Our artist has been modifying the raptor model some more in Mudbox, and has made 2 custom raptors so far, with 4 more to go. She has also been working on menu images, including buttons in all states. Another group member has been working on fixing up the collision system so that collisions on an angle work better because getting stuck in obstacles or walls was an issue last semester. He has developed a new system where the program will check if two boxes are about to collide rather than if they are colliding, and so hopefully this system will work better. Our newest group member has been working on finding and making us some sounds for our game, though I haven’t heard an update from him for a while to know how that is going, so we’re just keeping our fingers crossed.

               We have been outsourcing music for our game that is being made specifically for Raptor Racers, but we’re blindly hoping that will work out (if it doesn’t, we’re prepared to find some back-up music instead). We’ve heard some bits and pieces so far from what our music guy has made, but my group is not convinced that the music will suit the game as much as they’d hoped. I am going to remain hopeful that our music gets fixed up so it fits with the game better than it does currently, since our music guy is working away at improving it.

               Altogether, we’re making progress, but we’re still a little more worried about the sound side of things. However, we will have a back-up plan if all else fails, but we currently have other things to focus on, so we have our fingers crossed. This coming week will be full of hard work, and hopefully success in improving our game some more.

WASD Update ... Again

               My group hasn’t made the greatest progress this week because we were studying and working on our game pitch assignment for business all week. However, we have a couple of things in production that we are working on to improve our game.

               For one, our artist has been working with our raptor model in Mudbox some more, and now our raptor actually has teeth – which was a thing that bugged some of us (but especially her) until now. After all, racing toothless raptors is a little odd. On top of that, she will still be messing around with the model to make several different versions soon – once the base raptor has been touched up enough.

               In addition, our lead programmer will be working on a level editor in a sense – just something that will enable us to create tracks more easily so that we can have multiple levels. Last semester we created our track mostly through trial and error, so I am hoping we can make something that will enable us to create levels simply (we’re thinking of something along the lines of that animation assignment last semester where you could click points and a spline would appear between those points ... if we could somehow turn that into a level editor). Hopefully he can work this out soon so we can know that we are able to have multiple levels for sure, so we can get to working on them.

As for myself, I’m planning on working on menu implementation soon. Our artist is designing the menus, and I will be doing the programming to implement them into our game. We are planning on working on the requirements for menus in the game design homework assignment first, and then putting whatever we do into our game.

Soon, we will have to think more about requirements such as lighting, more advanced texturing, shaders, and sound, as far as actually implementing them rather than just design. However, we’re not quite there yet.

Post-Milestone 2 and Post-Reading Week

               Both the second milestone and reading week have come and gone (well, almost) and WASD has achieved a little more since my last post, but progress is coming far slower than any of us would’ve liked this semester. We have been finding it difficult enough to juggle regular homework from our classes, so we haven’t been able to find a whole lot of time on top of that to work on our game, which we would really like to do by now. I am also ashamed as a gamer that I have not played any new video games in the longest time because of homework, and so I still don’t have a whole lot to blog about besides my group. Hopefully we’ll get enough of a break soon that we can get some real work done on our game, and maybe even take some breaks for ourselves too.

               Since my last post, we have mainly accomplished 2 things: making our pitch documents including sell sheets for our game (though I don’t know if that counts as progress on our game), and planning out more aspects of design. We have been brainstorming ideas for power-ups and special stats for our raptors, though we all have slightly different ideas of what we should end up with. We have made a list of sound effects that we want to make and ones we want to find, and we have given this list to the newest member of our group in the hopes that he will have sounds for our game after the reading week. We also have lists of shaders we are considering using (cellshading/toon style shaders, fog as a full screen shader, and using Mudbox to change raptor models), and what kinds of textures and lighting we’re thinking of using. Our only issue with lighting is finding a light we can use that moves with the camera, but we’re still working with ideas.

My sellsheet on Raptor Racers

               As for my loading screen, I’m becoming unsure as to whether I should scrap the idea. It was something the group originally wanted, but it is turning out to be more trouble than it’s worth to get it working. The program still crashes if I attempt to load in a specific 3 models, despite having worked before, and it still freezes until I click the window, and I can’t seem to resolve these issues. On top of that, a loading screen is more of a luxury, and I feel that my time would be better spent working on menus, so I may switch gears and try to program a menu system instead. Hopefully I can return to the loading screen in progress and fix it later, though I may just scrap the idea entirely by now.

               Altogether, our group is frustrated, tired, and just hoping for a chance to fix up our game a lot more than we already have. I’m just hoping that after midterms, things will slow down, and we will have a chance to go hardcore on our game and make it amazing like we want it to be.