Industry Workshop - Particles

This semester we have been working with Gordon Moyes in Industry Workshop. We are currently working a game with Mechs. Henrik and I have been tasked with making the sweet particle effects for the game.

This is the missile particle effect -



This is an effect I made for when a laser beam hits something metal -


You can download the packages and actually play the effects if you like -

Rocket
Metal spark

Personal work - This weekend

There was a development weekend at my house recently.

I don't want to give anything away too soon, but I will share this -

Kebablhu progress

The last couple of weeks I've been working on putting the game together in Adventure game studio (AGS). After going through the 'Starting off' tutorial, which was amazingly straight forward and helpful. I've set up all the rooms and you can walk around the entire Kebablhu universe. All the backgrounds and objects are place holders at the moment though, so it doesn't look like much yet. I've started setting up all the hotspots for the first room so I can put in some of Nic's hilarious dialogue. And the more I put in, the more excited I get about how awesome this game could be.

Here is just a quick example of how hot spots work.

This is the first room with nothing selected

This is what it looks like with the hot spots menu selected, there is a drop down box on the right that lets you select which hotspot you want to paint. I have the beer tree selected.


This is the events tab on the right side. When you click on the 3 dots in the right column (it appears when you click on a cell). It takes you to the script for the room.

This is the script and you can see what happens when you look at or interact with the beer tree.


This is what it looks like in game.

It's amazingly simple to do, so I can definitely see us having something fun to play with in the next couple of weeks.

Semester Two

Firstly, congrats to Henrik and Delia for winning 'Best Design in a Game' at Freeplay this year, with their game 'Up down Ready'. It was an amazing achievement for what seemed like a cool little indie game they made for uni. I think it was especially cool because I saw it grow from an idea to an award winning game in a matter of months :)

I haven't made a new post in quite a while. I've been meaning to, I was just a little disappointed with how Islands went last semester, so I've been putting it off. We didn't get everything we wanted done and the game kinda failed a bit. But that's okay, I've learned a lot from the experience, so this semester will be different.

There were a few ideas thrown around in the first couple of weeks, we changed our minds a couple of times and these are currently the games being worked on -

• Run and Gun (2.5D Side scroller)
  
• Phoenix (2.5D Side scroller)
• Call of Kebablu (Adventure game)

I am currently working on Call of Kebablu. Which is a point and click Adventure game centered around a guy who has woken up from a long night of drinking and really wants a kebab. The script was already written, some of the other games students came up with it last year for another subject.

We are using Adventure Game Studio to create the game, which is perfect for this game... and it's free! I'm drawing up some storyboard images to be put in as placeholders, until the proper images have been done.

Here's one of the foodcourt -


I'm not sure if these storyboard images will be laid out the same way as the final ones, but these are fine for now.

Islands - Skybox

Last week I created a new sky box for our scene, so that it suits the style of the game a bit more.

Here's an in game screenshot without the islands -


I'm not sure how noticable it is, but the edge of each image is in pretty much in the centre of that picture. I'm really happy with how seamless it looks, and the colours work really well too, in my opinion.

Here's some more shots with the islands and some place holder foreground clouds -



I really enjoyed drawing it, and it seems to have completely changed the look of the game (for the better). Things are looking promising for Islands once again! *fingers crossed*

Industry Workshop - Journal

For Industry workshop, I chose to try and add a Journal feature into the Skunkwerks game. Cameron and Henrik teamed up with me and we've spent the last few weeks throwing together some concepts, sending them to Andrew (the game creator) and seeing what he thinks of them. The final product isn't too far from what we started with, but it looks great! And Andrew seems very happy with it.

You press 'J' while in game and it appears like this -

Ignore the filler text >.>

We thought the current mission should be the first thing you see. Along with amount of objects you have collected and a list of missions you have completed.

Then if you click on Monsters, this appears -


In the pitch document, it explains that every monster type has a weakness you have to discover and use to defeat it. So we thought it would be a cool idea to have symbols representing these things on the left page, along with the list of the monsters on the right page.

When you click on a monster it looks like this -

We didn't have a description...

So you get a description of what the monster is, then the symbols underneath it so you know how to kill it and what stuff it drops when you do. We thought this might make the game too easy, so maybe you have to figure out how to kill it yourself before it appears in the journal. But that decision is up to Andrew. To go back to the monster list you just click on the blue monsters tab on the right. The symbols page doesn't change inside the tab, so you can refer back to it.

Weapons tab -

Again....no description

This has the same format as the monsters tab, I didn't think I needed an image of the weapons list. The symbols show what kind of damage the weapon does, to correspond with the weakness of the monsters. Again, the symbol page doesn't change inside this tab.

Lastly, the story tab -


All the words on the left are clickable, they have a similar format as the last 2 tabs. For example, if you clicked on Characters, a list of characters would appear on the right page. If you clicked on Dusty, then it would look like that image. We weren't sure what kind of stuff to have in this tab, that's also up to Andrew. But we do feel as if some things are necessary, like the character and story background. We think alot of players need that, to understand completely what's happening. That being said, it isn't being forced down player's throats and they don't have to read it if they don't want to.


Henrik is putting together a flash animation, so that everything that is clickable.....is clickable. That might make it a bit easier to understand. At the moment it can be a little difficult to explain.

Islands - UV's

Last week I UV'ed these objects for my Japanese island, Zac showed me how to do it in Blender and I found it much easier to do.


This week I will be figuring out the style and then texturing them.

Islands - Japanese Island

I have modeled the basic Japanese Island. I'm going to see what the other guys think, then update. I also can't wait to see them all put together in unity, should be cool.

Islands - Waterfall

This week there was a bit of a crisis. We didn't feel like we had much direction for the assets and islands and seemed like everything was falling apart. After having chat with Zac, he volunteered his skills to make a style guide with concepts for each island. This is what he's done so far -


Japanese island is next!

I've spent most of my time modeling the assets for my island, so far I have -

• 2 houses
• Temple
• Bamboo
• Bamboo ladder
• Torii gates

We've also decided to model our own islands now, instead of Amjad doing all of them. We thought it might be easier for everyone to get stuff done. Speaking of Amjad, he modeled his snow island today, go check it out at his blog, it looks awesome.

I spent most of today trying to create a waterfall in unity, for when we need it later on. I figured it would be a good idea to wrap my head around it.


Click here to download a copy of the web build, so you can see it flowing.

Islands - Assets

I thought about making an asset list last week and I have no idea why I didn't, because we really do need one. Matt suggested that we make one this week in class so today we did!

Cameron, Amjad and I sat around thinking about what should be on each of the islands. There are only 4 of them now -

• Main island you start the game on
• Beach island
• Windmill island
• Japanese island
• Snow island

They aren't overly complicated themes, but they are all pretty distinctive, which I think is important. Each island has a main town building that the other houses surround, I'm not really sure what we'll be doing with that yet, for now it's just there to look pretty.
At the moment we are just creating 3D models and textures for the models. Although we'll probably have another discussion about what style we want for the textures to be before starting that.

I am creating the assets for the Japanese island, here is the first one I've done -

Torii gate

Islands - Unity Tree's

As I was looking around the unity website, I came across some terrain assets that are free to download and use in any Unity games.



However, after talking to Cameron about the style, we think the textures maybe be too realistic. So I thought instead of creating entirely new tree's, I would quickly try out some filter effects on one of the trees.

Before

After

There is a fairly obvious difference between the two. This isn't the final style, as we want to to be Miyazaki-ish. I just wanted to see how quickly it would be to edit the texture to make it look...more cartoony.

Lantern - effects

Zac asked me to do a little mock-up of what the mushrooms in the game would look like. In the game they will animate from dark to bright, because they need to be charged. This is what they look like so far.

I'll mess around with them again as the game development progresses.

Islands - Dialogue Trigger Beam

Shawn and Morgan looked at our games the other day, and gave us great feedback. I've been working on one of the things Morgan suggested. Which was basically, instead of creating a bunch of character animations for landing, talking off, walking around etc. We could just have some kind of beam of light shining into the sky right near where an NPC is waiting to talk to you. The player flys into the beam and triggers the dialogue sequence. Cameron has explained it on his blog aswell, with pictures!

I figured I would create a platform and attach a particle animator and renderer on it and create some pretty effects.

This is how it started -


And after playing around with some settings and textures.

This is what I have ended up with so far -


I don't know if this will be the final look, it depends on what my team thinks of it and also how the game progresses. But I'm pretty happy with how it looks right now.

I think this falls under my personal project stuff aswell. I really enjoyed doing this, hopefully the rest of my visual effects stuff will be as fun.

Islands - Tree's

Zac discovered a program called Tree[d]. As he says on his blog, it generates tree's. you change around a few settings and you can get a completely different looking tree EXTREMELY quickly. I had fun playing around with it a bit.

Games Workshop - Personal Project

When I initially thought of what I would do as my personal project, I assumed it would be environment modeling. It's what I have enjoyed doing the most over the course. But, in the back of my mind I remembered having loads of fun with Visual effects in a Tafe course I did just before uni. The problem is, I haven't really done any since then and unfortunately the Games Degree doesn't include any course on the subject. When I talked to Matt about it, he seemed to think it was a good idea. Nobody else had thought of doing it, so if I do succeed with it (which is my plan...) then I'll be the only person to come out of this course with that kind of specialization.

Which would be really cool.

So I'm going to have a crack at doing visual effects this semester. Not the coding part of it, which I'm told can often be shoved with it. Instead I'm going to offer my help with every projects visual effects needs, look up all the tutorials I can to help me get through. And hopefully in the end I'll have gained enough skills and enjoyment to keep going through to next semester.

Aside from the main game projects, I really like the idea of creating some nice looking weather effects for a scene. Whether it's one I find off the internet, or maybe even one of the environment modelers personal projects.

More ideas to come.

Islands - More pictures!

Now with trees, and much much more.

And the addition of the new Island that Cameron modeled.

Islands - Prototype Progress

Since Zac posted the Unity project with the flying script implemented. I have been messing around with the cloud layer textures, and also trying to create some nice looking volumetric clouds to fly through.

Here are some quick captures of the scene

This is one I took while testing, and I'm surprised at how well it came out.

Now I will be populating the Islands with some trees.

Islands - Concept 2

Image with the island

Edited with more trees...

Islands - Concept

The beginnings of some concept art for the prototype. This image here is what we hope it will be like when flying through the clouds.

I'll be drawing an Island in next.

Islands - ideas

After looking at Matt's questions about our game, specifically "What do you do on an island?". We had thought about having a central town, maybe the place the game starts. Where you get given an objective. For example, A town person asks you to take a picture of a lovely looking waterfall on one of the islands. You fly off to the island, take the picture and bring it back.

But then Zac came up with the idea of getting given a letter and a photograph from a character that you need to deliver. All you know is that this place is on a specific island. You then fly to the island (maybe using a compass) and use the photograph to find the place the letter needs to be delivered.

As we are trying to keep a relaxing theme, they are fairly similar. If the game moves past the prototype stage maybe both ideas could be implemented.

Islands - Roles defined

Cameron, Zac and I have decided that animating a camera to simulate the flight would be a better option for this prototype.

Cameron will be creating placeholder assets, such as the island, maybe more if there's time. Zac will be setting up the scene and animating the camera, to try and simulate the feel the playing will have flying around the world. I will be deciding on a colour palette and drawing concept images.

Islands

Prototype

List of jobs -

Constantly being pushed through the world (not controlled).
Affected by gravity, but not too much.
Navigating around, using the mouse.
Concept sketches of feel.
Placeholder island.
Pretty Clouds, with awesome light.
Placeholder collectables.

Game idea

Blocks

Platform -
iphone or flash game
Gameplay resolution – 800 x 600 (flash), 480 x 320 (iphone)


Game mechanics -
Random blocks move from the right side of the screen to the left side of the screen. The players job is to use the blocks they are given to make complete squares or rectangles out of the moving blocks, the player can only move their blocks up and down the screen. As the game progresses the blocks move faster and faster. Once any of the blocks reach the squiggly line on the left side the game is over.


Bonus points -
The smaller the square the more points you get (use the least amount of blocks as possible).
The player can get bonus points by getting a square all the same colour.


Gameplay screenshot
















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