Not dead, just sleeping

It has been a long time since I last posted.

Since I've finished my Games Design course, I have been doing a new course in 「Teaching English as a Second Language」. However, this does not mean I've given up entirely. Even though I haven't had time to do anything, I've been thinking. I now have several ideas on how to make KanaKana work better as a learning tool.

For the time being, bullet point:

• Racing game, Highway Hunter style. Letters appear randomly on the back of the car, and players have to match them to an oncoming gate with the corresponding kana.
• Bullet hell game. Play has to fly their ship with similar conditions to above. Avoiding incorrect letter/kana combos, while matching the correct ones. Starts off slow with plenty of time to match and dodge, then gets faster.
• Alternate Bullet hell game. A typing game. Player types in a letter to shoot down oncoming targets. E.g a = あ. Again, slow at first, then working up to insane.
• Game show game, Root Beer Tapper style. Player runs along the bottom of the screen, running between 5 buttons. At the top of the screen is a TV displaying a kana. Players must select the correct answer as fast as possible. A good game for learning and practicing the basics.

I've also had an idea for how to get the typing to work. A script checks if a, i, u, e, or o is pressed then loads the correct letter image. Default is 'a' category. By pressing a different letter first, e.g 'k', the script can tell the images in queue to load that set instead. Then when a letter is pressed instead of a = あ, it will be k:a=か. Afterwards it returns to default. Possibly including 'del' to clear if the play hits the wrong key.

Hopefully I'll get some time to actually start working on some of these.

Final week

Time sure has shot by.

Not that long ago, I started this blog to document my work in my university course, and now that course has reached the end. I've done so much and kept so busy, but still it feels like I've only just begun.

It's hard to believe that it is over. Nothing left to do but wait and hope that I've done everything right.

Even after my course is finished, I intend to continue posting my work on this blog. I also plan on working on KanaKana until it is a finished game capable of being fun as well as being a useful study tool.

In honour of the occasion here is the link to a build of the game I will be submitting.
KanaKana final build

24hr Sprint

Tomorrow is the beginning of the end.

I intend to have KanaKana ready for display by this time tomorrow. Henceforth, I plan on spending the next 24hrs sitting down in front of the computer doing nothing but work. Nonstop.

I will be starting at 10am (Brisbane time), being 00:00zulu. Hopefully I'll be able to show my progress throughout the day. Here goes.

KanaKana update:

• Fixed the letter handler so it can now load all the letter sets.
• Added a loading screen (doesn't show up to often ... if at all)
• Optimised the letter textures to lessen load time
• Fixed the problem with letter clicking
• Letters clear as soon as they hit their partner
  

Status update

Level 5 dead on arrival.

Moving on.

A new selection of games were chosen to be developed in its place.

The game I am working on now is titled Call of Kabablhu, a comedic little adventure game about one man's quest for a kebab.

An earlier build of the game was already written but recently lost. So we are starting from scratch to build the game anew.

Status update

A week later and we've already hit our first pitfall. Enthusiasm for a major game has just about died. In light of this, another round of pitch will take place to decide what how to proceed. I won't mind working on Level 5 if it goes ahead. If not I'll try pitching one of my other ideas.

Level 5

My idea for a game based off of our time as GFS students was chosen for our final semester project. Called 'Level 5', the game will be a comedic meta RPG with various mini-games representing the classes. Done from the perspective of a fictional student entering the course, and featuring the surviving members of the Game Design course as NPCs, the story will be a massive caricature of student life.

At the moment the game is still in the design phase, but everyone is really getting into creating the story. If things go well, we'll have a really interesting game to display. Full of Uni-life jokes and game references.

For now I'll be working on the design aspect of the game. Helping to nail down the story, decide on game mechanics, and generally get the thing to make sense. This week I'll try and write down a bio for my in-game character.

Resumption

4+ weeks of vacation have taken a toll. A steady cycle of cold-catching, sleep deprivation, and general apathy have resulted in total brain meltdown. I was hoping to have accomplished more during the break but there's not a whole lot you can do without a functional brain.


Now that Uni has gone back, it means I have to wake up all the old machinery and get back to work. Hopefully at the end of this semester I'll have something worthwhile to show from it. The first task of the week is to draw up some game pitches for tomorrow.
Luckily, I still have a few ideas kicking around in the old cranium. Just need to organise them enough to be presentable.

Well, here goes nothing...

End of Phase 3

Today marks the end of Phase 3, and short of miraculous resurrection the end of Project Zombie. Next semester will begin with a vote on which games need to be continued followed by another round of pitching. I think overall Zombie has reached its peak.

My work on the project has included modeling characters, texturing buildings, designing menu screens, etc. (It's all listed on here). I'm interested in seeing how things turn out next semester.

Technical Difficulties

Today I was making good progress on each aspect of my work.

Did some work on my environment scenes, worked on lowering the poly-count on my Zombie, and even modelled up a screwdriver as part of my personal project.

Unfortunately, the power-grid for the entire area of Southbank went kablooie. Almost everyone lost what they were doing. I should be alright (as long as the files stayed clean) as I had just returned from lunch and everything was saved before I left. Won't know for sure until I get a chance to use a computer with Maya on it, but I pretty confident that everything's okay.

Important note: Always save your work. (just in case)

Enivronment work #1

As another part of my course I am required to produce three environment scenes of high quality. Admittedly I've been a bit slow in getting started on them but I have finally begun the ball rolling today. I've decided to document this project here as well.

My goal is to recreate three scenes from Stephen King's Dark Tower series. The Western Shore (Drawing of the Three), Dutchhill Mansion (the Wastelands), and Doorway Cave (Wolves of the Calla). So far I've managed to start work on Western Shore without any major problems.

Reference picture:


Screenshot:


Preliminary render:


I didn't get a chance to finish stretching the ocean to the edge of the frame, but I think it is turning out pretty well. Now just need to get to work on the other two scenes and I should be headed in the right direction.

Phase 2 complete

Yesterday marked the end of the second game development phase. Everyone had to present a build of their game and demonstrate where it is at. Everyone's games are turning out amazingly, come end of year we should have a good crop of fun titles for people to play around with.

The game I'm working on, Zombie, now has its first official build. Right now it's not much but a fancy point and stuff will happen kind of event(not to mention buggy as all Samhill), but at least it runs. On top of that my models are actually in this one. There is a copy of the build available here.

What happens, at the moment, is the player controls a group of 5 soldiers while 2 waves of Zombies charge them from both the bottom and top of the screen. The soldiers can kill 1 Zombie at a time but if the Zombies get to close the soldier will die. They can also build walls (that appear to be made entirely out of Twinkies) by placing a holder and moving over to it.

Now the major focus is on tweaking to find any bugs or places where sparkles (not literally) need to be added. So far I've found some pretty entertaining bugs which should be addressed shortly.


Here's a good one. Build a wall to close to the start point and the soldiers run past it and do their own thing (mainly skate around in circles):

Zombies build 2 #1

Starting into the second round of Zombies and after some discussion, the team (Paul, Dan, and myself) has decided to angle the game in a new direction.

The game will be now an RTS/Tower Defense hybrid. The objective is to have a dual-play system which has a daytime and a nighttime component, during the day the player controls units to gather resources before returning to base in time for the waves of enemies attacking at night.

We have also brought James on board to help with the environments. With some luck by the end of this round we'll have something resembling a game to present to everyone.

My main role in this round is to create the unit models. First up is the Zombies themselves.

Asset modelling

Aside from the major game projects, there is also the individual development angle in which we pick a speciality to focus on and work towards. For me that would be modelling. So for my personal project I'm going to be working on asset modelling.

For this I need to develop skills in speed modelling, low-poly modelling, and efficient texturing. Matt has recommended that I take a picture of a warehouse or something similar and attempt to model every item in the image with varying styles of texture, therefore I've scoured Google for some source images to work from (below).

I'm looking forward to this challenge as I tend to find modelling a fun and interesting task (just not the high end crap or viciously rigged animations). So if any of the groups need some assets done up for there games I'd be glad to lend my help. Hopefully by the end of the year I'll be a lot more skilled and have an impressive stable of models to demonstrate.

Prototyping phase complete

Today marks the end of the first prototyping round.

Overall it was a rousing success, everyone's game is shaping up pretty well. There is lot of potential for all the ideas, and now that the first pressure test is out of the way it's time for the tune-ups to begin (or in some cases complete tear-downs).

Alright, on to the parts concerning me.

Blockets. Four-player rocket/jetpack fun. The demo turned out great, although my character models didn't wind up being used. It was simple, playable, and above all functional. The biggest problem was that it wasn't really captivating from a spectator perspective and there was absolutely no HUD to assist in gameplay. In preparation for the next step, James is planning on rewiring the code to function better ergo I have been advised to focus on Zombies while he does this.

Zombies. Post-apocalyptic RTS. The demo worked perfectly with our set goals of constructable buildings and movable units (many a wall charging kamikaze did appear). The main issue now is the need of a proper outline for how we see this game working, so over the next few days each of us is going to write up what we think this game should do and compare them on Monday.

That is essentially it, everyone survived the first blitz (or at least I think they did), so come end of year we shall have a fine batch of games to show to everyone.

Prototyping phase

After yesterday's Game pitch, several ideas were chosen to be prototyped.

I am currently working in two groups to produce functional prototypes over the next two weeks.

Blockets, a fun little game involving jetpacks and rocket launchers; and an RTS based off of my Worldbreaker idea.

Game ideas

I have several game ideas which I am toying with at the moment. I will post them here once I've organised them a bit.