End of Semester

So the semester has now come to a close, and I have to say that this game was really fun to work on. We did have a few big issues with the development of our game, but we manage to overcome most of them.

Everyone seemed to like the game, specially the part where the player can use a flamethrower. Now that I'm done with my undergrad, I will continue to work on more game development in grad school as we prepare to pitch our own games next semester.

My work can also be seen at this blog: http://fushinoryuu.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading.

Normal Maps Didn't Work

So I tried to do normal maps for the zombie, but it didn't work. We think that it was because the animations were done before the normal maps were applied, so when we render the model it doesn't change since its binded to the skeleton.

For now there is nothing else that we can do since the project is due tonight at midnight and there would be no time to do the normal maps and do the animations again. The zombies won't look as good as they should, but all the mechanics and gameplay are working just fine.

And finally the semester has come to a close. It was fun working on this project, it was a lot of work but everything turned out just fine at the end. There was a time that we fell behind, but everyone managed to get their act together and get back on track.

I may post one final update to the blog on Thursday after the presentation. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Crunch Time

So our game is coming along nicely. For a bit there we were nervous because the animations were done and we didn't know if we were going to put in all the animations for all the 3d models in time.

But we managed to get all of that done this last week, thanks to a big push from Derek who managed to finish his work in time.

Right now there isn't that much art needed anymore. So what I did last thursday during our last play test is that I textured a bunch of environmental and miscellaneous items for the level.

Now what I will work on this next week is trying to apply normal maps to all the models to make them look high res but still are low res. This will help our game look much better and will still allow the tech guys to not worry about collisions and whatnot.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Presentation on Thursday

So I haven't been blogging as much as I should have, hopefully it won't affect my grade. But I have been busy working on stuff for the project.

Last week I finished a new model that will be our second type of zombie. This new zombie is going to be fat, which means it will move slower but it will also have more health and will be a little harder to kill.

I made a quick texture for it, and then gave it to Patrick so that he would be able to work on it and make it look better.

I also made a normal map, and showed the other guys how to make them so that we can keep low res models and still make them look like high res. This will be important because we will be able to use more models in the game at once.

We are also finally making headway in the animations side of things. We will see how stuff looks today.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Update on Zombie Model

So I haven't been updating my blog as much as I should, mainly because I fell behind on some of my work. But I'm mostly caught up on it by now.

I'm suppose to be making a zombie model for our game and its coming along nicely.

At the moment I'm trying to figure out how to make a normal map to transfer detail from a high polygon model to a low polygon model. I found a tutorial in digitaltutors.com and I think that it will do the job (I hope, I'm transferring the normal map as I'm writing this blog entry).

I'm also trying to make cloth for the zombies without adding too much geometry. I found out how to make nCloth and it looks cool, but it take too much geometry to make it work properly.

Here is a render of a test I just did:

I don't know how I'm going to do the cloth yet, but I think that if it adds too many polygons we will just have to texture in the clothing instead of modeling it.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Presentation Tomorrow

So were suppose to present our game yesterday, but Marty couldn't make it. So now we have to present tomorrow and hope that everything goes well with our first playable.

From what I know, we still need a splash screen but it shouldn't be to long before Derek is done with it.

Our game looks in good shape, and I think that Marty will be pleased with what we have done so far.

Over fall break, I didn't do much of anything unfortunately. I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses, but there was a lot of work I had to do for another class wich we just presented a prototype today.

I did manage to finish a simple rocket launcher based off a M121-A1 rocket launcher. I wanted it to look more militaristic and something that it wouldn't require the cop to hod. So I removed the trigger and made it so that we could just mount it on the side of the segway and still look like a variation of the M121-A1 rocket launcher.

That's it for now, thanks for reading.

Segway Done

So I should've posted this a few days ago, but I forgot.

Anyways, I finished he segway and the texture for it on Thursday. I think I may still have to tweak the texture a bit because I don't really like how the colors look.

I was trying to make the color scheme for the segway the same as a cops uniform with the dark blue and the gold/yellow. But I don't think its working.

Here are a few renders of the segway:

As you can see, the texture is very simple. So I'm sure that I will making another in the near future.

In the mean time, I have to make a bunch of items that we would normally find in malls to use as obstacles in the game.

That's all, thanks for reading.

Mini-Gun Done

So today I finished the first model and made a simple texture for it using Mudbox and a texture I found.

Here is a render of it:

I was trying to go for the color scheme of a typical cop uniform, but I couldn't find a good way to include the yellow/gold. I think that it looks good for now, but maybe we can come up with a better or different color scheme.

I made this model so that it would be able to rotate while it fires and also be able to rotate 360 degrees while its mounted on the segway. The animation won't be hard and it will look really cool once its on the segway.

Next, I will be working on finishing the segway. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

More Research

So on Thursday we decided to go ahead with the Mall Cop idea. So for this weekend we have to research anything and everything that can help us make a better game and hopefully allow us to hit the ground running.

For the first level, we want to stick with the Mall Cop idea, and we would like to stick with the Mall as the first level for our game. Marty has said that we should change the setting, since we don’t want to encourage shooting in a mall setting. Another example of this would be like a school or some other setting tied to sensitive issues or accidents in the past. I think that this is a place where the art and the story will really help us.

First, the story that we have at the moment is that the Mall Cop is bored at his job and he falls asleep, then he goes into a dream where he saves the world from zombies and other things that threaten to destroy us all. I think that if the player knows this is a dream, they are obviously not going to think its real in any way or form.

Second, the art style will also helps us set ourselves apart from reality. What we’ve discussed so far is that we can make all the characters look cartoony and or comical to emphasize that this is a dream. Someone also said that if we tried to make them cell shaded, it might also get the idea across that this is not real, something similar to the look and feel of Team Fortress 2.

Notice how the way that the models are made, we can obviously tell that they are not realistic at all; they also kind of remind me of the The Incredibles. If we can create our models to look something like this, then we should have no problem with the mall setting or anything else that we have planned.

Another thing that we would also like to do is something similar to what Metal Slug does in their games, we can have hostages throughout the level and it will be one of the tasks of the Mall Cop to save them. In exchange we might be able to get power-ups from them as well as bonus points or other things that we might want to add to the game. This would also add to the story that the Mall Cop is a “hero.”


One thing that I'm also going to try and look into is a game called Left 4 Dead, which is a FPS zombie game that takes place in a mall. I want to see what they did and how they did it, but I just hope I won't have to buy it. If I do end up buying the game, it will be in the name of "research" or at least that's what I can tell my wife. :P


That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Personal Note

So far this last 2 weeks, we have been brain storming new ideas to make new games. After today, each team will have 3 game ideas. Hopefully, each better and more creative than the last.

One thing that I don't get is, are we actually going to make any of the ideas that we have pitched so far. The reason is that some of the games that have been pitched, at least the ones for the group I'm in, look like they are out of scope in the amount of time that we have to complete this game.

I get that we are doing all of this to get into the habit of how a game company works and to get a process engrained in our heads. I just wish that we had some restrictions set, more than just a genre (ie: RTS, vertical shooter, etc), so that we could actually be realistic about the games that we come up with.

I know that at this stage of brainstorming and planning, I'm not suppose to think about anything else in the future, but it's hard not to do that when some of the game that have been pitched require a lot of animation or other things like it that require a ton of time to get them to look good and not just ok.

I think this was a rant more than anything else, but at least I've put some of my concerns out in the open.

Thanks for reading.

Research

So my team is going to be working on a vertical scrolling shooter, but there is one thing that we aren't quite sure about how its going to work.

So far it seams like we are going to have a lot of freedom on how the game is going to look; but then again, we are still  in the brainstorming part of the development process.

In the classroom we started to talk about shooters and looking at some videos on youtube, and we started to talk about not just having vertical scroll, but that it would also be nice to have some horizontal motion as well.

One game that I really like is called Metal Slug. I love that game, and I grew up playing it as much as I possibly could. And there is something about this game that if you just look at someone playing it, it doesn't look like there is much of a challenge because the enemies don't apear to be quick.

But once you actually start playing, you realize that while the game might seems slow, there is a lot of action in each wave of enemies that you get.

I think that it would be a great game to base our game out of, because it has a lot of action that is well thought out and there is vertical and horizontal movement in most levels (although, most of the movement is horizontal).

But one of the problems that I thought of was that if we try to do humans or humanoids for our main character & enemies, its going to take a long time to create the assets as well as trying to get a good walking cycle for each enemy. Not to mention that we would also have to create reactions to different situations for the enemies and the player. This would require way too much time, something that we just don't have.

So something else that I thought of was: why not make a space shooter?

I've already taken my Capstone course, and I have a lot of experience making spaceships because the project for my Capstone was a 3D Space Fighter game (video below). We had to make different types of ships as well, for example: fighters, heavy fighters, bombers, and I even got to create a space station as the final boss. (The space station that is in the game is not the original one that I made since it had to be modified to look like a "final boss" would).

And I've been looking at different space scrolling shooters and they all look almost the same. I mean, there is only so much you can do in a 2D scrolling shooters. The one thing that I have always liked about the scrolling shooters that I used to play back in the day was all the stuff blowing up in the screen at once. I liked how you could power up your ship to be shooting all sorts of crazy stuff and everything is just exploding around you.

We could also add some of the horizontal movement that I was talking about earlier, that way we can come up with much more intricate and fun level design.

And in the end if we do decide to go with a human for the hero of our game, we might be able to just stick to one human (the hero) to make the animation easier on us. Then the enemies would be a bunch of different machines that are trying to kill you. Something simular to Neo Contra for the PS2 just that only in two dimensions instead of three.

That's all I have for now, I'll see if I have time to make some sketches for Tuesday when we meet. Thanks for reading.

Presentation

So I didn't have time to finish the model to make it look the way I wanted it to look. Mostly because I feel asleep last night, but we manage with what we had.

Overall it was a good presentation, here is a render of the model after I did some simple texture for it during class.

Next time I will try to finish my homework first before I go to sleep.

That's all, thanks for reading.

New Trash Can

So after presenting our many ideas we had for a new trash can, we talked about which features would be more realistic and which would be possible. So we decided to create one final version.

Dan Turchenko sketched out the idea over the weekend and emailed them to me so that I could make a "prototype" of our new trash can in Maya.

I'm still working on the model, but I can probably say that it's about 75% done at this point.

I still need to put in a few more details and whatnot, but I should have it ready before class tomorrow.

Also, if I have time I'll a really simple texture to the model so it's not all grey.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Sketches for Homework 1

So here are the sketches that I made for Homework 1.

They illustrate the design enhancements that I talked about in my earlier post.

This trash can has wheels made of plastic.

My design would replace the plastic wheels with rubber & metal.

This illustrates my idea about putting a heavier base.

The trash can is almost completely made out of plastic which tends to brake after a while.

This design would replace the fragile parts with metal to make the trash can last longer.

One last thing that we can also do is change the design of the trash can from round to square to fit more garbage.

That's it, thanks for reading.

Homework 1

So for my group we were tasked with looking at the trash can and see what we can improve in terms of design.

I have to be honest, at first I didn't really see much stuff that we could work with as far as redesigning a trash can. But I think that we have a few areas to work with.

This is what I've found so far:

1. After a while, the trash can's wheels can fall off. This makes it so its hard to move the trash can around or the owner has to buy another from the city.
2. They are not heavy enough, even when they have trash in them. This can sometimes lead to a trash can tipping over and scatter the contents everywhere. 
3. The lid tends to break.
4. They have to remain cost effective.

So most of what I've mentioned can be solved by just making the trash cans out of a heavier/more durable material., but that would increase productions cots.

So I think that the best solution is to try and make only some of the parts out of a better material. This might increase production cost just a bit, but in the long run a trash can would be able to last longer.

Maybe instead of having plastic wheels, we could add rubber and metal for the wheels. Maybe we can also add metal to where the lid moves to open and close.

And for the last thing, that trash cans tend to tip over, we can try to re design the look and shape of the container. Right now they are round and even most of the time. We can maybe try and make them a little wider at the bottom so that they have a better base.

But what I was thinking instead is why not build a separate compartment underneath where it would be full of sand. The compartment wouldn't have to be very big, just big enough to hold a few pounds of sand so that its heavier at the bottom. We would be able to make up for the lost room by extending the trash cans to make up for the room.

This would also make it so that the current garbage trucks wouldn't have to be re-worked to be able to pick up a new container instead of the current one.

The weight of the components wouldn't make it heavy enough that people with back problems wouldn't be able to move them, and it would solve all of the problems that we have with current trash cans.

I will also try to scan my sketches to illustrate what I'm talking about.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Skin Cancer Game Assets

So I helped the skin cancer team with some assets over the weekend. I've already emailed them to Pace, and he will emailed them to who ever needs them in his group.

They told me that they needed some flowers, a leaf, and a new block. I've only been able to work on the first two so far.

Here is a render of the two things I did for them.

Both of those things weren't hard at all, but the flower took a little longer than I thought it would. I made three different colors of the flowers: red, blue, & purple. That way it will give them a little variety in the game.

I still need to know what kind of texture they want for the block they need, since making a block in Maya takes only seconds.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Levels

So today during class time, I managed to work on a few levels on maya. I also manages to get them textures and colored.

They aren't that complicated, and it takes just minutes to make a level.

The textures isn't all that complicated either, so I'm happy that we are able to make levels fast and iterate on them.

I will probably be working on more levels over the weekend and more texturing. I asked the Mountain Dew team if they needed anymore help, and they said no. So I will maybe ask the Skin Cancer team if they need help.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Sports Car Finished

So I finished modeling and texturing the sports car for the Mountain Dew team. I based it off the Bugatti Veyron, and I'm really proud of how it came out. The texture might need a little work, but I think it looks ok.

Those were some of the pictures I used as references for modeling the car. Here are a few renders of the model I made:

I think I'm done helping the Mountain Dew team for now, unless they need more help with the art assets.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Basic Agent

Here is the basic agent render. It looks a little too bright, but hopefully it looks better in Unity. If not, I will ask someone else to help me.

That's all for now, thanks.

Reworked Factory

So right after I submitted the new factory, they had issues with it since the agent couldn't walk onto the factory.

This new one doesn't have the floor it had before, but I still had to make the four pillars a little wide at the bottom so it won't tip over. I'll see if it works or not.

Here is a render of the new factory.

Again, the only difference between the factories is the color of the spikes.

I also reworked the thumbnails of the factories so that they are 100x100 with a transparent background.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

New Factory

So here are a few renders of the new factory. The old model was too bulky and not really that high tech looking. I'm much more pleased with the new look.

The only difference between the factories is the color, which corresponds to the color scheme of the agents.

Swimmer Factory

Rammer Factory

Jumper Factory

So we have talked to the Tech guys and they said that we can add particle effects when an agents walks in, and we swap it for a new agent that is of the class that the factory belongs to.

I also finished the texture for the basic agent, but I'm trying to get it to look right. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Finished Baja Truck

So today I finished the Baja Truck that I've been working on for about a week and a half.

It took me a while to get it right, but I think the finished result looks good. I had to make some adjustments to the model since they didn't want transparent glass on the truck, I decided to just use a lambert shader instead of redoing the whole texture.

Here are two renders from before and after the modifications. They are the same except for the glass.

I finished working on a new "factory" for the object oriented team. Charlie and I didn't like that we had to use an actual factory for the model, so I made a model that resembles a teleporter based of this image:

It doesn't look exactly like that, but its simular.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Due By Next Time

So by next time, I have to finish modeling some spikes that we will be using in the game.

Nick will be doing the programing for it, and I will be doing the assets.

We are still not sure if we will be using the spikes or just fire particle effects for the pit trap.

Also on a side note, I'm in the process of making a car for the Mountain Dew team. I took a look at their asset list, and I decided to start working on a baja truck for them. It still needs a lot of work before its finished, but after talking to them today, I got a better idea of what they needed. This won't be ready by next time since I have other stuff to do for my group, but maybe I'll have something by next week.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading.

Batteries Are Done

So I finished texturing all the batteries that I was assigned.

They all look alike, but their size is different. I haven't heard anything from anyone if they wanted me to put any text on them, so I'll just submit them and if they want text on them later, it shouldn't be too hard.

Here are the renders of he five batteries:

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Finished Swimmer Agent

So I've finished texturing the swimmer agent for our game.

It took me a little longer than it should've, but I was having problems finding colors that I liked and a tech texture that looked good.

Here is a render:

I just emailed the group, and hopefully everything looks good. That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Spring Break

So my spring break won't be much of a break. I have a bunch of stuff that I have to catch up on and I decided to get some stuff from Game Dev out of the way early on so that I can have more time to maybe help the Mountain Dew team on some of their assets.

So for this week, I have to model 5 different batteries and texture them. I'm already finished modeling all 5 of them, and I'm in the process of laying out the UVs for them.

I decided to concentrate on just one battery and get it finished with a color texture and specular map. Here is a render:

I think it looks good, but I have a few questions about how all the batteries should look and if they want anything written on them.

I just emailed the group to get their input, hopefully they'll get back to me soon.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading.

Rammer Agent

So I've finished working on the texture for the rammer agent. It might need a few tweaks, but it should be done for the most part.

Here are a few renders:

Charlie made the model, and I just did the texture for it. Since this model will be running really fast and tipping things over, Charlie thought that it would be a good idea to make him like a football player. So we decided to base the uniform after the Utes football team since we are making this game at the U.

I'm still working on the swimming agent. I should've finished the swimming agent first, but I just can't find the right colors for it. I will try to finish it before class today.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

New Oil Bottle

So I created a new power-up for the Mountain Dew team not too long ago, but they were having problems with it. Basically, we couldn't see the texture of the bottle in Unity.

So I think I have fixed it. But I still need Nick to test it. Just incase that the specular map is still causing trouble, I also emailed him a model without a specular map.

Here are the renders:

With Specular Map

Without Specular Map

The difference between the two are really subtle, but they are there.

Also, I had to shorten the neck of the bottle since it was a little too long. Also, I made it look like it has a cap. The last one I made, it only had the top of the neck painted with black to make it look like a cap. With this one, I made sure that it would look like there is a cap on the bottle. Because of that, there is more faces on this model than the last one. But I think it should be ok.

Thats it for now, I'll see if there is anything else that the Mountain Dew team needs. I also haven't heard anything back from the skin cancer team regarding if they need help with some of the art. Maybe I'll ask them directly tonight.

Thanks for reading.

Finished Jumper

So I finally finished texturing the model.

It took me a while to figure out what colors I wanted to use. The last time I posted a render of the jumping agent, it looked a little too bright.

This time I went with colors that are a little darker.

Here is a render:

This time, I took away the bright pink color, and just replaced it with grey. Then since I didn't want it to look too dull, I applied a specular map to the grey parts to make them a little shiny and more steel/metal looking.

I also made a bump map for the tires, but I didn't really like how it looks. I might try and fix it later, but since its not really a priority it might take sometime.

Now I'm just waiting for Charlie to finish modeling the basic agent, and once he gives it to me, I'll texture it. 

Thanks for reading.

Jumping Agent

So Charlie finished the jumper agent for our game and gave it to me to make few textures for it in Mudbox. I've been working on this thing since yesterday afternoon, and I think it looks decent.

Here is a render of it:

I also made a bump map for it, but I don't really like the way it looks. I will try to make it better, and see if I can make it work.

I also need to rework the bottle that I made for the Mountain Dew team, apparently the bottle's neck is a little too big. So that means that I have to adjust the model, remap the UVs and re-texture the model.

I also collected a few textures that we will be able to use for the environment and items in the game. I don't really want to post all the images.

That's it for now, thanks for reading.

Another Power-Up

So the Mountain Dew team needed another power-up model like the cherry that I made for them before, just that this time they wanted a car oil bottle.

I thought this one wasn't going to take me much time since I had a good idea of how I was going to make the model without spending too much time on it. The modeling part was easy, but once I got to the texturing, thats when it got a little tricky.

I like to use Mudbox for texturing because I can see how the model is going to look without having to jump back and forth between Maya and GIMP.

What took me the longest was applying a picture of Mountain Dew Throwback to my model. I don't really use GIMP that often, so I'm still getting used to it and Photoshop is too expensive to buy. :(

Then the specular map wasn't looking the way I wanted it to, so I had to spend a lot of time in Mudbox fixing it so the label wouldn't be shiny like the rest of the bottle.

Anyways, here is the final product:

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

New Cherry

So the cherry that I made for the Mountain Dew team wasn't really working. The model that I had given them was too low in resolution and when they tried to apply the normal map to it, it just looked really weird in Unity.

So today while each team was doing the demo for their first playable, I was busy working on my laptop to try and get it to work right. I was talking to Charlie since he is the one that has the most experience with this stuff, and he told me to just do the color maps and the specular map in Mudbox. Then go back to Maya and apply them to the original model. After all of that, export it as an fbx but use the "export all" option in maya instead of "export selection".

This worked great. I was able to just give them the fbx file to the Mountain Dew team and they din't have to apply any textures to it, since everything was included in the file already.

They were really happy and so was I for being able to figure this problem out.

Here is a render of the new cherry:

Next I have to find textures that have a mechanical feel to them for the various items that we will be using in the game. I don't know if the Mountain Dew team needs me to make more assets for them, but I will ask them. I will also try to get in contact with the Skin Cancer group and see if they need help making assets.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading.

Cherry Bomb

So I didn't have anything to do for the Object Oriented team, so I offered to help the Mountain Dew team.

They needed a cherry bomb for part of their game, so I created a quick model for them. I also made a color texture, a specular map, and a normal map.

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

Start & End Screen

So I was suppose to work on a start & end screen over the weekend for the object oriented game. We don't really have a character locked down at the moment, so I didn't really know what to do for the background of the start screen.

In the meantime, I wanted to go for something more abstract since the art is still up in the air. So I was thinking of doing something like this:

I didn't create those images, I just found them and I think that they are good place holder art for right now. I just don't want to get into something too specific at the moment. Once we have a completely textured, I might do a couple renders and then use photoshop to put one in the background.

I will try to make sure to know when Charlie has an agent done so that I can borrow it from him and do a few renders then.

In the meantime, that's it. Thanks for reading.