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.