Enjoying the class more now that we have more creative freedom

Little update here. In the “Space Bowl”, I don’t imagine the city stopping once you leave the ground. Did a quick ’sketch’ of a level prop. I call it a sketch because I did it quickly just to get the general idea across (most of the texture work is pulled from google images) — I plan on redoing it later.

Most of my time working on this game is still spent coding the core gameplay systems. Things like limiting the number of weapons you can have equipped etc.

I’ve also put in simple explosion effects as feedback letting you know when you land a hit on another player. I don’t have concrete plans for what all the effects will look like, but I think I want to keep them abstracted.

Here are two missile trail effects I’ve toyed around with. I like that they almost resemble pictures of unfocused light. More importantly, it nullifies the work required to do realistic effects — as one guy working on a 3D game, it’s not realistic to expect this game to try and match the realistic graphics of modern games staffing hundreds of paid professionals working full time over several years. I still think I can make my game look interesting though, but aesthetic refinement will have to wait until more of the gameplay programming is done.

In Sculpture II our first project is a wood chiseled relief sculpture. I thought it’d be neat to add light to it and my original concepts were illuminated veins in a tree — I ended up going for something with a little more character — a tree spirit similar to the ones found in some Japanese films. I’ll be building a box to house the lights and I’ll have a slightly ghosted plexi screen in front to catch the light coming through the wood — this gives it a slightly eerie feel to it. I bought some of the materials for that today and did some tests even though I’m not done with the chiseled wood.

Testing the free wordpress app for iPhone.

Also uploading a sketch painted using another iPhone app. I need a design for an energy field that replenishes a player’s ammo when they pass through, so until I design something better, it’ll look something like this platonic solid.

(Click image to enlarge)

Here’s a quick mockup for the level I’m working on now. It is similar to the Bernal Sphere space colony design from the 70s, but only one of the poles is exposed. The other pole serves as the base of a spire that functions as the colony’s space port that extends through the center — this port will be crowded with all kinds of ships not unlike a crowded sea port today. These ships, cargo containers, and businesses located around the port will make up the level players actually interact with.

The shell of the colony will serve as an interesting backdrop for the players. The colony’s megapolis living surface spends most of the time in darkness, so the night life in this fictional colony thrives. As one gets closer to the poles of the colony, the gravity would be weaker — there will be sports arenas and water to take advantage of this lesser gravity. To clarify though — the shell is merely a backdrop and players won’t interact with these things mentioned in this paragraph (the players will be on the other side of the artificial ozone with all the ships using the port). I just want to make sure that, even if it’s not 100% realistic, things make sense.

(Click image to enlarge)

I’ve redone the code for the machine gun. Originally, I had used simple raycasts to detect whether or not a player shot another player. While simple, this method produces unrealistic results — implied projectiles hit their target instantaneously from any distance. I’ll probably still use raycasting for the long range sniper rifle, but for the machine gun I wanted something more visceral and realistic.

Now, bullet objects fly through 3D space — which means you can actually see the bullets and it’ll be harder to hit players at longer distances. When I make better art and effects for the bullets, I think it’ll look really neat.

(Click image to enlarge)

I’ve started making the team bases that will house respawn points and the team flag for capture the flag. It has proven challenging designing interior spaces for a zero gravity environment, so I’ve set that aside for a bit to work on other things. For the time being, I’ll have to leave them looking like Super Mario pipes haha.

You can also see something I’ve added to make it easier to spot players and differentiate between teamates and opponents (green vs red) — diffraction spikes (those colored lense-flare crosses). These also play into the stealth mode players can utilize.

Here’s an image showing how going into ’stealth’ mode will make you much harder to see (look where the red diffraction spike was). I want sneaky/stealthy gameplay to be a viable way for people to play if they choose so — there’ll be advantages and disadvantages to using this toggled mode.

I’ve also been working on more network code and have started adding sound effects to my game (yeah, the game takes place in space, but I’m going to have sound anyway and come up with some fictional sci fi tech to justify it). Going into stealth mode makes the audio a little more realistic, but not entirely silent — just heavily muffled. I may have a weapon that temporarily disables audio completely, but it’ll definitely be very temporary — a silent game is just boring, but I think using space’s silence as a gameplay mechanic could be fun.

Space Junk is a zero gravity multiplayer FPS I’m making myself in Unity3D — the game I mentioned in this post. I started about a week ago and already have it in pre-alpha — I’ve done the programming for a couple basic weapons and networking so players can already connect and play against each other. Of course all the art is placeholder art for now.

The only other zero gravity FPS I’m aware of is Shattered Horizon, but apart from zero g and nice visuals, that game is pretty basic (the only weapon is a standard assault rifle) — I’m looking forward to really exploring the gameplay possibilities zero g brings to the table.

The individual castle pieces can now break into rubble as a result of a big enough impact. In addition to that, castle pieces are essentially glued together more like a real structure would be — these joints can break under enough pressure as well. So what happens is that large structures can remain intact as they fall or tip over, but they’ll break up with the force of hitting the ground. You can compare this video with the last one I posted to see the difference it makes.

We’ve now begun swapping out the placeholder art so that the castle can start looking more like a castle, rather than a collection of building blocks. Pieces won’t simply crumble into cubes, either — each piece will have more realistic looking fragments.

I’ve just recently started on a solo game project as an outlet for creative game designs that don’t necessarily fit with the type of games I’m making with the ‘Pillage!’ group. I like working on casual games like ‘Pillage!’ but most of the game designs I come up with lend more to the hardcore gaming crowd — this won’t replace any other project. Too early to give many details, but I hope to make this game multiplayer and I’m pretty excited about it.

Raising the bar of my Unity3D GUI programming, I’ve created an interface similar to that of golfing video games for when the player will shoot the ballista in our Pillage game.

1. Use the slider to decide your desired firing angle
2. Click the button to start the bar moving
3. Click the button again to decide the power of your shot
4. Click the button again to decide your accuracy (closer you get to the bar, the closer your firing angle will be to your desired angle)

Each of our three weapons (catapult, trebuchet, ballista) in Pillage will have their own simple mini-game for firing, and they’ll also have their own advantages for taking down the castle.

Visually, the game is still VERY primitive and incomplete — we’re putting our focus the core gameplay so we can have more time for gameplay refinement while we create and polish our art and animation.

My Digital Wind Chime will be at the Dallas Museum of Art for two more weeks — the New Media exhibition uninstalls on January 19th.