Blog Entry

I added some of the final assets to the level a few days back. I added a grave model that I created as well as a texture, skulls, and an axe. I originality planed to have a center grave revealing the main characters name thus revealing to the character that they were dead. I thought this would be cool for the narrative but we did not have enough time to flesh out events. The level has been getting better and better every week. I am pleased with our work so far.

UPDATE

Well I've finally gotten the AI path finding working flawlessly and the enemy firing, now we just need to tweak it.

The only thing that I worry about is the amount of work that I have left. All that is left is tweaking and duplicating what is there.

For the AI, I have a damage system in place but it is not fully implemented as of yet. I shouldn't be too hard to do and I need to set the transform position of the enemies AI attack as the previous position of the player yet which won't be too difficult as I already have the data stored I just need to reference it so it all looks good.

I am quite proud of my timing on this I feel that i maximized my deadlines perfectly, I finished what I promised my team would be done with approximately 8 minutes and 35 seconds to go before class. I should get a cookie for that (or at least a set of IP addresses unprotected by any sort of firewall).

Blog

The game is near completion. We have to add some things here and there but we are almost there. The AI is the big goal. Without AI then our game is a haunted house simulation. I am continuing tinkering with sounds and playing with the design of the level to add more tension.

final stretch.

Final stretch I guess. Things are going fine. There's enough in place to get it all finished up just in time.
Unfortunately I don't have the time required to put into a project like this, so Ill get done what I can get done.
I am working on finishing up the AI and working around the bugs so that i don't have to rewrite it every time I work on the project. Issues such as this really make me not want to do anything with Unity.
So this week I will work on coding the sounds and finishing up the attack/AI things.

Weekly Blog Post - Scott Peddie

Down the final stretch we go. We got a lot of usefull feedback during our playtest in class on Tuesday. Right after the class, I went and tweaked a handful of minor things that we were taking for granted since we had run through the level so often, and had no trouble manuevering it. Small things like opening the gate up a little bit more at the start of the level. Guding the player a llittle more with lighting. Amother common concern was the user control. The players were raving about the enviornment and sounds, but they just want to be able to interact with the AI, and be able to feel even more threatened. At this point, that is our number one goal. Once we have an attack and AI system in the game, we will be essentially finished. After that, some last minute play tests to fix some of the smaller things, and we should have a pretty solid 10 week mod on our hands.

Weekly Post

Blah.
Ive finally got an enemy AI working. Our AI algorithms now work to have enemies follow along a path as long as all of the nodes of the path have the same name. The enemy shoots (still very buggy) and is at the point that it is very easy to modify. Unfortunately I'm the only who will touch the code so it's ease o use is irrelevant.
Once this AI is cleaned up and more functional then the rest should just be pretty easy code and behavior tweaks since all of the hard underlying systems will be in place.
The biggest issue right now is that Unity is not always working the same with every build. What I mean by this is that every time I click play whether I've changed code or not, the behaviors seem to change and I can't always be there whenever someone goes to work on the game so I'm stuck trying to figure out why Unity does this without the source to unity( which makes it more difficult).
I've realized that I keep trying to look at Unity from a C++ perspective, and trying to realize that Unity takes all control away from the programmer and does stuff I don't tell it to certainly makes it easier to work with.

weekly blog

The game is coming along much better than I expected. The feel is great and we got some great feedback from the other groups. We are discussing incorporating some of it. I think if our group continues doing what we are, we'll be in great shape when the final version is due.

Blog Post - Video Post

Up to this point, things have been going alright as a group. We have been able to put together a quality half of a level, and have been able to get some really good sounds and assets in to our game. We look forward to showing the class our video, as we think that it represents the "feel" that we are really going for. It doesnt have any gameplay mechanics in it quite yet, but that is coming and is our next big milestone. We will gladly take all feedback tomorrow and use it positively, and continue moving on. We are headed in the right direction, but we realize that we have a lot of work ahead of us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKiiAQn1Xd4&feature=youtube_gdata

weekly blog

I found a cool cloak model online. I have some cool ideas for our grave setting. I want the player to realize they are dead and get spooked by the phantom. I had to settle for a simple animation for my cloak because I am terrible with the uv editor. The cloak has lots of awkward movements so I am going to settle for a basic walk cycle for the sake of time. Time to create a video for the alpha milestone. Hopefully I remember how to work final cut!

Update

I'm still not a fan of Unity and don't like the scripting that is involved, but I"m more of an engine and systems developer so that's probably why.
We finally got a rudimentary AI system working and assets are starting to creep into the game which is good.
I've spent the past week trying to finish up the level design and look and feel and get some additional functionality in. This week I'm hoping to further refine the AI and have "attacking" in the game to have something playable ASAP.

--Kevin Forshey

Blog Post/Playtest Feedback

Game is coming along. I've been trying to update myself on unity and perforce. I have finalized most of the character sounds and ambiance. I have been also working on some art. We should be fine as long as we keep our expectations to a reasonable level.

The play test went well. I discovered some movement issues that some of the play testers had. One play tester wanted slower movement with the camera. Another tester wanted a way to run.W e will consider both options. Additionally, the atmosphere and setting of the game were questioned. Although the game is in its very early stages, we will take into consideration these concerns. Our game is relying heavily on these aspects so it is imperative that we nail down the setting and atmosphere. The textures and color of the world was also brought to our attention. We will continue to work to achieve our goals taking all this input into consideration.

Blog Entry - Playtest feedback

Here we are, 5 weeks in to the class. Things are still coming together, but we were at least able to put together a small, short prototype in order to test out a few things. For me specifically, the playtest was vital for a few reasons. One reason being, it was important for me to see the scale of the map, in comparison to the player size. There are a few areas in the map where the player may have to fit in a small spot, and I needed to make sure they were the right size. It turns out, they were so that was very helpful to know. I also realized that the maps scale as a whole was good.

Moving forward, there are things that I will be able to take from this playtest. One of them is the pipeline. I now know that the textures in Maya will not carry over in to Unity. This is helpful because now I know to spend more time creating the level, and I can worry about textures later when I get in Unity itself. Also, I am learning a lot about Maya as I continue to work in it. I need to become more detail-oriented within Maya. I need to start naming all of my objects, to make things clearer for me to sort out.

As a group, I think it is vital that we remember this is a game MOD class. We can use whatever code and assests we find online. We should not take up a lot of time doing things from scratch if we want to get this done the way we want to. For the next deadline, we need to take a huge step up. We need to have the player in the game, not some figure acting like it. We need to have an attack system, and the AI to react to it. The level should be finalized, and we should be in the process of adding assets to give it the right "feel." We should be incorporating sounds. We should have more scripted events. We have a lot of work to do, I think that is the main thing that we took away from this date. This needs to be a team effort with ALL THREE of the team members contributing. I hope that point came across during the playtest.

Update

I love Crunch-Time -- I like to think of it as that time when workaholics like me get to use a "real" reason to stay up all night coding.
I have just worked through upgrading our project to Unity Pro(using the free trial) and am looking forward to using the more advanced features. Today in a meeting with Scott, we discussed the opportunities to take advantage of shadows as visual cues to "lead" the player through the level. This resulted in some very good ideas that I am currently putting in (Dynamic Shadows and 2D sound).
I am also working on finishing up porting some AI and Animation code into our project from other Unity projects that I have seen. I'm looking forward to an all nighter, so hopefully I have another post later.
-- Kevin Forshey

Blog Post 2

I can feel motivation for this project falling extremely rapidly. I feel like this project has no reason to be made really.  Everything has been cut to the point where it does not come anywhere near the vision I had for this.  And it is going in a direction I don't want it to go ( not focused in on having something to say).  Development wise I would say that everything is going fine as I am starting to work on the AI code and that is the majority of the programming left before we  need to play test and tweak for countless numbers of iterations.  As far as a project that has no reason to be made other than getting a grade I guess everything is going fine and it looks like from the programming aspect we should be on schedule and we just need assets.  -- Kevin Forshey

weekly blog post 2

The team is doing very well. We are finding many assets and integrating them well into our game. I have been finding and editing sounds to use in the game. I found great ambiance and creepy whispers and laughter. I am using audacity to edit the sounds. I have also been tinkering in unity to get a better feel for the engine.

Blog Entry - Scott Peddie

We are still heading on the right track, and trying to gather all of our assets before we get to far in to everything. We have been hard at work with audio, animating and coding. This thursday, we should start implementing some of our assets in to Unity, and start to get them to work properly. The level has been layed out, now it has to be created in Maya. It is going to take some trial and error to get the scale right, but that is not a big issue. Other then that, we are continuing to grind and hope to have some decent work done this time, next week

Schedule -

9/27 - Work on having all player assets in the game. (i.e. all the animations that will be required for our player). Implement them in the game, and begin coding them in. Continue to find good audio as well

10/4 - Have a main character which is able to run around, and use her cross "attack." The lantern should be working properly at this point, with collisions. We should have a lot of audio complete, including ambient noises. Artists should begin, or continue, working on the enviornment now. Design the level layout. Begin finding, and animating some enemies to incorporate in the world. At this point, we should have enough to run some simple play tests.

10/11 - Have a version of the game where the player is functioning properly, and is able to fend off enemies with here cross attack. The enviorment should start to be put together, and it we should start getting that feel that we want. We need to get ready for our Alpha Milestone at this point. The biggest thing we need to create for next week is the level. We need to set the "mood" and give off the freaky atmosphere that we are going for.

10/18 - Alpha presentation. In order to be ready for this, we need to make sure we have a solid minute of gameplay. Thing we need to incorporate. 1. A solidfied starting point on the map. 2. We need to incorporate a soul. We don't need to capture it yet, if we dont have that game aspect in yet then its OK. However, we at least need to let the class know, this is what the soul will look like, and this is where you can capture one of them. We need to have the light shining in the background, at the endpoint. We need the monsters up and running. Even if they are not attacking at this point, we need them to be shown and moving. Leave a cliffhanger? We'll discuss

10/25 - Use critiques that we got during our presentation. We need to put together the soul mechanic. We need to have the souls light up the lantern. The sounds should be coming along nicely. The level should be coming along. Keep working on these three things. Begin work on splash screens / any static screens. Add texture to the players arm

11/1 - Keep working on whatever needs to be done. Next week is our second report and playtest, so we should have this thing very close to done at this point. We should be more fine-tuning things at this point, rather then adding new things and ideas.

11/8 - Prepare for the game testing on 11/10. Playtest it ourselves, make sure everything is solid, and there are no obvious glitches. All mechanics should be working, and the level and enviorment should be looking good.

11/15 - 11/21. The final days before Final Presentation. Fix the kinks. Make sure the audio is giving off the feeling that we want. Make sure we have all splash screens working properly. Play test early and often.

11/22 - Present our Beta, and Final presentation. Lets do it!

Weekly Blog - Scott P

After having the entire class period to work on Thursday, our group really got on the right track and began narrowing down our immediate concerns. Kevin has really been grinding out the coding, and the unity side of things. I have been finding assets, and trying to do some of the basic animating. Alberto has been fine tuning some of the sounds, including ambient sounds and possibly some music. Overall, we are on the right track. We have to keep grinding it out, and start putting things together and get a prototype up. We are all excited about the direction of the game.

Weekly Blog Post

So far we have seemed to just be working on getting content and trying to think through how the game will end up.
This is very frustrating to me as I just want to code and make the game.  I am starting to worry about the performance able to be achieved with the Unity engine.  From a coding aspect I am finding the managed languages that Unity supports (c# and Java) to be a hug headache.  I guess maybe that comes from having learned C++ over 10 years ago back when that was the easy to learn language.  I am confident in my C# coding abilities but I feel that the lack of memory access will limit things greatly.
Now that I'm done complaining about Unity, I will say that I do like how you can be a completely illiterate idiot and still use Unity without tutorials.  That makes the process easier than it could be.
In the past week I put together a basic FPS skeleton that we are using for playtesting and getting things looking right.  In the next week I will be getting AI in place and have a better light effect working.
In about 2 weeks hopefully the game should be mostly done and we can playtest until perfection from there.

-- Kevin Forshey

Weekly Blog Post1

The last few days have been a little confusing because the loss of our artist and our broad game idea. Now that we have figured out our game and some solutions to our art problem, I feel a lot more secure moving forward. Core game play was my main concern last week and I think we have hit a sweet spot for our mod. Moving forward I shall begin researching some similar titles such as silent hill and feed off these games. Additionally, I shall level design and begin to animate (haha).

Game Pitch- Alberto

My story revolves around a young boy who has been given a task by the creator Gods. They will create a world for man as long as he completes tasks that they have assigned him. Each creator God represents an element, for example, fire and water. The boy must traverse the world solving environmental puzzles and defeating enemies sensitive to that specific type of element . The hook revolves around completing puzzles with the set element. The genre of the game will be platformer/action/puzzle. The target demographic will be a teen and adult audience.

Update

As I'm getting more and more used to Unity, I am finding it easier and easier to work with which is certainly making this process much easier.
I surprised myself by getting a basic FPS skeleton up and running by just pointing and clicking and believe it now ready for unit testing with the most of the game play hopefully being finished within a week or two. Then just play testing, play testing, and more play testing until its good enough.
Even though we're down an artist since we have the core functionality ready to be implemented I'm not very worried. Being a programmer for just over 0 years, I tend to put more of an emphasis on game play over art.
Scott and I looked over some art assets we found online and we're feeling that we should have something decent, I'm not worried about the programming aspect in the least as we try to get assets that will work.

-- Kevin Forshey

Game Pitch - Scott Peddie

Alright, so I really like some of the concepts that we came up with after we took advice from the proffesor and our fellow class mates. I really like the use of a lantern, and the game play mechanisms that it can bring. I pose that we stick with this game play mechanic, but not do it in a 3d form. I pose a maze type, puzzle game. A game that plays like a platformer, but the clear end is not just going straight ahead. You walk around the platformed world, being wary of demon-like enemies that you won't see untill you get closer to them. That is, unless you save enough souls to really brighten up your lantern. Obviously, the brighter the lantern, the easier it will be so see around the maze so it is beneficial to the player. It also is risky however, because as you are saving a soul, you are still vulnerable to an enemy sneak attacking you.

The objective would be to make it to the end of the maze. The souls are not a requirement, however they are beneficial. This way, we could also introduce more then one level. They can get progressively harder, longer, darker etc. I feel like this will still allow us to do a dark game, but it has simpler, less demanding art and it would still be fun.

Obviously a lot would have to be fine tuned, but its a start. Let me know what u guys think!

Getting on the right track!

A few days before we were going to re-pitch our new and improved game idea, our artists decides to drop the class. Our remaining team of Kevin, Alberto and I will be meeting today in order to come up with a new solution. We have many options, and many ways in which we can go. We should be ready to pitch an idea come tommorow. We may be a step behind everyone else in the class right now, but we can't let that deflate us. We'll think of something fun and simple that we will be able to do. I look forward to it

Getting (re)Started

So today after the vagueness of our presentation of our game idea we decided to regroup and focus on the feedback that we have received in response to our idea.

What started out as a creepy 3rd person shooter will actually be turning into a creepy st person shooter. We have decided to revamp how the game works are instead of attacking demons and enemies, we are focusing on the survival aspect of the game and the point is now to survive until the end.

We found the mot interesting game aspect to be the element of light. We will be using light in the game in order to fend off demons and help you survive. We have also decided upon a second game mechanic which I think is actually pretty cool. The game now takes place in Hell and you are trying to fight your way out. On the way out of Hell, you see some souls that do not belong in Hell, and you can free these souls by "praying" for them. However when you pray for them, you are not able to defend yourself, leaving you open to attack. I think this presents an interesting decision for the player, do I remain selfish and only think of myself, I do I deny what I need(defending yoruself) for the sake of someone else.

Today we spent a lot of time thinking about and discussing oru ideas for reshaping what our game will end up being. We hope to have something very rough but playable by the time we re present our game Tuesday.

Currently I am working on fleshing out a schedule, programming the engine, and working with Scott and Alberto on level design. I am also working with Humberto on the art in order to bring everything together.

-- Kevin Forshey

Hello World!!

Um yeah this is the Undead Interactive Software solutions blog.
-- Kevin Forshey