Studio 1: “Grandpa’s Beard” Self-Evaluation

Intro

This self-evaluation I will attempt to pin point and up emphasis on my part in the development of “Grandpa’s Beard”. This will be a breakdown of what I think that went well and what didn’t go well. This evaluation is for me to understand the areas I’ve progressed in and where I’ve learnt new knowledge. Outlining these will help me moving forward with future projects.

 

What went right? What when wrong?

Documentation and Game Design

With is project 1 prototype, I have had a strong work drive and organized with the work being produce. I definitely excelled in different areas, and this affected my organization of tasks to complete and the way in which I went about getting the task done.

Comparatively, between the tasks that involved more administrative qualities, for example, documentation, and questionnaire development, I felt more comfortable and confident in myself, to get the task done, by a deadline I set out for myself. Unlike other tasks that involved different qualities, for example, advanced scripting knowledge, where I am definitely not in my element, I found myself in some instances “running around in a circle”, which is not a state or place that I like to be in, and it definitely does not aid in the development process

Overall, I fell that im strong in organizational skills, and worked well with the areas I was both confident and not so confident in. Across studio sessions, and the development teams, I would to increase my skills and learn how to better use this to my advantage, and not just instance of the same tasks.

 

Group Communications

The setup of communication with my group was something that I have done well in the past with the setup of shared files for work to be available for all to work on if we are not able to be in the same place or working at the same time. But this was something that always fall short with other group member and communicating in replay. However when work would start on game elements and structure group work would flow when and interaction with each other’s skill sets to achieve goals and complete tasks.

Task Assignment

There were areas that are implemented more effectively then some, we are aware of these issues and these were made apparent in the play testing and this was something that need to be fixed before it hit that point. Ensuring that we divide our time wisely and efficiently between all these tasks of the project, is of great importance.

This was only made evident in the late stages of development, there were some bugs within one of our scripts that ended up costing us greatly. Having a task assignment breakdown would help prioritise task and avoid any scenarios like the ones we experienced during our development.

Knowing this order of tasks is important to the game development, and the other tasks would help add features to our game is something that I could’ve done better, my lack of awareness to these in the earlier stages of development, meant that I only noticed these problems late and the scope. This is area I can learn from greatly and improve on future projects

Game Scrips

I would like to increase my knowledge of scripting techniques in C# language. Over this project, the more complex scripts became the more I had to try to understand these, comments would help greatly.

I was paired up with a programmer that had a decent understanding of advanced scripting techniques and when assistance was needed, I would ask them for help. This was one of the ways that I worked around areas, I did not feel confident as I should’ve been.

I found that this way of solving issues was most beneficial to myself. I feel like it’s equally, if not more important, to work through the areas that you find difficult on own too this way ill become more skilled in this area in the development process.

Understanding more advanced scripting techniques isn’t particularly easy. Increasing my knowledge of the C# language will surely help me in the future, giving me a better understanding of these techniques of code implementation. Is will allow me to write script more effectively and help me give feedback and solve future problems solve with team members with any new projects I’m involved in.

Scripting Goodbyes.

 

Another trimester another Module down and scripting for game developers was one of my more worrying units. In saying this thought I have learned a great deal in such a short amount of time, no-doubt  improve my skill set in the projects to come.

Over this trimester in GAM111 we have covered many different scripting techniques in C#. We did by covering a different weekly game brief , and ideally we would end up with a prototype games at the end of every few weeks.

SHMUP Weeks 1 – 3 Brief: “The player moves through a scrolling, top down environment, shooting and destroying enemy ships. The player earns points for destroying ships and collecting the rewards (health, ammo) they may leave behind. At the end of the level, the player is confronted with a much larger, boss-like enemy. Upon destroying this boss, the player is confronted with a score screen informing them of their score and number of enemies destroyed.”

 

 

 

Survival Shooter

Week 3 – 6 Brief: The player must fight off waves of spawning enemies in an exciting FPS arena. The player is awarded points for the time they stay alive for as well as the enemies they defeat. The primary weapon will consist of a rocket launcher, with rocket packs (ammunition) scattered around the level. Jump pads will provide additional mobility, as well as the option for rocket jumping.

 

State Driven Side Scroller

Week 6 – 9 Brief: The player must traverse a 2.5D side scrolling environment, fighting simple AI enemies. The player will control an animated character that can walk, jump and perform a melee attack. Enemies will patrol along platforms by default. If the player is both within line of sight and within an enemy’s aggro range they will instead attack the player. The player wins by either killing all the enemies or getting to the end of the level.

 

Real Time Strategy 

Week 9 – 12 Brief: The player must move and control characters and place buildings from a top down, isometric perspective. The player must complete a simple objective, such as destroying enemy units or a base, surviving for as long as possible against waves of enemies or reaching an economic goal (e.g. building an important or expensive structure). The objective of this prototype game is not as important as the underlying RTS mechanics and paradigms.

Implementing  various scripting practices through the means of creating games was a great way to see how relevant they are to the creative process. Personally this has helped me understand and be able to code game action in a better and more logical fashion Now I’m able to use this same code in other games to get other features working. With the logical implementation

THE FINAL SUBMIT… (Week 12)

THE FINAL SUBMIT…sion

This week see the final Unity project for Gam111 be due for submission. The RTS we have worked on in our weekly brief. The game is coming together and the elements that I have and want to implement .

• the ability to implement unit selection.
• multi unit selection.
• the collection of resources.
• resource tally.
• the action of building structures.
• structures contribution to the unit cap of the settlement.
• unit interaction with resources and unit pick up on the play area.

This has had me gathering and searching for a large amount of different examples of this in game to see how i can implement and change them to fit my game style and interaction.

Unity Camera tutorial.

This blog post will be a short one but i will be making my next one a lot bigger with all the elements i have put in my project and explaining them a little more deeply.

Rts – Building Placement (Week 11)

With the end of the trimester approving the mindset is a mixed bad to say the least. This Week we implemented more on our RTS frame work  we focused on getting building placement’s functional, which will prove useful in the next assignment.

In a RTS like ‘Banished’ you can see this idea of a pre-building placement, with green and red indicators for the placement zones, ‘red’ indicates when the placement is obstructed by another building or unit, and ‘green’ specifies where the building is not obstructing anything

We implement this idea of a pre-building or “ghost”,  which would be on the player’s mouse location, when they were deciding on a location for the building to be placed. Then, when the player had chosen a location for their building to be placed and the pre-building would be replaced with the building model. Many games from the RTS and strategy genre implement this concept of pre-building, for instance the games from blizzard entertainment WarCraft series and Starcraft uses this feature well, and it adds a good scene of player feed back that is intuitive to players scenes.

Animation for our buildings was another feature we touched on. We wanted to create a brief animation movement for the building, so when the player’s click was on a valid location for the building to build, the animation would happen and rest in the final build position . This animation of the building raising out of the ground was a simple example of what was possible, but it does add a little more appeal and visual stimuli for the player, doing this give something for the players to engage with and fell rewarded with this animation otherwise it would be boring for players to engage with.

 

 

I’ve been trying to transfer this pre-building and building placement to my final project, and all is going well. Nowto get profection on player to indcate selected players and also resource gathering for players to use to build structures and units.

 

Rts Groundings.

Compiling content…

State Driven Side Scroller Cont… (Week 9)

Animation and Controller support + Unity = “Fun Time for all”.

After a less than ideal experience with control configuration in you during a production group the announcement of this in the weeks content gave some flashbacks. But I come at it with a different outlook. The content covered setting up the xbox360 controller as the input for the side scrolling game and setting up the animations for our new player spider creature making use of the Mecanim tool built into Unity.

New to me Mecanim has different ways that it can be implemented into a unity project.

• to setup animations and show a easy workflow of animation on humanoid characters.
•  Management of interactions between animation with a visual programming tool.
• animate different body parts with different logic.
• Animation re targeting – being able to apply animation from one model to another.

Here is an example of the tool in unity 

Unity – Mecanim

Also we covered the implementation of xbox360 controller support of the second player character and having this work without interfering with player one’s input in any way, something that my track record to date wasn’t as good at I’d like it to be. Controller support isn’t necessarily a complex component, but it definitely could be less stressful for developers using the unity game engine, whilst the unity development team has improved upon their game engine in many ways, the confusing Input Manager window is something that will get first using a little confused.

Input Manager Breakdown

I’ll quickly mention the final assessment for GAM111. We are to develop an isometric RTS or Strategy style of game. Leading into next week’s class (week 10) we have been asked to put some thought into the style of game we want to make for this particular game brief. Ill be leaning toward a “Warcraft 3” style game with more of a survival aspect to the overall goal of the game. Something reminiscent of “Don’t Starve” or “Banished”.

State-Driven Side Scroller. (Week 8)

The weeks brief is focusing on State – Driven Side Scroller, this instantly had me reminiscing to old titles like Super Metoird and Wonder Boy 3.

Task description

“The player must traverse a 2.5D side scrolling environment, fighting simple AI enemies. The player will control an animated character that can walk, jump and perform a melee attack. Enemies will patrol along platforms by default. If the player is both within line of sight and within an enemy’s aggro range they will instead attack the player. The player wins by either killing all the enemies or getting to the end of the level. “

Across the duration of the tutorial we covered camera functionality and running animation and a state system. Working with animation and states is something that i had never touch on and found it easy to impairment and i feel it can get crazy complex and yield some awesome results.

Next week we’re starting on the final project assessment for the Trimester. Its a top-down 3D Strategy/Economy based game. I looking at making a survival RTS but it’ll be similar to game where you gather resources and time to last as long as you can or to a set time limit, this will cover the games must have main feature. The first being resource based economy, the player will acquired this by harvesting, generating or maintaining. This will lend to the second feature, where the player will be able to place/build structures.

Angry Cars Summit. Study Week Prep.

With Angry Car nearly finished this week in a cram of several classes and assessments all dude at one. With this assessment a CIU Media studies Presentation and a CIU essay all due my time is tight to say the least.

This is the CUI presentation on Hacktivist and their influence on society

https://baconman360.wordpress.com/2016/03/21/hacktivism-good-or-bad-for-a-modern-world/

and a essay on the symbolism in a captain Americas Movie poster. CIU210 Hacktivism if you are interested in a read.

This week will be a short one but on the study break i hope to look into a few things i have put on the back burner related to scripting  and Up coming idea too like,

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/released-node-ai-pathfinding-and-ai-for-procedurally-generated-games-and-more.313694/

Looking into RTS mechanics for the nest assessment.

http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/genre/date/real-time/pc

And maybe some of this.

 

 

SHMUP round up. FPS Assessment Groundings. (Week 4)

The SHMUP is come to a close. Implementation was rather solid, and these are the components that I managed to get ready, the SHMUP includes: 2 weapons, 1 enemy, enemy navigation, simple particle effects for various weapon explosions, and finally game play audio. I would have liked to get more included, but limitations in time, as i needed to focus on my Angry Cars assessment.

So following the SHMUP, we have been handed our second game brief. We are creating a survival FPS. There are a variety of new features that were introduced to us , including a very, very useful and easy to implement feature of Unity.

The Nav Mesh Agent allows us too place points around our game space’s, where objects will move too. For instance, an enemy horde of demons are drawn towards a group of surviving players… these enemies are drawn to the player using this component. It’s extremely useful. We don’t need to create or understand advance coding techniques to achieve this same result, instead, Unity having this functionality makes thing a lot easier.

https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/navigation/navmesh-agent

NavMesh Agent Tutorial: I implemented this component for the enemies within the Survival FPS, draws them towards the player, throughout the whole map. This video gave me a good understanding of the Navigational abilities within Unity, It’s awesome and made easy.

Below are some game play screen shot’s for Devil Daggers, as an example of  whats possible  .

Although these are for our game game brief, we also have our first assessment task due soon. What we are required to complete is a 3D physics based game, here is the brief : “You are required to design and implement a 3D physics game that is a cross between an arcade driving/sports games (e.g. Trackmania, Rocket League) and artillery wars-like games such as Angry Birds!”.

 

Here are examples, of the type of game were aiming for. Here are screenshots from the titles (Burnout, Crash the Castle, and Trackmania).

 

So the type of game I’m going for is a Trackmania feel with the crash and burn of the burnout games. I’m not able to just make a clone of ether of these. So I’ll need to take the third person perspective of “Trackmania” and the launching and scoring of “Angry Birds”. Additionally, I have some other ideas for my project, to help keep it original.

 A lot of work is coming up but it should prove an good learning experience. I believe that these game play mechanics discussed above, will make my game new and original, and not just a simple cross over, And that’s my goal for this assessment. Hopefully all goes to plan.

Angry Bird meets Burnout / Angry Cars Assessment (Week 5)

With the first Assessment’s deadline looming , all of my time has been devoted getting the brief meet. With my assessment progress going relatively to plan I haven’t had to much complied stressed, and feel I’m getting the hang of this uni thing people talk about.

I have managed to have a very productive week with all of my university work, especially scripting! I had two steady 6+ hour sessions spent on scripting over the week, it feels great getting some real work done. This is my ‘Angry Cars’ project at this point.

 

 

As you can see above, this is my UnityProject, there are still a number of features that I am yet to implement, but at this stage I have managed to complete these areas of my game:

• Spinning diamond  PickUps (Collect these for additional Multiplayer )
• Model Race Track (Driven through by the player, before launching into blocks)
• Car Jumps ( that apply force to the players car)
• Car Driving & Car Boost (Provided by Lecturer; Unity Settings + Scripts/ Code)
• Audio Assets (Coin PickUps + Game Music)
• Art Assets (For the hay barriers, Ramps, terrain, etc..)
• Scoring Platform (This is where the final blocks will be placed and score not only when player hits but also when they fall)
• GUI (Score, Timer, Attempts, multiplier)

So as you can see, I have managed to get heaps done. And most of it, being the larger elements of my game which are more time consuming tasks, such as the track building and physics areas within the Unity Editor. In the following days, leading up to my next blog post, I will be delving further into my ‘Angry Cars’ project, by getting all the requirements from the game brief implemented and hopefully have them all polished by next week’s class. Submission for this project is next Friday!