[385 3DGameDesignMagnus]

Prj What am I up to

2008-05-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

Well After endless meetings with the group and discussion idea development we have put together our final guy in brief began design document.

now we have started creating our models in blender and making our ideas into visual concepts.

We have all been assigned certain jobs and duties, mine is to develop the map and imagery concept for that.

I am drafting up models and maps in sketch format.

I am making mock up models 3-D in blender of the whole map (the island) and I am using terrain elements in unity to create the 3-D sketch up of what i think the Map of the island should look like.

Project 3

2008-05-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

The famous interaction design firm Ideo describes their intense collaborative process of tackling a design problem as “The Deep Dive”. This project will be a Deep Dive – examining the status quo in game design – and meditating on how to break away from these trends while charting new territory. Ultimately this brief examines professional game design, from well-known companies in the industry, to experimental Indy games and serious games, and finds this activity is 100% a group-work activity. Much of this is due to the division of labour and the creative benefits of developing ideas within a team dynamic. Capitalizing on these same strengths, while also providing a professional model of instruction, this final project will have students work in groups. Students are asked to creatively extend some aspect of current day game design: story, game-play, level design, social interaction, and user interaction design.

30% of your total grade:
1. Game concept proposals will be submitted for review. 9-4-08

2. Selected winners will be chosen and teams will be formed around these proposals. 10-4-08

3. Teams will design and present a project plan and game design document. game design document due on this day -> 7-5-08

4. Teams will work on creating a game following the project plan and design document.

5. Progress critiques will review early game development.

6. Beta tests will be reviewed for assessing game development.

7. Final presentations of games will be shown in class.

8. Post production, packaging and distribution.

Hand-in all work: publish parts of your game to the web; document your research to your blog; turn in a group DVD containing all documents related to the creation of the game including the final working game file(s). The DVD should contain folders named after each team member and each of these folders should contain the work done by that person. Collaborative files should go in a folder named “collaborative Files” with a READ_ME.TXT file describing the breakdown of work in such cases. All formal proposals, game descriptions, and other writing must be in PDF format.

10% Blog Hand-In:
Each part of this project must be uploaded to your blog using clear and concise entry headings.
Your blog will serve more than just an organization and presentation tool for your project – use it to fully describe your research and production processes for all phases of your project. Think of your blog as a ‘hand-in’ basket: If it isn’t on your blog, it won’t be graded.

Objective: The professional world, especially the gaming industry, is an environment of collaboration. It is also an incredibly competitive area, where only a small fraction of projects with serious investment are ever brought to market and/or generate a profit. Given these facts, this project is designed to help bring students up and over the bar that is currently set within the industry: how can we think 2 steps ahead of what is already known? And how can you work together within a group dynamic to produce creatively fungible solutions for the next wave of digital games?. In addition to producing a complete game, evaluations will be based on individual effort, creativity and level of professionalism. . Project due Wednesday, June 18.

The game SolveMe is here

2008-04-29T18:32:00.000-07:00

http://magnusmax.com/solveme.unityweb.html

The game is here click on the picture to enter the SolveMe World

DEverlopment in UNity

2008-04-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

Here is my final stages for setting up my level

Modeling buildings on blender

2008-04-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

this is me working in blender during tis project

my last 7 days

2008-04-23T21:09:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about my level and will show my thought process and developments here. I have created in blender a house, a rocky cliff, a dam, a table and a chair . These 3d elements will be added to my level in unity which will all be arranged as shown in the sketches below.The path thought my level will begin on the roof of the piece of architecture i have created (remembering that my game is a puzzling quest) . To get of the roof you will have to shoot a rock of the cliff above to smash through the roof of the house you are on once in the house you need to run around on the top level until you find a table to jump on which will smash and break the floor below it once on the next level down you need to blast your way though the floor by blowing up some gas cylinders and once in the bottom floor and garage you need to take the brake of in the car and let it role through the garage door to smash it and allow you to et out once out you need to cross the river but to do so you need to open the dam to let all the water out once that is completed you get trapped on the other side and eventually die trying to find your way out and hence have to restart.

Waypoints AOI and bolts

2008-04-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

While developing my level I found that I wanted AI/ bots within my level. One problem here was the fact that the bots I was using would just be getting stuck in areas or impaled on my 3-D meshes because they were walking in the wrong direction and following the wrong area markers. It took me some research focusing on the unity forums asking Doug and My classmates and searching through lots of code within the unity to finally find out that the way to seat the AI/Bots movement orientations and limits, is to put in waypoints to set the area that the AI/bot will move within. Setting out the waypoints allowed me to very precisely set the area that the bots will move within.

My friend the F Key

2008-04-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

While working in Unity during this week I found the F Key to be extremely important and helpful to me, especially when locating items (mainly meshes) within my level, or if I was just simply trying to place a character or mesh in a very accurate position. The F Key would constantly help me to take me to and get me into a right camera angle so that I can line up each mesh to the exact position on the level to where I wanted it place.

Navigation tools.

2008-04-13T17:10:00.000-07:00

Beginning my work in Unity 3-D I had big problems with navigation. It wasn’t until both Steven and Sam indicated to me, how all to control the navigation with a combination of mouse click control. Control right mouse click (rotate camera), Control left mouse click (zoom camera) and the centre mouse wheel (up and down and sideward movement) would all help me to manage my environment. Once knowing what this can do my navigation within Unity 3-D was amazing and I was able to zoom in or get very close to every position and place every object extremely well.

Level Layout & Plan of Attack

2008-04-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

I will put up some sketches of my level layout and a plan of attack process tree here

HL2 Episode2 Cats Eyes

2008-04-01T19:38:00.000-07:00

Here are some inspirational images of wat i want my level to look liek and work like taken directly from my precedent game HL2 Episode2 Cats Eyes.

My Inspiration in a Game Environment

2008-04-01T19:02:00.000-07:00

HL2 Eps and Fear.

Why I have chosen these is because they have an absolutely amazing physics engine that really deeply inspires me. I think its amazing how a player has to trigger certain elements in the environment to enable something changing in the environment to then enable the player to progress though that stage of the level .The use of life skills and logic required to trigger items in this environment is really high and simply make the player think more life like in the environment it also looks at a less linear story because you have to almost carve your own way though a level.It is this particular element of physics and environment interaction I have taken particular notice in both my precedent games.

Just a little on the actual environment. It reveals itself to the user as a world turned upside down by aliens of enemies of a chemical and scientific experiment gone wrong . the levels are all sorts of terrains and environments in utter dystopia with most things partially destroyed and you as the user have to navigate though this environment using logic and ability to carve your way though.Each level has a new scene of dystopia on a new area of the game map presenting new kinds of challenges as you are in a new kind of terrain.The space/environment controls the player in that progress can not be made without modifying the environment and hence one relies on each other for progress.

The level i wish to build will be one building 12 rooms and you have to blast lift fly wreck and destroy your way though by using the environment against its self like using a roof to smash a floor a wardrobe to smash a door and a high pressure fountain of its latch to blast of a ceiling.
It will be an evironmetn cntrolled by a players use of logic and the will to get though.The need to destruct or modify must be within the player.

To do list and Accompishments

2008-04-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

I had inteded at he end of last week to Choose an environmental system from an existing video game. Write about this environment, describing how it reveals itself, changing through different levels, and how characters and objects behave and are controlled in this space. This was my to do list over the last week till now

finish the 3rd person platform tutorial from Unity
complete the 1st person shooter tutorial from Unity, part 1, part 2, and part 3

Out of this what I archived was I played some repeats of my favorite games HL2 Ep2 and FEAR
and figured that was the game environments I wanted to pull some of my inspiration from for my Project 2 .I also did the FPS tutorial parts 1,2,3 and had another thing back to the 3rd person platform tutorial which i have so far only done to page 50.I loved the FPS tut what a great tutorial its really clear and divided int o 3 nicely manageable parts but hey I also love FPS games to any how I am now all up to date on these and happy to have done them.

Project 2 starts here

2008-03-28T17:42:00.000-07:00

Project 2

The computer screen is an illusion– it is essentially a grid of flat pixels. To convert these pixels into a narrative world that suspends disbelief that can immerse the user/player within a situated experience requires strategic designing. This project will explore gaming perspectives and examine the design problems surrounding the constructing seamlessly interconnected levels. Additionally, we will be analyzing how characters are integrated, not only with the worlds they inhabit – but the perspective employed by game designers. This project will examine how to build such systems while striving towards a more general goal of creating virtual worlds that support internal game systems, while also relating to the player’s second order of cognition: the real-world.

20% of your total grade:

1. Choose an environmental system from an existing video game. Write about this environment in your blog, describing how it reveals itself to the user, changes through different levels, and how characters and objects behave and are controlled in this space.

2. Create a character and environment in Unity that is influenced by your research, with the following rules:

1. You may only borrow the perspective structure from the inspirational game – not the game content.
2. You also must significantly alter your version, so that it departs from your inspiration (game-play, level design, user-interaction (UI) and/or conceptual framework).

Hand-in all work: publish your interactive animation to the web; document your research to your blog; turn in a PDF of your writing, and all files used for the project (Unity, Photoshop, and any other media files used) on a CD or DVD by the due date. Nest a Unity game web file in your blog.

10% Blog Hand-In:
Each part of this project must be uploaded to your blog using clear and concise entry headings… Your blog will serve more than just an organization and presentation tool for your project – use it to fully describe your research and production processes for all phases of your project. Think of your blog as a ‘hand-in’ basket: If it isn’t on your blog, it won’t be graded.

Objective: The goal of this brief is to push the boundaries of immersion wtihin a gaming experience – detail of graphics is only a small (yet overly focused) element of how immersion can be achieved. Graphics, audio, dialogue, story line, and game play work in tandem to create a state of player-game symbiosis that can be thought of as cybernetic ludology. Evaluations are based on the timely completion of labs and reading assignments, and creativity and mastery of the project. Project due Wednesday, 30-4-08.

Opp View angle

2008-03-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

Another render

2008-03-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

Another render with more shine and new angle

My Final Walk Cycle

2008-03-25T15:04:00.000-07:00

This is the final walk cycle with sound and total movement in good quality I like the look of this and just to say it the movement would be just as good in unity if I could get it in there.

Answer found

2008-03-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

Upon searching the blender forum with no success i decided to study the blend program interface more in depth and found a window one can select called the movement editor thee each bones locations and key frames come up after right clicking to select then you can just hit delete and accept by hitting ok when prompted and wala the key fame seeing this bones movement is gone.

One thing I want to change

2008-03-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

I have found that my walk cycle is way to slow and that i need to speed it up some and change the movement some what but i have now hi the problem that i cannot remove the key frames from the animation in any way so i guess its Google time and see if there is any cure

I am stuck

2008-03-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

I have spent the last 12 hours trying to import my character fbx file into unity using a tutorial provided all about lerpz the alien that shows how to import characters and textures and setting it up and scripting everything so that the character works but when ever i do this i get my character walking around in the provided gaming environment totally invisible you can see the movement happening but there is no texture.I guess all i can keep doin is keep tryin.

My Character

2008-03-25T11:46:00.001-07:00

Walk Cycle

2008-03-25T01:51:00.000-07:00

textured final 3d Blender view of my Character

2008-03-25T00:27:00.000-07:00

First 3d Blender view of my Character

2008-03-24T23:11:00.000-07:00

Blender Tutorial(UV Mapping)

2008-03-24T23:05:00.000-07:00

this i tried but ended up up opting for the written tut online

http://forum.nystic.com/

This is the rigging tutorial I used

2008-03-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

This tutorial was extremely helpful in me learning blender little own rigging and setting up a characters bone and movements i went back to this tutorial half a dozen times to get it right and learn some shortcuts it really thin kits massive people can provide these.

The most handy trick ever

2008-03-24T22:48:00.000-07:00

This is the most hand trick ever for weight painting. Doug discovered it while showing me something the other day and I kept forgetting how to use it even though it is so mighty handy so I asked Doug to word it for me and I though I would post it here so I can keep coming back to it and don't ever forget it again so here it is.

Select the armature, then go into POSE MODE.

While it pose mode, select the X-Ray tab in the tools so that the skeleton will be visible in the weight paint mode.

WHILE IN POSE MODE, right click the mesh so that it is selected.

This will now show you to be in Object mode, scroll this up to Weight pain mode.

You should now be able to right-click on individual bones, and paint on them as needed.

While in this mode, you can also hit the F key, that will display the mesh (and vertices) which makes it a little easier to paint. But, if you go into that viewing mode, you also have to select the mesh you want active to receive weight paint. You do not need to use this F key mode in weight paint, but I found it valuable.

Remember, you must go into the weight paint mode exactly following the steps above. If you simply select the mesh and go straight to it (without going into the pose mode with the armature selected first) you will not be able to select the individual bones.

another inspiration

2008-03-24T22:46:00.000-07:00

this and the video prior show some seal /sea lion like movement i want to use in my characters foot movements

One of my inspirations

2008-03-24T22:45:00.001-07:00

First walk cycle trial

2008-03-24T22:43:00.001-07:00

Game Proposal:Limb Wars

2008-03-24T15:16:00.000-07:00

This title proposes a game called limb wars and as suggested by the title, both the players of this game and the environment are made up of limbs or parts of the human anatomy. The direct objective of the game is to become the ultimate limb at the top of the body. The environment will be a jungle of human parts, split bodies and human skins all part of the environment which will make up "the whole" the body.

LevelMap

The challenges will range from simple hand on foot battle to a puzzle where certain body parts need to be collected and re assembled to proceed onto the next stage. The world one moves in is a deformed body. Inside is the underworld bloody guts and smelly warm mess. Outside is the upper world somewhat more comfortable but still limb danger zone. Veins will be trees and rivers depending on their structure and orientation. Organs will be rocks terrain and boulders and so on. Hence all other known anatomy in the human body can and will be used to create this environment.

The player has a choice in what limb to use as their character like an ear, arm,eye, toe, or nose. Each one of these limbs has a special attack power or weapon for protection and battle mode. These will be limb particular like the fist will be able to smash its opponent around the ass will be able to gas its enemy and the toe will be able to green slime cheese all over its enemy.

Some navigation will be though disgusting tight alleys of the body like rotting smoker’s lungs and fungus infected inner areas. Other parts of the navigation will be out in the open large open spaces filled with the perfect anatomy of the body all clean and beautiful looking, making the user somewhat comfortable again. The limbs one can choose with which to conquer and navigate the level will all move in their own sort of way, like heads and fists will roll, ears will fly and noses will hover.

Also when it comes to enemies other limbs are not the only enemy one has there are also the typical or most common enemies of the humans anatomy like the bacterial and viral troops that can surround you and send you flying backward far far away from your goal of achieving to become the most power full and king of the limbs position. About the environment around you as you navigate into and through areas where a battle could accrue or danger lurks there will be some sudden discoloration going from nice comfortable colours into the dark and sickly colours.

There will also be traps and trap doors , for example one called the dirt track which once you are on it you slide and slide and slide while being wrapped in more and more and more dirt until you die and you need to begin the level from the start. The game as a whole should be viewed as being in realistic human scale so all parts of the body will be as seen in the normal anatomy. This will lead to the payers seeming almost small and dwarf like to the human eye in fact maybe even microscopic in the huge world of normal human size.

I have considered the time this may take to develop and bring to life as a well functioning game and to be totally honest if provided with a team of 4-5 this project can well be completed within 3-4 week.

This will happen by tasks being divided into the parts modeller who will have to sketch and then model a minimum of 6 complex and 6 simple body parts plus a level element for example the body that will be the terrain. Then there will be a Texturing and image editor which will texture all 3d models made by the modeler and bring them over to unity. This person will also have the duty of doing any extra editing requires in photo shop to contribute to the game building process.

Then there will be the level builder that will put all 3d components into place in the level and arrange it all to a plan devised by the whole team as to what the level should look like. This person will also have to put function elements in pace to make the 3d components work like they should. Then there is the coder that will make sure all the elements in the level work like they should and if they don’t figures out why not and how to fix it which will more than likely require searching the net and unity forums for answers.

This person will also be responsible for some 3d positioning and over view of the whole level build. Then there is the team leader how will have to oversee the whole process help in the building of all elements and extend on all parts of the level. This person will also be responsible for time management and keeping the whole team busy from start till end. This so all comes together well and that there is always something to do for every team member the whole way though the project. That is to say there should be no down time waiting on elements to be developed there should always be things to do for everyone and that’s the team leaders responsibility.

This concludes the outline of the limb wars game proposal I hope this works on a scale required for this project and has some interesting qualities that have not yet been over explored out there in our world and could make something a team would like on for this project.

The Doc version of this article is available for download at this link.

Padmin has arrived

2008-03-17T16:04:00.000-07:00

This is my finished character Padmin just about to start rendering an animation with the textures applied.

Image Research & Sketches

2008-03-05T00:54:00.000-08:00

Here is my own sketched angry bowling pin with its hover pads and bowling ball arm pits .Remember this pin is humongous and that way because just like man turned into halk when angry this pin was so sick of being hit and smashed over it got really angry and also really humongous.

2008-02-28T17:42:00.001-08:00

385 First Posting

2008-02-27T13:28:00.000-08:00

So here I am once again staring at my screen thinking hey hey a new blog.

But this time is DESn385 and I am thinking 3D character design sketching programming and level design.

Where to start well I think i need a concept for a groovy character, one that has identity and personality a charmer.

Id say yes, a charmer like you have never seen before non human and shape and size but oh so classy.

Well now that i have some ideas its sketch time to come up with some looks ideas ill post my rough hand sketches soon.

ill be back.................