Game design concepts

I am currently working on designs for the start of a game idea I hav come up with. The aim is to create a realistic looking, believable futuristic setting. I am concentrating on one building for now, the home of the main character, and on the designs of individual bits which give the feeling of a futuristic setting. This includes showing advanced technologies suh as animated wallpaper and digital displays projected on many surfaces such as walls, mirrors and windows. I will work on transparency and animated textures in maya and the unreal engine to achieve these effects. Currenlythese advanced features are just conceptual and I have not yet implimented them into any software yet.

I will also look into the use of programming within unreal to see if it going to be an achievable goal to have the character interact with the differnent displays to effect different parts of the room. If this is not going to be easily achieved then I will simply code a GUI in C showing how the system would work, and havedifferent preview screens within the program showing how the displays would change the look of different rooms.

I would also like to experiment with scripting in unreal and the creation of objects which can be picked up and used to solve puzzles etc. Dialogue/Monologue would also be important in the sort of adventure game I wiso create/demonstrate. If this is not easily achieved in unreal then again I wll look at other methods of demonstraingtis in C or actionscript.

As I am going away for a week or so, I wl justbe working on more concepts and designs before creating anything more in maya and unreal. I will scan in some designs at a later date date as well as get some screenshots of what I have done already (I'm not on the right computer at the moment to get anything like that).

Unreal Level

Ahhh all projects for this year done and handed in, just an essay to hand in tomorrow which I'm printing out now. I'm pretty happy with the work I have done this year, and although I think I was a bit ambitious with the scale of my level, which I think ended up with it being more quantity than quality I still think it turned out quite well. Its not up to a proffessional standard but it has been very useful working on the unreal level, in learning how to use the game engine as well as the 3D software maya. I know I would be able to create the same level with much more ease if I were to do it again.

Over the summer I am going to try and achieve a few projects.

1. Another unreal level. A bit smaller than the one I have done for the term three project, but with more detail and more work with maya and photoshop in creating tiles. I might have it completely platform based and try and work with some of the physics to make a more advanced, less first person shooter-ish level.

2. Work on my website, put some new stuff on it, get my projects up on there, etc

3. Come up with a game concept/idea for a flash or unreal level, plan it out and if I have time start working on it. Something to put on blog.

4. Some work with maya creating general static meshes to use on projects.

5. A summer comic of some kind, maybe an interactive animated comic or something.

map of my almost finished level (made changes since) quite a bit of the level is underground so this picture is pretty pointless :P

House Model

This has taken a lot longer than I'm sure it should have. Oh well my first real attempt at UV Mapping. Really enjoyed it actually, just a bit frustrating. There are rooms in the house, and just a big open space upstairs.

So much more left to do. I still have the actual level to design (though I have done a lot of planning and a bit of the level planned out) and loads more stuff to make. As well as putting it into unreal, doing the lighting, etc.

And now blogger is being rubbish and not letting me upload pictures again

Static Meshes and Sky Box

A static mesh of a building created in maya based on drawn designs. I have had problems with importing static meshes into unrealED, with it complaining that there are 'not enough vertexes'. Much more simple objects such as primitive cubes and much more basic rooms will import though.

Creation of a sky box in unrealED 2004, following the tutorial here.

UnrealEd 2004

I've not updated in a while. Been doing a lot of level planning, mostly on paper, brain storming ideas etc. I will probably scan and upload some at some point. Anyway, I have just started doing some work in UnrealEd 2004 having got a copy off my course mate and been working on a very basic map, which I intend to gradually build up into my finished unreal level.

The editor seems a bit alien at first, especially due to differences in controlling and moving objects to 3D software such as Maya and 3DMax,and so the work I am doing at the moment is quite primitive. I have also been doing some work in Maya with creating static meshes for the editor.

Stuff I've been doing

I have redesigned my website, created a new banner, background, added links to other pages of mine, such as this blog, my flikr account, etc.


(http://www.guiblin.com/chris)



I have created the flickr account which I have been adding some pictures to, including 3D things created in maya and 2D stuff from Illistrator.



I have been doing a lot of sketching of random character designs and stuff, mostly quite abstract and cartoony. I have scanned a sketchbook in and created a PDF file of it. The upload for the whole PDF keeps timing out both on my server back at home and my file den account, blogger too is refusing to upload pictures any more to here, so I will try again later. (one page can be seen as the background image of my website).

I have also been doing some colouring in of images that I sketched and scanned in. (I uploaded these before i tried the sketches that wont upload)

Daily Routine by ~chrisguiblin on deviantART

Other stuff: been doing a little bit of playing around with Visual C#, learning some basic stuff. I haven't got anything really to show from that but just been learning to use different controls, create them at run time and other window related stuff.

Also got my hands on UnrealEd 3 and been doing some practicing of that in creating simple rooms and such. I have been watching videos on Game Trailers (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/136126.html) showing basic tutorials on using the engine. I have been writing notes on stuff I have learnt from the tutorials I have watched so far and this will be very usefull for this terms project.

What else....I have been working a bit on my flash game from my last term's project, 'Wizards'. I have started it from scratch and using online tutorials about tiles used in tile based platform games I have created a basic way of using arrays to map out the levels. To do this on a bigger scale I need to look into using xml files to load in the level information, but I have given this a break for now to work on learning to use UnrealEd.

Linux

One thing my games tutor Brad suggested was learning Linux and C++, both which are useful things to know and understand. Both of which I have actually wanted to know for a long time.

Strangely enough I had actually downloaded a version of Linux a week or so back, openSuSE 10.4. My Dad and I had previously experimented with this distribution of Linux back at versions 6.4 and then again at 8.0. We had always had problems with the operating system, never quite working properly. However, since I had been ill over the weekend and stuck up in my room and bored I decided to get Linux installed on my barely used laptop. After having some difficulties with swap partitions and the boot record (I had managed to mess the hard drive up some how) I managed to install the operating system and everything has worked perfectly from then. All the hardware compatibility issues I had found with previous versions were gone, and I am very happy with the system, and my laptop is at last getting use again.

While exploring the installed programs included with the OS and the other software on the disk I came across a program under development called qt designer. Bored, and having no idea what it was I opened it and found it was a widget maker. This uses C++ as the language for programming these widgets. I have worked my way through a couple of the basic tutorials, managing to get "hello world" and similar stupidly basic examples working. Hopefully as I continue with this I will learn C++ (which seems very similar to the actionscript I was using in my Flash Game project, so hopefully this won't be too hard).

So not only am I learning Linux and C++, I am learning C++ in Linux. I am also playing the Curse of Monkey Island which has nothing to do with anything, but its fun! (apparently using ScummVM this can be run on Linux, which if I was doing would actually tie in to this post but....I'm not.) :)

Also working on my website, started from scratch again. I wouldn't like to think about how many times I have done this. I guess its because I never really spend all that much time and effort making it look how I want, so whenever I come back to it I don't like it. Anyway I'm keeping it simple for now and will upload soon and hopefully put stuff on it. I keep writing about it in my posts so that when I read them back I will feel guilty and get on with it :P

The fact I have been posting so much lately shows how bored I am lately! The next thing I need to do for my course is get hold of Unreal Tornament 2003 (think thats the version I need) and a book on the game engine as we will be designing a level for it next term, which I am looking forward to but can imagine will be quite difficult so I should really get learning it now!

web pages I looked at and used to fix my hard drive issues in linux:

http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-to-repair-corrupt-mbr-and-boot.html
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialAdditionalHardDrive.html
http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/mounting.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-33858.html

Further Flash Programming

Since working on the flash game project I have regained mhy interest in programming and am learning further about actionscript and programming in general.

I am currently working on understanding object movements and the maths behind the movement of objects. Using the code from a reply to a message in a forum (http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2297490) I have created a simple movement of a block which moves where you click the mouse.

The object does not stop when it reaches where the player clicked, however. Although I will experiment into how to make it stop when it does reach the location, I also think the block continuing to move would make a good little game if it were to bounce on the walls or to loop back round the other side, or give game over if you go off the side (probably the easiest method for now). By adding objects to collect and avoid this could be a nice quick little game.

Link: http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/11/6/1567526/2.swf

Term 2 Game Project - Completion

I have finished my game project for the second term. I am pleased with the outcome, though I got very stressed towards the end of the game and am very glad the project is over. I will, however, make slight ajustments to the game and then uplaod it to the internet.

As my games lecturer Brad said, this game will be useful in a games or programming job interview, being able to show original idea creation and to follow through with the actual creation of the game.

I am very pleased to have this game created and under my belt, feeling it will be a useful part of my portfolio.

Saying that, I really need to get on with creating a website to show all my stuff including games, animations, computer created graphics, sketches etc.

Mind reading

There seems to be quite a l0t of stuff I've been reading in the news and online lately about developments in science which allow thoughts to be read by computers to perform actions. I find this sort of thing facisnating and I think goes perfectly hand in hand with gaming and interactivy which are things I am very interested in. Here are some videos:

Voiceless phone call:


Controlling a rat with a laptop (bit weird but very interesting):


Second life being controlled with mind control:


Obviously very useful for people with paralysis etc, but also would be great for the entertainment industry. Hopefully in upcoming years the use for this will be applied to games, allowing a step up from the Wii's simulated interactivity to actually moving a character by thinking about walking, as though you are actually in the game.

Actionscript 3.0 Smooth character movement

Smooth Character Movement
In actionscript 3.0 when you program an object to move following a keypress, the object moves once then pauses before continue the moment. This is the way I have achieved smooth movement, not certain its the best or easiest way but anyway heres what I did:

Using the example of moving left

Under your 'keydown' function for the left key, type mLeft = true;
Then under your 'enterFrame' function, have an if statement saying:

if (moveLeft) {
myCharacter.x = myCharacter.x - 10;
}

Then, under your 'keyup' function for the left key, type mLeft = false;

You will need to define the following variables for the different keys:

var moveLeft:Boolean = false;
var moveRight:Boolean = false;
var moveUp:Boolean = false;
var moveDown:Boolean = false;

(the last two if you are moving the character up and down as well as left and right)

All the code:

//Defining the variables
var moveLeft:Boolean = false;
var moveRight:Boolean = false;
var moveUp:Boolean = false;
var mDown:Boolean = false;

//Adding Event listeners
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, reportKeyUp);
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, reportKeyDown);
stage.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, EnterFrame);

//KeyDown function
function reportKeyDown(event:KeyboardEvent):void {
if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.LEFT) {
moveLeft = true;
}
if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.RIGHT) {
moveRight = true;
}
if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.UP) {
moveUP = true;
}
if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.DOWN) {
moveDOWN= true;
}
}

//Key Up Function
function reportKeyDown(event:KeyboardEvent):void {
if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.LEFT) {
moveLeft = false;
}
if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.RIGHT) {
moveRight = false;
}
if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.UP) {
moveUP = false;
}
if (event.keyCode == Keyboard.UP) {
moveDOWN = false;
}
}

//Enter Frame Function (this happens over and over repeatedly)
function EnterFrame(event:Event):void {
if (moveLeft){
myCharacter.x -= 10;
}
if (moveRight){
myCharacter.x +=10;
}
if (moveUp){
myCharacter.y -=10;
}
if (moveDown){
myCharacter.y +=10;
}

}
}

I *think* that this should work, if it doesn't I apologise and please comment and tell me what the error says or what is happening.

Bibliography

Just pasting a link here to remember for my bibliography for my game project.

http://blogs.adobe.com/pdehaan/2006/07/using_the_timer_class_in_actio.html

will have to search back through some other sites I have used for when I write out my bibliography which is something I need to do along with all the other paper work I need to do for the project along with other stuff I need to do this week.

Today's plans:
Get game over/score/lives/timer etc working
Get phidgets working

That should be enough since I can see phidgets being a pain. If still more time I may do some websitey stuff which I really need to get doing.

3D Modelling

I guess the previous post was a bit pointless. It was really just a reference for me to look back through, im not suggesting you watch through them unless your bored and have some time to spare looking through clips of people playing video games. Anyway I feel as though its time for an animation blog. Although I havn't done any animation as such in a while apart from a quick background movement for my flash game, I have created a few quick 3D models for birthday cards for my mum and my brother in law whose birthdays it was over the weekend. So here are the things I made.

As I said these were quick rushed jobs and so are not perfect, although I am quite pleased with these pictures, especially the guitar.

Games Research

I have been looking a lot at both platform games and puzzle games to help me with inspiration for my own game's development. Here are a few videos I have looked at (mainly classic 8/16 bit games since this was when comercial 2D platform games were at their height).












Not a platform game or puzzle game but wizard themed and I loved this game (And the music)




Jazz Jackrabbit


Sonic The Hedgehog (Master System)



Sonic CD


Chuck Rock 2


Sonic 3 (Lmao at person giving stupid commentary)


Gradius (shoot em up game, but looks great)


Again


Castlevania Dracula X PSP


Castlevania GBA


Dynamite Headdy Final Boss


Another boss from Dynamite Headdy (a really weird one)


Gunstar Heroes



Manic Miner - Makes me feel good about the graphics in my game


Wardner


Quack Shot - game i loved as a kid


A range of puzzle games being reviewed


Hexaxis - A great looking (unreleased?) puzzle game


Advance Theory - unreleased outside japan puzzle game


Super Puzzle Fighter - only played this once but loved it


King of Fighters - looks cool, kind of like super puzzle fighter


Puyo Puyo (someone getting a 19 combo) - very addictive game, similar to Super Puzzle Fighter


Later version of Puyo Puyo on the PSP showing the changinge in graphics and behaviour



I feel I should leave it here...

Flash Game (Again) (ARGHH)

Grrr this is really making me go insane now, but at least its increasing the amount of blogs I am posting.

It seems that when ever I get one thing working, the next problem I face seems to cause something previous to stop working or something and so I have decided to go back to basics and started with a simple hit test between blocks. I was having problems with walls stopping the character from moving so I created a new flash document which ONLY did this.

Flash Game v0.02

This may seem stupidly basic but it has taken me so long, I was really struggling with the hitTest for multiple blocks but it seems to be working! Now I've got to make it so blocks can be walked on as well making the bottom character move simeltaniously (which I had problems with, hence it falling off the stage as soon as the game begins.

2D 05-02-08 7.swf
Free file hosting from File Den

versions, changes and problems

0.001 - detect keypress, trace output
0.01 - map left and right arrow keys to move the character
0.012 - map space bar to jump
0.2 - Wall and floor collision

I didn't really come across anything much until the wall and floor collision. I found the chanracter was walking through the walls before the hitTest was able to work. After a lot of changing of code I decided to start the code for the left and right movement from scratch and managed to get it working pretty well, as far as I can tell anyway, by simply giving a margin to the x value in the hit test. (see the file above to view).

I am currently struggling getting the bottom character to behave the same as the top, although the code is pretty much identicle so I'm not quite sure whats wrong there yet.

Term 2 Game Project

I have only just properly started on the actual coding of my game since my computer has been playing up. I spent the time planning the game on paper and designing the levels and interactivity. Once I got my computer working my internet wasn't working so I then couldn't get online to find help and code examples so I quickly got to a dead end.

At uni I was able to look at different files on the VLP and bits I had worked on in different projects which helped me over come the problem I was having with making my character jump. My internet is now back up so production of my game should be quite faster than before. Below is a plan of the first part of the game which gives an idea of how it will work.

The animation stops abruptly because its unfinished but I thought I would put it on here as it shows the general concept of the game. If its not obvious from the animation, the controls move both the top and bottom character (or block in the case of this example) and you must use stratergy to get through the game, finding ways to move the characters independently.
level plan.swf

Review week, projects, animation, etc

From trying to access my blog from computers at uni I have realised it doesn't show up my blog posts on older versions of Internet Explorer. But since you won't be able to read this if it doesn't work theres little point me writing it, but yeah.

REVIEW WEEK
Quite a few things I want to put on my blog right now. Firstly, the review week a couple of weeks back. Generally it went ok I think. I didn't have much to show, not having have updated my blog over the christmas holidays and so not having known about the review before hand so had nothing prepared. I did however, have the platform flash game I had created for Interactive Design last year, which I had not shown to any lecturers or anyone so this was something new to show. The feedback I got was that I needed to keep up to date with my blog and catch up and keep up with SPP2 work in order to be prepared for this year's essay at the end of the year.

CARD GAME (Last term's project)
I was pretty sure I had written a blog post on the development of my card game and uploaded images of the cards etc, but during the review week when I brought up my blog I realised this didn't exist, whether I had not done it at all or it didn't post properly (I was having some problem posting a while back) i'm not sure. Anyway I was quite pleased with my card game, mainly the design and the use of a different way of playing playing cards.

ANIMATION

A rigged up man moving his leg

My character Gibbo based on an 2D Adobe Illustrator saved PNG file. A very basic character design.


Moving the leg after rigging up


Moving the arm, caused a problem deforming the head.

Interactive Design

Choose a site and review and write down the interactive elements. Think about how you would create an interactive device to be used in a room for launch of the site. Make a paper protype.

GeoTerra

http://www.geoterra.ecomagination.com/indexFlash.html

For an interactive device for the launch of the site, my idea would be three big screens displaying the island picture from the website with the excimation marks on the screen. The screens would be touch sensitive and the information which appears on the site when the mouse points at it would appear in the place of the exclamation marks when people press it. Other information would scroll at the top.

Comcastic

Instead of man moving about from keyboard presses, man moves based on movements sensed by cameras, and looks differently based on light levels in the room. Navigate a menu by moving your arms to point at different parts of the screen. Character's mouth moves from speech based on sound inputs from a small microphone.

The different parts of the site such as the different games etc, can then be controlled through hand movements.

Animation Rigging

Admitedly I am being terrible at doing my blog.  I have done quite a bit of animation in maya and even taken quite a few screen shots but just not got round to uploading them on here, and the one time i tried it just wouldn't work.  Anyway here are some screenshots of some of the stuff I've been doing in Maya.

1. Very basic rigging of a cylinder shape to show basic movement:


Basic Cylinder shape


Adding the skeleton


Adding the IK (Inverse Kinetic) joint


Using smooth bind to bind the joints to the cylinder object


Moving the IK Joint to modify the shape of the cylinder



2. Human Modelling




In this second modelling example, I have modelled a human's upper body and then added the joints as before, however, when moving the arm, the whole body becomes destorted in this example and so I left this and started from scratch.