Just a quick update ahead of tonight's likely more lengthy one. I just today got Sketchfab after remembering that it existed, so for anyone interested you can now view my models in all their low poly glory. Since the only model I've made so far for this project is the sniper rifle, I guess that's all you're getting. More will come soon though!
Tonight I should have an update on the Time Warp project. The collaboration project has ground to a halt since Dan gave up on his script and now I'm going to have to do it instead. Yay. Otherwise, we'll have to wait weeks for it to be done, since Dan has Uni stuff and all that. How dare he get an education. How inconsiderate.
Friday 30 September 2016
Wednesday 28 September 2016
More Time Warp Progress!
Since I've been waiting for Dan to finally finish that script, I've been working more on Time Warp then our collaboration project, hence the lack of updates on it since those initial two posts. That said, apparently John has tried to do some animations for the placeholders, which won't be used in the final game because they're rigged for the placeholders so...why do it? Whatever, it's practice I guess, I'll put a GIF of it if it's funny or it looks weird, from listening to him doing it earlier it sounds a lot like he's going to screw up my AI with it so that's fun, tip top collaboration. Of course, I let him get on with it and didn't correct him, he's gotta learn somehow! I can fix it anyway, so it's better to let him learn about what to do and not to do then be told everything. I learnt from making all the wrong mistakes, and it's made me become the developer I am today. You don't want to see my first game. Trust me. You don't.
Anyway, I made some fine tweaks to the sniper's materials and things, but I'll be writing this as though I'm making and changing it while writing this, which nobody would ever do because that would be daft. Either way, there's a work in progress GIF of the sniper rifle, and then probably a couple of the 'finished' (subject to change) product. One of the first things I did upon opening the project in Unity 5.5 was fiddle with the new particle systems, and ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh they're nice. Real nice. You can have lights and trails, making it the perfect candidate for projectile weapons when used right. And as my central mechanic (as of now unannounced, I'm keeping it a surprise, but lets just say that my description of the character you'd be playing as in my first post about this was all true fact to the game) relies on projectiles being moving objects and not any ray-cast line rendering fancy shmancy more optimised stuff, it's the best option I can get. Also makes for short code, too! have a look at a work in progress firing of the sniper, as it stands. no lighting is set up yet, so it just looks silver and stuff, but that'll change very soon.
The animations on it aren't bad, it's lacking a walking animation but I really don't mind that; I can always add it in later should I feel like it. I like the other animations, too; they seem simplistic enough to fit in with the game's art style and generally seem to fit the whole human-alien design I was going for with the weapon itself. The scope floats a little independently of the sniper's body, and has a slight delay when recoiling from being shot, further giving the impression of not actually being attached to the rifle but instead floating with it. The idle animation has a similar latency between rifle movement and the scope catching up, which I quite like as it reinforces this idea that the scope isn't actually attached. Also, that core piece in the middle has become a firing chamber, and spins when a round is fired. It also recoils back into it's original location, as though it's loading another round of whatever supersonic space energy this target-vanquisher exudes. Also, ignore the weird stained glass window to the right. I needed it there. For science.
Overall, the lighting and tone of this has been really fun to do because it's something quiet different to anything I've done before. I've always liked the colouration and styling on games like Heavy Bullets, using pink and cyan hues, but I've never quite liked their over saturation on the colours, so for the styling on Time Warp I'll be using a largely pastel pallet, with pink hues being used for the upper skybox and a dark-ish cyan for the bottom. I'm super glad for the newer procedural generated skyboxes now more then ever, it allows for such freedom to get things right it's unbelievable, props to whatever employees slaved over that for months on end and will receive no recognition whatsoever.
Notice how It uses more of a neon approach to the colours? Yeah, I'm trying to avoid that. I don't feel like it blends well (obviously it isn't meant to physically blend, but I mean it doesn't fit together right) and that it separates certain objects from the environment, not in a 'I want this to stand out to the player!' sort of way, but more a 'This is a complete disconnect from the world I have created around the player, making a break in the player's immersion!'. I want to point out that I'm not having a go at Heavy Bullets, and it's a fantastic game, just that I feel like for my game, this exact style wouldn't work. And where something doesn't work, we make it work.
Enter my non-Baked Object-Lit Lighting Obscurance Creative Kit System. All of that is meaningless, I just wanted it to abbreviate to a funny word. But it isn't necessarily untrue. It renders the lighting in realtime so that I can change it on the fly, should I need to, which gives me more creative freedom for designing missions and levels. Also, it does use object-based ambient obscurance, or something to a similar effect, so that isn't wrong either. And it's creative. Unfortunately, it isn't a kit or a system in the technical sense, so the B.O.L.L.O.C.K.S. methodology won't fly for your Computing assignments at Uni. Sorry John. Anyway, here's my properly lit scene, with my newly improved sniper rifle in it!
Ok, so things are looking a lot better, and there's some things to note about this right away when compared to the original. Firstly is the cross heir. I'll be honest and say that I lied when I said earlier about not using ray-casting, I did use it a little bit here. I'm ray-casting out the middle of the screen, and rotating the particle effect to make sure it's always looking at whatever the cross heir is pointing at. It's using Unity's LookAt, which should make double sure that shots are always on target, unless the player can't aim, in which case shame on the player. Also chrome won't let me type ray cast as all one word without it throwing a fuss, so for the record I know it's not supposed to be two words, but apparently chrome, made by coders, doesn't.
Second thing to note about this is the firing chamber is now cyan. It fits better with the scene's lighting, and just looks damn nice. It gives the rifle some identifiable without having to fire it and see it's projectile colour. Remember that it has to be identifiable, it'll come up later in the post-blog post test. Also, the projectile has changed colour to the rifle's identifiable colour, in this case cyan. Additionally, the scope now has a slight lightening effect striking between it and the rifle's little scope holding panel thingy on top. I think it makes it look more like there is a force holding the two together, and occasionally science gets a little too rowdy so some gravity-based barrier keeps the energy holding it up in check and it gives a visible flash of energy in response.
I suppose that long exposure would lead to some nasty results from the gravity barrier holding the energy inside that small gap, which would for sure lead to some kind of cataclysmic event happening in the palm of your hands, or more likely right against your face. But, if you're an assassin and you're near your target, it'll probably get them too, so..mission accomplished, I guess! That's probably not even real science or in any formation of the universe possible given the laws of physics, but it does give a nice little effect so that'll do for now. (What? all my scientific knowledge comes from ShoddyCast videos? how dare you!)
I get that most of these changes are aesthetic, and I realise that aesthetics don't make a game fun, but it's important to establish an art style from the very beginning of development, because it WILL shape how everything in the game is designed. all your models, level design, animation, lighting and how your gameplay is implemented into each of those will be dictated by what the art style is. So getting it down now is a good shout for the future of it's development to be as smooth as I can make it. Also the GIFs are a little slower in frame rate then the game is, so for the record sparks come out when shots impact.
And now onto the post log post test! What was it i said was important to remember for later? Was it:
A) Making the rifle's animations differerent so that it looks cooler?
B) Making the rifle identifiable through colour?
C) John smells?
The answer is, of course, B. But you'll get points for writing C too. the rifle needs to be identifiable from it's physical appearance now. Why? because a good game is nothing without progression. And while I plan to have a healthy dose of story woven deep within the crevices of levels, missions and other little hiding places, I'm talking about the player's progression through the equipment available to them. At the start of missions, you will start out with one rifle, and something else, as of now unannounced. But as you progress through the game, different options will become available to use, offering different play styles and completely new ways to approach encounters. Well, as new as you can get when you're still shooting people. These new variants each have their own name, with the original taking on the name of the Vanquish Sniper Rifle. Here's a little breakdown of each of them.
>>WARNING!<< Some people may not want the upgrades and other stuff spoiling for them if you intend to actually play the game, so if you're bothered, then don't look below for obvious reasons. >>WARNING!<<
I believe you're already somewhat acquainted with this one, but in case you've not quite got it from other GIFs and such, here's you're breakdown. The Vanquish. It's simple. Basic. Ordinary. But that's not a bad thing, not with the other guns in our line up. It fires a straight projectile moving at 50 meters a second which harms whatever target it hits, and most likely gives the target's family some serious funeral organisation to be doing. It's main advantage is you can't shoot yourself with it, which is bad because you don't have a family to arrange your funeral. It's distinct colour is cyan, and all of it's colourable stuff is themed that way.
This is a new addition to the family, the Ricochet. It's primarily the same concept as it's Vanquish brethren, but it's projectiles don't just hit the target, they bounce off and continue to hit things until it's lifespan expires. This is roughly 1 second, so use it wisely. It has a number of advantages, from shooting enemies that are hiding behind cover to bouncing off walls to hit multiple targets, but of course we all want to do it for the style points, mainly. Because hitting a long range sniper bouncing collateral double kill just feels good. but it does have a downside. Mainly, the user is it's downside. Firing bouncing projectiles at all the walls in the rooms is all fun and games until you melt your own face off with it because it bounced into you. Use it with caution. It's colouring is a pinky-purple, and all of its stuff is similarly coloured.
Oh boy. This baby. this is the real deal. I named it the Exterminator for a reason, and that reason is that generally death is coming for anyone who fires this in a small room. With projectiles similar to the Ricochet, it fires a three round burst of bouncing beans of death. they fire in a small diagonal line, usually leading them to having reasonably varied projectile paths. Great for clearing out guys or if you just want a better chance to hit, but not ideal if you want to live for long and have an itchy trigger finger. Mainly because you won't have fingers for long. As the great rice manufacturer's Uncle Ben's Rice once said: with great power, comes great plasma death rays to the face. I might be remembering that wrong. It's colouration is green, and again all of it's doodads are also coloured green.
>>WARNING!<< The triggering stuff is over boys, you're good to read again. >>WARNING!<<
I'm actually quite happy with not only how they look and work, but the variety between them. when using them, they all have their own advantages and disadvantages which make each of them viable for a different play style, and allow for different playthroughs of the game to have different end results and levels of difficulty. The projectiles themselves work pretty well and the particle system is holding up nicely, overall I'm pretty damn happy with how it's turned out! Things are starting to take shape and I love how it's currently looking!
For the next post, we'll possibly be looking at a new weapon in the player's arsenal. If I can get some of the issues with it worked out, then we should be good to have that post tomorrow, but that depends on weather I can get some of the ancient rivers imagination flowing again. If not then I might start working on the AI, as that's a biggie that needs doing sooner rather then later so that I can fine tune it for gameplay. I realise that I still haven't mentioned anything about the main mechanic, or how far I've come along with development of it, but just be sure that it's coming.
I don't really want to show this one until it's in a reasonable state, you know, since the whole game hinges on it. Plus the AI plays a very VERY important factor in it, so that'll be more likely to come first. Then it's on to level design! I have some ideas and sketches, along with some pretty sweet ideas in my head, but their application and implementation is undoubtedly harder then their inception. Anyway, the things to take away from this are: Lighting! Guns! Bollocks! Keep your eyes open for more development news as it comes. I'll probably do a small update on John's animation when I can, it'll befunny interesting to see what he comes out with.
Anyway, I made some fine tweaks to the sniper's materials and things, but I'll be writing this as though I'm making and changing it while writing this, which nobody would ever do because that would be daft. Either way, there's a work in progress GIF of the sniper rifle, and then probably a couple of the 'finished' (subject to change) product. One of the first things I did upon opening the project in Unity 5.5 was fiddle with the new particle systems, and ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh they're nice. Real nice. You can have lights and trails, making it the perfect candidate for projectile weapons when used right. And as my central mechanic (as of now unannounced, I'm keeping it a surprise, but lets just say that my description of the character you'd be playing as in my first post about this was all true fact to the game) relies on projectiles being moving objects and not any ray-cast line rendering fancy shmancy more optimised stuff, it's the best option I can get. Also makes for short code, too! have a look at a work in progress firing of the sniper, as it stands. no lighting is set up yet, so it just looks silver and stuff, but that'll change very soon.
The animations on it aren't bad, it's lacking a walking animation but I really don't mind that; I can always add it in later should I feel like it. I like the other animations, too; they seem simplistic enough to fit in with the game's art style and generally seem to fit the whole human-alien design I was going for with the weapon itself. The scope floats a little independently of the sniper's body, and has a slight delay when recoiling from being shot, further giving the impression of not actually being attached to the rifle but instead floating with it. The idle animation has a similar latency between rifle movement and the scope catching up, which I quite like as it reinforces this idea that the scope isn't actually attached. Also, that core piece in the middle has become a firing chamber, and spins when a round is fired. It also recoils back into it's original location, as though it's loading another round of whatever supersonic space energy this target-vanquisher exudes. Also, ignore the weird stained glass window to the right. I needed it there. For science.
Overall, the lighting and tone of this has been really fun to do because it's something quiet different to anything I've done before. I've always liked the colouration and styling on games like Heavy Bullets, using pink and cyan hues, but I've never quite liked their over saturation on the colours, so for the styling on Time Warp I'll be using a largely pastel pallet, with pink hues being used for the upper skybox and a dark-ish cyan for the bottom. I'm super glad for the newer procedural generated skyboxes now more then ever, it allows for such freedom to get things right it's unbelievable, props to whatever employees slaved over that for months on end and will receive no recognition whatsoever.
Heavy Bullets screenshot, available on Steam
Notice how It uses more of a neon approach to the colours? Yeah, I'm trying to avoid that. I don't feel like it blends well (obviously it isn't meant to physically blend, but I mean it doesn't fit together right) and that it separates certain objects from the environment, not in a 'I want this to stand out to the player!' sort of way, but more a 'This is a complete disconnect from the world I have created around the player, making a break in the player's immersion!'. I want to point out that I'm not having a go at Heavy Bullets, and it's a fantastic game, just that I feel like for my game, this exact style wouldn't work. And where something doesn't work, we make it work.
Enter my non-Baked Object-Lit Lighting Obscurance Creative Kit System. All of that is meaningless, I just wanted it to abbreviate to a funny word. But it isn't necessarily untrue. It renders the lighting in realtime so that I can change it on the fly, should I need to, which gives me more creative freedom for designing missions and levels. Also, it does use object-based ambient obscurance, or something to a similar effect, so that isn't wrong either. And it's creative. Unfortunately, it isn't a kit or a system in the technical sense, so the B.O.L.L.O.C.K.S. methodology won't fly for your Computing assignments at Uni. Sorry John. Anyway, here's my properly lit scene, with my newly improved sniper rifle in it!
Ok, so things are looking a lot better, and there's some things to note about this right away when compared to the original. Firstly is the cross heir. I'll be honest and say that I lied when I said earlier about not using ray-casting, I did use it a little bit here. I'm ray-casting out the middle of the screen, and rotating the particle effect to make sure it's always looking at whatever the cross heir is pointing at. It's using Unity's LookAt, which should make double sure that shots are always on target, unless the player can't aim, in which case shame on the player. Also chrome won't let me type ray cast as all one word without it throwing a fuss, so for the record I know it's not supposed to be two words, but apparently chrome, made by coders, doesn't.
Second thing to note about this is the firing chamber is now cyan. It fits better with the scene's lighting, and just looks damn nice. It gives the rifle some identifiable without having to fire it and see it's projectile colour. Remember that it has to be identifiable, it'll come up later in the post-blog post test. Also, the projectile has changed colour to the rifle's identifiable colour, in this case cyan. Additionally, the scope now has a slight lightening effect striking between it and the rifle's little scope holding panel thingy on top. I think it makes it look more like there is a force holding the two together, and occasionally science gets a little too rowdy so some gravity-based barrier keeps the energy holding it up in check and it gives a visible flash of energy in response.
I suppose that long exposure would lead to some nasty results from the gravity barrier holding the energy inside that small gap, which would for sure lead to some kind of cataclysmic event happening in the palm of your hands, or more likely right against your face. But, if you're an assassin and you're near your target, it'll probably get them too, so..mission accomplished, I guess! That's probably not even real science or in any formation of the universe possible given the laws of physics, but it does give a nice little effect so that'll do for now. (What? all my scientific knowledge comes from ShoddyCast videos? how dare you!)
I get that most of these changes are aesthetic, and I realise that aesthetics don't make a game fun, but it's important to establish an art style from the very beginning of development, because it WILL shape how everything in the game is designed. all your models, level design, animation, lighting and how your gameplay is implemented into each of those will be dictated by what the art style is. So getting it down now is a good shout for the future of it's development to be as smooth as I can make it. Also the GIFs are a little slower in frame rate then the game is, so for the record sparks come out when shots impact.
And now onto the post log post test! What was it i said was important to remember for later? Was it:
A) Making the rifle's animations differerent so that it looks cooler?
B) Making the rifle identifiable through colour?
C) John smells?
The answer is, of course, B. But you'll get points for writing C too. the rifle needs to be identifiable from it's physical appearance now. Why? because a good game is nothing without progression. And while I plan to have a healthy dose of story woven deep within the crevices of levels, missions and other little hiding places, I'm talking about the player's progression through the equipment available to them. At the start of missions, you will start out with one rifle, and something else, as of now unannounced. But as you progress through the game, different options will become available to use, offering different play styles and completely new ways to approach encounters. Well, as new as you can get when you're still shooting people. These new variants each have their own name, with the original taking on the name of the Vanquish Sniper Rifle. Here's a little breakdown of each of them.
>>WARNING!<< Some people may not want the upgrades and other stuff spoiling for them if you intend to actually play the game, so if you're bothered, then don't look below for obvious reasons. >>WARNING!<<
I believe you're already somewhat acquainted with this one, but in case you've not quite got it from other GIFs and such, here's you're breakdown. The Vanquish. It's simple. Basic. Ordinary. But that's not a bad thing, not with the other guns in our line up. It fires a straight projectile moving at 50 meters a second which harms whatever target it hits, and most likely gives the target's family some serious funeral organisation to be doing. It's main advantage is you can't shoot yourself with it, which is bad because you don't have a family to arrange your funeral. It's distinct colour is cyan, and all of it's colourable stuff is themed that way.
This is a new addition to the family, the Ricochet. It's primarily the same concept as it's Vanquish brethren, but it's projectiles don't just hit the target, they bounce off and continue to hit things until it's lifespan expires. This is roughly 1 second, so use it wisely. It has a number of advantages, from shooting enemies that are hiding behind cover to bouncing off walls to hit multiple targets, but of course we all want to do it for the style points, mainly. Because hitting a long range sniper bouncing collateral double kill just feels good. but it does have a downside. Mainly, the user is it's downside. Firing bouncing projectiles at all the walls in the rooms is all fun and games until you melt your own face off with it because it bounced into you. Use it with caution. It's colouring is a pinky-purple, and all of its stuff is similarly coloured.
Oh boy. This baby. this is the real deal. I named it the Exterminator for a reason, and that reason is that generally death is coming for anyone who fires this in a small room. With projectiles similar to the Ricochet, it fires a three round burst of bouncing beans of death. they fire in a small diagonal line, usually leading them to having reasonably varied projectile paths. Great for clearing out guys or if you just want a better chance to hit, but not ideal if you want to live for long and have an itchy trigger finger. Mainly because you won't have fingers for long. As the great rice manufacturer's Uncle Ben's Rice once said: with great power, comes great plasma death rays to the face. I might be remembering that wrong. It's colouration is green, and again all of it's doodads are also coloured green.
>>WARNING!<< The triggering stuff is over boys, you're good to read again. >>WARNING!<<
I'm actually quite happy with not only how they look and work, but the variety between them. when using them, they all have their own advantages and disadvantages which make each of them viable for a different play style, and allow for different playthroughs of the game to have different end results and levels of difficulty. The projectiles themselves work pretty well and the particle system is holding up nicely, overall I'm pretty damn happy with how it's turned out! Things are starting to take shape and I love how it's currently looking!
For the next post, we'll possibly be looking at a new weapon in the player's arsenal. If I can get some of the issues with it worked out, then we should be good to have that post tomorrow, but that depends on weather I can get some of the ancient rivers imagination flowing again. If not then I might start working on the AI, as that's a biggie that needs doing sooner rather then later so that I can fine tune it for gameplay. I realise that I still haven't mentioned anything about the main mechanic, or how far I've come along with development of it, but just be sure that it's coming.
I don't really want to show this one until it's in a reasonable state, you know, since the whole game hinges on it. Plus the AI plays a very VERY important factor in it, so that'll be more likely to come first. Then it's on to level design! I have some ideas and sketches, along with some pretty sweet ideas in my head, but their application and implementation is undoubtedly harder then their inception. Anyway, the things to take away from this are: Lighting! Guns! Bollocks! Keep your eyes open for more development news as it comes. I'll probably do a small update on John's animation when I can, it'll be
Monday 26 September 2016
A Quick Update on Time Warp
Only a really small post this time, because I just imported the sniper model into Unity. You remember how I said it was big? That might have translated to physical size as well, and it appears I got a little lost in blender's scale. We've overdone it this time, people. See that small green thing to the right? That's the player, and the rifle is approximately 64 meters long. If you thought that 12 feet is big, how about 1 AND A HALF THE SIZE OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY (46m). That's 17 and a half Fiats. I'm going to take a guess that it will have to be scaled down a bit.
Once I get some gameplay up, they'll be better, longer posts. But for now, you'll have to enjoy that sexy reflective sniper.
Once I get some gameplay up, they'll be better, longer posts. But for now, you'll have to enjoy that sexy reflective sniper.
My Personal Project!
Ok, so, I know that we're doing the collaborative project and everything but let me tell you, I cannot stay focused on one project for long. Often, I loose focus for it, come up with a new idea and think "hey, that's cool, let's do that instead!" But this time, I'm not doing that. Even if it seems like I am. Promise. I'm hoping to avoid that by having a personal project of a completely different style and genre, so that if I get a bit out of focus with our joint project, I can come to this one for some away time, and if i get tired of this one, then back to the collaboration. So, I've had this idea for a while and I've just being sitting on it because I haven't really known where to go with it. I'm not revealing it's central mechanic yet, but I will soon when I can demonstrate it and have something to show for my work.
It all started when I was sorting out the importing of the models for our collaboration project. When importing the knight model and setting up the lighting, I noticed that I had accidentally fallen in love with the low-poly untextured style. Well, that's not true, I've played games with that style before and loved them plenty (Note: Grow Home) but this was the first time that I'd fell in love with my variation on that style. And by that, I mean that I felt that my works looked cool and not ameture for once. Looking at what I'd made, I thought about what I could do with this style, and then it dawned on me. This was the missing piece of my idea, the visual styling that would allow the mechanics to fit perfectly alongside it, keeping the game optimised and looking beautiful at the same time.
Basic premise: you play as a badass in the truest sense; a deadly assassin, enhanced with extraordinary abilities allowing him to kill with ruthless efficiency. Using a otherworldly sniper rifle, she/he is able to eliminate roomfuls of enemies in under a second, moving too quickly for even the most specially trained of bodyguards to be able to comprehend. Dodging bullets at 2,500mph is trivial, for the most part. But, some of these things just don't look as nice in Unity as I'd like them to, so I've got an upgrade.
Unity 5.5.0b4! Numbers! This is the beta version of the latest unity update: Unity 5.5, which comes packed with new features apparently. All I see that's new in the patch notes is the new trail renderers, particle effect changes and splash screens. but, that doesn't matter, because we'll be using pretty much all of those new features! specifically the newer particle effects, but the splash screens are nice too. I'll slap that giant ass 8-bit logo on there and it'll look nicer on Steam. Oh, I forgot to mention, this will hopefully be on Steam Greenlight eventually, but don't get your hopes up! It'll get drowned out by all the mobile ports and RPG-Maker games. I'm passing the time during the install playing a half an hour long Audiosurf ride. Yay for film scores. Today's ride is Batman V Superman, cause the film sucked ass but the soundtrack was bomb.
Additionally, I began some designs on the sniper rifle. I'm aiming (heh) for a more human-alien look for this, so I want it to be quite square and boxy while still having unfamiliar shapes and hovering bits. For the most part, my initial concept sketches are a little clunkier then I'd like, and it looks more like an assault rifle of some kind. But, with the magic of blender modelling, this shouldn't be an issue. Also, I'm aware that most concept artists use graphics tablets to draw their concept art, and have a full colour rendition from multiple angles, but I got a D in my art qualifications so I have an excuse. Mainly, it doesn't need to be so detailed due to the styling of the game, and the fact that concept art is generally to convey an idea to the development team, but I'm the development team AND the concept artist, so I know what I mean when my drawings look like asscheese.
The rifle and scope are designed separately partly because they're meant to be separate, but mostly because I ran out of space at the top of the page. The red arrows indicate where it'll be placed on the rifle. It'll hover over it, to give it a bit more of an alien look, and the centre small core-like piece will rotate, either with each shot or constantly, we'll see how it pans out.there will be about 2-3 materials on this whole thing, mainly metallic greys and silvers of varying reflective. I'm tempted to use reflection probes so that the rifle reflects the scene, but i think that's a little too much pushing the style. I'm already pushing the whole 'low poly' idea with the amount of detail on it, so we'll see how it pans out.
During modelling the rifle, Dan asked how things were going and I thought i'd take a screenshot to show him. I use Lightshot, which has a pen tool built in so I could draw in the rest of the rifle. But this prompted a problem. A big problem. a big big BIG problem. See those mall circle-ish shapes at the back? that's the handle, and the bulging down lump in front of it is the other hand hold. Notice how it's not even half way. The average arm span for people is 5 feet and 9 inches. After a bit of maths so inaccurate and guess-y it would make Pythagoras have a stroke, it's looking to be about 12 feet-ish. That's an entire Fiat 500's worth of sniper rifle. Hell yeah. Nothing inspires fear more then a gun the size of a small city hatchback.
So, here we have the finished sniper rifle. It's huge. And beautiful. And awesome. And huge. Did I mention it was awesome? I didn't scale it down, it'll be on the player's HUD anyway so scale won't really matter, just the third person model will look weird, but it's not multiplayer so that doesn't even matter! It looks alien, mysterious, futuristic and kick-ass. the scope floats, but may have a little bobbing animation while idle, and the centre core-piece is now part of the firing chamber. It'll probably spin up when it fires or something. I don't care, it just looks cool. If anyone wonders how it works, I'll claim space stuff. You may notice that the hand-holds aren't there, and there's no room for the trigger or anything. That's cause it's so god damn huge that to get it on the screen that part wouldn't be visible anyway, so it's only wasted performance. besides, it's alien, you could fire it by tickling it for all you know.
Anyway, that's all there is for now, so keep your eyes open for more things on this project and the collaboration one. I don't know how to separate the two verbally (or..wordily?) so we'll call this project Time Warp. Not like the song, though if I could get the rights I'd have that as the sound track. The name has relevance, but since I didn't unveil much on mechanics it doesn't make sense to readers. Oh well. You'll get it one day. Oh, and this blog is on Bloglovin now, as per my girlfriend Lois's recommendation. She's awesome so I'm sure the website is cool, as far as I know it'll keep you updated and give you notifications and such on my posts, so you'll never miss another flag physics milestone again.
It all started when I was sorting out the importing of the models for our collaboration project. When importing the knight model and setting up the lighting, I noticed that I had accidentally fallen in love with the low-poly untextured style. Well, that's not true, I've played games with that style before and loved them plenty (Note: Grow Home) but this was the first time that I'd fell in love with my variation on that style. And by that, I mean that I felt that my works looked cool and not ameture for once. Looking at what I'd made, I thought about what I could do with this style, and then it dawned on me. This was the missing piece of my idea, the visual styling that would allow the mechanics to fit perfectly alongside it, keeping the game optimised and looking beautiful at the same time.
Basic premise: you play as a badass in the truest sense; a deadly assassin, enhanced with extraordinary abilities allowing him to kill with ruthless efficiency. Using a otherworldly sniper rifle, she/he is able to eliminate roomfuls of enemies in under a second, moving too quickly for even the most specially trained of bodyguards to be able to comprehend. Dodging bullets at 2,500mph is trivial, for the most part. But, some of these things just don't look as nice in Unity as I'd like them to, so I've got an upgrade.
Unity 5.5.0b4! Numbers! This is the beta version of the latest unity update: Unity 5.5, which comes packed with new features apparently. All I see that's new in the patch notes is the new trail renderers, particle effect changes and splash screens. but, that doesn't matter, because we'll be using pretty much all of those new features! specifically the newer particle effects, but the splash screens are nice too. I'll slap that giant ass 8-bit logo on there and it'll look nicer on Steam. Oh, I forgot to mention, this will hopefully be on Steam Greenlight eventually, but don't get your hopes up! It'll get drowned out by all the mobile ports and RPG-Maker games. I'm passing the time during the install playing a half an hour long Audiosurf ride. Yay for film scores. Today's ride is Batman V Superman, cause the film sucked ass but the soundtrack was bomb.
Additionally, I began some designs on the sniper rifle. I'm aiming (heh) for a more human-alien look for this, so I want it to be quite square and boxy while still having unfamiliar shapes and hovering bits. For the most part, my initial concept sketches are a little clunkier then I'd like, and it looks more like an assault rifle of some kind. But, with the magic of blender modelling, this shouldn't be an issue. Also, I'm aware that most concept artists use graphics tablets to draw their concept art, and have a full colour rendition from multiple angles, but I got a D in my art qualifications so I have an excuse. Mainly, it doesn't need to be so detailed due to the styling of the game, and the fact that concept art is generally to convey an idea to the development team, but I'm the development team AND the concept artist, so I know what I mean when my drawings look like asscheese.
The rifle and scope are designed separately partly because they're meant to be separate, but mostly because I ran out of space at the top of the page. The red arrows indicate where it'll be placed on the rifle. It'll hover over it, to give it a bit more of an alien look, and the centre small core-like piece will rotate, either with each shot or constantly, we'll see how it pans out.there will be about 2-3 materials on this whole thing, mainly metallic greys and silvers of varying reflective. I'm tempted to use reflection probes so that the rifle reflects the scene, but i think that's a little too much pushing the style. I'm already pushing the whole 'low poly' idea with the amount of detail on it, so we'll see how it pans out.
During modelling the rifle, Dan asked how things were going and I thought i'd take a screenshot to show him. I use Lightshot, which has a pen tool built in so I could draw in the rest of the rifle. But this prompted a problem. A big problem. a big big BIG problem. See those mall circle-ish shapes at the back? that's the handle, and the bulging down lump in front of it is the other hand hold. Notice how it's not even half way. The average arm span for people is 5 feet and 9 inches. After a bit of maths so inaccurate and guess-y it would make Pythagoras have a stroke, it's looking to be about 12 feet-ish. That's an entire Fiat 500's worth of sniper rifle. Hell yeah. Nothing inspires fear more then a gun the size of a small city hatchback.
Image photo credit to Fiat
So, here we have the finished sniper rifle. It's huge. And beautiful. And awesome. And huge. Did I mention it was awesome? I didn't scale it down, it'll be on the player's HUD anyway so scale won't really matter, just the third person model will look weird, but it's not multiplayer so that doesn't even matter! It looks alien, mysterious, futuristic and kick-ass. the scope floats, but may have a little bobbing animation while idle, and the centre core-piece is now part of the firing chamber. It'll probably spin up when it fires or something. I don't care, it just looks cool. If anyone wonders how it works, I'll claim space stuff. You may notice that the hand-holds aren't there, and there's no room for the trigger or anything. That's cause it's so god damn huge that to get it on the screen that part wouldn't be visible anyway, so it's only wasted performance. besides, it's alien, you could fire it by tickling it for all you know.
Anyway, that's all there is for now, so keep your eyes open for more things on this project and the collaboration one. I don't know how to separate the two verbally (or..wordily?) so we'll call this project Time Warp. Not like the song, though if I could get the rights I'd have that as the sound track. The name has relevance, but since I didn't unveil much on mechanics it doesn't make sense to readers. Oh well. You'll get it one day. Oh, and this blog is on Bloglovin now, as per my girlfriend Lois's recommendation. She's awesome so I'm sure the website is cool, as far as I know it'll keep you updated and give you notifications and such on my posts, so you'll never miss another flag physics milestone again.
Sunday 25 September 2016
A Quick Catchup
So in my last post (probably posted a couple of hours before this one) I mentioned that more info was to come, so here is said info: I'm super glad I let Dan do the coding. Like, seriously glad. I've looked at his script a few times and I have no idea what's wrong with it, but as long as he doesn't break it that's fine. But being honest you probably couldn't give a rat's ass about Dan's scripting troubles because saying that we've done stuff isn't proof, and a picture is worth a thousand words! Side note: how many words is a GIF worth?
Unit placeholders have arrived! And they look low-poly and dumb! Actually, I'm quite fond of the low poly look, used properly and with the right lighting it can create some really stunning visuals, but that's not what these guys are for. They're to stand in for the proper models, which will come later when I have the slightest idea what the hell a Halburger is. You may have noticed by now that the knight-looking dude in the centre has no legs, and you may be wondering why that is, and I answer with legs are a ballache, and since these are only placeholders I have no need to ache my balls where my balls are not required to ache.
I actually really like him, I gave him a chesspiece-like base so it didn't look too weird and i quite like the effect it gives off, sort of similar to the small wooden pieces a General would have on his warboard or Risk. I've never played Risk but I imagine that's what it's like. Anyway, on the right is our stand-in for siege engines, the subject of the previously mentioned lecture on trebuchets and catapults from John. The abomination on the left is, in fact, not an Anteater, and is supposed to represent a horse, though it looks more like one from a distance, roughly of about 1000 miles. Also, the knight guy has a variety of different weapons and is modular, so we can re-use his placeholder for a bunch of different units cause I'm lazy.
Unity had a slip up here, and rendered the lighting in the 'Butt-Ugly' preset. I would normally just re-render the lighting and take a screenshot of that as appose to showing this, but I wanted to show how important my job of global lighting and scene design is when it isn't done right to inflate my ego a little, what you end up with is something from the early 2000s. And gouged out eyeballs.
Here's the aforementioned knight, with some of his buddies in the background. he's lit properly this time, but doesn't have any camera effects on so he doesn't have the full visual package. That being said, I actually really like this guy now that eh's here and I kind of want to keep him, making other models in this style with a similar low-poly and basic texturing style would be both a nice visual distinction to other entries in the genre but would do wonders for computers running large battles, especially old ones. But alas, it isn't meant to be, as when first showing him to the other two the first point was "where's his legs?" That said, it does free him up to use in my personal projects so one day I might find a use for him, but for this project the prototyping stage is as far as he's going.
Anyway, I'll stop horsing around (get it?) about my cool little knights, because all you unbelievers in my anteater-horse hybrid are about to get a lesson in what proper lighting can do. Well, ok, it still looks bad, but it looks better, and the knight placeholders fit onto them perfectly, so they go together quite well. I want to name them Knight Riders, but I suspect that's going to cause legal issues down the line. The thinking is that these guys will be the fast attack type of guys, though currently they're in some form of squad of three to make testing multiple moving around each other easier, though i quite like having them grouped and would make for nicer, easier to control large battles, I can see why they would need to be split up.
Here's our little test battalion (were they called battalions back then? our resident medieval expert is in bed at the moment, so who knows) they're a tough bunch, mainly cause they don't have health scripts yet. up in front, we have three Knights, which are going to be a separate class of Elite units which will have their own population cap to normal infantry and such. Behind them are my Knight Riders (until I get enough blog views to make it a legal threat, I'm going to keep doing it) which have two groups of spear men either side. On the next row, we have archers sided by two groups of Knight Riders, which totally wouldn't trample the spear men in front of them at all. Behind those are our halburgers, sandwiching two groups of archers. On the final row are one last group of halburgers, flanked by two of our catapult siege teams (these are a catapult and two operating engineers).
Finally, for the models, we have a castle-type structure. It's built out of modular walls which will be able to be individually placed, giving people maximised customisation of their defences and stuff, but mainly people are going to use them to make penis shaped forts and we all know it. I just look forward to the day that I can topple King JustTheTip from the very thin end of his castle if this gets released. If the shape survives, I'll fire some catapults out of the head, in his honour. Units can stand on the walls while ramps are placed nearby, though this might have to go since it would involve generating a navmesh in real time over the network to sync it up correctly and that would extend into an aforementioned ballache.
But let's get real for a second people. I'm doing the graphic work on this test scene, even though it's a test scene and nobody will ever see it, and I want it to look fancy damn it. So, I've done some wonderful stuff with Wind Zones and made the trees and flag blow realistically in the wind. I can tell you're excited to see this more then anything else, so I'll go the extra effort and make a GIF for you. Did we ever establish how many words those were worth?
You know you love it, I know you love it, it looks great. Also, there's units on the walls in that GIF, so there's a bonus for you. Oh, and I understand that some people couldn't care less about my flags (cries) will want to see this thing called 'Gameplay', and while there isn't much to show, I can still show what's there. Basically only camera controls, unit selection and unit movement. But hey, we've been working on it for 2 days, what were you expecting, Starcraft? Currently Dan is working on the script which highlights the selected units, but that's what's giving him such a hard time, so let's not dwell on it, because if we do we'll realise that he's now been looking at the same 50 lines of text for 2 days. I'd like to point out that the game runs at frames that are well into the hundreds even on my 7 year old machine, but the GIFs don't seem to want to render at any consistent quality, so just know that frame rate issues are with the GIF, not the game. Oh, and the camera effects are applied in this GIF, so you'll see the current look of the world it's a little bright on the white, but it looks cool and I like it.
That's all for now, though I'm sure it won't be long before more developments happen. I'll go into the in-depth networking techincal mumbo jombo about how all this will work over multiplayer another time, as I've yet to even find a way to explain it properly to the other two. Basically, it'll do a thing, and it'll work, or not. Either way, I'm coming for you, King JustTheTip, and no amount of low-poly anteater-horses or legless knights you throw in my way can stop me. I'll siege you later.
Unit placeholders have arrived! And they look low-poly and dumb! Actually, I'm quite fond of the low poly look, used properly and with the right lighting it can create some really stunning visuals, but that's not what these guys are for. They're to stand in for the proper models, which will come later when I have the slightest idea what the hell a Halburger is. You may have noticed by now that the knight-looking dude in the centre has no legs, and you may be wondering why that is, and I answer with legs are a ballache, and since these are only placeholders I have no need to ache my balls where my balls are not required to ache.
I actually really like him, I gave him a chesspiece-like base so it didn't look too weird and i quite like the effect it gives off, sort of similar to the small wooden pieces a General would have on his warboard or Risk. I've never played Risk but I imagine that's what it's like. Anyway, on the right is our stand-in for siege engines, the subject of the previously mentioned lecture on trebuchets and catapults from John. The abomination on the left is, in fact, not an Anteater, and is supposed to represent a horse, though it looks more like one from a distance, roughly of about 1000 miles. Also, the knight guy has a variety of different weapons and is modular, so we can re-use his placeholder for a bunch of different units cause I'm lazy.
Unity had a slip up here, and rendered the lighting in the 'Butt-Ugly' preset. I would normally just re-render the lighting and take a screenshot of that as appose to showing this, but I wanted to show how important my job of global lighting and scene design is when it isn't done right to inflate my ego a little, what you end up with is something from the early 2000s. And gouged out eyeballs.
Here's the aforementioned knight, with some of his buddies in the background. he's lit properly this time, but doesn't have any camera effects on so he doesn't have the full visual package. That being said, I actually really like this guy now that eh's here and I kind of want to keep him, making other models in this style with a similar low-poly and basic texturing style would be both a nice visual distinction to other entries in the genre but would do wonders for computers running large battles, especially old ones. But alas, it isn't meant to be, as when first showing him to the other two the first point was "where's his legs?" That said, it does free him up to use in my personal projects so one day I might find a use for him, but for this project the prototyping stage is as far as he's going.
Anyway, I'll stop horsing around (get it?) about my cool little knights, because all you unbelievers in my anteater-horse hybrid are about to get a lesson in what proper lighting can do. Well, ok, it still looks bad, but it looks better, and the knight placeholders fit onto them perfectly, so they go together quite well. I want to name them Knight Riders, but I suspect that's going to cause legal issues down the line. The thinking is that these guys will be the fast attack type of guys, though currently they're in some form of squad of three to make testing multiple moving around each other easier, though i quite like having them grouped and would make for nicer, easier to control large battles, I can see why they would need to be split up.
Here's our little test battalion (were they called battalions back then? our resident medieval expert is in bed at the moment, so who knows) they're a tough bunch, mainly cause they don't have health scripts yet. up in front, we have three Knights, which are going to be a separate class of Elite units which will have their own population cap to normal infantry and such. Behind them are my Knight Riders (until I get enough blog views to make it a legal threat, I'm going to keep doing it) which have two groups of spear men either side. On the next row, we have archers sided by two groups of Knight Riders, which totally wouldn't trample the spear men in front of them at all. Behind those are our halburgers, sandwiching two groups of archers. On the final row are one last group of halburgers, flanked by two of our catapult siege teams (these are a catapult and two operating engineers).
Finally, for the models, we have a castle-type structure. It's built out of modular walls which will be able to be individually placed, giving people maximised customisation of their defences and stuff, but mainly people are going to use them to make penis shaped forts and we all know it. I just look forward to the day that I can topple King JustTheTip from the very thin end of his castle if this gets released. If the shape survives, I'll fire some catapults out of the head, in his honour. Units can stand on the walls while ramps are placed nearby, though this might have to go since it would involve generating a navmesh in real time over the network to sync it up correctly and that would extend into an aforementioned ballache.
But let's get real for a second people. I'm doing the graphic work on this test scene, even though it's a test scene and nobody will ever see it, and I want it to look fancy damn it. So, I've done some wonderful stuff with Wind Zones and made the trees and flag blow realistically in the wind. I can tell you're excited to see this more then anything else, so I'll go the extra effort and make a GIF for you. Did we ever establish how many words those were worth?
You know you love it, I know you love it, it looks great. Also, there's units on the walls in that GIF, so there's a bonus for you. Oh, and I understand that some people couldn't care less about my flags (cries) will want to see this thing called 'Gameplay', and while there isn't much to show, I can still show what's there. Basically only camera controls, unit selection and unit movement. But hey, we've been working on it for 2 days, what were you expecting, Starcraft? Currently Dan is working on the script which highlights the selected units, but that's what's giving him such a hard time, so let's not dwell on it, because if we do we'll realise that he's now been looking at the same 50 lines of text for 2 days. I'd like to point out that the game runs at frames that are well into the hundreds even on my 7 year old machine, but the GIFs don't seem to want to render at any consistent quality, so just know that frame rate issues are with the GIF, not the game. Oh, and the camera effects are applied in this GIF, so you'll see the current look of the world it's a little bright on the white, but it looks cool and I like it.
That's all for now, though I'm sure it won't be long before more developments happen. I'll go into the in-depth networking techincal mumbo jombo about how all this will work over multiplayer another time, as I've yet to even find a way to explain it properly to the other two. Basically, it'll do a thing, and it'll work, or not. Either way, I'm coming for you, King JustTheTip, and no amount of low-poly anteater-horses or legless knights you throw in my way can stop me. I'll siege you later.
A New Collaborative Project!
For some time, me and two friends and fellow developers, John Wheatman and Daniel Dennis, have discussed potential game development projects that we could work on together. We have been through MOBAs, FPSs and RTSs, as well as a number of other genres that could conceivably provide a fun development experience with the potential for a full release through the distribution program Steam. Most of these ideas have either been lost to the vast wastes of left behind ideas, but recently, we were provided with an opportunity.
Unity opened up the ability a couple of weeks (or maybe months? I'm unsure) to have multiple developers work on the same project through a 'Collaborations' feature. It allows the syncing of files over Unity's cloud servers so that the project can be edited by all three of us without having to use Dropbox or google drive to store the data, and removes the large upload times that using those methods would entail. This feature, however, is in a closed beta. But, I applied anyway, and we were granted access to the beta feature! It works fantastically, and while having a couple of technical difficulties stemming from being unable to connect to the cloud servers from time to time, it works perfectly and is very well optimised.
So, perfect! The stage was all set for our first collaboration project (well, besides helping each other in college, but we won't mention that cause those games generally sucked ass and were more tech demos then anything). Our basic premise was an RTS-MMO hybrid that would allow players to build armies and defences, and then attack other random players to topple their kingdoms because...I don't know, maybe they're assholes, maybe we didn't think of a reason besides 'killing is fun'. But either way, we had our premise, and after an in-depth discussion we've made decisions on most of the units and buildings that will be present. It's also worth noting that, as per John's suggestion, this will be medieval themed, so units, buildings and gameplay will be themed as such.
Our roles for this project will be me providing networking code (I've used Photon Unity Networking (PUN) a bunch before in a number of different games, so we'll be using that for this too) as well as models, animations and most scene-related stuff, some AI work, plus making things look pretty. Dan will be our main coder, though I'll be helping him every now and again, as will John, though I imagine i can coax him into helping me with some textures and things further in. John is there to look pretty, and maybe tell me how inaccurate to real life my unit models are (I already got told off for accidentally labelling a catapult as a trebuchet).
Anyway, more info is to come, but as I want to split it up into posts, it will probably be in the next one. FYI if anyone from Bungie or Dice read this and decide that you want to hire this coding and graphical genius based on what you see here, hit me up.
Unity opened up the ability a couple of weeks (or maybe months? I'm unsure) to have multiple developers work on the same project through a 'Collaborations' feature. It allows the syncing of files over Unity's cloud servers so that the project can be edited by all three of us without having to use Dropbox or google drive to store the data, and removes the large upload times that using those methods would entail. This feature, however, is in a closed beta. But, I applied anyway, and we were granted access to the beta feature! It works fantastically, and while having a couple of technical difficulties stemming from being unable to connect to the cloud servers from time to time, it works perfectly and is very well optimised.
So, perfect! The stage was all set for our first collaboration project (well, besides helping each other in college, but we won't mention that cause those games generally sucked ass and were more tech demos then anything). Our basic premise was an RTS-MMO hybrid that would allow players to build armies and defences, and then attack other random players to topple their kingdoms because...I don't know, maybe they're assholes, maybe we didn't think of a reason besides 'killing is fun'. But either way, we had our premise, and after an in-depth discussion we've made decisions on most of the units and buildings that will be present. It's also worth noting that, as per John's suggestion, this will be medieval themed, so units, buildings and gameplay will be themed as such.
Our roles for this project will be me providing networking code (I've used Photon Unity Networking (PUN) a bunch before in a number of different games, so we'll be using that for this too) as well as models, animations and most scene-related stuff, some AI work, plus making things look pretty. Dan will be our main coder, though I'll be helping him every now and again, as will John, though I imagine i can coax him into helping me with some textures and things further in. John is there to look pretty, and maybe tell me how inaccurate to real life my unit models are (I already got told off for accidentally labelling a catapult as a trebuchet).
Anyway, more info is to come, but as I want to split it up into posts, it will probably be in the next one. FYI if anyone from Bungie or Dice read this and decide that you want to hire this coding and graphical genius based on what you see here, hit me up.
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