Rough Draft Design Doc

Let's see if I can upload a PDF to this blog.

Nope... but I can upload it to somewhere else and link it.

Design Doc Download

It is a crappy file host... maybe I'll try to find another one. :/

Here is the rough outline of the tunnel flow and the rough sketches I did for whatever reason. For the sake of getting something done I shorten the length of the level, making the first boss - "stomach area" - the brain idea instead (neuron blasting). Also, here's a compilation of ideas, over time, that I've written down; not necessarily up to date with all our idea changes, but it's something to look at and form you're own ideas. Sorry for the grammar or whatever other funkiness might be in it, lot's to do, you'll have to put up with it. Also, sorry it took so long to post this stuff.

- Nate T


Various gameplay ideas:


Timed:

Timed doors - speed up, slow down, or destroy doors that open and close at intervals.

Timed speed strips - make it to the door before acid fills up the room or tunnel by using "speed increasing strips". Miss too many and you're screwed.



Avoidance:

- avoid stringy things spanning the tunnels.
- flying objects, rocks, building pieces, floating blobs
- oily goo or explosive acid - which can kill or slow you down or both.

Overall time limit - antibodies sent out in increasing amounts if you start taking too long to finish the level.

High speed avoidance - caught in a gas expellation (burp for lack of a better visual) which causes you to attain higher than normal speeds for a short speed boost. Could also be caught in fluid flow which is constant until a designated end point and doesn't allow stopping of any kind except possibly death.



Multiple Tunnels:

- side-by-side tunnels with openings between them to switch between tubes as soon as oncoming events are made visible. Failure to do so would result in death.

Dye shot or heat seeking probe - shoot some dye into the circulatory system of the creature, then you have to keep up with traveling drop of dye or locator or whatever. Tunnels can have forks that the dye will lead you down. Avoidance will also have a place here. Instead of having tight deadends or aimless wandering, if you go down the wrong path for too long, there would be the oncoming rush of . . . something that kills you.



Chain Reaction (Brain):

- target the glowing nerve cells to activate the door. Wrong kind will send out random impulses that cause explosions that can damage and cause pain to the creature: he shakes making your controls wonky. Could also have the end result be an accidental killing of the creature that results in a timed run to the exit (mouth).



Organs:

Stomach - stay alive till the entrance opens so you can progress.

Gizzard - Large flying, crushing rock hazards.

Mouth - suction and avoidance as you try to make your way toward the opening of the mouth while it's opening and sucking. Debris flies in towards the gizzard which is behind you. Too many hits from the debris or laying off the gas too much will cause your ship to pass the point-of-no-return and end up getting crushed in the gizzard. Survival comes from living past the suction time and making it out of the creature during the grace period as the creature slowly closes it's mouth up again.

Mouth - rotating bone jaws

Mouth - mutliple sets of chomping teeth forming either a timing puzzle or find the gaps between the closed sets teeth (missing teeth) and fly your way through the gaps.

Mouth area - find someway to create a break-out puzzle. Chip away at the front of the monster until you break through, possibly dodging the debris you create or enemies that try to stop you.

Mouth - after destroying the brain, you have a certain amount of time to make it out of the creature before it dies and closes its mouth forever.

Brain - find the section of brain that opens the mouth and destroy it.

Brain - wreak enough havoc in the brain area to cause yourself to be vomited up. Once done, speed race to the entrance before your chance passes.


Rest areas:

- areas that with just flying or very minor avoidance.

Figured it out!

Well... the last little bit of flight controls I wanted to figure out has been done.  I added a bit of a roll when using the left stick... just makes the rotation look nicer. I'm sure these will need tweaked quite a bit... but I'm not going to touch them again for a long long time.

A Few Cool Screenshots

I thought these were really cool. The game is a top down 2d style shooter that takes place inside a human body. But the idea is similar to our first level. I think these really show how you can have a really cool look and feel to being inside an organism.

 

 

I've been working on the controls a bit more. I think they are more responsive than they were.  I was also able to up the frame rate a ton, while still keeping the lights in the scene. And I made the controls more responsive even when the frame rate is around 30 fps.

Collisions are better, although I think I could tweak it more. And the camera now has a collision applied to it so it won't be able to clip out of the tubes. But there are some drawbacks to it I'll need to fix.

Unity also has a built in lightmap creator, so baking lightmaps is super easy, and can be done while still editing. I've also learned how to occlude stuff... so I think many of the basic things we will need for long tracks are almost in place.

Here is a really basic video, in it you will be able to see how the lightmapping has worked. This runs around 500 fps on my desktop.






By Tuesday I should have some basic guns on the ship to test out, and maybe something on the test track to blow up.

Unity Stuff

I thought I would toss up some Unity tutorials for anybody who wants to give it a go. The Unity 3d site has a number of tutorials, and some good documentation, but for getting started videos are always the best!
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/video/

This site has a number of videos that will take you through the basics, it is based on Unity 2.6 though, and when he uses the "Island" demo you won't be able to follow along unless you download those assets from the Unity web page. But he covers pretty much everything to get comfortable with the interface, and to see how things basically function.
http://www.vtc.com/products/Introduction-to-Game-Development-Using-Unity-3D-Tutorials.htm

This one I found recently and covers a bit more about scripting and making things interactive. Just be aware that the first lessons start at the bottom of the page and get more complicated as you move up.
http://www.vtc.com/products/Introduction-to-Game-Development-Using-Unity-3D-Tutorials.htm

Me, Nate, and Nate discussed some things about scale and units to work in so I'll put those up here too.

Working units in Maya should be meters. The Maya default is centimeters, so you will need to make sure when before you model something you set the units in the settings to meters.

A human in the game world will be about 2 meters tall, and ships will need to fit into an 8x8x8 meter box. So keep in mind if a human is 2 meters tall then the cockpit needs to be proportionate to that size on the ship you model. If you have a ship design that doesn't fit within that box size, then we can all discuss it. The reason for choosing that size is because we are trying to figure out how tight we can make the tunnels, and how sharp the corners can be and such. Having a standard box size just helps us to know that everybody's ships will work within the level we are designing.

Ship

Here are the side views and front view.

So, I made a feeble pitch the other day in class and now I need to put it all down in words.

First I thought I would just try to bullet out the main mechanics of the game as I *think* everybody was in agreement.

• Spaceships
• Subterranean linear course to fly through
• Player verses environment gameplay elements
• Full rotational freedom
• Necessity of speed based on time limits for completing each stage.
• Varied environments, with a single type of environment focus for the first stage
• Simple Weapons to shoot obstacles/enemies
• Enemies to be limited to basic “turret” style dumb AI

These are still somewhat vague, but I think breaking up the tasks into teams and then discussing decisions made at the team level will help to solidify the direction.

The Pitch was a really basic storyline, something I thought might work within the world of Beyond Good and Evil.

The Story:

You are an intergalactic space treasure hunter, or pirate if you must (think Indiana Jones meets firefly). You have your trusty small ship, which is equipped with an artificial intelligence companion who will help you along the way. Your current mission is to retrieve an artifact from a planet which is currently experiencing seismic anomalies.

When you get to the planet you find that the anomalies are tearing the planet in half. You decide to risk it and try to find a way down to the subterranean city where the artifact is held. Since the front way in is most likely guarded you decide to take the back door.

From here the game continues as you fly through different subterranean environments, constantly pushed to reach your goal within a time limit as your AI companion informs you of the impending collapse of the current section you are flying through. This “middle” section of the game can continue as long as wanted, with new environments being added between the beginning and ending. The ultimate goal will be to reach the underground city, which will be in the process of being evacuated, so you will need to quickly retrieve the artifact and escape before the entire planet falls apart.

This is just the foundation... for a full document it would need to be developed much more. For the time being I hope this can give us a starting point.

Goals for this semester:

• Focus on one environment, with the intent to block out more as time allows. The environment should be long enough to allow for the player to get an idea of what the gameplay is. The goal will be to have the first stage blocked out and the detailing process started.
• One to two functioning ships for the player to choose from. Ships should be modeled to the point where they can be tested in the engine, preferable rigged for animation, and a list of needed animations created.

I'm sure there will be more goals, more crap to think about and this is clearly not an industry standard design pitch... but again I hope it can give us something to work from. As time goes on and we start producing models this can be fleshed out more. I know that is somewhat backwards, but I think it will allow us all to focus on what we are most excited about doing.

Feedback would be great, or if you think I totally missed what everybody wants... I am not emotionally attached to this so please don't hold back. This isn't my project... if it was we would be doing a farming sim with cute little animals. :P  

ship

Here are the quick sketches I should on Thursday.

Some Notes

I finally got around to looking over my notes from our last couple meetings... I thought I would try to make them readable and toss them up on the blog...

Nate Notes

Nate outlined a few things for us to do when designing a game.

First he said we need to define the bullet points on the back of the box.

What he means by this is to define the key factors of the game that will stand out. What are the hooks, or the game defining aspects.

Define the genre, the style, and 2-3 game mechanics that make it stand out.

He suggested that when creating a design doc it becomes the sole responsibility of one person. This means that the one person can be asked about any aspect of the game to help others be clear about the goals, or style for the overall project.

The design doc should allow the reader to clearly visualize the important aspects of the game.

Some things he suggested specifically for us:

• Define the reason for racing.
• Decide on single or multiplayer
• We will need to invest time in particle effects to sell the idea of speed
• Think of ways to boost the appeal of the environment, push it a bit farther to make it interesting  
• Define the threats
• Balance the fun parts, ensure that the game stays fresh by balancing enemy interaction and environment interaction  
• Define the “hook” for the game.

Some level design considerations he mentioned:

• List what will be drawn on screen
• How are we leading the player from scene to scene  
• What gets loaded into memory
  
  

Kim Notes

Kim really stressed that we keep the scope of the project in mind, especially with the time frame that we have. Pre-production usually takes 3-5 months.

He then covered a lot of information on design docs, and style docs.

First create a one page doc that covers all of the basic ideas for the game. Similar to what Nate suggested in listing the bullet points.

Then create a 5-10 page doc expanding on all of those features.

The art doc, or style guide can be as detailed as you want it or need it to be. He suggests that we:

• Define Goals
• Initially explore games that might have a similar style.
• Look outside of games at “period styles”, especially if the game takes place in a historical period defined by certain styles.
• Try some style and color pallets to provide choices.
• Story board out the gameplay
• Outline specific graphical features for people to follow.
• Mock up the front end.
• White box the levels
• Define the major elements for each level. 

Quick Concept

Just thought I'd post this concept I did the other day. It's quick, unfinished and not too pretty, but I thought I'd post it up anyway, for the sake of documentation. Also, a couple icon concepts I did for pickups, if we do indeed use pickups:

I'll post more of my concept work as it's finished, of course. Not gonna lie, I've never done concept work before. Seen LOADS of it, but never created any myself. So, it might look a wee bit hideous right now, but I'm really stoked to work on more, refine my process, and get some quality work done.

More style concepts

Everyone's offering up some great artwork and ideas. Here's something to help narrow the style focus a bit I guess. Mainly the style focus though, as I feel everything about them can be pushed a ton further. I suppose the main image you peoples were after is the top color cave, but I kept the rest in there as well despite being very unfinished, for the hell of it. I'll add more as I create more. Up next, the plan for myself is to do some more focused style tests on individual elements like the caves: rocks, plants, some small man-made structures or materials, textures, etc. Also, possibly a rough block-out (drawn or in Maya hopefully alongside a storyboard) of a possible track. Anyone thinking this plan does not help us feel free to chime in, I would like to not waste my time on useless stuff.



Ship ideas are just that; ideas. The designs are all over the place with the intent of reforming them to the chosen style.

Style Concepts

A little late, but in the spirit of documentation, here are the Beyond Good and Evil shots.

Style Concepts

I found another article on Gamasutra about game art... pretty interesting stuff.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6121/from_ancient_greece_to_halo_art_.php

I also found a fantastic blog with a ton of spaceship concept art. There should be a good amount of stuff in there to help those who want to make ships.
http://conceptships.blogspot.com/

Then here are a few of the images I showed last week.

Game Design and Art

I found a few articles on Gamasutra that talk about the role of art, and artists in games. I thought they were worth sharing. One is specifically about the different types of art style a game can have. Since we are at that stage I thought I would share them.


http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6026/an_artists_eye_applying_art_.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2665/redefining_cartoony_game_art.php

I also thought I would pop up a few images from the Descent games to help people see what games we are drawing inspiration from.  I'm sure there are better screens out there, but these show some of the universe that the idea is coming from. Perhaps it can give us a bit of an idea as to where we want to take the art style and gameplay.

Free 13 month student license of maya suite

Just in case anyone doesn't have a "copy" of maya 2011 yet......legal copy that is, you can get a 13 month student copy if you register at http://students.autodesk.com . Not sure if there are any limitations yet or not, but I'll let ya all know.

Genre Presentations and Game Ideas

Thanks everyone for your Genre Presentations. When possible, please add a couple of your screenshots and/or links to the blog so that we have a representation of the ideas (maybe the ones you think best represent the genre).


I would also love to see you add some of your game ideas, even in very rudimentary form, up here as you think of them. Just as an example...My 9 year old son keeps pitching me the following game idea: A Halo kind of game (I assume this is his way of saying a first person shooter perspective) that instead of weapons and killing it uses food! I think, therefore, his game idea is a food fight game...

The other thing I failed to mention is that if there is a game pitch that doesn't fit with any particular genre, go ahead and pitch it anyway. We don't need to feel constrained to only what we talked about today. For instance, we did not even mention things like fighting games (although, again, animation intensive....but hey, just throwing it out there....I loved Soul Calibur back in the Dreamcast days!) but  there might be a game idea that crosses genres or is not easily defined.


Let your creativity flow, we aren't constrained by marketability!

Welcome to the Game Class!

I have enabled it so that each of the members of this class have author permissions, so feel free to add information and ideas as we go along. I encourage each of you to use this space as a means of archiving our project, posting links to useful articles and tutorials, and exchanging ideas as we navigate this process.

Here is our list from yesterday of what game genre you will each be sharing tomorrow (Thursday Sept. 2)
Jeff: 2D sidescroller/platformer
Nate T: Sim/Racing Game
Larry: Sports
Steve: Third Person Shooter
Andrew: Real Time Strategy
Mason: Tower Defense
Nate S: First Person Shooter