For a second I thought I would miss this weeks post. Luckily, I had the time this morning before I start the rest of my day. Week two of our senior team project was pretty typical.
The designers ended with different amounts of completion on their whitebox for their levels. The three of them are taking on the first levels. We are using level streaming in our game in order to make the levels flow better. For those who don't know, level streaming is a pretty standard concept that happens in games you play without you knowing. What may seem like one level is actually different parts of that level glued together and loaded at different times. The load normally occurs when you are in some narrow and closed space, such as a cave tunneling through a mountain, or a long corridor or hallway in a building. One level is loaded and the other is unloaded once you make it through. One reason that this is done is to prevent one large load time up front of a level so you can play quicker. A few of the designers have started putting this in and working with it to make it flow.
They have a bunch on their plate since a lot is introduced in those first few levels. The gun's primary fire, destructible supports, and introduction of your first enemies happen in the first level. The second level is the introduction of the magnetic environment, the weapons secondary fire, and a quick encounter with the second AI type. The encounter requires no fighting, it is only a sighting in the distance. The third level is the introduction of the cold environment, and a new bot type.
While sitting in on the meetings that the designers have, it is interesting to hear the solutions they come up with in order to actually handle some of their tasks they need to do. How do you introduce an enemy in a way that doesn't allow you to hurt them? They have come up with several different ways, such as seeing it on the other side of a window or seeing it move by in a passing vent or under you as you move down a catwalk to name a few. This way the player can see them and wonder or fear what it may be.
The artists have continued on their planned path as well. The lead artist is conceptualizing the various different art pieces that are now needed in the new levels. Evan, one of our artists, has been working on the first of three enemies. It is modeled and the texture maps have been completed. He also started work on the animation for that bot. It is coming out pretty sweet. Our third artist concepted and started work on one of our major visual features, a tram hallway. It will be used throughout all of the levels as something that is familiar. The idea is that this hallway runs the length of this ship. He also started working on making modular hallways.
On the programming side we have been moving along. The AI have been given different meshes (two are place holder and one is the bot Evan made). This part was pretty easy since all I had to do was subclass our base AI and assign the subclasses different models. Although a bug occured while doing this. I am looking into what is making them blink. I found some leads and will follow up with them next week. I started on giving the AI slightly different attributes. I worked with Chris on getting the weapon together as well. He is still adjusting to UDK but we have decided on a path for him to take in order to get the gun moving along. The gun made no large mechanical change this week but the back end of it moved around quite a bit.
Greenlight for this semester is next week and we are moving along so none of us are overwhelmingly concerned about it. We haven't got what the teacher is looking for exactly yet for this milestone. However we have been working off of our critique that we got from our professor last semester on our vertical slice. we figure if we stick to that it will handle most major concerns. It is also what we were planning on doing anyway for the most part so it doesn't put us off of our planned track.
Here is some concept art that I pulled off of our repository (version control is key to making games). I think blogger will let you click these to see them larger.
This is one of the Bots you will encounter in its early mock up stage.
Here is the concept behind what an attack may look like.
This is a second enemy mock up.
Imagine an enemy in a dark area and all you see is its glowing search lights.
An old hallway
This is a mockup of a level. This version is not what made it into the game, but it shows that you need to think things through before you start your work.
Right now the project is at one of the stages where a lot of conceptualizing has been done and we are working on getting the functionality to move along. Once assets and mechanics start appearing it will be interesting how quick stuff moves along. I am actually pleasantly surprised that the amount of programming work that needs to get done is actually lightening. Hopefully it stays this way and no surprise mechanics spring up.
Next weekend is the global game jam. Champlain is one of the official sites for the game jam and I'm sure a bunch of students will give it a try. But instead of jamming on the a new game, my team will be jamming our game. It is separate from the game jam but essentially instead of sinking time into the game jam we invest it into our game instead. So, come the end of next week we should have moved pretty far. Last time my team did this we got the large hanger made that you saw in that vertical slice video I posted.
Comments and feedback are appreciated.
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