I had a little meet up with Alex and Amelia on Friday and we discussed the character for Hideous. Amelia did some amazing conceptual pieces based on a bunch of random creepy-pasta images I bombarded her with. We decided on parts of each monster to take forward into the next iteration of the character design:
We’re adding in more code to improve the way in which players see one another in varying light levels, this should make the game more fair when it comes to seeing one another in the maze. Kirt is working hard on making more models in order to make the environment more interesting. Things are coming together beautifully!
So my game “The Food Chain” has been published and I like to think that its gone down pretty well. We did a few play-tests of it in the university’s computer labs and everyone seemed to really enjoy playing it. I even had my lecturers playing it (one of them said that they think it could be quite addictive) along with the students.
If you want to play my game with friends you’ll need to set up a LAN network – you can also get a feel for it by playing it yourself on two screens (but that’s hardly very fun…). Here is a link to the game in action: Play “The Food Chain” Here!
Some cool things I learnt:
Oliver is a gaming troll and he intentionally would get bitten in order to lure the shark towards where other people were hiding their fish. (Not gonna lie… clever tactic – but a little mean.)
Unity networking isn’t too hard – but I’m still only able to run things on a LAN network… which is a real shame. But i’ll definitely look into getting it working over the internet as soon as I have a spare couple of days.
My laptop is a trooper and can run a good few copies of the same game at once for testing.
SCRUM development methods go out of the window when it’s just me working on a project. Whoops.
Amelia and Kirt are both awesome 3D Modellers – and I really want to work with them in the future!
It’s surprisingly cheap to get some assets from the Unity Store… and they can be really good quality.
And lo: January turns to February and game number is about to rear its ugly head! Working alongside first-year games computing student Alex Saye, we are developing a game named:
I’ll post up more information about this delightful little game as soon as we have something to show!
So today we had our first official meet-up of students who are thinking about doing #1GAM at The University Of Lincoln. We started off with a quick listen to @McFunkypants’s keynote and then proceeded to have a chat about how things were going to go down!
We each took turns writing down themes and putting them into a hat in order to give ourselves some inspiration – this then devolved into me pulling them out and reading them aloud. We settled on the idea of using one of the themes as a ‘main theme’ and then each choosing one of the others as a complimentary one. The main theme we chose was “Underwater” so I’m looking forward to some really nice looking games coming out of it!
Since we only have a little while to work on our January games (having left it a little late…) the majority of the group seemed to be thinking about making something reasonably simple to get them into the swing of things. Next month’s meeting is on the first, so we should get a really nice bunch of games made for February.
This is just a quick blog post to alert any Lincoln Computing (or non-computing as the case may be…) that tomorrow is my first meet-up session for #onegameamonth – an on-line quest to make one game each month for the whole year! If you’re interested in making games and want to take up the challenge then please do come along!
A number of students have expressed an interest in working on the “one game a month” (#1GAM) online competition, which is designed to encourage people make more games.
More detailed information about the event can be found at the website: http://www.onegameamonth.com
The complabs have been booked out for bi-weekly #1GAM meetings on Fridays from 5PM to 7PM, in order to help competitors meet, discuss and create ideas and games for #1GAM.
If you are interested in participating, why not come along to the first meeting, this Friday?
This could be a perfect time to find people to work with in a team or to discuss your ideas with like minded designers!
For more information on the meet-ups send an email to Sean Oxspring at Sean.Oxspring@hotmail.com or send a tweet to @OxyOxspring
Now I know you might have some assignments and things right now – but consider this as a little challenge to not only improve your coding skills but also your portfolio of games! I’m planning on doing most of my entries in a 48 hour stint during one weekend of the month… so I think that if you tried to do that kind of thing too you wouldn’t have much trouble fitting it into a hectic student schedule!
Even if you just have a passing interest in maybe taking part… I hope to see you there!
(Oh… and OneGameAMonth is ran by @McFunkyPants – you should totally follow him on Twitter because he is pretty cool and I think he has an awesome voice.)
Today was my first day back at university! So it was time to start working once again on my Games Engines assignment. I’ve fixed a good couple of bugs today including an annoying little problem I had with the PhysX cloth occasionally becoming too still and therefore not updating with the rest of the scene – I tried adding a constant force to it… but it didn’t seem to work at all – then I found a really nifty little function:
gMyCloth->getNxCloth()->wakeUp();
That pretty much fixed one of the biggest problems I’ve been having without much fuss at all. Occam’s razor eat your heart out! So now the cloth ‘wakes up’ every frame and no longer stops working properly if left alone for too long. I’ve also changed the colours in the game and made the blocks explode into a shower of debris when the ball collides with them… just to make the game a little juicier.
Another important part of this assignment is the collection and analysis of user data. One of the ways I’ve decided to implement this is by getting the computer to do most of the work and record my data into several files at run-time. The first piece of data I’ve decided to record is the location of the ball in space… this allows me to see where players mostly die and where the ball travels most often. I played a single game and then made the data I collected into a graph… here are the results:
This graph could also be considered as a really dodgy version of a heat-map. I can see where the ball tends to be often by looking at the concentration of points in certain areas – this could be useful to see if players have trouble getting the ball to land on the bat in a certain place or (as the case above suggests…) where they have used a strategy to destroy blocks vertically without risk of angles interfering!
So I just submitted my finalised build of the game to the Ludum Dare website. It’s probably got more bugs than I can shake a stick at, but I’ve fixed as many as I could find in the last few hours and added as much visual polish as I could. It’s now time to pack for tomorrow’s trip to Wolverhampton for teaching stuff and then put my feet up and have a cup of tea. I am knackered!
I proudly present “THE EVIL REVEAL” a game in which you play an evil CEO who has plans for world domination. You are about to present your evil plans to the company’s board of investors… hoping that they’ll all fall into line and become your evil minions. Unfortunately for you: All of your employees have consciences, and will eventually become scared of your insanely evil ramblings. When they get too scared, they’ll attempt to flee the room and alert the authorities! Luckily, you have an array of dastardly traps set up in order to kill and maim your enemies!
So here’s a little post mortem from my first attempt at a Ludum Dare:
What Went Well:
Programming/Designing Speed: The time-period I had to make the game was quite tight, not only due to the 48 hour limit but also I had some other things on at the time… I’ll talk about them in the second section.
Idea Generation: I came up with quite a few ideas in the morning for the game I was going to make, but I’d like to thank Alex Saye for providing me with the inspiration for the final version of my game by showing me this Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch.
Graphics: I really like the style I achieved in this game, I was going for a style similar to that of Lone Survivor. I think it works quite well and its definitely different from what I normally do when it comes to art in games… not to say that my traditional style menu screen didn’t pop-up like usual.
What Didn’t Go Well:
Lack of OOP methodology: I’m afraid I slipped quickly into a non-object oriented approach quite quickly when I started this project, unfortunately meaning I ended up with LOADS of arrays for storing different Board Member variables (like whether they were on fire or if they were dead.) One day I’ll learn to pre-plan my classes… but right now my clsSprite.cs file has never really done me wrong!
Going Out Drinking: I kinda might have gone out drinking with friends on Saturday night. This probably cut out a massive amount of time I could have used to make the game better. But I feel that I made up for it by coding til about 6AM afterwards though.
Sleeping In: Pretty self explanatory – I’m in serious need of a fixed sleep pattern as I keep waking up at midday. Like with the point above this cut deeply into my possible coding and asset creation time.
Balancing Issues: The final game is a little broken if you play it right. The flame-thrower is really OP right now and it spreads like wildfire between the Board Members and always guarantees a kill. It kinda makes the Tesla Coil useless… but it’s still a lot of fun to hear a loud zap noise as the people get killed by it.
Lack of AI: I considered having some form of AI to allow the board members to avoid getting hit by certain traps. It would have been really cool to see them avoid traps that they’ve seen other board members get nabbed by – unfortunately due to time constraints and my lack of path-finding knowledge this was to remain a dream!
Just to finish things off, here is a trailer for the game that I whipped up in about ten minutes:
Six in the morning… I think I’m seeing things in my living room and I’m getting tunnel vision. I think it’s about time for me to call it a night here on my frantic programming and artistic madness. It’s probably for the best as I think I’ve got the vast majority of the major work completed… now I’ve just got to polish and add more features when I wake up in the morning/afternoon. I also need to balance the game a little as there are points where the player isn’t doing much for long periods of time, and its far too easy to kill people right now… maybe a health bar is in order?
Goodnight to all! Let’s hope I don’t sleep in too late…
I’ve been working on the game most of the day and now have a working basic prototype. I’ve got to work on the art and UI quite a bit before its completed, but things are going quite well! I’ve implemented a group of board members who each have a ‘fear/doubt’ meter, when it gets to zero, they will flee and attempt to alert the authorities to your dastardly deeds. I’ve also put in a basic trapdoor trap… but I’m considering changing it into a spike trap and making things a little bit gorier.
Unfortunately tonight is also the pre-Christmas meet-up and night out with some of my friends who have just arrived home from their respective universities. So I’m going to have to put the programming on a hold for a few hours and go and have a few drinks – I hope some awesome ideas strike whilst I’m out there so I can implement them when I get back.
So I just started work on my first jam for Ludum Dare. I woke up kind of late this morning so I’ve only just started programming and brainstorming for the game… whoops! This dare’s theme is “You are the Villain!” which I hope will lead to some awesome games in the end. I’ve still got fond memories of playing Evil Genius very late into the night during my teenage years and relishing every minute of it.
After a chat with Alex Saye I’ve decided on my final idea for the game, you play an evil CEO of a giant corporation. You have decided to call a meeting of all investors in order to reveal your dastardly bastardly evil plans for world domination. Of course not everyone in your company is particularly happy with this change in the company’s image… so you have to “deal” with them.
Each person at the table will have a ‘fear’ meter which will slowly drain, when it reaches the bottom they’ll dart for the door and try and escape. You have to kill them before they leave the room and blab about your plans to the local authorities. To begin with I’ll add trapdoors to the game as the most basic trap… I’ll add more if I have time. (Shark Pits, Fire-Traps, Acid Showers etc. etc.)
I hope to have a basic prototype completed before I go out tonight for a few drinks with my brother. Then I’ll polish it up early tomorrow and feature creep late into the afternoon! I’m not expecting to enter the competition this time around… considering this is my first Ludum Dare and I’ve not really planned ahead for it – so I’m not really prepared for super late-night crunches right now.
Oh, and good luck to everyone else I know who is competing!
Today I managed to get back into the computer labs to continue work on my PhysX assignment. The plan right now is to have about 90-100% of the implementation done before I leave for home on Thursday – when I get home I won’t be able to work on the code properly as I don’t have the right set up on my laptop. Today I implemented a scoring system now and physics feedback for when the ball hits a block. I’ve also added rotating motor joint objects on either side of the screen to enhance gameplay.
Tomorrow I hope to add in lives and an end-game mechanic. Then do some cool stuff to make the bricks explosively shatter everywhere when they’re hit. (Not sure how I’m going to implement that yet… probably with an array – but we’ll see how much time I have to do it!)
Sean Oxspring's Omniverse 