Homework 3

 The First Object I made was a ladder. Unlike traditional ladders, this ladder has prongs on the top so that it can be transported and attached to flat plane surfaces above. This kind of ladder makes an appearance often in platformer games. The reason I would guess is that it is easier to program the physics of the ladder and person using it if the person can only move up and down instead of at a diagonal like stepladders.

How I made this in Blender: I made this in blender using a cylinder as the base, flattened. I used this over a box for the simple fact it looked smoother and less rigid and a ladder of all cubes. Next I re-sized the steps by making a single cube and scaling in the X direction. After a single step was created and placed on the ladder, I copied the step to the object clipboard and pasted it several times, each time manually moving it a fixed distance below the last step. As for the prongs, I used the subdivision tool on the step at the top of the ladder in addition to the extrusion tool.

How this may be used in our game: As stated above, ladders are often seen in platform games in all sorts of variations (Ropes, vines, missing Bricks). I tried to make the ladder generic enough to snap onto the side of any flat surface and with a little effort the ladder can be extended as needed without stretching the object.

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The second object I made was a vending machine. Although at first I thought this to be a simple subdivision and extrusion of cubes, fir the same reasons as the ladder I found using curves and rigid bodies in tandem create a more realistic looking vending machine.

How it was made: The base of the object is indeed a cube. After breaking up the front surface into subdivisions, I selected several boxes in the lower half of the machine and extruded them inwards in order to act as the dispenser. the coin return dispenser was also made in a similar fashion. After the dispensers, a quick scaling of a cylinder was used for the coin return. and placed next to the part that accepts bills. Next, a cylinder was flattened and scaled a bit and inserted/merged halfway into the machine. After using a copy of that cylinder, I was able to make the other buttons in correct proportion just like with the ladder. the most complicated part (and not complicated at all), was the part that takes in the bills. I inserted a cube about halfway, divided the front face once, and then proceeded to edge-select mode in order to create the triangular shape simply by pushing the edge into the machine.

How it will be used for our game: We have not gotten many details but what we do have is a woman lead character in an abandoned city. It would not be uncommon to see a vending machine or two around and would give the level some personality. Perhaps the vending machine will later be voted on to be used in some sort of way like as a save point. Many games use similar "oddly plain" objects as save points (Couches in ICO and Bathroom stalls in Dead Rising). With what we are learning in class about spontaneously generating objects, we could also have the vending machine dispense cans easily and perhaps the player can actually use them. We have decided that the player will be collecting something throughout the levels. If that something turns out to be a form of currency like most platformers, then maybe it can be spent here.