Homework 12 - 5

This week I was working on getting the character from my last video working in the master floor plan from two videos ago. Originally I had done the logic for how the player (represented as a cube at the time) interacted with the camera (motion tracking) and walls (2d platforming element). In the below video I show the end result which turned out well. Our team still needs to decide on textures for the floor and walls so I can update the jump logic like you see in the video but overall no more changes should be made to the rig unless we decide on additional animations. The rest of the game logic should only be dependent on the players bounding box.

Next week I hope to finalize the transition system from floor to floor so the player may open and go through doors. This will tie our floors together to simulate the one level.

Homework 12 - 4

This time I was working on the character rig. We are using a character and armature from Blendswap.com.
The rig came with basic controls and only one walking animation. I animated the rig to jump and set up the logic bricks such that the animations/keys do not conflict with each other if the player decides to mash buttons. In the video below I will show off the character rig, animations, and controls:

Next time I will work on putting the character rig in the master file, and making sure that the character's jump logic (no double jumping for example) correctly interacts with the floor of the master file. I still need to add logic to the character to get the same results from my previous cube example on how the player traverses the floors.

Homework 12 - 3

I was working on the master floor file that everyone will be working out of. This weeks work was not particularly hard in any technical aspect but I essentially dealt with 4 people (my team) and their respective floors and ways to improve them such that the game will not lag from too many vertices. this took several renditions of everyone's individual floors. Steps included:

1. joining complex objects
2. decimating vertices until a noticeable decline in quality was seen
3. adding the edited object to a group
4. repeating steps 1-3 for all objects planned on being put into the floor
5. adding the object(s) to the floor through append
6. duplicate without copying the mesh data (things like multiple chairs)
7. add entire floor to its own group

From there I basically appended each person's floor to one blank blender file. For convenience purposes I left the player and camera in the blank floor files sent to my team mates but took them out in the master file. They will be replaced by a proper character and a camera that interacts accordingly.

Below is a video of me showing off the master floor file:

Next I will be working on the character rig for our game.

Homework 14: State

Above is the state transition diagram I foresee for the diary-viewer. The player will press a button which will bring up a special inventory page where they can see the diary pages collected in the game so far. These pages include information on puzzles and plot which is relevant to the game. 

The diary viewer will start in the closed state, showing the first page or the front of some notebook where the diary pages are kept. Each press of the 'x' key will turn the page of the book. Each press of the 'z' key will turn to the most recently viewed page. The diagram will expand to a fixed amount as soon as we know how many diary pages there will be in total. For now you can see the diagram pattern continues until the last page is displayed.

The above state diagram is for the doors in our game. Part of the game includes unlocking doors to get to different parts of the level. This diagram technically includes 2 start states because there may be doors that are unlocked initially. This diagram is for locked doors specifically if we go by the start state. The player will have an inventory of keys collected throughout the game and the player pressing the action button near a locked door will decrement his inventory by 1 and put the door in an animated state of open or closed depending on the proximity of the player. If the player pressed the action button while the door is in the unlocked/open state then the player will enter the door and come a different door somewhere else in the level.

Homework 12 - 2

For this week I tried to create a gateway system for my team to use when making their levels. This gateway system was supposed to be a door with two things attached to it:

1. An open/close animation that will play when anything with the property "player" (which the player object will have)

2. An empty attached to the object that will be the spawn point whenever a player comes out of the door on a different floor.

Below is a picture of the door and I managed to fulfill requirement 1 stated above:

In class we decided to scrap the idea of attaching the empty to the door object as it would be easier to implement the logic from the main blender file after all the levels (including doors) have come together from my group.

Next week:

I want to have at least 2 floors of our level done so that I can experiment with gateway spawn points and changing the active camera between floors. Basically we will start building levels.

Homework 12 -1

What I got done this week: Player-floor interaction, camera-player interaction, jumping, player direction, a few basic controls.


What I plan on getting done by next week: Gateway points, a way for the player to navigate between floors. Animations for the gateway points (whether they be doors or elevators or whatever), camera switching logic to switch between floor cameras.

Homework 11

Chapter 15

1. What is the relationship between the main character and the goal? Why does the character care about it? The relationship between the main character and the goal is the story. More specifically, our character is trying to unravel the story behind an event that took place in her town just prior to the beginning of the game. The character cares about these events because she knows for certain they have to do with why the town is vacant and the story also involves her colleague.
2. What are the obstacles between the character and the goal?  Puzzles and platforming elements. More specifically, we have several puzzles throughout each level that the player must solve before advancing up each building. The ultimate goal is to make it to the top floor of each level/building. Platforming elements include jumping, locked doors, and alternate routes the player must traverse in order to ascend. 
3. Do the obstacles gradually increase in difficulty? If yes, how? The puzzles are not designed with the intention of scaling difficulty simply because we are in dire need of any puzzles that can be easily implemented into the game engine. It really is up to each individual players ability to pick up the controls behind each puzzle and think critically.
4. Great stories often involve the protagonist transforming to overcome the obstacle. Does your protagonist transform?  Physically, no; metaphorically... no. The character remains a hallow vessel in our game and is simply a means to an end. The lack of response from the main character despite uncovering the story through diary pages gives the player a chance to use their imagination and impose feelings onto our main character which is how they would react in her shoes. 
5. How is the game world simpler than the real world?  Restriction of movement. Mechanics. Restriction of choices on what the player can do at any particular moment. 
6. What kind of transcendent power do you give to the player? If we decide on a fight as the final stage in the game, then one power is to kill in the same respect the book gives war games. You could think of the fact the player of the game can unrealistically plow through the entire game in one sitting as a sort of power seeing the absurdity of our games events taking place over a short period of time.
7. What is the weirdest element in the game story? As of right now there really is not anything wierd about our game. Once we are done getting the mechanics and building levels we may introduce weird things such as power ups and odd gateway points to jump from the middle of a level back to the first floor.
8. How do you ensure that the weirdest thing does not confuse or alienate the player? Again, this does not apply yet. If we decide to implement what I have mentioned above, it is common practice in many games to have a nonsensical save point or point where a player can return to the level select. Examples include a couch in ICO (couches that dont belong in ancient Japanese castles) and statues in Devil May Cry. 
9. Will the players be interested in the game story? Why? We are hoping this is the case. In the same fashion games like Silent Hill drop the player into the game with very little information, we are hoping the players sense of curiosity is what drives them to make the first initial steps to unfold the plot where the storytelling takes over as their main interest.

Chapter 16

1. In what sense does the player have freedom of action? Does the player "feel" free at these times? The player in our game should feel very free. We only give the player the goal that the top of the building needs to be reached with no real direction they should be going. The player should feel free to initially explore the floors that are not locked and then either find usable items (keys) by chance or get frustrated by not being able to progress and search more intently. 
2. What are the constraints imposed on the players? Do they feel constrained? The constraints imposed on the player include the parts of the building the player can not initially get into. The constraint is simply the player can not go where he pleases. They should not feel so constrained because there are still places the player can go initially which suggests a starting point to branch from.
3. Ideally, what would you like your players to do (lens #72) We want our players to uncover the truth. We do this by introducing them to the main character and the situation she is in. The player may also feel a sense of duty to help this woman after they start reading the diary pages.
4. Can you set constraints to "kind of" force the player to do it? In our game this is as simple as locking a door and indirectly letting the player know they need to unlock it in order to advance.
5. Can you design your interface to "force" the player to do what you (the designer) wish him/her to do? For our game in particular this seems difficult. Our simplistic controls sort of force the player to really interact with every object they deem suspicious in order to search for clues or items on each floor. In some sense this is our UI forcing the player to do something but it is really up to the player what order they do things in if we design the levels with multiple pathways.