Hi everyone here is another update on how the map is going, currently I have created multiple assets to populate the scene with, the major parts being Huge pipes which i guess would be used to transport sewage,water or house electrical cables for connection between the higher and lower part of the city, Below is a gif of a brief fly over.

Mostly i have been working on trying to make sure the pipes phase in and out from top to bottom using either fog or at the top of the level a massive block, which is meant to represent part of the unfinished city, Originally i was going to use a volumetric fog to cut off both the top and bottom, however currently their is no such tool in UE4 to allow me to do this eventually i will try and create a fog particle effect to try and block out the upper sections.

I also had help from one of the lecturers who helped me improve some of my already completed assets and i plan on creating some basic textures for the level so that we have something more tangible to show off for a presentation that is coming up soon on the project.

As well as all this both myself and another class mate have begun designing what the HUD will look like, below you can see the most current design for the HUD, it has to show all three placeable towers, the players crossbow as well as a wave counter and a bolt counter for the player, We decided to position it at the top center of the screen instead of the bottom as having the HUD and the crossbow in the same section of screen space would be to confusing for some players.

Aside from all that i haven’t been doing much else, i look forward to mocking up some textures for the level and seeing how that goes as i always enjoy creating assets, anyway hope you’ve all enjoyed the read and ill see you next time.

This new triemester

Hi everyone so I’ve become incredibly inconsistent with posting and we all know that!, I’ve finally stopped lying to myself about it to!

I’ve just started this new trimester and have been told that yet again i have to do a blog on it, following the end of today’s class i have decided to just get it over with and start it now.

Today was mostly just a meet and catch up, talk about what well be doing and such however! we did have a small have a small project today were we had to try and monetize an existing game that we’ve played, Recently (last night) i started playing Dying light which is essentially dead island at its core but with parkour elements introduced and a partially revamped leveling system.

I did not want to harm the games core mechanics by trying to add pay walls within the game but instead attempted to add a monetization system into it by adding a secondary currency.

This secondary currency “ZomBucks” can either be earned or purchased within the game, To earn you must simply play the game (killing zombies/finishing missions), this will earn the money at a smaller rate than the actual in game currency, For instance you earn money at a rate of 100% and ZomBucks at a rate of 25% for instance if you kill a zombie it will drop $35 and roughly 8 – 9 ZomBucks, however during nighttime this rate will increase to 75% (as the game is harder during nighttime) and you will earn 26 – 27 ZomBuck (This needs balancing i am using fudged numbers at the moment) .

ZomBucks are essentially the same as normal money within Dying Light however items that you can buy in stores are cheaper with Zombucks instead of normal money, I have done this to try and make the game feel as unaffected as possible by the integration of real world money.

This being said earning ZomBucks takes far more time than earning normal money, this is to try and make it not noticeable to players and also make them want to purchase it with their real world money instead, i have still not found a solution to stopping players from just “grinding” for said money, perhaps the longer you play a session of Dying Light the percentage of ZomBucks decreases?.

Now apart from this excersize we also have to come up with a prototype being it a design document or something playable for this trimesters project as we will all be working in one group on the same project, Currently my idea for this trimester is to create a first person or third person arena brawler, this is mostly inspired from my old work (Nox Brain, have a look if you haven’t its one of my earlier works) and also my enjoyment of games like Zeno clash and Binding of Isaac.

I want to attempt to merge to two styles of game play being brawler and rogue like and combine them within an arena style level with possibly some randomly generated style enemies as well as weapons in an arena that changes form depending on the wave.

Now apart from that i haven’t put to much thought into it but expect posts in the future as apparently i have to do one a week now! and hopefully you’ll see my idea evolve, I’m trying not to get to stuck into it as theirs a possibility that it will not even get chosen which I’m cool with.

Bye for now thank you for reading!

Addo

Click above image
(Visualization of concept, no play ability in current example)

So last week i started my fourth trimester at college, my first class of the new trimester involved us each having to design a mechanic based around an emotion, i came up with Addo, Addo is designed to invoke a sense of motherhood over the player through the use of minimal input and watching how your “people” change and react to you leaving “Markers”  around the world.

These markers may or may not lead your “people” towards objects that they will respond well to and will change the way they react towards you this will be shown through the use of audio, Currently in the background you can hear a Cello playing, depending on what happens the Cello will change, which will ultimately decide how the game will end.

Aesthetically the game is designed to be as minimalist as possible with visuals, audio and input, Addo is based of games such as From Dust, Goddus and Black and White.

Anyway I hope you have enjoyed reading this and I apologies for not posting anything in a long time, I hope people start reading these again and that you come back in the future as i am going to try and do these more regularly.

Jobs Done!

(Click image to play, Game only runs in IE, No clue why)

So me and Reign finally finished it, Our final submission for this class, Courage’s Gate a turn based exploration game, It’s a take on both Pokemon and final fantasy With our own distinct art style, drawn by Reign, Granted not everything was completed to the highest level that we wanted, we feel it is both a great piece of work and hope that you enjoy playing it.

Maybe I’ll revisit this project at a later date, it is pretty feature complete and we could do a lot more to it if we wanted, anyway i’m going to be guy’s sorry its such a short read but i hope you all enjoy it, please leave feedback below!.

 

 

 

 

The Final Prototype!

Hi everyone! So as I said the last time is that I am working in conjunction with another student at SAE Qantm by the name of Reign! on our final prototype for our rapid prototyping class, we decided on this so as to make sure that we can produce as high a quality product within four weeks as possible with myself as the programmer and Reign as the artist.

Now prepare yourself as currently none of the art assets being created have been implemented as were only at the start of the second week however, this is currently what I’ve got in terms of the programming side, you can also click on the image to open up the web player demo of what this actually does so far.

 

So currently in the project the player is able to re-roll their characters statistics and then set them, currently this just re-rolls set random values which means you could potentially get a character with “OP” stats, I’m considering redoing this so that it takes stats points from a “pool” so that you never get an “OP” character however that is dependent on whether or not i have enough time for it.

You are also able to navigate around the level by moving your mouse, the camera is clamped so that you cannot fly off forever and potentially “lose” the level. What isn’t but is currently in the works of being implemented is the actual combat, what happens currently is the player clicks to move to a tile next to there current tile to move to it, Once they have moved to said tile it then does a random check to see if there is an enemy on this tile, if there is an enemy the combat phase starts.

What happens in the combat phase is that the characters team is the displayed on the right hand side of the screen (Or left, haven’t decided yet) and the enemy is then spawned on the opposite side, Then the player engages in a Pokemon/final fantasy style battle system were each side takes a turn selecting what to do.

I’d say this is my first real attempt into designing a “smart” AI as i usually don’t put that much thought into how i want to program them to do, But i’m feeling hopeful about it!.

Anyhow I’ve used up enough of everyone’s time here and i’ll write some more about this project either this week or the next, Enjoy!

dat blog entry

Hey guys! blog update!

I’ve finished the second brief which I’ve gotta say was a bit of a pain, i didn’t really like the brief outline and it didn’t really work with what in wanted to do so the project didn’t up being that great, it still worked for the most part but could have been better i think, and am now onto the third and final rapid prototype, the brief says it has to be a game with either grid based combat and movement or have final fantasy style combat.

So I’ve decided to work in a group for this final project, myself as the programmer and the other as the artist, were hoping to create a really high quality final prototype that is something that we can eventually turn into either a good piece of portfolio work or an actual game for release, either way im looking forward to this final assessment.

I’m not going to post any images for this post as currently theirs no real artwork to show of as were in the first week of the project, however so far it is going pretty well, we’ve got grid based movement working as well as the beginning of our combat system so all should be good.

Anyway that’s all for now, ill post some stuff with some actually screenshots next week hopefully, Enjoy!

 

Project 2!

So here’s the next update, I’m now working on my second project for my scripting class, For this project i’ve decided to create a two player game were one player play’s as a Hunter and the other plays as the Seeker.

The seeker’s goal is to find all the orbs in the level and then escape with there life while the Hunter has to find the Seeker before they can collect all the orb’s, currently the game is two player split-screen like some of the older games that you’ll see on Nintendo 64, GameCube, PS1 and PS2, you control the characters with the use of an Xbox 360 controller as I’ve been wanting to try using one in one of my projects for a long time now and I’ve finally been able to purchase one.

Aesthetically speaking i’m trying to create a semi horror feeling within the game to try and make the Seeker feel as tense as possible while trying to find the orbs, The Hunter has the ability to scare the Seeker with use of a scream mechanic which startles the Seeker and causes his screen to shake, while the Seeker has the use of a torch which they can point at the Hunter to stun them for a short amount of time.

Everything currently within the game except for the character models has been created by myself as i cant be bothered to fully model, texture, rig and animate two separate characters as it would take to much time in the 4 week time span i have to create this prototype, Anyway hope you’ve all enjoyed reading this and ill see you later.

Lastly here’s a recording of what I’ve currently got

 

 

So im in Australia and i was lazy

Well everyone that’s probably not been reading this because i haven’t posted in several month’s, I’m back!  I’m in Australia now and i am currently studying at SAE Qantm in Melbourne to do a bachelors in interactive entertainment, I figured that because the course i was doing in the UAE had alot of parts directly taken from the Qantm curriculum that i would be able to come back here and finish my studies and so that’s what I’ve done and it’s going pretty well, i’m ahead on alot of the programming assignments and doing alright in the theory classes’s, having a bit of trouble in the Math class but i think i can manage it.

anyway i’ll talk abit about what im currently working on in terms of assignments, for my programming class were making card games in unity and you can try it below, currently in it you can draw cards from an array and it allows for hot seat multiplayer so you can play it with a friend, the game is pretty basic at the moment but you’re able to select a card and use that card to attack a friends opposing card the only real problem im having at the moment is the picking up of cards it’s a little buggy but works for now and i will fix it later, anyway hope you enjoy playing it!
Card Quest

As for my Maths class i had to come up with a project that incorporates some of the skills that I’ve learned in the class, so for my project I’ve decided to create an endless runner which goes up in difficulty the longer you play it, not alot to say on this one as ive only just started working on it but hope you all enjoy playing it! (you will need to refresh the page to start this game again)

Endless Runner

Hope everyone reading has enjoyed this post and i will try and update a little bit more from now on Bye!

Wisp

Hi all!, so were on to our next prototypes and this time i’m working as a two man team with Nick Phipps who’s blog you can find here!,

Anyway, we’ve started production of our prototype game Wisp!, a game were you the player interprets whats happening, with this we hope that each player get’s there own experience that is special to them and they can share these with other’s.

it can also be played as many times over as you want  for different outcomes seeing as every game only lasts 3 minutes.

So myself and Nick decided to group together on this project as it was more tailored towards visuals, sound and emotion than game mechanics which meant that we had to make it look good and get the programming done really fast seeing as how each prototype has to be done within two week’s, as for the brief of the prototype we have to make a game that uses three different camera angles, four separate emotions and indirect control of the player (so you couldn’t control the players movement’s but you could control the player’s cameras).

as allways hoped you enjoyed this quick post and except more soon seeing as how its got to be done next week! bye!.

Yay!

Hi everyone I’ve finished the first prototype and you can find a link to it below!
People Construct

This was a really fun prototype and I’ve learned a lot from it to, anyway not much to post here other than i’m starting my next prototype brief today and i’ll probably post about it later this week seeing as how instead of having to produce a prototype in three weeks i only have two so it will be made a lot fast. enjoy!