Synoptic Team Update!

A few weeks ago I started coding the space invaders style game which will be the second game in our synoptic project, (second to Jacob’s Asteroids style game). In the project me and Jacob both agreed that it would be better if we split the tasks into two by having a core programming task which covers the basic movement of the game and enemies etc. and an additional mechanics task which covers power ups, collectibles and other things similar to that. So to put it simply the core mechanics are the bones/structure and the additional mechanics are the meat (the thing that makes it a game). In this blog post I will be covering both mine and Jacob’s games.

Astrol Defence

I will start with my game which at the minute is going well with no current problems. So far I have the core programming done: Player movement, bullet firing and enemy movement (Needs fixing). I am working on getting particle effects in which will, hopefully, cover the enemies dying/the player dying and the bullet firing. On the additional programming side of things there aren’t many things you can do with a game as plain as Space Invaders but we came up with a few ideas which I will be experimenting before the additional programming deadline of the 8th of March. This is what the game currently looks like at the time of this blog post going up:

[GIF Needed]

Asteroids Style Game

Over the week I was working on my game so was Jacob and he also has his core programming done. He has the player movement, player shooting, enemy movement and enemy ‘dying’. I believe that he is going to be adding pickups/power ups to make the game more modernized like the games today instead of just having a carbon copy of the old asteroids. At the current time of this blog going up this is the most up to date version of Jacob’s game that I have:

I am happy with the overall progress that me and Jacob have made with the development of our games and we look forward to moving on to the production of both of our second games

---

Away from the game development side of things two other members are working on the animation/modelling side of the project since we were told to treat the project as two separate projects (an animated short and a game) because mine and Bence’s ideas were combined together. Over the past couple of weeks Bence has been rigging and skinning the robot character that Josh modeled a week or so before. Bence has also been modelling little miscellaneous items to go into the storage room like tools etc. Here are some of them below:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

While Bence is rigging and skinning the robot character Josh is modelling different things to go into the starting room (Storage Room) since he can’t do any animation until the character is rigged and skinned. He has been doing a little bit of main modelling and some miscellaneous items that will be scattered around the storage room to fill the place up a bit. Obviously the robot character is one main model but the other model(s) that he has done is the Arcade Machine(s). Below are a few examples of what he has done so far.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The work that Bence and Josh have been doing is making me really hopeful for how the overall project is going to look like outside of the games that me and Jacob are making, I am looking forward to expanding the project to the actual Arcade Room as well as the storage room.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Scrum 4 – Synoptic

Overall

Most of the group has made progress but it has been slower than normal due to having a week off and needing to get into the rhythm of college and work again. The group has taken its time to get back into it and has completed a couple of tasks each, next week we will be focused again and start catching up for last week hoping we can get closer to reaching the MVP goal by the end of March/Beginning of April.

Issues

During the half term most did not do any work during it however we have talked and discussed that we should start working in our spare time to make sure we do not lose our attitude during periods of time when we are not at college and have a continued attitude and focus towards it.

Currently Working On

Matty – Finalizing the Additional Mechanics for Astrol Defence.

Jacob –  Finishing adding power ups and starting to add additional enemies to the asteroid styled game (still need a name).

Josh – Creating 3D assets for the arcade room (vending machine and lights)

Bence – Experimenting with lighting in the storage room.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

2D Assets (1st Game) – Synoptic

Today I started to draw up the assets for the space invaders style game for the synoptic project. I started with the ship because it is the most important part of the game since it is the thing that is actually being controlled by the player. Research wise I decided to go along the lines of a fighter jet instead of a spaceship because I wanted to have the sharp tip on the end of the character to symbolize an arrow which shows the player where to fire (even if it is pretty self explanatory). Below are a few images that I used for reference:

 

When I was drawing the ship, obviously, I didn’t want to just copy off of an already existing model/drawing so I took away and added to the drawing, taking pieces from the 1st ship (RIGHT) and putting it on the 2nd ship (MIDDLE). Below is the finalized ship that I ended up with:

After that I went for the enemy sprites (the aliens in space invaders). I looked for space invader style enemies since the art for my game is going to be entirely pixel art. Below is what I managed to gather to help me with the enemies in my game.

Just like what I did for the spaceship I took inspiration from both images and compiled them together to make my own sprites. I took the colourized sprite idea from the 1st image (LEFT) and I took the similar shape of the sprites from the 2nd (RIGHT). In the end these are the finalized sprites that I got:

After that I began working on the background because I didn’t want to go with the normal plain black style of the original space invaders so I decided to do an animated background with stars flashing, I plan to do this using the unity animator. Below is the reference image: i am writing his nwithoit lookimg

I saw this and instantly wanted to incorporate it into the game but in a pixel format. In Photoshop I created two frames of animation, one with normal stars and one where the stars have flashed. In the end I think it worked out fairly well but I think it might be a little bit too distracting so this may change in the near future. Here it is below:

[GIF]

The following pieces are art that I need in order to complete the art for this game: The bullet, ship firing particle effect, ship exploding particle effect and destroyed ship.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Scrum Week 3 – Synoptic

Overall

It is the beginning of the week so we got together to scrum and discuss anything we were currently doing and anything we wanted to get done by the end of the week. At the minute we are all happy with the way that this project is going as we are pushing through the tasks at a quite steady pace getting closer and closer towards the minimum viable product due in early April.

Issues

At the current moment there are no issues arising with any member and all previous issues have been corrected and are no more.

Upcoming Tasks

Matty – Finish coding the mechanics for the Space Invaders style game

Jacob – Finish coding the mechanics for the Asteroids style game.

Josh – Finalizing Storage Room assets.

Bence – Rigging the robot character.

Scrum Week 2 – Synoptic

Overall

Me, Bence, Josh and Jacob got together to discuss the current standings of the project again today. Overall we all agreed that the project so far is going pretty swimmingly apart from one thing which I will mention later. Most of us are moving with the current and we are well on our way to meet our MVP goals by the start of April.

Issues

Currently one member of the team is not working enough to match the progress of the overall project. We have informed said member multiple times on several occasions that he needs to do something and be more productive but he never listens, continues to watch videos and look at memes for the entire day. We are aware that it is only the second week but usually people are motivated at the start of a new project which is why we are starting to worry so soon into it.

Upcoming Tasks

Josh – Starting to model assets for the starting Storage Room

Jacob – Core Mechanics for the Asteroids Style Game

Matty – Additional Mechanics for the Space Invaders Style game

Bence – Assorted assets for the Storage Room and the rigging of the robot character.

 

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Scrum Week 1 – Synoptic

Overall

This week was the first scrum of the project and me, Josh, Bence and Jacob got together to discuss what we have done, what we plan to do in the week ahead and what issues have been arising (if any). The scrum wasn’t as detailed as a normal scrum would be because at this stage of the project we haven’t started the actual production yet. The Pre-Production process is going well with members coming together to come up with new ideas to make the game better. The management process of the project is coming to an end with all of the necessities set up (Production Plan, Asset List, Shot List, Storyboard and Treatment).

Issues

At the time of scrumming all of the group agreed that there are no current issues arising and we are happy because that means the pre-production process is going smoothly which means we will most likely be into the production of the project sooner rather than later.

Upcoming Tasks

All of the members all have things to be doing for the rest of this week and they are all listed below:

Josh – Modelling and texturing the Robot.

Bence – Modelling parts of the Storage Room.

Matty – Finalizing the management process and planning the games.

Jacob – Planning game ideas and putting together an audio plan.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

My Synoptic Team and Role!

As I mentioned in my last blog I was put in a group with Bence, Josh and Jacob in a part Animation part Game project. This blog post is to reflect on how I feel about the project and my general thoughts on everything.

Overall I am happy that I get to work on what I actually wanted to work on and with a team that I can actually work and communicate with since being in a team in which I couldn’t communicate was my biggest fear during the team selection. In this project I will be working as the Project Manager as well as a programmer and level designer for all of the games in the Arcade. Josh and Bence will be animators/modelers/artists for the project and Jacob will be programming games alongside me.

Overall I am still happy with the project even though it is not fully my idea but I am exited to start working with animations in unity and more things that I wouldn’t have ended up doing if I was working on my pitch.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

 

Synoptic Work So Far!

After the Synoptic Pitches I was assigned to a team including: myself, Bence, Josh and Jacob. My pitch did win in a way that my idea was combined with Bence’s. The concept for the project as a whole is a game set in an arcade but in between the levels of the arcade machines there are little animated shorts instead of just going over to the next machine.

Below is the general idea of what the game will be like:

So far the actual production of the project is barely underway because the first week was full of sorting out all of the pre-production such as the burn down charts, Asset list, production lists and the Audio plan.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Next week I will start the production of the first game and will blog about it as soon as I have something suitable for the blog.

That’s all for now with the Synoptic Project,

Matty OUT!

Synoptic Pitch So Far!

Over the last week I have been spending time on my pitch for the synoptic project. So far I have everything done apart from the play board which is still in production. The basic premise of the game that I want to make is: It is a game where you are in an arcade surrounded by a number of arcade machines (number depending on where you are in the game) and you have to play through each arcade machine beating each high score to move on to the next room. The types of room I have in mind are:

Corner Store (Level 1)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arcade (Level 2)

Casino (Level 3)

Ideally I would want a different number of arcade machines in each room gradually getting more and more to keep the conventional difficulty curve of games getting harder and harder to complete as the game goes on.

The minimum viable product (MVP) for this game is to have a simple arcade style room with 3 different fully working machines. The stretched goals for the game is to have all of the rooms listed above full with arcade machines and with all different games in them. I understand that this will be hard to pull off but that is the reason it is stretch goals and not the MVP.

That’s all for with the Synoptic Pitch,

Matty OUT!

Creative + Technical Submission

The end of the Creative and Technical project has finally come to an end and I say finally because as you know I am not very thrilled with having to do a modelling project when I want to be a programmer/level designer but it had to be done. Nonetheless, Looking with hindsight I shouldn’t have been too fussed with having to do this project because to be honest it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I learned a lot of things which I won’t use but will be very useful just to say that I know how to do certain things like baking, etc.

---

Here is the link to the Wolf Skull model on Sketchfab:

Animal Skull by Matty Dickson on Sketchfab

---

IRay Renders

---

Normal Map

---

Portfolio Piece

---

Pre-Production

Here is the PowerPoint Presentation for my Pre-Production.

Model Inspiration

---

Final Thoughts

When I first started this project (I’ll be honest) I wasn’t happy when I found out that I had to do some modelling instead of focusing on programming and level design but the more I thought about it the less bothered I was about it because I realised that if I put a good amount of effort in I could learn some things new and have a good portfolio piece too. During the modelling aspect of the project I only came across one pretty major issue and that was the fact that my high poly model wasn’t baking onto the low poly but Nath helped me by deleting history, freezing transformations and making sure that both models were in exactly the same place in the Maya file.

Overall I am happy with the progress that I have made in the modelling aspects even though I will most likely never do anything like this ever again it is still good for that slight chance that someone needs help with this sort of thing in the future and I will be able to help them. It also allows me to understand the process that modellers go through to get a good looking model when under a tri limit.

That’s all forever with the Creative and Technical Modelling,

Matty OUT!