Alpha Status Met

hey folks,

Quick update. We did our alpha presentations to our mentors and some industry vets and things went swimingly...aside from a crappy projector that shows images far too dark. They liked where we went with the game. We've accomplished (and then some) all the requirements for alpha status and are now hard at work charging towards Beta.

Beta comes on the 14th of this month so not much time to do...well anything aside from work on the game. The end is in our sites....Anyone from Relic out there want to offer me a job before we grad and I am inundated with job offers?! ....k seriously though I need a job end of Feburary

Dev Diary Numero Seven

So,

That was a well needed break. Development slowed to a crawl, as predicted working from home for a group of 5 is not a terribly productive process. We had sicknesses, traveling, difficulty communicating and, of course, the holidays and family.

A comprehensive bug list has been made by yours truly while our PM works on fresh eyes work and PM duties. Our coder was tasked with refining the AI which is sorely needed (Due to our dismemberment feature, out AI cannot make use of the extremely useful and sorely missed Kismet AI) So, our coder is literally learning to make basic AI on the go. Something I am sure future employers will value. Our level designer has been battling the elements in an effort to get back to the UK to visit his family. He made it, but had no access to a computer Circa later than 2000 so...He couldn't do a whole lot of level design work. He got back to Canada early enough to do a bit of level tweaking, but not as much as we had all hoped. Our 3d Guy is simply AWOL. we're all assuming he just had an awesome restful break.

Anyways, this is my blog and my dev diary so, onto my tasks. As I mentioned above I compiled a comprehensive bug list. I concentrated, obviously, on larger game breaker bugs of which I found a fair share. In addition to that I've been writing up suggestions for enemy placement, level layout, gameplay flow and intuitive instructions. I have plans to make some changes to textures for several gameplay objects to emphasize (or in some cases de-emphasize them) I also have a nice list of sounds to create.

Now, on my first day back (tomorrow) I'll be making a prioritized list of these bugs and then I'll be handing them out to team members to get fixed. As anyone in QA can tell you. fix two bugs, switch on or create one. So, better to start now than in 2 weeks for QA. I hold no illusions given our time frame and inexperienced team that we will have our fair share of bugs, but it is my goal to showcase my QA talents and part of that will be starting early. I'll also be commandeering our 3d modeler for QA work. He's shown little interest in doing work aside from 3d but did express some interest in QA so that should work out nicely.

In addition to that work tomorrow I'll be creating the sounds I have discovered we will be needing after my test passes, I am sure the team will have some more sounds to add to my list as well. I am still counting myself lucky we had the foresight to prioritize our sound list and begin work on it with the collaborators early because they've been out of contact and have seemingly lost interest in the project. We've gone far and above out of our way to accommodate them, but they seem too busy and have little interest in completing the project they agreed to. Ah well, luckily we have all the stuff we need and I have a lot of interest in sound design in addition to game design so it will be fun to complete.

Speaking of sound, since I do not pro tools I had to get my hands on a copy of Reaper (great price for what is it by the way) to edit sounds in an effort to create music. I spent a day or two on my break learning the program and creating music for the game. I am just too used to pro tools now, even though I find the program...odious to say the least (buggy, buggy, BUGGY) I am still used to it, as such. I do not feel any of the music I created for the game over the break with Reaper will be used for the game. I'll be creating some more music for the game when I am back with the group and have a copy of the oh-so-finicky pro tools.

Approximately one month until industry night, man I need a job...

Dev Diary 6

And The end is coming alarmingly fast. We're on "Break" now. Which means when we're back in January we'll only have 4 precious weeks to refine, polish and finish our game. Scary!

Fun though, The progression of the game is coming along nicely. I've transitioned my role once again as development continues and my art and sound priorities wane. I am now taking on the primary role of QA. If you are a regular reader of this blog then you'll know it's something I did for 6 years before coming to school so I know a bit about it.

A preliminary bug list has been assembled and will continue to be assembled over the "break" I will then prioritize, mark severity and so on. I'll be bringing in fresh eyes testers once we hit Alpha (technically we already have, but the review by mentors is not done until we're back in early Jan.

In addition to that, I'll be working on creating some ambient sound tracks to compliment our game. I had managed to completely forget about the soundtracks I created early on in the year, our project manager recalled us doing audio tracks and decided to check mine out and reminded me. They seem to go well nicely with our theme so we'll either be using those or I'll be creating variations of those over the break. If you haven't already please give em a listen and throw me some feedback!

http://soundcloud.com/zedkhov

So, I'll be keepiung busy over the break making bug lists, suggestions and working on fine polish art and sound. From the fresh eyes testing we've done so far I've had nothing but positive feedback on my unique frontend idea so I am really planning to showcase that on industry night. I believe it could be what tips the scales in our balance and gets our team jobs, or at least more notice from industry vets.

So, onward and upward, game is looking good for Alpha we're on schedule and happy with where we are right now. More news to come before I head back to work in Jan.

Dev Diary 5

Already on Dev Diary 5...Time flies when you're making games.

We're making good progress, slowing down a bit so the PM and I decided it was time for a 2 day weekend. The team obviously agreed. We plan to recharge and to hit the ground running on Monday.

I just finished converting the game to the new art style. Instead of only high contrast on enemies and the players hands, Now everything is high contrast. I was met with doubt by a few mentors, but I insisted that the art style would look good, or, great in fact, once I get the final lighting in.

They still wouldn't believe me. So, I converted my test room to the new textures and created the lighting I am envisioning for the final game. It was met with a lot of positive reviews...in fact, More than half of the mentors said it certainly has a Sin City look to it, to which I take particular satisfaction as that was my mission from the beginning. I couldn't have been happier to hear that.

In addition to that, I've completed all (currently) required particle effects. They really add a nice polish to the art style, combined with selective use of emissive textures we have a very unique, eye-catching art style here.

We got decap working 100% with our enemy models which was a task and a half for our 3d modeler. UDK was just not willing to comply, we were actually near to cutting it because we couldn't get it implemented soon enough but our modeler pulled a hail Mary and did a great job.

Our Coder is plugging away and is doing fantastic work as always, we are continuing to refine our main mechanics, but we are also receiving compliments on getting them all implemented and working so early in our build. That may suggest to some that they were simple to implement, they absolutely were not, we just busted our asses to make sure our core gameplay is working as intended as soon as possible. Lots of late nights and many more to come of course.

Our collaborators are doing great as always, we are actually running out of things for our 3d collab guy to do. Our sound guys are awesome, but very busy so work as slowed down a bit from them, completely understandable. We also planned for this so we had our sound "sprints" prioritized for them. We have all the vital sounds from them already, the rest of the stuff if/when completed is just icing on the cake.

Our PM is doing great, continues to evaluate and schedule. Constant adjustment and adaptation are what Agile management is all about. Some big changes may be coming soon (I am privy to this as assistant PM) but the team knows that in order to run effectively as an agile team adaptation and adjustment are key. Not only that, but in order to function in the industry one must be able to roll with the punches. More on this later.

Finally, I must once again apologize for lack of screenshots. Due to this hectic schedule, I have to do my blog updates on my 1 day off a week at home (where my current game build is not). I use the term "day off" lightly as that day is usually spent prepping for the following days work or doing other homework that VFS thinks is a good idea to stack on us right now. That said, it's no excuse, I'll be sure to make time early next week to add some screenshots of the new art style up here.

Cheers,

Z

Devi Diary 4

It's update time.

Work on this monster of a project progresses, Things have been progressing smoothly for the most part as we met our first milestone. We have our main mechanics working, we have the majority of the art incorporated and we have a whitebox of our final level in the works.

We only today finished the enemy character model, it will be my first time texturing a full character so I am looking forward to that. We've also devised several puzzles to incorporate into our first area of the game which will make use of our main mechanic and should give players a real fun time.

I've got to admit, I am loving this art style with selective use of emissive textures we've really transformed the game into something slick. I'll be getting some screenshots up for you guys on monday which will show off the texturing cryo chamber complete with eery emissive white lights.

Everything is shaping up, we have our external 3d modeler working on the first of our environmental traps, a giant industrial buzzsaw! can't wait to get that one working in game.

More to come folks.

Z

P.S. Anyone picking up assassins creed 3?

Dev Diary 2

Hey,

Game has changed a significant amount. We're now in a basement cavern type area. (Picture the tram ride from Half Life 1, but you're able to run around those labs and caverns that intertwine with each other.

The hand gun has been removed and replaced with a second "power" which is your other hand which shoots bolts of energy that stick to anything, then detonate after a short period of time, destroying the environment and sending enemies flying.

We have prototypes for all of our main mechanics and are going into week 2 of development (officially development, we've been making the game for several weeks now)

So, I've spent that time learning how to collaborate with team members, collaborating with outside sources who are submitting 3d and sound assets to us for the game (look and sound great by the way) I've also created a large texture database, decal database and started on a particle effects database. I've done a bit more concept art as well. Here is our new vision for our main character (he's being held captive in the basement/cavern area as a test subject. I basically combined elements of our original character model of Vinnie, coupled with elements of a character I made some time ago for another game called Asylum. Check it out:

Anyways, short update. I apologize but I am running on empty. Still wanted to get something up here though. Will have more for you guys next week. We should have a lot of sound, 3d and art assets completed by then so it will be a productive sprint...barring any horrible unforeseen events.

Cheers,

Z

Update on it's way

Lo all,

Been an incredibly busy start to development. Having a blast. Update coming within the next day or so. Lots of big changes so be sure to come check it out.

Wolf Dev Diary #1

Hello everyone,

We are rolling into our last few months of classes, which means the massive final project is full steam ahead. I've decided it would be pretty cool to document our struggle in making a commercial quality "vertical slice" of a video game done with our extremely talented 5 man time. Our jobs on the project are as follows:

Zach Williams - Art, QA, Sound, misc
 Matt Macmahon - 3d modeling, misc
Clinton Ma - project lead, scripting, misc
Balraj Basi - scripting, misc
Nick Cattley - Level Design, scripting, misc

The game is called Wolf, it's a Film/tech Noire style first person shooter made with the Unreal Development Kit. You play as Vinnie "The Wolf" Morello. A mole for the mob entrenched within the oppressive totalitarian government's regime. The mob uses you for warnings and general information that the government may have on them. It was good while it lasted, but Vinnie has been discovered.

Vinnie isn't a pushover though, he just happens to have telekinetic powers, these powers make Vinnie extremely destructive and extremely valuable to the mob. It's up to Vinnie to clear his way through the regimes headquarters in an effort to escape.

As I mentioned, the game takes place in a film/tech noir style world. The time period, while never official resembles the 1930's but with technology far distant from our 1930's. Things like video walls, computers and even basic service robots can be found throughout the game world. The game will be almost entirely in black and white, try to think of it along the lines of sin city, High contrast with effective use of vibrant colors. We'll utilize the colors to really make the game appear visually stimulating while distancing itself from the UDK mod feeling so many games developed in this engine fall into.

So, Telekinesis. Yes, Vinnie can pick up and toss objects and even enemies with his left hand, with his right he can charge up objects and enemies with energy to the point where they will explode. This will make for interesting battles with plenty of wow moments. To add to that, we  will be incorporating an extreme level of aesthetic level destruction. All of our objects we create for the game will be destructible. Walls and pillars will chip away, debris will fall and the players will be left feeling extremely badass after witnessing the destruction then can bring.

That's not to say Vinnie is invulnerable. The totalitarian oppressive government did not get to where it is without breaking a few limbs. At their disposal are some extremely powerful riot troopers. Most will be armed with hand canons, some will be armed with something we like to refer to as "the spike" it's a heavy club, a taser and a spear all in one!

Concept art for our enemies

Ultimately, our goal with Wolf is to create a stylized, fun, power trip type of game. So, since this is my blog, I will be covering (for the most part) my experience with the development process form here on out.

Today, I had a scheduled job to take hand turnarounds. I took front side and back photos of each of my hands, edited them in photoshop and then fired them off to our 3d modeler. He's now on his way to creating the main characters hands which players will always view on screen.

Mock up of our game view including basic hud.

 I then went on to discover how to create proper looking particle effects in UDK which will spawn from a joint on our custom models. In other words, I made bloody particles which will spew out of our models when they suffer a serious wound. There will likely be several iterations, but for the moment I am content with it. Our 3d modeler will be playing around with incorporating it with his models in UDK sometime soon.

Tonight I'll be adding more content to the textures folder. I cannot afford a copy of a handy little program called Crazybump which basically would make my job a hell of a lot easier. Once I create an initial texture, I load it into crazybump and it spits out the other texture maps I'll need for our game (in this case normal and specular) So, I'll just have to stick to creating textures, making sure they tile and making sure they look good in black and white for now. Once I am back to school on Monday I'll begin finalizing them with crazybump....Unless any of you kind Internet folks wants to donate a copy to me. Hah.

Tomorrow my team has a meeting with a mentor at a pub downtown. We're hoping to get his insight on whether or not to remove the gun the player uses in game (see screenshot above) and adding another telekinesis power to the right hand instead (as described far above, a charge power that makes things 'splode) The team is a bit divided on it, but we've set a time to decide and with our mentors advice we will make a decision.

Finally, over the weekend, I will be creating a fancy schmancy single page poster for our game which will be passed along to our schools 3d students in the hopes of enticing one of them to collaborate with us. We are not in need of one particularly, but we can always use more 3d objects in game so we'll give it a shot. I'll also finalize our preliminary sound assets list which, you guessed it, will be passed along to sound design in the hopes of getting collaborators there as well...which we really do need.

I've written enough, back to work!

Cheers,

Z

Buy me a cup of coffee it helps the dev process!