Phew, where did my week go?

This week has gone by so quickly! As the team nears closer and closer towards the alpha milestone, features are quickly beginning to get added to the game. I must say, things are looking quite good. We were lucky enough to have James from Sidhe in again. For all you budding game designers out there, James offered some great advice.

1. Make sure that when designing a game, have a FOCUSED idea of what is going to happen. This should be based almost entirely on the "gamer experience." This will help prioritize goals and features for the game.
2. Introduce the player to the important elements of the game gradually. The player experience should be enough to keep the player interested without boring them or overwhelming them.
3. The first ten minutes are critical. If the player is not hooked by then, then their is something wrong with the current design. It's better to have a game with a polished ten minutes of good solid play, than a game that is half-assed that lasts one hour.

These tips have come in handy this week, and with James's help, we were able to draft up a sample playthrough. As with all projects, the initial design can sometimes become inapplicable as the project evolves hence the need for a different sample play through description. Keep posted for how our game develops.

Blake - Week 14

Been doing a lot of asset upgrading, i think their starting to look pretty ok

Michael Bastiaens -Friday 17th April

"Captains Log 17/4/09"

Its another week done and another week closer to our alpha milestone. As with the approach of most deadlines people tend to start working longer and harder around the class and more and more of the game is starting to take shape. This week I started by finishing off the sniper rifle for First person and have completed the first person cage for the machine gun and was about to start creating the normal maps for the object but I was then informed that I was going to take over finishing off the Grunt. Although it was not totally unexpected that I would be working on it, it did mean I had to take a pause from working on the weapons but heck getting to work on the grunt and getting back to Zbrush and Photoshop is a welcome change. So without further delay... here are the latest images of this weeks work.

First up is the First Person Sniper Rifle with the normal map applied to it.

This next image shows the wireframe on top of the Machine Gun weapon for the first person camera angle. All that was left for this to be completed was the process of transfering maps from the high res model on this current model.

These last few pictures show the screenshots of the current Grunt Sculpt in Zbrush. At the moment I am now dropping base colours onto the model so I can then work on them easier inside of photoshop. I did make one mistake in this process in which I forgot to unwrap the low poly model before importing it into Zbrush which is that much of a problem it just means I need to take the extra step of importing the high res models into Maya and then transfering maps or mixing it up with a little X-Normal depending on the results of the normal maps.

Well thats all from me for this week. Next week ill be continuing to work on the Grunt and should be getting out a colour map all sorted out by next week and depending on how much Maya will crash on me I might get out a normal mapped version of the Grunt as well. So until next time....

-Michael

pretty extracts

Jason - No idea what week were into now - Shotgun!

For most of last week and this week i have been working on the shotgun pass-1 and pass-2 and am pleased that the modeling has been finished, alot of the shotgun was organic which isnt my strongest modelling point.

This shotgun is my second complete model because i didnt feel the previous one was upto standard, next week ill begin unwrapping, and texturing.

Unfortinutly alot of my enviroments that needed to be fixed i have only just managed to get around to exporting today, after the update to gamebryo 2.6 my whole maya-gamebryo plug in died and the machine required a wipe and reinstall, which sadly took I.T over a week to get it done, which held up asset exportion but all is good now, and pass 2 of all enviroment assets is complete.

Shotgun:

Yes, We can research now!!!

So as the title so abruptly suggests, we can research new weapons nows, I got that a few hours ago. I would have posted a movie but unfortunately it still needs some tender love and care from an artist to make it look pretty. It displays a nifty tool tip though!!!

Tim Bewick - Week 14

This week we moved from Gamebryo 2.5 to Gamebryo 2.6. There had been a few changes to the way animations worked and I converted our code to work with the way Gamebryo 2.6 does it now. I also worked on the game's tool tips and I got the nano-bot bar in the HUD to show the amount of nano-bots the player has. Now I am working on getting the avatar to die properly.

Michael -Thursady 9th April

"Captains Log 9/4/09"

First week back from our holidays so it was time to kick the holiday habits and get down to some serious work. This week I was continuing with the weapons and managed to finish modelling and normal mapping the remaining weapons ive been assigned to for the third person views and have started moving onto the first person guns now. The normal maps still need tweaking in photoshop but thats a task ill be doing later on. Also there seems to be a hint going on that I might be moving onto the grunt as well which would be all good in any case. Now for the pictures XD

First up is an image of the high poly and low poly rocket launcher with wireframes. The image following that is the normal mapped rocket launcher with untouched normals. They still need tweaking in photoshop before I feel satisfied with them.

Next up is the High Poly and Low poly sniper rifles. The image after that is the normal mapped third person rifle and the very last image the start of the first person sniper rifle model.

Well now its the end of the week since we get another short break due to Easter but after that ill be working on the first person models and I might be assigned to do the Grunt so until my next post take care everyone and everything!

-Michael

speaking in first perosn

progress update on the mine layer



the firstperson camera rig setup

Art Update !

Here's the initial sculpt of the Scientist, originally I should be detailing the Grunt last week but since Mike like to do it then I decided to give it (I'm generous). Anyway here's the Scientist and for this week I'll start the initial sculpt of the 1st Lieutenant so watch this space =D

Cheers =)