Student Project V: Adventure Tool Kit - Introduction, progress and more

It is the fifth semester and my last at the Games Academy and this time around I have not found enough other students to work on my idea (a point & click adventure in Unity) and the other projects were not what I wanted to do in my last semester. Apart from group projects we can also do solo projects in which we have a tutor who will supervise the challenge we set for ourselves.

So I really wanted to develop my own point & click adventure and now I am doing that alone. Unfortunately, without much outside help I am not capable to get my ideas in a game, so I decided to build a tool kit with which I might be able to make my ideas reality later on. The first part of the Adventure Tool Kit (ATK) is a dialogue editor with nodes for every line in the conversation.

My work started about three weeks ago and my first working prototype is ready:

Complex dialogue with multiple "hubs", I used the first dialogue of "Magic of Innocence" as an example node network.

Even though it might look ready yet, there are a lot of kinks I have to iron out before calling it "finished". As you can see in the screen shot complex networks with hubs can get kind of confusing to follow so far. There are some features missing that might be important but for that I have to meet with my tutor and show him the process and get his feedback.

The next part will be an item editor and after that I will implement a control system for mouse and touch interaction. The end goal will be a small game prototype were I used my tool kit for content creation.

If the tool kit works as I want it to I might even considering selling it on the Unity Asset Store. If I will provide it as a whole package or a set of components, is not clear yet.

Some artists I worked with have said that they might provide me with some art assets that I can use for my prototype, so it might not end up as crappy as I thought ;P

Cookie X - Some Progress and Plans for the Future

I started Cookie X as a side project to learn a bit more programming in C#. Unfortunately there was little time or motivation to do much while I worked on Toy Flyer. Especially in the end phase of that project I was happy to not code on the weekend and so Cookie X sank into some kind of dormant state. 

I worked a bit on collision and simple physics but the result so far is not that great. There is the problem that Cookie either flies or his jump is not even noticeable and some collisions are detected irregularly. So far I have only worked with simple sphere and box collisions but those will not work with the platform graphics that "Revenge of the Cookie" used. Implementing my own physics calculations is harder as initially expected and too much for me at the moment. If I want to finish Cookie X, I would have to use some kind of physics engine to help me out. The first project was started in Unity because of that but some disagreements let us to abandon Unity and switch to Torque2D. In hindsight it might have been better to stick with one engine and finish it there as we encountered the same problems as before.

Using a 3D engine for a 2D game might be a bit overhead but I have worked with Unity on two successful projects by now so I might switch from XNA to Unity. Another bonus in Unity is the integrated editor which frees up my time considerably because I don't have to write my own. In one of my classes at the Games Academy we will work on an editor for 2D games in Unity that will be separated from Unity. When it is finished I will integrate mine with Cookie X and could publish them together.

The progress is not lost because I can port my classes to Unity and continue from there. When finished I could even publish the game but that will only happen if I find enough time to recreate the original game and maybe finish it according to the design documents we made for the student project. When the mechanics are working and the editor is integrated I will give it to a friend who was level and game designer for the first game and he can build some levels. Maybe we will even recruit some 2D artist to create additional graphics for platforms or enemies...

Student Project IV - Post Mortem

The fourth student project at the Games Academy is at an end.

It was quite a challenging project, unfortunately not because of high technical difficulty but because of endurance and staying focussed. We struggled to find a vision we all could live with and could work on, which resulted in a lot of unnecessary work and motivational problem for most team members. We found our vision about three quarters in the given time and had all to work overtime to finish it. I initially wanted to work on Cookie X on the weekends but there was not time for it and I even had to cancel on parties and seeing friends.

The problem was that a helicopter is not really suitable as a vehicle in a racing game, so the game designer played around with different mechanics until he found the "taxi mode", where the player has to transport items from one place in the room to another. Ideas like a rescue helicopter or a real taxi helicopter were tested but not fun enough for us. We wanted something different. And that we found.

Why not build a city out of building blocks via helicopter. That idea was kind of strange at first but combined with a mechanic to pick up blocks and a kind of 3d blueprint of the building to build, it worked. The player controls the helicopter, flies around the room, can pick up blocks of different shape and size that are distributed all over the room, fly with them to a designated building place and drop the block at the right spot in the blueprint.

To accomplish that we build the mechanics and made play tests but the pick up process and the placing inside the blue print was quite difficult. With a target group of casual mobile gamers in mind, the controls were far too difficult. After a long period of time (one programmer being absent helping his wife with their new born kid), we managed to fix even that and in the end we had a nice little casual on the android platform.

Like I mentioned in the previous post, I worked on the UI, menu and asset integration. Unity has some problems with 3rd party revision tools like SVN, so we had some difficulties there but after some mistakes we managed to overcome that obstacle as well. Another curiosity is that 3d models imported into Unity are scaled down to 0.01 of their original size by default. There is a scale option but while importing a bunch of models it was overlooked, which had unwanted results and I was the only one charged with integrating all assets after that. For a mobile project we needed to limit the draw calls as much as possible but if there are two instances of the same model (which use the same material) inside a scene but they are scaled in Unity they will produce two separate draw calls. So, all models had to be scaled outside of Unity and the material had to be versatile enough to be used on as many models as possible. Unity is able to combine meshes that use the same material and that are switched to static (if it is not moved) reducing the draw calls and thereby boosting the performance on mobile devices.

Due to the short time frame at the end of the project we could not implement all the needed tweaks to make the game work with older or less powerful devices than my tablet but we will do so during the next few weeks.

Student Project IV - Introduction

The fourth semester started about a month ago and my next student project is nearing its first prototype.

The idea is to have one of these remote controlled toy helicopters and be able to fly around in a kids room. Our target platform is Android, mostly tablets but maybe we might get it polished enough to get it to work on phones as well.

There is a game in the Google Play Store that features a toy helicopter but it is more like a simulation. Our goal is to have a game were the player is able to fly through predetermined routes inside our level, collect points or other pickups and will have a control scheme that is easy enough to handle by 12 year olds (or clumsy people like myself ;P ).

We are using Unity as our game engine and my tasks will be UI and code implementation for audio and particle effects, like I did for Hadron. Additionally, my assignments will be performance and asset integration as well as tutoring some of my team mates in Unity.

To avoid any confusion, each new semester project consists of a new idea and a new combination of students. Most of the students that worked on Hadron were in their last semester and have left the Games Academy by now, so most of the students I now work with have never worked with Unity before because it is not part of our regular classes. Some had minor experiences with it but not on a full (student) project.

My new Android Tablet

Some days ago, I got my first android tablet. It was quite a good deal coming with my mobile phone contract, otherwise I might not have bought it.

After installing some apps I also had installed on my phone, I made an android build of Hadron for my own and it runs like a charm :)

The tablet is a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and I am quite impressed with it. Not only does it run games and programs like a charm, its Stylus starts to replace my paper notepad and I am able to send my notes to team mates via email or skype.

This isn't a sales pitch, I am just genially impressed with the tablet...

Cookie X - Introduction

In one of my classes at the Games Academy we worked with XNA building a side scrolling space shooter. It featured a player ship, some enemies that spawn on the right side of the screen and the player shoots them for points before they collide with the player.

This small project and the fact that the platformer we tried to build as our first student project was never finished convinced me to start a new project, Cookie X. It is called "CookieX" because the original game was called "Revenge of the Cookie" and the new one will be coded in C# and XNA.

The brave chocolate chip cookie faces his sworn enemies, the vegetable armies.

Cookie X will be a simple platformer loosely modelled on Super Mario Bros. The player character is a chocolate chip cookie which has to get to the end of the level despite the vegetable armies trying to stop him.

The simple movement around the screen I could just copy from the space shooter but a platformer needs different kinds of movement and very basic physics simulation.

Student Project III - Post Mortem and More

My third game project at the Games Academy is finished and I did do some coding in C# in Unity.

I created a manager file each for audio clips and particles which provided the public variables used inside the Unity editor and the static files or functions to use in other script files throughout the project. Before the project my experience with C# was nearly non existent, I did some work with C++ or Java before, so the syntax was familiar but my feeling about .NET were kind of mixed. But after working for the project and some work in class in connection with XNA, I kind of liked the ease of work with it.

It was my second project in Unity and this time around it was much more fun to work with. Unity is a great tool kit and gives developers much freedom with their projects. A year ago, my skills as a coder or general developer were not good enough to master Unity but having worked with some coders with more experience than me helped me a lot to understand the ease of work and the freedom Unity offers.

In my free time I converted an old program of mine to C#. As a result I also tried out some WPF interfaces and was surprised by the capabilities it offers.

I am looking forward to my future projects and what might also come by...

By the way, look up Hadron on Facebook. It's the project I worked on :)

Game Ideas 02: Old School 2.5 D Point & Click Adventures

I am a huge fan of old school point and click adventures like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max etc.

So my dream is it to design my own someday but the modern adventures are mostly action games or filled with quick time events. Both aspects detract from the fun of the adventure by introducing hectic events and the chance to die because of bad reaction time. An adventure game for me provides the player enough time to think about his decisions and does not hinder him with unintuitive controls apart from telling a good story and maybe having some laughs. Nowadays, most adventure games use controllers or the keyboard to navigate the characters through the game world. Why? Well. maybe because the world is in 3D and the character should move in 3D as well but how about proving the characters and the world in 3D and leave the presentation mostly 2D? In gaming terms this is called 2.5D and it is used in different kinds of games and genres.

It sounds fine but it is nothing new and not even innovative so why the hell do I want to do that? Well, mostly for the love of those classics I played as a kid and because point and click adventures are ideal for new platforms like the iPad or other mobile devises. They don't need complicated control schemes and can be as long as the developer wants them to be. Some good modern examples are the Telltale Games episodes of Sam & Max or the most of the games by Pendulo Studios.

There are some new 2D adventures by indie developers out there but I have not played any of them yet (apart from Machinarium) but having worked with some young artists at my game design school most want to do 3D work and not work in 2D any more. The 2.5 D game is the best compromise that I can think of in that case, so hopefully I can find some people interested in the small story I am writing as background for the game idea and my own old school adventure game can become a reality some day...

Student Project III - Introduction

A new semester has begun and with it a new project.

This time it is a 2.5 D platformer in Unity. There is not much to show or tell at the moment, so I just say that I will do some programming for the interface and maybe some particle effects...

There are some tutorial links I wanted to post:

• http://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/runner/ (a game prototype somewhat similar to our idea)
• http://www.unity3dstudent.com/category/modules/ (some video tutorials on different aspects of Unity)
• http://pastebin.com/TZM50gGY (a health bar in C#)

Game Ideas 01: First Person Exploration Adventure - Phaeton

First of all, I thought about writing up some of my ideas for games that I might develop some day or just use them as a basis for new ideas.

The idea of a first person exploration adventure was poking around my head for some time now because I think it would be a game that I would play the hell out of... but as someone who just finished a game design course at a game design school here, I know that designing a game for myself is not something I should do from a game designer's point of view. As a game designer I should be looking at a game idea that could sell and that has a huge target group. Sorry but I don't like the idea of just designing games that sell and that are fashioned for the masses. The problem with these kind of games is that they are not really innovative but build on too many proven concepts to be original. I think that these games and that approach of designing games are wrong and smother innovation in the field of games. The idea of going indie is not so appealing either because more and more indie developer think of making games as art and design something that is either nice to look at but without any gameplay or that is so simple that it is fun for a few moments and boring in the long run. But enough with the ranting about the state of games at the moment...

Ok, back to the idea part: What is a first person exploration adventure?
It is a game not unlike a RPG but without all the character stuff, the classes and the micromanagement. The player has all the freedom to do what he/she wants without sticking to a predetermined play style. There are games out there that give that experience to a point. One of them is Minecraft which give an ever expending world and a small set of tools to the player with which he can do whatever he wants. A problem with Minecraft is the lack of goal and lack of guidance that many players want for their games but as an free-form exploration game Minecraft shines like no other. Another game that could fit the "genre" is Amnesia but my experience with it is limited so I am not so sure about it. Apart from that is the setting that is not one I would prefer as I am no fan of survival horror or any kind of horror for that matter. To clarify the "genre" a bit, I thought about the old Myst games and changed the puzzles to be more "in-game" than just some "mini games" like you can see in most action adventures nowadays, write a story that is a background and part of the game as well and have a goal that the player can see but reach in his own time. So in conclusion it would be a game where the player character walks around a set of areas, finds clues to proceed to new areas, solves puzzles and experiences an engaging story without shooting or killing anything.

And what is the difference to an action adventure?
Well, first off, it is in first person because the first person perspective is as far as I'm concerned the perspective with the best immersion in the game world.Second, the emphasise is on exploration and not on killing stuff or doing mind blowing acrobatics in split seconds. There is no time limit and nothing that pushes the player to rush through the game world. Everything inside the game areas could be a hint to proceed further so the player has to have enough time to have a thorough look around.Another difference is the fact that the story is one of the most important parts of the game.I already mentioned Myst as an example but thing of more free movement and the chance to alter the story by being able to choose different paths to solve a puzzle and having that choice influence the story (that's why I mentioned RPGs as an example because most modern rpgs advertise with this feature). So much for the "genre".

The title says "Phaeton", so let me explain what Phaeton is.
It is a Science Fiction world some friends and I created as a world for pen & paper role playing. It uses our galaxy but in about 4500 years, so a lot of things changed in that time and mankind noticed that they are indeed not alone in the universe and that there are a lot of other species out there. One of these species are the Raccequa, a kind of amphibian that needs a lot of water to survive, which enslaved most of the galaxy and ruled over them for about 2000 years. The massive expansion and internal struggles lead to the fall of the ruling caste and to a rebellion that freed most species resulting in the formation of an intergalactic union which brought equality and temporary peace to the galaxy.

The background story for the game is:
The player character is a mix between a smuggler, a private investigator and security guard who owns a small ship and preforms odd jobs to get by. One day he picks up a distress call and find a large cruiser drifting through space near an asteroid belt. Driven by curiosity and the distress call he docks and gets on board the larger vessel, just to find that the reactor seems off-line and no life signs could be detected aboard. From his point of entry he starts his investigation into the whereabouts of the crew and the distress call. By looking around for clues and reading diary entries he finds in crew quarters he can find what happened on the ship and proceed to the bridge to find the source of the distress call.

Much more I will not reveal by now because I am willing to make that game someday and telling the whole story here would spoil too much...