Animation

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Game mechanics by Achiricioaei Ionut Lucian_UPDATED



Working on game mechanics.


We started with a glowing texture, what we had in mind was to make some crystals glow only when the player was around them, but we changed our mind because we wanted to keep the lights even when the player was at a distance from them so we just animated the glow


The most interesting part in this animated texture was using the time with the cosine function node to keep the values from -1 to 1 and then using the clamp node to restrict it only from 0 to 1. So the rotation wont increase towards the infinite.

Next we implemented a door open and a info text with some light.
The text and light+ the key input activation are triggered by a proximity cube when the player start overlap with the cube they activate, and deactivating when the player stops overlapping with the cube.


Because the first door was activated by a single button switch I thought that the second door would close itself after releasing the button in this way the player would get stuck on the other side, this was an easy way of doing a no point return, here is the implementation of the first gate.


And here is the second gate implementation:




Next step was to make the door move and to connect the input to a key press and a proximity detector.


The trap trigger as it can be seen below has a 4 seconds delay before returning back to it's initial position.



My first approach in showing the objective message was a draw text procedure which was achieved with a HUD blueprint; unfortunately I couldn't find out why the Draw text wasn't drawing any text on the HUD, either way here is the call function



The objective in the beginning would be communicated with the help of a trigger cube here is the implementation:



Further down the road we made a base parent class for pick-up from which we derived  two children the Collectable, and the Energy.


This blueprint is the pick-up event it basically print's the item name, collectable or ammo, and adds +1 to the variable and set's it; then it print's out a string with the new values of the collected item.




This small blueprint has the role of printing the number of collected artefacts which includes collectables as well as ammo;





I implemented a basic shooting system with a limited amount of ammo, unfortunately I was unable to connect the pick-up ammo variable with the initial allocated ammo variable; The projectile also is loosing velocity and can interact with objects in the scene with other words physics.




Lower is the construction script that sets the length of the collectables.



Worked on the camera mode, now the camera can switch from 3-rd person to first person using the mouse wheel here is how it's implemented:


As we planned to implement creatures in the game we had to create a firing system so we made the left mouse button the trigger for that, also create variables for maximum ammo and current ammo plus health and energy as our character will be half mechanic it will consume energy when he will hyper jump or sprint. Added sound when the fire system is triggered a -- counter that will reduce the ammo and set the variable to the new value. The trigger will only work after it will perform a check to see if there is any ammo left.

Next the implementation of checkpoints with respawn points at the checkpoint location. First I created a respawn interface blueprint which I included in My_Character blueprint, I created two functions Set_Checkpoint and Get_Checkpoint, the set look like this:


and here is Get_checkpoint:



Next step inside My Character blueprint I created a new function called Spawn Player which will re-spawn player at the latest checkpoint but if player will re-spawn at the same checkpoint twice  or better said more than once it will be randomly placed on the map, here is how the blueprint look:


The HUD is simplistic and basic but it serves it's purpose in this case here is how it looks inside the designer: Left top ammo bottom left the life rectangle near to this with orange it s the stamina bar and the long green one it's the experience bar;

here is the cast return of the player's health variable P Health, towards the health bar on the HUD


The text implementation of the current ammo variable, basically it outputs the variable on the screen


The energy output to HUD


And finally the Hyper jump event which supposed to be triggered when the player would acquire a number of experience in the blueprint the XP is set to 1>= and the H experience variable it is set at a value of 1 because the acquire of experience hasn't been implemented. This should increase the jump size distance but I couldn't figure it out and also decrease the stamina level. Here is how I've done it:



Last but not least I created the victory point, reaching this point will send the player to another level which is the main menu level.




Monday, November 17, 2014

some plants

I think the plants go well with our idea,and -sublimish saying- flavour of our game. Thinking about that   led me to vibrant, lively world of Flora.
I end up creating those,hope it'll go well with the project.
Inspirations were obviously taken from plants,amazon jungle surprises, meadows, forests and so on..



Claudia

some sketches




This is my concept art,pretty much only quick sketches so i could have an idea of what I'm doing. 
Basically they all look terrible in terms of workshop,but we all know when there's idea in the head it's better to immortalize it as it might fade away being surrounded by a gang of thoughts and contemplations of our abstruses brains! ;)
Although I've made my assets and sculptures carefully and tightly with my artistic afflatus desire! :)

Claudia

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Level design, the map.

                                    

                                   Level design, the map.



         The first map that I had in mind was more of a maze, while the idea wasn't bad for some people might create a confusion state of mind, so I left behind this idea, while this map was a "straight ahead"creation and was a more spontaneous map it didn't had a plan behind it and as you can see in the image below it lacked a central structure.

Because I haven't done a plan before starting the project, I only had something vague in my mind, the progress started to slow down and lose momentum. So I started again this time planning more rigorously. All the team members we met and discussed the map and after we studied some Aztec city plans as these found below



I came with this plan:


Even raw at this state I had a better understanding of how the level it would look like and more importantly the player's path.
Later I developed this more refined map

With starting point, added some gates and incorporated all the assets created so far.
As seen the maze is completely out of the scene; The most important aspect is the view (see the eye in the legend), there are two sites where the player can have a panoramic view of the surroundings usually before the stairs where the player can have a look from a certain height/elevation.


















Main Character concept art

Anthropomorphic Jaguar




Here is the concept art I made for the character. It was based on a jaguar with human features, I've played around with its proportion by adding some long legs to show it can run and move fast like a Jaguar. and added some pockets to show that this character would be a collector or an explorer of some sort.

New Concept


The team has asked me to modify my design by changing the robotic placid face of the character and adding a more organic face to it

2 New Modes for the Character!



  Normal Mode



Gestalt Mode


To push the jaguar concept, I decided to make the character "transform" while its running. This would make the game more fun and playful plus it works with the overall "Mayan concept". The team is still deciding whether to use this concept or make a new one.


Main character research

Since our character would be an alien researcher, we've looked at some references that would suit the overall theme. If we placed a random high-tech alien, it might not work with the ancient Mayan ruin theme so I've research on Mayan animals that maybe I can turn into an alien so it would have some connection with the game.

I decided to look for an anthropomorphic jaguar because ancient Mayan had some a Jaguar gods which may be a good concept for our main character.



Modelling workflow

I retopologized the model so that it would be low poly and used Headus to arrange its UV layout.
I just want to show the process on how I made the model from Zbrush to Maya to Headus. 




Statues

These are the models I have created in Zbrush.  As you can see, these two models were based on my concept design. They will be used in our game as Statures and some parts of the models would be used separately so we can recycle the model.


Other assets

Here are some other assets that I made, some broken walls and some ancient arcs to add that deteriorated effect. All are based on real Mayan ruins.


Both these two assets were done in Zbrush but was retopologized in Maya  for less polygon. Both were also UV'd in Headus.