New Build

Here's some of the features implemented in the latest test build for Knightside Chronicles.

New/fixed features:
+ Fixed boost dash
+ Fixed air control
+ Boost Dash object collision detection (the rectangular block will dissapear if you boost dash in to it (while in mid-air) )
+ various minor character control script modifications


Also:
+ keyboard controls
+ increased jump height as per Avi's suggestion

Things to fix for next build:
- grounded boost dash only inches forward a small amount, will fix in next build (eta sunday/monday)

New build

New build's up in the weekly builds folder in 27/08/2012
New features:
+ Shooting [press X to shoot, currently using placeholder projectile]
+ Mini tumbler hit detection [will detect when you shoot it]
+ Mini tumbler control modifications [now affected by gravity and can ascend/decend slopes]
+ Mini tumbler death sequence [shoot 5 times and it'll die]
+ Fully-functioning pause [Finally! even works in mid air! :D]
+ Fixed jump animation issue

New problems
- No air control while boost jumping [you'll keep travelling in the same direction, even after boost jumping til you land, try it and see for a better explanation]
- boost dash vector problem [doesn't work properly, looking into it]

I'm going to look through the mechanics doc again to see what rift attack stuff I think I can implement without the models.

Comat Scripting : Melee & Special Attack

Following our recent presentation to evaluate the progress of the game's development, it was evident that the implementation of some game elements will need to be 'fast-tracked' in order to have a working game demo within the time we have left.

To help achieve this goal, I've implemented the two other attacks for the main character, Melee attacks and Special attacks, before the animation sequences have been imported for the character. Now, when the player presses the melee button, the character will execute a melee attack, which will take form of Caruso swinging his sword down onto the enemy in front of him. Pressing the special attack button will execute the special attack which is an area-of-effect attack and will inflict damage on enemies within the attack's radius of effect.

Since the animations for these attacks have yet to be implemented, the attack sequences currently use placeholder objects to help indicate the movement of the attack and where it will hit.

How it works:

Melee:
When the melee button is pressed, the combat script will execute the melee function. doing this will instantiate a 'sword' collider object in front of the player character and apply a rigid body, collider and tag to the object. It will then animate this newly created object so that it rotates downwards to mimic a downwards swing motion of Caruso's sword. If the sword collider complete's it animation sequence without hitting an enemy, it will be destroyed/removed from play, ready for the next sword collider to be instantiated during the next melee attack.

Special
Performing a special attack works in a similar way to the melee attack in that when the special attack function is executed from the combat script, a temporary placeholder collider is created and assigned, at the player's position, then animated in an arc sequence. The special attack is different because instead of rotating vertically, the special attack collider rotates around the player character in a 360 degree arc on a horizontal plane. This sequence is to represent the area of effect attack from Caruso's special attack.

Interim Presentation

Earlier today, we reached another milestone in our project by having an interim presentation. Following the weeks of work we have put into the game's development so far, we created a new build of the test environment to display for peers and our examiner to view, as well as each of us detailing the current progress of the project.

Following the results of the presentation, we have decided to speed up the current pace of the game's development so that we can incorporate as much of the proposed elements for the final build as possible.

Mudbox Sculpting

The texturing process took far too long and is still in need for a few extra details but the cloth folds definitely add a lot of character to the base which looked very simple before. Hopefully this will translate well when the normal map is rendered out and applied to the mesh in Maya.

Some very basic and rough colours added to the mesh (using Nell's concept art as reference) - the paint layers will be extracted and re-painted in Photoshop to add more interest and make it tidier.

Game Level WIP

Started out by discussing and designing with Cullan the overall design and how we wanted to look like,

overall aesthetics and theme of the level. The goal of the first part of the game is to familiarize the player with the controls and platforming system of the game. The player needs to climb up the platforms and make it to the top of the tower. there he can activate a switch so the floating islands will align into a path to the first teleporter.

 Second part of the level the player teleports to a circular construct which is an elevator, there until the player makes it to the top must face his first adversary - the mini tumbler. 

Once the player makes it to the top it's the second platforming section of the level. The objective is to activate the four crystals so he can face the first Boss-fight.

 Making some adjustments to the first part of the level.

Here we decided to add a spawning island (the small one attached to the big main island). We thought that the player should have a different platform. That way the place around the tower seems more special and awe-aspiring.

Different perspective of the first part of the level. 

Adding more details to the second part of the level. 

More paths are being added to reach the rest of the crystals. 

All four parts are now complete, each path has a different way of approaching, taking advantage of the game mechanics. 

 Cullan had the idea of having a huge spiral crystal that rises up when a crystal is activated, to give the player the indication that he's actually advancing.

After working on this idea, we thought we could have a second one lowering from the tower higher up (where the Boss fight will take place) and the player could walk up the crystal. So now the player has an extra motivation on energizing all the crystals.

 We wanted to change the overall aesthetics of the second part. we wanted to make it look like a Sci-fi city. Those path will look like roads that lead to roundabouts where the crystals will be placed on.

Started working on the platforming part of the level, each path will have more than one way of completing it. Some parts will be more forgiving in mistakes than others.

Editing the second path.

I thought that maybe one of the paths could be completely fractured making it more unique and breaking the aesthetic monotony of the other 2 paths around the tower.

 Adding some buildings (dummies) which help creating more than one correct ways of travelling across the path! (all the paths feature this. The measure tool is a great ally on this task!)

Today I thought I would start working on the interior of the second tower. In that piece, Caruso (Knightside) will get his first memories back in the form of images as he platforms to the top where he will face his first Boss-fight.

Here is a close up of all four paths. Note each path is designed so there is more than one way of travelling across!

First path

 Second path

 Third path

 Fourth path

Once all crystals at the end of those paths are activated the player can advance to the Boss Fight.

That's a crystal with a Node on it. Caruso will find one on each of the paths, the node will need to be destroyed so the crystal can be purified!

Just Uved the buildings! looking good so far

last but not least! the animations of the game Level!
First part of the level can be viewed here
Second part of the level animations can be viewed here

Giant Tumbler WIP

Starting to block out some parts of the body but focusing on certain parts.

After I block out basic shapes and volumes I started adding more detail into it!

Adding more limbs and detailing them, every part of the body is a different mesh so it can be parented to another for easy non-rigged animation or if the animator wants to add a skeleton it's very easy to bind the meshes on the skeleton!

 We were not really happy with the overall shape of the head, seemed too friendly for a final boss, so we started experimenting with various designs. The one on the center looks more threatening than the one on the left side of the screen.

 Final small adjustment on the legs, rotated to the sides to make it look a bit more different than the Mini Tumbler!

Model available online for 3D viewing at:
http://p3d.in/UkxnH

Textures

Hello guys! I am facing some problems with the texture part. Not the textures themselves, that comes pretty much straightforward, more like problems in the ZBrush - Maya connection. Here you have an screenshot of how the Ravager looks in Zbrush:

This is pretty much Texture map + Normal map + a ZBrush material called "jelly bean".

Everything awesome so far... but when you try to recreate it on Maya, THIS happens:

As you can see, gets massively screwed. Texture map displays ok, the Normal Map is the one that doesn't show correctly.

This already has got the following tweaks:

• Layered material, so the crystals look transparent and more "glossy" than the rest.
• 2D bump attributes tweaked to "use as : Tangent Space Normal", and played with Bump Depth.
• I also played with the Alpha Gain in the Color Balance tab, does pretty much the same than this thing above. 

 Avi suggested to redo the sculpting subdivision levels without smoothing. I tried that, but it kept the low poly hard edges and looked quite bad.  Asking around I got David to shown me a way to do both things: use smooth in the subdivision levels and keep the original low poly proportions. He made a video for that in here:  https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwDFuVSgOQ2EMTFOdTFvd2l6Rkk/edit?pli=1 .

I followed that method, then again, that was not the problem, as you can see:

Render with the first lowPoly-smoothed Normal Map 

Render with the second lowPoly-preserved Normal Map  

Only difference you can appreciate is the change in the pattern design due I had to sculpt it again, but other than that is creating a weird bump in the facet limits in the crystal, instead of defining them as it should be:

I also got the maps tested in marmoset:  

This render gave me cancer :c , and totally lacks transparency.

Assuming is an issue of shaders, materials and/or illumination, I guess what follows is to send all the files to Josiah for him to test it into Unity, and see if we can do something so this doesn't get lost in translation. You can find these files at 3D Art > Enemies > Ravanger in the DropBox folder. They are objRavager.mb, Master_nm2.psd (normal map), Master_Trans.psd (transparency map) and Master_tx2.psd  (texture).

UV maps for Caruso

The UV map is done so Caruso is ready for texturing. Thanks to some tools that Avi informed me of the entire process was actually quite enjoyable and far easier than the methods I used to use! 

Finished Caruso Base Mesh

Caruso's base meshes. The Nude version was modelled using Nell's reference images and will be used to get the right body shape for the clothed version of Caruso - the head is reused from the nude Caruso mesh.

The clothed version using Nell's concept art to base it on. After some feedback from Cullan and a few creative decisions we decided to go for a vambrace on his left arm with a rolled up sleever but made the coat's collar/lapels symmetrical because it was agreed it looks better this way.

Gem Shader Testing

While looking up how to best render the crystals that will be present in the game, Avi directed my attention to a user-created custom diamond shader for unity, which gives a nice translucent, glossy effect to the mesh that it is used on.
After receiving the plugin from Avi, I imported it into the game project and applied it to some of the in game objects to see how it would look.



It looks nice so far but will probably look more appropriate on the crystals once they're added to the game level.

Designing the Game Level

The main idea of the level is that can help the player learn how to play the game through pure gameplay and try to avoid "how to play" videos or "tutorials". The first part of the level has a set of pillars/platforms where the player can start jumping on. 

 This is how it looks like. (up)
The player is drawn to them since there's nowhere else to explore. so by taking advantage of human curiosity   and by giving the player the time to experiment with the controls the player can now start climbing his way up.

 After the player makes it to the tallest of the platforms, all of them rise up to a certain  height, so the player can make it to the top part of the tower there is. We decided to do it like that - and not add extra platforms for that so the player can understand that the world he's in is a bit different than ours and certain rules don't apply (such as platforms rise up). Also the player gets used to the jumping height and distance and has no time limit to get used to the controls,

As the player makes it to the top, the floating islands that surround the level align into a path where Caruso will get to use his Rift Powers to start crossing the path. Ideally there would be a cutscene to explain the player how to use them, but we couldn't do it due to schedule constraints. At the end of that path, there is a gate-teleporter that allows the player to move on to the next part of the level.

 This part of the level, features a platform of Crystals, which works as a tutorial for the combat. As the elevator rises, it stops at 2 points where enemies spawn. At that point the player again has no time limit and can try beating the enemies.

 The elevator takes the player to the crossroad, where he can start Purifying the crystals at the end of each path. Ideally the player could choose which path he wanted to go to first, but due to to schedule constraint, we had to put barriers to rig which path the player will chose to go to. 

 The Paths are designed so that each path can be crossed with more than one ways. That way the player can have a sense of freedom in the platforming department.

 At the end of each path there are enemies that guard the corrupted crystals. After all the enemies are defeated then the player can simply walk to the crossroad, since the road floats to it's original state.  Some of the buildings move and align themselves to a spiral, some parts of the elevator start rising up as well forming a crystalline staircase.

This is how the Crystalline staircase looks like as well as the building spiral. This works are a visual indicator for the player on his progress and as a relaxing platforming section to prepare the player for the battle ahead.

 This is the boss room where the player fights the first boss, the Giant Tumbler.

After the player defeats the Giant Tumbler, he has to go through a fairly easy platforming section which works as a reward to the player for beating the level. The main idea was that in that section the player would unlock memories of Caruso (the avatar of the player) as he was platforming, but we didn't feasible in this timeframe we had available. 

*note i am using the most recent screenshots for the sake of good aesthetics.

Early sketches made by Cullan and myself as we were brainstorming about the level design. We worked together on the initial designing. 

Sketch of the platforming bit in the last part of the game level, the main idea was that the camera would change angle and it would make the game feel like a 2D platforming for that part. The idea was canceled after we decided it would be too time consuming on the programming aspect of the game.