So I play tested my Prison Card Game - Jailbreak (very generic name but lets just go with it), after a successful run it was terrible! It was boring, unbalanced, and lacked alot of what must games need, "fun". Anyways went back to the drawing bored and came up with a new way to make it more fun and upbeat. I know you do not know how to play so I will give you a quick run down. Object of the game is to collect all items on your given escape card. The first to aquire all 4 items wins the game. The game consists of three decks: Event Deck, Item Deck, Special Items Deck. Before the game begins, each player recieves a random Escape card, and character card. The escape card must be face down and only the controlling player may look at the card. The character card will have a special ability, and a starting weapon. Each round you will turn over an event card from the Event Deck. Each card will have a task. whether you succeed or fail, the card will specify what will happen. Most Successes will have the player recieve an item card from the Item Deck. or Special Items Deck. After the Event phase, you have a chance to fight another player for special items they may posess. If the attacker wins, he may choose a special card of his choice, if the defender wins, he may draw an item card. Defenders win on ties. Here are my changes after game play: -Cut stats on charcters from: [Fight, Quickness, Charisma, Luck] to [Attack, Defend, Skill] -Now there are 2 sets of dice to roll: Blue die have the probability of 2/6 successes Red die have the probability of 3/6 successes Edited each weapon, item, and action card to make it fit with these new dice. -Changed all events to how you succeed/fail. Instead of needing a set number of success to pass you need only 1 success. -Made Special Items in their own deck now. -Special Items are now face up. I have been thinking about making the game be set in the future, idea given to me by Sean, and have android players how can have special andriod items, and special human items. Mix the game up a bit, but before I jump to that I want to have successful game mechanics. As for Choas, the MOBA I have been working on, I have not had a chance to edit the Game Doc. But have been making drastic changes to make the game player more PvP. Here is the game doc so far: http://avd373.aisites.com/Portfolio/Game%20Design/Chaos.html -I shrank the map to a smaller size -Outpost do not attack unless upgraded -There are more outpost around the map -XP gain was increased As for balancing issues, I will address those later. I have been attempting a way to fix spawning units, but will continue scripting. As for Left 4 Dead 2: LockDown, I finsihed the entire layout on paper. I have half of the level created already, but have not had a chance to work on it. My laptop can not run L4D, and I have been home in Granite Bay for a family emergency so I have only been able to work on my laptop. I will hopefully have a FRAPS of it Monday night. So far the pacing is quite fast, because of the tight quarters, and short hallways. I think I am going to have to expand every hall double its length. And I am trying to prevent the "I can just run through the entire level with an auto-snipe or axe and GG" Because I have only recently learned Steam, I have been learning more and more so I may advance my level to a L4D playable standard. What I want to accomplish is a basic layout of the Level. As more my At War project, I have been learning Python scripting and trying to add more and more to the game I made last quarter. It was suppose to be a game where you are a soldier trying to get through the beach front to the other side. During your journey you are attack by enemies and gunners. Through the multi-level trenches, bomber planes swoop down and drop bombs down your path. Well it is nothing like that what so ever. I had a guy pushing sandbags up a screen while dodging enemy sad faces. During the break I took what I made a made a basic level, with a guy who can shoot, and falling enemies that hit you. This weekend I ended implementing: -a random level generator -2 power-ups: Tri-Shot Life bonus -Enemies have health that deplete -UI now has: Scoring system, Lives left, and enemies on screen Anyways I wish I worked more on my projects, just had to help my family out. Hopefully Monady I can bust somethings out quick before Tuesday. -V

DM-Lost Temple/MP-Station update

My IGDA 2nd place level DM-LostTemple

I went through this level and optimized some of the lighting aswell as fixed various mesh problems with flickering and off placement I also added a couple meshes in areas that I noticed needed it as well as removed some useless particle effects. I also went through the level and optimized item placement by removing a good amount of health that was not needed and also moved ammo and weapon placement to increase flow and level playability. Also tweaked the PP settings to tone down the bloom, did that after these screens were taken so those changes aren't visible in the pics below. The tweaking of health placement and item placement made the map alot more control based by having the players have to move through out the level to restock on ammo and make better use of the health pool room, all in all a much better level after the tweaks and much more interesting that the original version I submitted for the level design competition.

Fly thru video:


Screenshots:








Gears of War PC MP-Station
This is a Gears of War PC multiplayer level that is focused around low cover and fast paced game play. I made a relatively straight forward layout that has three levels of play. Each level has a weapon spawn that will direct game play to those levels and has proper risk vs. rewards for each weapon to allow for balanced game play. This level is almost complete I just have to do the final deco meshes such as wires,pipes, monitors, and light fixtures to make it feel like a train station. I also need to figure out what to do with the side walls on the main floor that will not be to mesh heavy and distracting but still be visually appealing. I was thinking a couple store fronts that can be mirrored and then custom signs for each store front to make them all unique if worst comes to worst I will place ivy over them and call it done. I posted this level up on the gears of war forums for testing and feedback ( http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=773157 ) and I will tweak based on that. No fly thru at this time will do that once the level is finished.

Screenshots:










-Jack

drmidnight_revision1

Shrunk the head down, so it's no longer globe sized. Also added a collar bone, and divide the cape up more.
Head is already unwrapped, and started texturing.

6390 Tris.

sandking_revision1

So I added some stronger contrasts to the characters color tone, and even added some blues. I rendered this out in Mudbox, just to see how the whole render thing works (OMG, render setting in mudbox!!!! bye-bye 2009).  Poly count hasn't changed.

3014 Tris.

Kraken Update

My primary focus this week: Getting the Kraken diorama in a place where I can begin to assemble all my objects in 1 scene.

I've adjusted the Kraken so the legs are longer (per suggestion), cut down the tris from 6,000 some odd tris to 3950, Unwrapped the mesh, and I'm in the process of sculpting.

Project Seacliff

So, working on getting the last remaining assets in. Just have to finish the modular pipes, and a few additional vegetation pieces really. I would like to make some ivy to crawl up the towers in the courtyard and along the foundation brick of the asylum (think it will create a nice visual break from the symmetry of the art deco architecture). Got the lighthouse texture panning good, need to get the light cone to do the same. Possibly animate through Kismet and Matinee? Neither of which are my strong suit, so may wait to do that until next week in class.

Other than that I'm tweaking existing textures to boost the color of the bronze metalwork, and finding the sweet spot for the flickering emissive on certain materials. Also, redoing the texture for the pillars. Too much brick in the building design, want to see more metalwork. I made a nice custom material network thats been carrying the majority of material jobs with a few variations where needed.

After that its landscape, lighting fixes, and camera flythroughs. Lighting issues are occurring with lighting information being poorly matched between two stacked meshes, like the upper building trim. Going to switch projects for now, finish the few assets I want done for the ShantytownSkirmish MP map. Screw around with some DX11 stuff some more.

Peace.

MurderBall Update

I've started with some updates to MurderBall:

Scoreboard in the top center of the screen updates the score accordingly now.

Sprinting causes the reticule to fade out, and fade back in when not sprinting.

Reticule switching when guns change. The circle for the ball gun...

and the plus for the assault rifle.

I've also continued a bit of work on my website redesign, which should be published soon.