12/6/12

Unity3d Ragdoll Tests


Some simple testing of ragdoll in Unity3d. I was surprised that it was easy to make a lot of clones of the ragdoll without any performance problems. Half way through the video I reversed gravity just to see the ragdolls move around a bit. This is for a game in development by Obscure Fish called 13 Factories.

The character model was done by Jason Wiegele.

5/10/12

The Art of Security Alpha

Well, we have finished production of our 2012 Edutainment game The Art of Security.
Here is a brief video of gameplay.


4/22/12

Art Of Security Interface

This is an interface I put together this weekend for an upcoming game by Obscure Fish, The Art of Security. Designed it, made graphics for it and coded it etc. (except the Obscure Fish Banner by Jason Wiegele).



I tried to give it a security / artsy type of feel. Definitely needs some more work, but I am happy with it so far. I used Unity's "2.0" gui system (OnGUI). The animations are done with iTween, highly recommended!.

ORBscure Whirl Demo

This is a quick demo I put together of an upcoming Android game by Obscure Fish. The game is titled ORBscure Whirl.



As you can see, the game uses tilting to move, and touch to draw platforms on screen for the ball to interact with. Stay tuned for more details about this project.

4/18/12

Precipice

Precipice


You can play Precipice here.

Precipice is my submission to The Edge Create Challenge. The challenge was simply to make a game using Unity3d around the theme Edge. The competition began on March 6th, but I only got word of it around the beginning of April, so I knew I had a lot of catching up to do if I was going to be able to submit anything. I was working on an Easter game that was nearly complete but I decided to put that on hold until next year.

The theme edge can really be interpreted many ways, and I immediately thought of games with edged weapons, swords, ninjas etc. However those types of games have been done many ways, very well for a long time now. I considered digging up one of my old video game ideas, but figured it would be too large to create in the span of two weeks. Two days passed and I really thought about what it means to be on the edge, and what could possibly be made into a game with someone on the edge. I thought of a line I remembered hearing from a movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, "Well that's where we are. You say we're on the brink of destruction and you're right. But it's only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve. This is our moment. Don't take it from us, we are close to an answer." And so Precipice was born.

Precipice allows you to play the role of a crisis negotiator who is tasked with helping bring peaceful resolutions to various dangerous situations. In designing this game I researched a bit about the science behind crisis negotiation as well as studies on depression and suicide. I never expected to be researching topics like these in order to build a game, but it was interesting to study them briefly. In this early version I cut things down to a single scenario with a woman who is attempting to jump off the edge of a building. Ideally I wanted this game to offer multiple scenarios and endings depending on how the player reacts to the situation. But as I was writing the dialogue I realized just how many different paths a conversation could go, and it became very clear that I didn't have the time to truly explore all these different paths.

The 3d models for the game were all made with Blender. I initially wanted to save some time by using a city generator to quickly get buildings, and by using a "human generator" called Make Human to make the characters.  However I decided that it would be better for me to make the models myself, not only as a learning experience, but just to say that I was able to do it on my own. It took about 3 days to make the models, texture them, rig them (give them skeletons) and finally animate them. They are far from perfection, but for my first ever biped characters I can't complain.

The code for the game was all very straight forward. There were no amazing feats of programming necessary, but I did get stuck along the way on a few things. The dialogue system became a huge problem towards the very end of the development time. Right before the game was due, I noticed that the point system for response wasn't working properly and I had to quickly make major changes that eliminated the randomness of the dialogue. Without random responses the game loses a large amount of gameplay in my opinion. Also because of various bugs, I don't believe you can make it to the end of the dialogue without problems happening. It is unfortunate, but I made the difficult choice to release the game with these bugs, rather than scratch the project completely.

I should also mention that the user interface for the game was done with Unity3d and not any 3rd party systems, for better or for worse. I considered using NGUI, but I didn't want to learn any new GUI system in the time frame that I had. I have some experience (good and bad) with the Unity "2.0" GUI system so I felt most comfortable using it for the interface.

4/10/12

Ginger Bread Man

This is my gingerbread man!


Basically this was my first go at animating a character in Blender. Pretty fun stuff it was.

3/15/12

Progress with Art of Security Game

Quick video of a nice little 'move to the other side of the building animation' for this edutainment game. 
Also an early version of the puzzle system for the game, basic rotation and (non math) solution finding.
And also those blue cubes are bouncy chairs, really easy to do with Physics Materials.


3/14/12

Trip'n part 1

Well today was a good day! I guess me and the guys in obscure fish were taking the Non disclosure agreement that we signed a little too seriously. We are imitating a real company, not actually making a real company. We were keeping all of our work secret ... but basically the point is that we are able to talk about all the things we are working on.

So I have to go back a bit and try to piece together some of the things I have done so far. But I will start with a little bit of info about the small game side project I did, called Trip'n. It was for the Game Prototype Challenge version 11. The neat thing about this game jam is that there are 2 themes to use in making your game. The theme for the jam was Stimulants and Nets ... quite an interesting mix. At first I thought what in the world could you do with that, then in about 5 minutes I had an idea. In comparison the Global Game Jam 2012 used an image based theme, which I still am not sure how to handle.
Net Section Designs

3/13/12

Trip'n released!

Finished up my game for GPCv11. Theme was stimulants and nets.

You can check it out here:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Minimally/tripn


I'll make a few posts about how it all came together, but for now, all in all I am proud of it.

3/2/12

'Weekly' Wrapup

For the last week or so (time flys) I have been working on 3 game projects.

In one of my classes I am helping to design a game (call it Project A) along with the good people at 'Obscure Fish Studios'. I some how or another became the "lead design" on that one, which basically means ... more responsibility for the overall project. I set up a framework for a game design document and have been trying to get everyone to fill it up with different things.  I find that with the right amount of encouragement (I send out bulk text messages to the entire team) people will come through. Since I am not focused exclusively on a single aspect to the game such as Sound or User Interface, the majority of my time goes to making sure all the pieces fit together. Most recently I helped write out the text that will appear on the box cover of the game for presentation.

2/9/12

Obscure Fish

So, what is an Obscure Fish you ask? Well it is a hidden fish of course. But also it's a simulation indie game company formed by a group of aspiring video game developers, of which I am one. As part of the computer simulation and gaming program at MATC, you learn the ins and outs of what it takes to make games by forming your own indie company. So I was placed in a group of strangers and told that these are going to be the people I'm working with in this program. We went through names, we discussed some things, and 4 hours later Obscure Fish was born. Okay there may have been some more to it than that, but you get the gist of it (and the rest is classified information).

2/6/12

Global Game Jam 2012


Recently I took part in the 2012 Global Game Jam at the MATC Downtown Campus. The GGJ is the world's largest game jam event, with hundreds of "Jam Sites" around the world. Teams meet up for the 48 hour challenge of building a game based on a specific theme given by the GGJ Theme Committee. The 2012 theme was the following image, not exactly what I was expecting.


2/2/12

Day 3 at CSG production lab

Today my team Obscure Fish set up team roles for the upcoming edutainment game project. We are still feeling the waters so to speak with specific tasks involved with the overall project, but we are enthusiastic and want to be prepared.  I decided to take the role of build master for this project.  I am sure I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I am very excited about the project that we are going to do.  We are hard at work putting together a proper game design document.

Here is a crappy demo I did. And some design things


1/30/12

Welcome

Hello there, welcome to my blog.

I will use this blog to post my progress in the world of video game creation. Hopefully I will keep this updated with new projects I am working on and interesting things that I find as I go.