In Other News! - Nordic Sol

While I've mostly been posting stuff on the Game Jam, I have not forgotten about Nordic Sol. We've been pretty busy with the Jam, so not much progress has been made on Nordic Sol unfortunately. Over the past week I've worked on it here and there.

Some of the things I fixed/added are:

• Added a temporary bump damage to the player when an enemy hits you.
• Fixed an issue where the health/stamina bar wasn't updating when hit by the enemy.
• Added a few more graphics to the shop, but am waiting or the rest of the graphics to be completed.
• Added damage to the player attacks and added enemy health/health bar. 
• Added a charge bar for the powershot on the bow.
• Set up the scrolling to follow the player correctly.

Bryan Harlow added two temporary enemies so we can get some of the attacks/health stuff out of the way. He even got it so they patrol an area and not walk off the edge of the map. Good job Bryan!

At the moment the visuals of the game are at a pretty rough state:

Bow charging after firing a shot:

The shop with a few of the graphic put in:

As you can see it still has quite a ways to go, but we're slowing adding to it. Hopefully I can get the main character graphics put in and finalized here in the next week or two, as well as the shop finished up. I'll try and keep posting updates after significant changes happen.

An Iguana Tank - Iguana X

My roommate asked if Andrew and I wanted to help him with an animation he's been mulling around for a while, which I've dubbed "Iguana X" for the time being. The main characters are an iguana and its owner, a high school boy. I was asked to make the iguana tank and stand. So far I only have the tank itself textured, but have almost the whole stand and tank accessories modeled.

• Here are all the models I have done so far: 

• Here is the textured iguana tank:

• Here is a closer look at the sticker on the tank:

• And again without the text:

The sticker was my first attempt at 'hand-painting' a texture. I think it looks pretty decent for a first try. I don't really like the waves, but I couldn't figure out a better way to do them. 

 Once the boss approves the models I can start texturing the rest of them.

Even More Assets - Game Jam!

As we are compiling the level, we are still finding a model here and there that got overlooked in the initial distributing of assets. Here is a sawhorse with "Caution!" on it and an orange cone, for the area of the map under construction. Here they are:

• Sawhorse:

• Sawhorses with some cones:

Pretty simple models, but they'll work. Now to get them into the level! 

Getting the level put together is taking a little longer than we anticipated, sorry about that. We ran into some issues with the animations as well as we were missing some classes needed for the enemies. We've got almost all of it put back together and fixed up up, so it shouldn't be too much longer till we have the level completed.

Switches - Game Jam!

As we have been compiling the level we found a few things that still needed to be modeled. Two of these were a keycard and a switch to use the keycard in. So, I made them.

• Keycards:

• Switches:

The switches look a little flat, but they are going to be in the back of the level and primarily straight on. Now to get these to Andrew Talarico(Check out his Tumblr with some of his work) so he can put them into the level.

In other news I'll be posting an update on Nordic Sol, as well as some models for an animation two of my roomates and I started working on. 

Scaleform Menu Tutorial

I thought I would put up a Scaleform tutorial I made for a class last quarter on creating a main menu. As far as I can tell it is complete and works. If you find any inconsistencies or errors let me know and I'll try and figure out where I went wrong.

The tutorial has two parts. The first one goes over creating a basic SWF and how to make it show up in UDK. The second part goes over how creating a menu. The menu will have an options page with adjustable volume(Master, Music, and Sound FX), resolution, fullscreen, and key binds(setting which buttons do which actions). The last part of the tutorial goes over how to make your map the default map when you package the game.

Anyway, here it is: Scaleform Menu Tutorial

*Note: I have not had any extensive experience with Unrealscript, or even Actionscript, so there may be ways to optimize the code.

I may make a new tutorial once we get done with our UI class, but that will be a few months from now.

Another HUD and Menu Update - Game Jam!

Finally got the main menu and the HUD completed and functional, with graphics provided by Justin Bucher. Thanks Justin!

Here are some images of it:
The HUD. The Laser changes color depending on what weapon you have, and the ammo count changes accordingly as well.

The main page of the menu with a little chicken foot shaped boot as a cursor.

 And the Credits page.

Now all I need to do is give the HUD and menu to the guys that are putting the level together.

HUD and Main Menu Update - Game Jam!

We now have a working HUD for the Jam, only it is not as clean as I would have liked it to be. In the three days I was working on it I couldn't figure out how the standard UDK HUD actually works, like what makes the ammo count go down in the SWF when you fire the gun in UDK. Anyway, I think we'll get it all figured out in our UI class this quarter. In the mean time I have a workaround using Kismet and a lot of Actionscript. The main menu has all of it's functionality, once I can put a specific function into our Jam's Player Controller class.

Here is my workaround in Kismet:
*Note: this is a very messy workaround with duplication in actions between AS3 and Kismet, but that was what it took to get the effects we wanted.

• The main sequence where the sub-sequences and named variables are stored.

• This sequence handles the main menu, as well as opening the HUD.

• In this sequence, this will reduce the ammo count by 1 every time the gun is fired if the primary gun is not equipped , as well as setting the weapon to the default one once an alternate gun  runs out of ammo.

• This sequence controls weapon switching, and receiving the call from the ReduceAmmo Sequence to change to the default weapon.

I ended up using quite a few named variables throughout the Kismet for the HUD. This allowed me to break the different function into their own sub-sequences for greater organization. One thing I learned about named variables is that they have to be in the main sequence in order to be used by the sub-sequences. This means that if I want to reference AmmoCount in my WepSelecting sub-sequence, but it is declared in my ReduceAmmo sub-sequence, it will not find the reference to it. To fix this I put all the named variables in the main sequence, which is accessed by both the ReduceAmmo and WepSelecting sub-sequences. I also learned about the 'Finish Sequence' and the 'Sequence Activated' Kismet nodes. These allow you to link nodes in one sub-sequence to another node in a different sub-sequence. 'Finish Sequence' acts as the 'Output' for the sequence while the 'Sequence Activated' acts as the 'Input'. Both of these nodes can be named to use as a reference when determining which Sequence 'Output' goes to which Sequence 'Input'.

Anyway, tonight after class we'll be putting together as much we can. Hopefully I'll be able to get the graphics for the main menu and the HUD tonight and implement them.

Cafeteria - Game Jam!

Here we have the last of the models textured. The tables look a little plain, but that's what we're going for.

Now that I have my models done I can go back to figuring out the HUD class so we can have a custom HUD for the Jam. 

HatJam Blog

Just a small update: Here is the official blog for our Game Jam. It is being updated by David Troyer(Check out his personal blog as well, good stuff on there.), our 'producer' for the Jam. On the blog you can find more information about the Jam, as well as more images of what everyone has been working on. Dave even wrote up a post on what he thinks being a producer is. There's a lot of pretty cool information in the blog.

Medical Bay Textures Completed - Game Jam!

Ok, so I got the "Go Ahead" to continue my texturing work. I finished up the textures for the medical equipment. Here are the two containers with variations on the color schemes:

And here are all of the models with their textures:

Now on to getting the cafeteria textures done...

We're wrapping up the Game Jam. We've started putting everything into the level and finishing up the remaining things. We're hoping to have it mostly done by Monday.

Cafeteria Prop - Game Jam!

Here is the final installment of the preliminary models. These are some things that you'd find in our cafeteria:

It's hard to see but there is a tray and cup on the table. The closest object is a vending machine, most of the details will be done in the texture for that one.

The poly counts for these models are as follows:

• Vending Machine: 34
• Table: 52
• Tray: 26
• Cup: 26
• Chair: 70
• Buffet Table: 183

The group will be meeting tomorrow to look at all of our assets and proposing adjustments.

Now that I have these models done I can start trying to figure out what code I need to pause our game when the pause menu is brought up.

MedBay Models - Game Jam!

Here are some models for a medical bay:

And here are two of them with textures:

I realized after I textured the computers and these two that I have no clue what the art style for the textures is going to be yet...Time spent practicing I guess. I like parts of these textures, but on the overall I'm not satisfied with them. Once I get a direction to go in I'll probably be redoing them anyway.

These objects are a little more complex than the computer ones, so they have a slightly larger poly count:

• CryoTube: 55
• Medical Gurney(Raised): 98
• Medical Gurney(Lowered): 98
• Table: 93
• Box Container: 18
• Cylindrical Container: 37

Now onto modeling some cafeteria items...What will they have in a futuristic cafeteria I ask myself...

Game Jam Update

Here are a couple futuristic computer related things I modeled today for the Game Jam.

These are the models without their textures:

Here they are with their textures:

These are meant to be extremely low poly background models, hence very little detail on the models themselves. All four of these models are 147 polygons combined. 

The console with a:

•  Console with a Keyboard and Monitor: 58 Polygons
•  Console with a Keyboard: 40 Polygons
• Computer Tower: 24 Polygons
• Stand-alone Monitor: 25 Polygons

I could probably cut down the texture resolution by quite a bit, but I'll do that after I get my other models done. I should have more models done by tomorrow.

Game Jam!

I don't have much to update on Nordic Sol, but the majority of our class is doing a Game Jam over our two week break from school. A Game Jam is where you create a game, or level, in a short amount of time. We decided to make a level for a game with a two week deadline. To get a setting/style for the game we all wrote down nouns on pieces of paper, then drew them out of a hat. We did the same for game mechanics. We ended up with a pretty strange selection. For the nouns we got: Laser Guns, Frogs, Chickens, and Moon. For the mechanics we pulled: Jump and Maze. From this we came up with this:

Main Character: A frog riding a chicken, with mounted laser cannons.
Setting: Colony on the Moon
Enemy: Evil robot chickens
Health Pickup: Broccoli
Game Characteristics: Maze-like, basic avoidance/destroying of enemies. sidescrolling.
Engine: Unreal Development Kit

It's pretty out there, but we'll have fun with it.

I took the task of modeling some computer consoles and some medical and cafeteria equipment. I also will be working on the title menu and pause menu. It won't be as extensive as the one I made for Umbra, our class' game. The menus are almost done, but I'm stuck on getting the game to actually pause when the pause menu comes up. 

I'll post some pictures of the models once I get them done. 

That's it for now.