Features, Features, and More Feaures! - SMDP

Since my last post I've been working on getting the formerly known Super Happy Monster Dance Party(now just Super Monster Dance Party) features implemented and working. So far I refined the story mode, allowing players to unlock the next mission after achieving a high enough percentage in the previous mission. Today I got all the game setup done for Infinite mode, including map selection, difficulty, and monster selection.

Now I have to set the free mode to use the game setup screen and fix an issue where buttons are accidentally getting hit when hitting other buttons. A silly mistake that I should have seen before.

Here is the monster select screen with some temporary graphics. As you click on the small portraits the one in the center will change.

David Fuson has done a great job of designing the characters and bringing them to life in the pixel art style. Dave Troyer has started turning all the sprite sheets that David F. made into animations in Construct2. Everything is coming together pretty well. We'll see how this one turns out!

More Talking - Umbra, SHMDP

Hey guys, I hadn't been able to work on Umbra too much since I was waiting for two other classmates to finish up what they were working on. I have started working on the intro animation for zone 1. The main character comes in like a meteor and hits the ground sending up a cloud of dust and debris. When she stands up the camera will glide to its normal position behind her. It's a pretty simple animation. I'll post a video once I get the missing assets and put it in the final build .

In other news Dave Troyer(He has more info on his blog.), asked for my help on a simple rhythm game that he wants to put on the Android market, which is called Super Happy Monster Dance Party(or SHMDP for short.) I agreed, and I'll be working on the system for the game, making everything work. We are using the Construct2 engine for this one. The game is based around this monster that is rocking out in the middle of a city and you tap a button when a flying sound node goes over the button. I've mostly been working on getting the flying sound nodes to go towards a particular target, setting up multiple targets, and setting up random spawn points. Dave got me a page flow chart so I can start setting up the different pages and working through the functionality.

We're a small group on this one, which I think is working a lot better. Dave is he organizer/porducer, David Fuson is our main art guy, and Corey Farmer is our master of sound. We have also added Dan Langford for vocals, and Ben Mjelde as a supporting artist.

Now enjoy some pictures!

Here a a test I was working on trying to get the random spawns and targets to work. Not very pretty, but it helped a lot. When you touch the grey circles when a blue one is over it the blue one will disappear and your score will go up.

Here is a preview of some of the monsters that David F. has been creating for the game. He's added quite a bit more since this image and is working on the final boss.

That's all I have for today! Now, back to work...

Another Set Of Pictures - Umbra

Hey guys,

I've put my generic menus on hold for a bit, I got the ones I wanted to get done finished. Since I don't have anything new for those I figured I'd show you some of the stuff I've been doing for Umbra lately. I don't really have any new models but we've been spending the past quarter populating the different zones in the game. The team I'm on is in charge of Zone 1 which is solely a natural/forested area. We broke the zone down even farther, into quarters, and I was assigned the third area of Zone 1. Here are some images with the ingame post-process applied to it.

Looking at the first island from the second one.:

Looking at the first, second, and third from the edge of the third one:

Looking at the third and forth islands from the second one:

A view of all of them from afar:

I might go through and add a few more rocks and such now that the majority of the landmasses are covered by grass. Mostly I want to add these the the path on the third island since it looks a little bare on the ground.

Thanks to Andrew, all the grass on the islands reacts to the character when she walks through it.

I also took on the task of placing some lily pads in the pond on one of the islands in the first area. I'm still missing a particle system for the waterfall out of the pond, but the animations are there for the pond to fill and several key lily pads to float off for the player to step on. Here are the lily pads in the level:

And here is a render from 3DS Max of them. Andrew also did the opacity map and normal map for the flowers. I haven't gotten around to creating a normal map for the lily pad itself, but I'm not really sure if it will need it(Though it does look really plain without the post process on it.)

It is a little boxy but it looks pretty good ingame. Well, that's all for now! I'm working on an intro animation for Zone 1, but am waiting for assets before I can proceed any further. I'll try and get some more stuff together to show you guys. Thanks for reading!