Thursday, February 24, 2011

Starting The Game Trailer

So Charlie said that it would be a good idea to start working on our game trailer. At the moment I'm playing around with Cam Studio for screen capturing.

But before I can start on the trailer, I need to finish the textures that I made for my asteroids. This is because the way that Mudbox makes textures won't work with what we have in mind.

The programmers made it so that the size and the texture of the asteroid will be random, which means that the texture won't match the other asteroids if they get one of mine. So I have to come up with something else. I will try to have that done over the weekend.

Then I will try to get really good at the game so that I can start recording cool scenes from the game to put in the trailer.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

At Beta

So today is the day that we are suppose to be at Beta. And we are, sort of.

The tech guys say that there is still a few things that need to be tweaked (ex: the capital ship ai). So at this point we are really close, but not really there. But the game is playable at this moment. Some of the stuff might not be there, but it feels like a game now.

Rodger played the game, and he was very happy with how far we have come in just a few weeks. At the beginning of the semester, they actually wanted to cut our game because they didn't think that we could actually take what we had at the end of last semester and turn it into a game.

I also got to play our game for the first time today. I've been able to see some of the tech guys play it before, but never by myself. It felt really cool to actually see it with my own eyes.

Over this last weekend, I worked on a few asteroids to make them look just right. I was trying to add a normal map to each so that we could get some detail, but James told me to not worry about that. That the asteroids aren't really going to be all that important so just do a color texture and thats it.

So I've managed to complete two asteroids, and I'm currently working on another one. Since my Photoshop skills aren't that good, I've had to so the textures using Mudbox. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I think I'm doing a better job now.

Now that I have Maya on my laptop, I'll see if I actually have time to get around to posting renders of all the work that I've done.

That's all, thanks for reading.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

More Asteroids

Last class time, Charlie told me of a more efficient way to make asteroids within Maya. So I'm in the process of making different kinds of asteroids for the game. They are going to be different size and shape.

They aren't quite ready yet, so I'm still experimenting with different things in the meantime.

I finally managed to install Maya on my laptop after a week of reformatting my laptop and reinstalling a bunch of stuff. So now I will finally can do a lot more work without being at school.

I couldn't get to class today, but from what I hear there wasn't much to do today anyways.

Charlie told me afterwards that all they did was to go to L130 to see how the game is progressing. Apparently it's looking really good and we should be at Beta by Tuesday.

I'm so excited!

That's all, thanks for reading.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Close To Beta

So we have till the end of this week to finish our game because we need to start Beta testing next week.

Yesterday I finished the first fighter that I made at the beginning of last semester. I tweaked a few things, but overall it looks the same. I also attached a few guns to the ship along with a few locators.

I also made an asteroid. I tried to make one in Maya, but I couldn't get it to look right. So I made it with 3ds Max and exported it in fbx format. Then I brought it into Maya to edit it. And then I ran into a problem.

3ds Max had made the model using only triangles, so I had to spend between 1 and 2 hours deleting edges to make everything quads.

It looks great now, but it's probably too high of a resolution. I don't know if I'll have to make it again or not.

During class, we didn't really do much. We did talk about another of the games that is also in the process of going into beta. But I won't go into that.

We mainly talked about what needs to be done to get to full beta.

In the art side of stuff, we need to finish a few things. We need to tweak some ships, make a tone more asteroids. And some other last minute stuff.

While on the note of asteroids, Charlie told me of a way that is much more effective at creating asteroids than what I did. We are trying to get them to look good, but at the same time stay as low poly as possible. Charlie wants me to stay below 200 faces at all possible.

I will give it a try tomorrow night while I'm in the lab, and see how that goes.

That's it, thanks for reading.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Capital Ship Done

So I finally finished the capital ship that I've been working on for almost 2 weeks.

I emailed the file to Charlie and all I have to do is add a little more geometry since the edges need to be more rounded.

I will try to get the extra geometry in today. If not, then this weekend for sure.

Today, we had to bring our game to class to have Roger play it and critique what we have so far.

Today was the first time that I got to look at our game since the day that we had our "play date". I have to say that it's looking really cool. The models that Jeremy has textured for us are looking great. The game still needs a few tweaks, but overall is looking great.

For this next week, we have to build more enemy fighters, different types of asteroids, different models for the pods, and I can't remember what else.

I will be working in a few things. That's it for now, thanks for reading.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Name Lock Down

So before I get to the name of the name of the game that was decided on, I'm going to first write about what I've been working on.

So last week, I was working on a full size capital ship. But I didn't  like the way that it was looking. So I decided to start over from scratch. This is one is looking a lot better in my opinion, and now all I'm waiting on is for Brandon and Charlie to take a look at the file before I keep working on it.

For class today, we had to bring three names that we liked for our game. Then Bob, Roger, & the class gave us some feedback on each. After everything was done, we decided that our name will be:

The Last Pod Fighter

We might change it to just Pod Fighter or something like that.

Thats it, thanks for reading.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Still Working on Capital Ship

So I've had a lot of stuff due in other classes in the last 3 days, so I haven't had that much time to work on the capital ship (or enough sleep) so this is the first time that I haven't been able to finish a task on time. :(

I will get to work this weekend and have it done by Tuesday at the latest.

Today in class we talked mostly about the importance of a name for our game. Rodger pointed out that we don't have the time or money to come up with a brand for our game. So the name for the game is something that is going to be really important when it comes to publishing it.

The name has to be descriptive enough that people will know what the game is just by looking at the title, but not too long either or random just because we want it to sound cool. Rodger gave an example of calling a game "Eclipsia." That name does nothing for the game, or any game for that matter.

The group task is to come up with three really good possible game titles by Tuesday, for that is when we have to lock in our game name. We have a few good names already, but we will find out for sure on Tuesday.

That's it, thanks for reading.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Working On Capital Ship

So my task for this sprint is to work on a full size capital ship. I started working on it, but it's harder than I thought it would be.

Usually I look up pictures from different types of ship on Google, and then try to get bits and pieces from each to come up with a new design. But this time I don't think it's working.

I've noticed that most of the capital ships that I've found on the internet are all either really pointy or really round. I started to work on something resembling the front of this ship for now.

I sent the file to Brandon and Charlie to see if either one of them had any better ideas.

I will finish the capital ship by next class time so that Charlie can work on the UVs.

While in class, we talked a little about the assets and how we are going to use them in the game. Since Brandon is still improving my space station and is probably going to be the model with the highest poly count, we were all talking about how it was going to be used in a boss fight where it's the only capital ship and will spawn the occasional enemy fighter.

That's it, thanks for reading.