March 28, 2012 16:41
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March 9, 2012 17:40
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GDC 2012
Then on Wednesday I was able to go into the Career Pavilion and I got the chance to talk to a lot of people from many different companies. If there is one thing that I've learned, is that it's not enough to just have a portfolio online, you have to bring something with you to show. Wether that maybe a paper version of your online portfolio or a tablet to show your portfolio on. Many places that I talked to wanted to see my work but I couldn't show them. Its also thought me that there are a lot of people out there trying to get into the industry just like me, so I have to dedicate more time to learning new tools and improving my skills.
Next year when I come back to GCD I'll be ready! Thanks for reading.
February 22, 2012 20:48
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New Team
Sadly, the game I pitched didn't make the cut. And I'm now in a team that will be making a 3D kinect game. The prototype that was made for last week's pitched showed a man flying around a city trying to get through rings in the sky. The player uses the kinect to control the movement of the character.
But its going to change, we are still brainstorming ideas because they thought that the game was way out of scope. But they thought that the prototype was good enough to show that it was doable.
We have 3 artist in the team, which is a good thing because we will need a ton of environmental art assets. We will decided on Monday what we want to do and will start to work. In the meantime, that is all.
Thanks for reading.
February 15, 2012 16:39
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Presentation Tonight
The first picture is a drawing of Wall-E, we think what our main character to look somewhere in the middle between Wall-E and Rob from Smash Brothers. The second picture is what an enemy unit could potentially look like. The last one is of what our main character PerCy could look like.
I've done a simple model of the last sketch and I put some very simple animations for our game. Hopefully they will look ok, and everything goes ok.
That's all for now, thanks for reading.
February 1, 2012 16:31
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Update On Current Project
Well, at the beginning of this semester we were told to come up with a game idea to submit for consideration as a possible thesis project. I came up with a game idea I decided to call AI Termination. I don't know how many students submitted a game pitch, but it was narrowed down to seven teams. I was very lucky and my game idea got picked to move on to the next stage.
Since the middle of January, we have been working on making a white boxed prototype for each of our games with Unity. We still have about two weeks before the prototype is done, but we need to make sure that our prototype is playable by next week since there will be some people from Microsoft coming to visit us.
Brandon, has been working on getting together some kind of central location where we can all put our ideas together to start making some sort of bible for the game. He has been working on this wiki and so far its coming along nicely as we work on developing a narrative.
Since I originally pitched the idea, the game has gone through big changes. The prototype that we are currently working on will focus heavily on combat. We are still trying to implement the combos that I spoke about in the original pitch. The game won't have any puzzles, but we will be keeping the time manipulation ability.
The game has also morphed into something like an arena like setting. We will try to have multiple maps, but the player will have to finish one map before moving on to the next. The map is actually very simple, below is an example of a map that I've been working on:
Now I'm working on making simple shapes for the different components of this simple map. They are mostly going to be cubes and cylinders for now, but that should be enough to get the idea across.
That's all for now, thanks for reading.
January 9, 2012 16:51
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Start of Second Semester
This week we are suppose to put together a game pitch, and submitted to be considered for a class project. We also have to learn as much as we can of Unity since we will be using Unity to prototype the games for the first month.
I don't really know much of about Unity, so I will have to look for good tutorials to learn how to do basic things on it.
That's really all there is for this week, thanks for reading.
December 15, 2011 01:03
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End of First Semester of Graduate School
I'm really proud of what we accomplished, and I think that this was the best game that i was a part of the whole semester.
Everyone really liked what we did and, as usual, everyone was really impressed on what Dan was able to achieve mostly on his own (I mean in terms of coding).
There are a few things that I wish we couldn't had more time to work on the project, but we still did a very good job.
This will be the last entry for this semester, and i can't wait for the start of the next semester where we will have a chance to pitch a game idea and have 2 games picked for the class to work on over the course of the next 2 semester. I already have an idea which is similar to the game I pitched last year in my undergrad capstone class, but I've made some improvements this time around which I hope will be enough to make it interesting for people to want to vote for it.
We are all suppose to submit a game design document this weekend, so I will see if I can post something over winter break. That is all for the foreseeable future, thanks for reading.
December 14, 2011 04:10
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Prototype 4 Done
It was a little challenging because I had to model a bunch of different object that I had done before. One thing twas that I had to make a whole level in a 3D model as well as a boat, a fish, and a bunch of other stuff. Here is a render of the final scene that I put together using a bunch of the assets that I made for the intro screen.
I think it came out decent at the end. I will try to make one more post after the presentation tomorrow. That's it for now, thanks for reading.
December 13, 2011 02:20
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Almost Done
They may not look that complicated, but it took me a while to do all the art myself, its actually one of the things that I actually don't like about the program. In the teams that we are placed, its always one producer, two engineers, and one artist. I shouldn't complain since Sterling has made a lot of the art for the HUD, but I just don't like it because if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have been able to get everything done by this next thursday.
Now the only thing that I have to do by tomorrow night is putting together a little scene in maya off all the assets I created and then getting a little render for the title screen. Then if I'm lucky, I may animate the scene so that it moves. But Dan said that he was going to look into it a little and see if it would work since he also wants to add some special lighting to make it look like time is progressing in the title screen.
Hopefully I will finish everything on time, so that I can finally get some decent sleep. That's all for now, thanks for reading.
December 4, 2011 16:25
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Fish Model Done
November 21, 2011 17:17
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Prototype 4
This project is going to focus on a new piece of hardware being developed at the University of Utah. Essentially is a new type of controller, much like the current Xbox 360 controller but different. We are still not sure how much we can write about it on our project blogs, so for now I won't go into details of what it is and how its different than current controllers. I'll just refer to it as "The Controller".
So inorder for the people developing The Controller to know what it can and can't do, they want us to develop a game that will focus on the new mechanism of The Controller. They want us to make the game to showcase all the cool features of The Controller and that it can make a game much more enjoyable thanks to the its cool new features.
Dan came up with cool idea, and we are calling it Feelin' Fishy. Its going to be a fishing game, but you aren't going to be able to see the fish under the water. There is going to be a way that we are going to let the player know when they have a bite and you will have to pull the fish to you.
For now, Dan is going to set up the framework for the game and I'm going to make some really simple models in Maya for place holder while I get caught up on my other classes. I will eventually have to make a skybox and whatnot, but that is not for at least another week.
That is all for now, thanks for reading.
November 18, 2011 15:58
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Prototype 3 Done
October 31, 2011 00:10
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Prototype 3 is Underway
We got some good feedback, like we needed to make sure that the circuits looked a little more complicated and that it had to make sense on how it all works. I thought that the layout I made would get the idea across that it was a bomb and that everything was connected, but I guess it needs to be a little more clear.
I still don't know if any of the prototypes that we showed will actually get deployed to the Mechanical Engineering students like we were told at the beginning of the project.
Since then, we've started on our next prototype. This time our client is the Utah Museum of Natural History. They just finished building a new building for the museum and they are in the process of getting all the exhibits ready for when they officially open their doors to the public. But they have one problem, one of the exhibits that they had wasn't working the way that they had hoped.
The exhibit is called Futures (or something like that) and it has to do with technology and the future of Utah. They want to have a short game in that exhibit that will teach the visitors about how Utah will be impacted by its doubling of the population in the next 40 years and what we will have to do to manage all of our resources.
The game that they have right now has all that information, but its too wordy, too long, and really confusing. So we were called to try and save the exhibit.
We have to incorporate as much information about water conservation into our game, but it has to be a short game (about 2-4 minute play) that will be fun and teach something to the visitor about the future of Utah.
My team this time consists of: Brandon Karratti as the producer, Jorge Elola & Pace Sims as engineers, and Christine Olinquevitch & I as artist.
I'm so happy that there is another artist in my team this time, it means that I won't fall behind like on the other 2 projects because there is too much art to do and I have to do all of it.
So for our game, Pace got the original idea of coming up with a game that you have to "shoot" your resources to parts of Utah that need it the most. While making sure that you keep everyone happy and keep track of your limited resourced. We hope that this will make it easy to understand and fun to play for children and adults.
We are going to make this game using flash, I'm still not sure how all the technical stuff will work but I can leave that stuff to Pace and Jorge to figure out. In the meantime, Christine and I have to come up with some placeholder art so that the engineers can start to put stuff in place since we only have 3 weeks before the museum opens.
If we succeed over the other team (there is only 2 teams working for the UMNH this time, everyone else is working for another client on a different project) we will have our game shown on the exhibit.
I will have to brush up on Flash, but I don't think that it will be too hard since Christine is a graphic design major (or something like that). :)
That's all for now, thanks for reading.
October 19, 2011 19:49
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Prototype 2 Presentation Today
Overall, it went really well. Our game really emphasized that it was going to be used for educational purposes and we managed to get our idea across of how it would look once it was finished.
It was still a little confusing for some people, but they managed to get the idea in the end and gave us some input on how we could make it look better.
One of the things that someone said that really got burned in my head is that the assets have to scaled up, never down until you have had time to experiment with them. This was because the grid for our game was really big compared to the size of the circuit/problem on the board. So basically the cells needed to be bigger to allow the player a more clear view of the art and it also gives us more room to work with.
Finally, I don't know if any of the games will actually be used/fully developed but it was a nice experience getting to work for a client.
After all the presentations, they told us a little about our next project. Apparently there are a few people that will be flying in from a company that is looking to expand but don't have much experience with games. We weren't really told what we were going to do, so will have to wait until next week to find out.
In the meantime that is all, thanks for reading.
October 17, 2011 15:33
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End of Fall Break
I manage to do the following things: a new game board, title screen, icons, and some text for the buttons of the title screen.
Most of the art work that I made was done in maya and then I just rendered it and tweaked it in photoshop.
Here is the new title screen:
Bomb Defuser is just a working title for now, and it will most likely change.
I still have a bunch of stuff I need to work on before the presentation on Wednesday, thanks for reading.
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Previously the game was a flying game, and like I mentioned before it was going to change. So the game is now a falling jousting game. The premise is that there will be battles fought in the air, but the player and the enemy will be falling towards each other thanks to a "gravity well" like object.
They will be able to shoot at each other from afar, while dodging incoming fire and obstacles. Once they get close to each other, the game will switch to something like "bullet time" and be able to hit one another and then keep moving away from each other, and after a short break it all repeats if there was not a winner on the first go.
We have decided to work on two arenas, one that is in some sort of long tube that will be an enclosed arena and one that is in an open area. I'm in charged of the open area arena.
I've been getting a lot of inspiration from the James Cameron Avatar movie and trying to do something like floating land masses. But we decided that we were also going to add debris from ancient buildings (ex: roman temples or buildings). The reason why I'm trying to do that is that I want the arena to be filled with more than just rocks, but also because I want it to be a post apocalyptic feel since this game is suppose to be in the future.
So far, I've done really rough models just taking spheres and using the lattice tool to deform them. I've done solid rocks, and some that have a tunnel that would allow the player to go through them. We plan on inserting power ups as a risk/reward option for the player that is more experienced.
I've also done a really quick sample level with the few models that I've done so far, since one of the engineers wanted something that they could use in Unity to start working. That's all for now, thanks for reading.