Last week I presented Carnage to the Get In The Game advisory board and I’m happy to report that it was very well received. The main feedback was more about my PowerPoint presentation. I need to lose a lot of the text from the slides and ensure I deliver an emotional presentation in early April to the Sony guys.

A great deal has happened on the game since my last post on this blog. I missed a week because we have some cool new visuals that I wanted to show for the first time in the meeting. Now that’s all out of the way I’ll share it here.

Coding Carnage

On the coding side a ton of new features have been added;

• The higher quality level and the high poly characters are now added to the game, including the grim reaper. When the Reaper power up is picked up the game alpha blends smoothly from the main character form into the Reaper form. The player can then run around the level at a faster rate and cut down anyone in his way – it’s a lot of fun!
• Power-ups like the reaper and the shields now re-appear (respawn) after a short delay.
• A special check had to be added for the shield. There are some weapons that don’t work with the shield – one example is the grenade launcher, using it with the shield could result in you blowing yourself up! Valid weapons for the shield power-up are pistol, shotgun, ak47, uzi, flame thrower. Dual weapons are not allowed. If you pick up an invalid weapon when you have the shield, the shield is dropped.
• One of the main coding blocks completed included the AI for the BOTS. It’s now possible to see 8 vs 8 battles! Even with the simple AI we have at present there’s a lot of carnage being dealt. They can even pick up the reaper power-up and go on a killing spree!
• An intro screen has been added to the start of the game and the voice over introduces the background to the game. This is the script we have used; “Hello ladies and gentleman, and welcome to the filthy and stinking ghetto of North Bridge, hosting city of one of our favourite arenas – the industrial complex we lovingly refer to as The Butcher House. Prepare yourselves for another evening of quality dismemberment, with your host Randy McBane. And without further ado… let the CARNAGE commence.”
• We added an INI file control to the game. It’s wise to do something like this. It makes it easier for the person who has to do the demo. For example, I might want to set the game up for 2 human players and 4 BOT players. I can do all of this by just text editing the INI file.
• We also added PS3 controller support. Due to other priorities for the meeting I decided not to use them. Hopefully I can demo using two PS3 controllers in the final meeting, they just need testing more.
• During the game the commentator will make announcements on what’s happening. Here’s just a small sample of some of these;

“Rest in pieces!”
“Where is the justice?”
“Oooo. That’s gotta hurt.”
“Now isn’t this quality family entertainment?”
“Checking out!”
“Another one bites the dust”
“Taken a licking, and he sure aint kicking”.
“Ooooooo. I hope you’ve all eaten already.”
“Just another arena misdemeanor”
“Replicator to the rescue”
“It’s all pain and no gain!”
“Extinction!”
“Call a mortician!”

This is by no means an exhaustive list. A lot of other smaller tasks have been carried out, these are just the head liners!

Artwork
The main level is now complete, here’s the final render;

The characters are all textured and animated too. Just after our meeting we completed the giblets and charred textures for the poor soles who suffer the world of Carnage (look away now if you’re squeamish).

The first shot shows two different textures for team White and team Black;

After a blast from a flame thrower you’ll end up looking a lot worse;

Once your body has taken a few bullets, you’ll look like this;

And should someone take a long sword to you, you’ll be in pieces (literaly);

Now the carnage begins…

So for the remaining two weeks we have identified the following areas we want to improve/add;

• Add an environment floor pad which triggers a circular saw to cut up anyone in it’s way.
• Add support for all the new animations
• PS3 controller support
• Death camera views (close in shots as you die)
• Change the voice artist to another one
• Add an animated intro
• Animate the “Reconstructor” which brings warriors back to life
• Code pick-ups for Health and Steroids
• Make the game play for about 2 minutes so it can be won
• Create a fence around the arena to make it feel more like a live game show
• Improve the AI of the bots

Rick Vanner

The Game Creators Ltd

www.thegamecreators.com

This last week has been sent getting everything together for Production Review meeting #2. The near final edit of the ripomatic movie came in and the post production done on it by the editor is fantastic. I’m really pleased with it. Hopefully the movie shows the intended direction of the gameplay, I’m sure the X-factor panel will let me know tomorrow if it doesn’t ) I’ve got the presentation and the rip movie all working on the PS3 now as well. Had a good response from the proposed development teams and have sent the concept document out to 3 of them. Anyway time to get into costume………..

Laters,

Ivan

Busy few weeks since the last blog. Juggling a full-time workload and completing work on this project has meant many a late night – and to tell you the truth I’ve actually missed them. I never realised that a late night glass of merlot could prove so inspirational J The ripomatic is coming along nicely and I’m really pleased with the first pass edit. The company that are doing the movie for me are doing a first-class job, the edits and gameplay shots work really well and their choice of music complements the footage. From a production admin side of things, first drafts of the following documents were completed -

· Budget proposal and associated breakdown

· Resource plan and schedule

· Pitch presentation and presentation overview

Not very exciting stuff but essential in order to provide an overview of what the goals and outcomes for pre-production would be.

Cheers,

Ivan

Yes, that’s right there are 5 companies involved.

I’ve finally found a minute to write a quick something.

The idea was to combine a load of technology and make a game that could benefit from being played anywhere and that anywhere may benefit from it.

I am going to write more about my game development experiences than the technology involved, you can find out about the tech later.

So, back in December I received an email. Something along the lines of pitch an idea and get ten grand. So, as an animator with a few techie skills, I thought YES PLEASE.

So, I replied almost immediately.

There was a presentation telling us that out of the people in the room five would receive the money, I looked around did a quick head count and fancied the odds. Then I spoke to a couple of folks,

“Hiya, 25 years game development”,
“Hello, combined 40 years game development”,
“Hi, 10 titles”,
“What do they expect us to do for £10,000”.

Ok, so I was out of my depth, but I was there and I was positive so I thought I’d like to do these workshops if nothing else.

Another email arrives register for the workshops.

I thought I’d better do that right away, that way I may just have a chance of getting in.

Clicked on the link and I started filling in the form. Part of the way down it asked for an elevator pitch .

WHAT!!!!!

I wasn’t really thinking of a particular game idea, so I had to use something from my past, something I’d played with but never really explored seriously. At the same time I was thinking where is this going my precious idea that I’ve held close for years and years and never done anything with, but then the form was finished so I sent it anyway.

Wow, I thought about it a lot the opportunity to learn something about games with real games people.

I thought about a few ways to progress my idea and then the email came saying your in so be here on this date at this time.

No way, it’s actually going to happen

The last week on Carnage has been very exciting. The game now has AI Bots active in the playable game, this gives a real sense of what a massive multiplayer game will be like. It’s great fun as you run for your life with a sword hacking manic chasing you down the narrow corridors of the arena.

At this stage the AI is fairly simple and will be improved and tweaked as we play test it and suggest improvements. Yet even with this simple implementation it feels real and dangerous – these enemies mean business and don’t offer any mercy as they relentlessly hunt you down for the kill. I like fooling them by making them engage in battle with another AI bots, leaving me time to pull out the missile launcher and take them both out!

Here’s a screen shot from the game showing the Carnage. I’m in the gun turret on the right, about to be blown up by an AI bot with a rocket launcher. On the left you can see a battle between two AI bots, one with a flame thrower and one with a chainsaw;

The game’s level is almost complete and our art team have vertex lit the level as a test – here’s the result of this rendered test;

The character animation is stil being worked on. When they are all complete we can move the playable game over to use the new high quality character.

The game’s logo has also moved on. It’s an important image to get right and we have moved through a few designs so far. The current design is shown below;

We’re now into March and have to start to prepare for our next production meeting in two weeks time. I’ve had a quick review of the production plan and I see we need to focus our efforts on the voice announcer script this week. Everything else seems to be on time and the results are looking great.

As a developer of PC games and technology we are not so sure about multiplayer coding on the PS3. So we have Google searched and found a solution with a company called Quazal (www.quazal.com). We are in the process of evaluating their middleware solution. If possible, it’s best to use middleware if it can save you a lot of time in development. You will need to consider the cost of it, the time it saves you and how successful it’s been used in the industry already (don’t be a guinea pig to some new tech).

And BTW, we have released our March newsletter over at www.thegamecreators.com

Rick Vanner

The Game Creators

www.thegamecreators.com