The second production review took place on 18th March 2009. This was intended as the dress rehearsal before the final ‘X-Factor’ moment of pitching to the Sony panel. It was excellent to see how far each individual company had progressed with their games. Questions posed at the previous review had been answered with confidence, and some impressive developments had been made across the board. The companies had obviously worked hard, and had taken into account comments made at the previous review- they were much more focussed about their individual games, and had more concrete ideas about what they were pitching. I got the impression that everyone was very proud of their games, they have become such personal triumphs for each of the teams. A couple of the teams had working models and rip-o-matics which were exciting and whet the appetite. One of the teams has started working with a writer, which was really interesting to see.
Although the games have been substantially developed, and milestones have been met, it is still important for each team to take on board the comments made about their pitching skills. This was the focus of the review for a very good reason. The game has to be strong, but so does the pitch, and it is important to spend time preparing, learning the pitch, building confidence in delivery. Get in the Game came about primarily to encourage Sony to enter into a dialogue with the games creators in the North West. Now is their chance, they’ve got to get these presentations right.

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

Here are our first visualisations of the surgery space, promise that this is not a photo

AI killers

For the final pitch in April we want to demo how we feel full on multiplayer battles will be. We don’t have the time to develop multiplayer code and have it tested within the prototype time frame. So the aim is to create some basic AI bots that can battle in the game.

In the picture below, it shows a large number of waypoints, linked together by line of sight (i.e. if a waypoint can see another waypoint, they’re linked together). These waypoints are placed in such a way that from anywhere in the level an object can see at least one waypoint. This means, no matter where an AI character is in the level, it can always get onto the “network of travel”.

The next step is to use a propagation algorithm to teach each waypoint where each other waypoint is, how far away it is, and what route to take to get to it. In essence, the waypoints all talk to each other, creating a comprehensive map of paths through the level. This map allows you to work out the shortest route through the level from any point to any other point, instantly.

In the second image below we see two characters standing far away from each other. The white line shows the quickest route through the map between them. This instant route calculation allows us to get AI BOTs chasing you down at all times. Unless we choose to give you breathing space, there is nowhere to hide!

Art

On the art side a test animation of the main character running has been exported by the art team and tested by the programmer. This test went perfect and so now the production of all the various animations can begin.

The level art continues to be developed, with extra props fully textured (crates, oil tank, sandbags and a dumpster). More work on textures, including railings, shelving and flooring. The current level has incorrect shadows – this is because balancing these will take time and it’s best to do this lengthy job when the whole level is completed. Here’s an updated image;

Music to die to!

We also thought about the music for our game’s pitch. We decided it had to be a hard rock type sound. In the past we’ve used an online music store called www.shockwave-sound.com

The benefit of using this service is you can quickly find a track that can be a place holder for the type of music you want for the game without having to go to the expense of hiring a musician. The track we selected has just cost us $30 and fits perfectly with what we’re doing. If we then get full funding we can brief a professional musician who then has some reference music for what they have to produce.

Bubble on your iPhone…

One final note, we released our first ever iPhone app last week. It’s called iBlow! and let’s you blow bubbles on your iPhone. Check out the video demo on You Tube here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4H650q4KdQ

Rick Vanner

The Game Creators Ltd

Another week flies by in the world of game development. As mentioned by Ivan below, the companies in this process had their first production meeting at Sony’s Liverpool offices. It’s always interesting to hear what others have to say about your product. Mainly because we can get so close to the product we can miss some obvious areas that need attention or defining. We learnt that we needed to be very clear about the whole scope of the game and to be more certain of our target audience. Luckily, the game seems to be well received so far, so we don’t need to back track and change things.

On the development side, our main hero character is now textured;

The process of animating him will now begin. With the player’s hero being them main focus, there’s a long list of animations to do. How the player reacts to the user’s input and what he does on screen has to be the most important aspect of a game. You can have all the wonderful “Triple A” graphics but if the game play sucks then so will your game and your reputation, and ultimately sales of the game. So a lot of attention and refinement must be spent on this.

The level continues to be worked on, with the final floor texture added, box, toilet, and furnace props added and the inclusion of a prototype wall texture. Here’s a new render;

Coding time at the start of the week consisted of making a demo video to show at Sony and to also make a two player playable demo. After the meeting we decided to work on the game design document and production plans to further crystallise our ideas.

Rick Vanner
The Game Creators Ltd
www.thegamecreators.com

I am new to the Get in the Game project, in fact I’m new to Northwest Vision and Media, starting last month as a Project Co-ordinator. I missed the initial workshops and arrived on the scene just after 5 different companies had been granted 10K to develop a game to pitch to Sony.

Up until this week I’d been involved from an administrative angle, chasing project plans, getting contracts signed, etc. Although I’d read the project briefs it was great to be able to attend the first product development meeting, which was a real eye opener in terms of just how exciting an opportunity this was for the companies in question, who were all really embracing the challenge and the chance to present their ideas to Sony. I really like the way the project has been set up so that there is a definite framework, the ideas are being sold to Sony and Sony are already listening. From my experience even to get the attention of such a major publisher is pretty exciting.

Content wise it’s been especially interesting for me, as my background is largely in film and music (in that I’ve studied film and played around with several bands). I have had some experience of the processes involved in getting UK Film Council or Art Council funding, or trying (in vain!) to get a record deal or a publishing deal with a band. But the world of games development was rather foreign to me.

Hearing the creative feedback from Matt from Sony was really the most interesting part for me, seeing games as culturally important, referencing music, film, TV, pop culture. Identifying audiences. Marketing. These guys are working with designers, artists, programmers, all of whom are really passionate about the finished product. Some are coming from an art angle, others from a programming angle. The design element is really interesting, I would have thought that a ‘story’ or a concept would come first in games design, but it’s so much about technology too, that you could start with this and work backwards into a storyboard.

There is so much potential for each of these 5 projects, but working within a 3 month framework is obviously putting a time limit on the creative thought processes and brainstorming. It is important that each project start honing and refining their ideas. Yes your game could do all these things, but deciding on one final ‘angle’ for the pitch is now the key focus for each of them. Watch this space!