The End of Pre-Production!

"Vertical Slice" is a term we've been kicking around for quite a few weeks now and finally on Thursday, March 26th Cohort 5 was able to see just what that meant for Drifters and Sultans of Scratch. Development documents, printed and bound in a tangible format, were handed to Rick to become the plan of action for the next 4 months of game production. The game demos shown were a representative view of how the completed game will look, feel and play like...literally a 'slice' of the final game experience.

The teams had 6 deliverables: Gameplay Target, Visual Target, Risk Analysis, Pipelines, Design Document, and the game demo.

Sultans of Scratch
The SoS team described their gameplay target as "A rhythm game with non-discrete instructions for input; freedom to input random combo moves." Their visual target was stated as "urban, aggressive and stylized" - a statement they had stuck with since early on in the pre-production of their game. The pipelines are in place for art with a ramp-up document written to help document the export process and file structure. Design has the full design document, plus the programmers have been working on a tool to simplify adding action notes and developing combos, so the design team can make changes to song note data without having to consult the programming team on the actual code changes. The programmers are working heavily with XML and developing tools to streamline processes like the note additions.

As for risk analysis, the design team stated the difficulty of the freestyle system was an issue they were paying close attention to and their current safety designs to combat that was the face that combos are not required, any series of buttons will execute positive results on notes, and also a tutorial feature to allow players to practice learning the combos. Art's major risk was the cleanup time on the large number of animations the game will need for the various dance moves and idle states. Their solution was the addition of Neal, the cohort's resident expert on mocap, to their team as a full time animator. Programming's risk was the custom peripheral as their current build relies on keyboard and mouse controls to play right now and they are unable to test the peripheral controls until it is built. The team is working closely with the UCF Engineering department to establish an early milestone for a functional prototype to be created so it can be implemented and heavily tested. They are also creating a backup plan to control the DJ tables with an Xbox 360 controller in the event the peripheral cannot be realized within the next 4 months.

The demo shown on screen showed a basic menu structure that branched to several choices such as song and character selection, difficulty levels, and other features to be implemented. The environment was fully textured as was Mr. YinYang and they were both fully functional, with lighting and complete rigged animation. The dancer combo system shown was working with certain combinations of button presses on the numbers of notes would execute specific dance moves.

The DJ mechanic saw a final change before being committed to the design document: the turntables now have 4 distinct moves - rotation clockwise, counter clockwise, fader switch left, and fader switch right. The final plan for the game emphasizes the DJ/dancer relationship again with either player performing poorly causing missing notes, lower scores and such. Teamwork is heavily rewarded, though, with good performance creating more 3- and 4-note streams for the dancer to perform combos on, almost like a skill increase for awesome performances. Some of the visual awards being implemented include spotlight effects, the DJ being able to add special particle effects to the dancer, and crowd participation (the crowd shouting for dance moves that if executed will earn more combo points).

With one character and stage modeled the art team is working on additional characters and potential environments, as well as props and other visual treats to give the game the most authentic club feeling they can. The programmers were able to meet with the Engineering department recently and got to discuss the peripheral design and functionality. Design team is working on music tracks, note streams, and preparing for a focus group test for various visual and gameplay element analysis later on this month. A lot of positive movement coming along, and their momentum is still building!


Drifters
The Drifters gameplay target is described as a "stealth based hunt with tactical gameplay elements where the player is both the predator and the prey with enemy players hiding in plain sight." Their goal is to instill a feeling of paranoia and unpredictability, especially through the environmental lighting and audio. Their demographic is neither hardcore gamers nor casual ones, although they do focus on the online gamer as a target audience due to the networked nature of their game.

The visual target for the Drifters is to create iconic silhouettes with the detail of the drifter form coming from their particular back story. The drifter aura will be a striking, glowing contrast to the rest of the body and environment, centered around the head and upper body. The museum environment is based off the London Museum of Natural History with a very sophisticated, elegant style. The fictional setup is that it is opening night of the museum, leading the crowd present to be dressed in more formal attire and act in a controlled manner, making it easier to blend in with a tranquil crowd. This traditional presentation of a museum scenario populated with ethereal beings creates a blend of the expected with the paranormal to create a compelling story and environment for the game to take place. The goal with drifter vision is to create the feeling of viewing another plane of existence unique to the Drifters. When active, the screen de-saturates except for the drifter auras, creating a sharp contrast between the normal environment features and the glowing, vibrant drifter auras and abilities.

Some of the safety plans they've built into their development plan include extensive QA testing using multiple machine setups, system analysis, and the use of DevTrack for eventual bug reporting and fixes. The programming team set early deadlines for networking and have hit all their milestones so far, allowing extensive stress tests and implementation to take place now so their main mechanic can be preserved. The art team has taken care with their designs to keep their poly count low and load times minimal, considering the depth of detail on their environment as well as the scale of the space and crowd.

The demo shown was played with 4 separate laptops each running the game in a LAN setting, allowing 4 Drifters to intermingle with a crowd of about 30 NPCs. Load screens were implemented to allow for everything to set up and run smoothly during gameplay. When switching into drifter vision, all characters were shown to glow white with NPCs staying that way and fellow Drifters slowly starting to re-saturate with detail, eventually giving them away to the player. The environment was completely base textured with the final texturing at about 50% completion at that point of development.

The team stated that their basic game cycle was a process of scanning the environment and getting a lay of the land, drifting into a body, switching to drifter vision to get an ability, finding and stalking a target, using the ability to make a kill, drifting again, and blending back in to the crowd to start the cycle anew. Of course, the game is open enough to allow for any sort of player strategy to emerge, as some more aggressive players will want to make multiple kills with little drifting, while others will want to play a bit more stealthily and use their abilities to their maximum potential. Drifters is shaping up to be a very open-ended sandbox of play, with no clear advantage to playing strategically or spur of the moment, allowing for a great expansion of player types. Their progress has been steady and shows to continue to bigger and better things within the next months!