Drifters Team: BEARD-OFF! Final Week

No photo yet, because tomorrow (Thursday) ends the Beard-off!

Here's the latest update to the contest:

Hey All,

Just wanted to pass along the official Beard Off Update. The Beard Off will end on Thursday July 2nd so that everyone can be clean shaven by Monday when industry interviews start. Beard Off ceremonies will take place in the bridge directly following the Sultan’s presentation. I also encourage participants to bring in clippers, shaving cream, and razors, to shave some fun into this mess following the festivities. Rick, Shawnna, and Donald have agreed to be the three judges for the competition and will be deciding the winners of the following categories:

The Billy Mays Memorial Award (formerly the Grizzly Adams) – Grizzliest beard in honor of the greatest pitch man ever
The Patch Adams Award – Given to the participant with the saddest and patchiest beard
The Colonel Sanders Award – Given to the participant who looks most like this guy

The Ron Jeremy Award – Given to the participant who most resembles a 70’s adult film star
The Chameleon Award – Given to the participant who you cant tell is a participant
The Man Scaping Award – For whoever shaves the most creative design into their beard after the initial judging

Each Beard Off participant will briefly tell the story of their beard and their five week journey.

If anyone can think of additional awards, please reply to this thread and we will add them to the list.

We’ll buy some pizza and soda and prizes will be awarded to the winner.

Thanks,
AD

2 week countdown!

It's content insertion and polish time for both games! With 2 weeks left, there's no room left to add new features, it's time to really hammer down what's there, add the last minute shinys, and smooth out the wrinkles to make it into Alpha/Beta/Gold Master stages. Blogger's video system didn't like the several clips we had to share this week, so YouTube it is!


The first glaring change in the game was the addition of Lenore, the fourth and final Drifter. Once in game, the next large change was the huge increase in the variety of the NPC models. Through two gameplay sessions it was difficult to see a duplicated combination of parts, thanks to the magic of the Voltron rig and the design team's creations. Another addition to the gameplay was the drift radius highlight: when a player is near a driftable NPC, that NPC will have a faint blue glow on them...especially useful when you near a body that doesn't glow, giving it away that they inhabit a Drifter without having to switch to Drifter Vision.

Lenore, the 4th Drifter

After looking through the questionnaires from the focus group, listening to the Q&A tape, and starting to watch the player footage, a number of suggestions for improvement were brought to light. One of the major things the test players found was that attacking was a bit slow with the extended animation times, and when killed, the time to respawn in a body was also a bit too long. Also, when a player is killed while not in Drifter Vision, there's very little in the way of feedback to tell that has happened. The team has brought these issues up to the designers, who have formed a task force to adjust these parts of the game and eliminate the confusion and lag.

Some polish details in progress include baking in the lighting within Maya rather than the 80-some lights placed in scene designer. The artifacts are almost finished being re-rendered and placed in the museum, along with a few ambiance pieces such as benches and banners to add some color to the interior. The exhibit audio which used to project in a sphere from the podium, will now project in a conical 3D shape instead, originating from the new speaker boxes on the new podiums. The audio team is also working on adding a distortion filter to make the voice sound more speaker-like rather than the clear sound it has now.

All the models are being weight painted so the animations for their walks, tells, and environmental cues all flow more naturally. The attack/fail animations are also being retouched to help with the feedback timing and transitions between animation. While the Drifter models are complete, some slight detail work is being done to further push their individualism and iconic look, as well as the addition of particle effects unique to each Drifter. The finalization of the environment with the lighting and exhibit/prop placements will allow the cinematic team to get that in and render out the entire cinematic movie for inclusion in the game.

The website has also gotten a bunch of new content, including a new introduction video with the 4 updated Drifters and gameplay footage, art pieces, and of course, a mirror of these blog entries.

And now, your moment of Drifters play footage zen:

This week was a lot of gameplay tweaking and feature additions for the Sultans game. New art releases aren't scheduled until next week, but we managed to snag plenty of in-game footage to illustrate the new additions to gameplay and the user interfaces!

The team leads sat down and analyzed the polish backlog tasks, categorizing them by type and then by priority. This allowed the team to tackle the issues that were most critical and shift focus on the more elaborate and involved issues. Some of the small things that were adjusted were the look of the DJ notes, which now have colored flames spinning around them as they drop. The motion blur for pass the spotlight is now applied to the dancer:

And the end-game score sheet is now in place to show each crew how well they did:

Last week the transition from crew-to-crew was a sweeping camera pan, but that's no longer the case. The transition will now allow the current DJ to be shown at their table and then cuts to the current dancer performing a few of their moves before cutting over to the other side of the stage where the new DJ is shown at their table, then their dancer warms up and gameplay for the second crew begins.

Both environments has the textured and animated instances of 5 unique crowd models running during the game and the female dancer is now playable with her complete dance move, fail states, and idle animations all functional.

The menu now allows players to select a difficulty on their song by spinning the record that pops out of the sleeve at the top.

And, some full gameplay footage:

Drifters Team: BEARD-OFF! Week 4

There's been rumors of unnecessary trimming amongst the competitors...does anyone look specifically well-groomed to you?

3 Week Countdown!

Both teams are now nearing alpha stage for their timelines and that means extensive testing can begin. Currently, daily sessions are taking place with each game as the teams get to experience the fruits of their labor and look for their next improvement task. We were able to sneak a camera in to the status reports to show you some in-game footage - exclusive here!


Play testing is now a daily event in the Drifters half of the cohort space. Crowds can be seen gathered in whichever hex is hosting a game at the time and cheers of victory and defeat can be heard throughout the halls. However, the team knows that testing your own game is easy, so they've brought in some fresh testers, unrelated to FIEA and unfamilliar with the game. This way they can get an unbiased look at the gameplay and have a fresh set of eyes look things over. Last Friday they had a group in to cold test the game: they were given a brief presentation on what the game is and how to play and then let loose on two 5-minute and two 10-minute matches. After, they participated in a written and verbal Q&A session, and were provided with free pizza as a thanks for their participation. The team is currently analyzing the video and questionnaire data to make more improvements to the gameplay and balance.

The Drifters team testing their game along with some of the Sultans team

As with last week's promise, the team delivered on optimization of the game in many ways. Their two major changes were the conversion of all .tga textures to .dds files and also the size reduction and sharing of the environmental texture maps. Both of these changes produced a cutdown of 50% of the video memory used, a huge improvement! Many of the exhibit models are also being redone to drop their poly count and add to the reduction.

New exhibit pieces, now with lower poly counts

Graphically, small improvements are being made as most of the assets are complete and are undergoing a bit of polish. The bathroom area is now completely textured and the team is working on a new display case so they're uniform in appearance. Small details like the audio tour guide speakers on each exhibit are being added in as well as just small cosmetic touches to add to the realism of the environment.

The textured bathroom

Two new models were also released this week: the Sovereign and Gideon, the third Drifter. The Sovereign is completely modeled and textured and awaiting placement on her throne. Her audio files are getting their final adjustments and her haunting voice will be heard during the match, updating the Drifters on their progress and egging on their competition.

The Sovereign's profile and throne

Gideon has been added into the in-game play with his own image on the character select, complete with his unique stats.

The final renders of Sid, Luther and Gideon

A lot of bug fixes took place this week as well, with all the NPCs now correctly pathed and spawning, resulting in no more walking into walls. There are currently 50 unique paths each with behavior nodes where a NPC will stop and interact with an exhibit before continuing on. The team hopes to get another 30 paths in so they can potentially increase the number of NPCs in the environment as well once all the final assets are in and play testing can focus on value adjustment.

Since the NPCs will randomly stop to examine the various parts of the museum, the team implemented a keyboard command to let players do the same. By pressing the Q button the player's current body will stop and lean in and examine whatever they are near, or if they are in the open, they will play another context-sensitive animation such as checking their watch. Another control option added this week is the free-view camera which can be a useful strategy if your player is stopped at an exhibit. You can perform your environmental animation and while that is taking place, quickly hold down the F key and use your mouse to take a 360 degree look around you, identifying any suspicious behavior that may be taking place behind your head.

A player approaches an exhibit and uses their environmental action command to interact with it, making them appear to act like a NPC

On screen you can now see statistics as to who is in the lead, how you stand compared to their number of kills, and a report in the bottom left updates constantly with the latest "Player 1 killed Player 2" announcement. These can be brought up at any time during game play with a tap of the shift key. Another addition to the user interface is the inclusion of loading screens which show the keyboard controls while the match loads. A player tutorial video is also in progress to explain the finer points of gameplay, including blending in with the crowd and drifting strategies.

Loading and tutorial screens, as well as the on-screen current score update, which can be toggled on and off

Drifter Vision has also gotten a huge update, mainly in how the transition to and from corporeal vision works. Now instead of a jerky switch to glowing NPCs, the glows on other bodies slowly fades up, as does your own. Your Drifter form fades in after the waiting period and soon other Drifters are also visible. When drifting in Drifter Vision, a bright flash of light disorients you for a moment as you switch, leaving you slightly vulnerable for a second as you adjust to your new location. When switching back to corporeal vision, the glow on the other bodies slowly fades to a shell and disappears completely.

Updated Drifter Vision

Next up on the plate is further testing, additions of the final art assets, and biggest of all is the final Drifter reveal, Lenore. For now, we leave you with a little in-game footage!

The presentation this week started off with more of a show-and-tell approach, because Sultans is down to adding assets in-game and tweaking the mechanics to find that playability sweet spot. The 3D menu we've been seeing concepts and renders of is now a reality with fluid camera movements between each area. The player begins by selecting their crew, then flying over to the turntable rack, and finally to the record bin to select a song and difficulty. The second crew sets up their characters and turntable and the match begins! Right now, the Sexy Clown/Dino Guy models are in place and animated with textures to follow and the other 2 crews coming soon. The three turntables are in place with the rotating rack, and several song album covers are in place and will be selectable.

The gameplay has gotten another update with the 2-player crew vs. crew mechanics working, complete with the crew switch during the song. Each crew has its own area of the level where their individual multiplier status, score, and note streams appear. The DJ notes now stream top to bottom directly on to the turntable records, rather than in the center console. This allowed the notes to be larger and more directed toward where the DJ has to look for scratching rather than all jumbled in the center. As for adjustments to the peripheral interaction, the fader is now a required part of the controller, as the DJ must switch the bar to the side they're scratching on to activate it, making the experience more realistic.

When the crew members reach a high synergy level (constantly hitting the white notes) new environmental effects are visible with the turntable records getting flame effects, spotlight activation, and floating money particle effects. The crowd members, including the currently textured and in place mohawk guy, also react to the performance by jumping around more or less. The crowd is also in place in the fully functional Warehouse environment, which is also selectable alongside the Club environment. New songs are now marked with notes and ready to play, and loading screens have been added between the menu and the start of the round.

Early render of the Warehouse with crowd

The dancers and DJs are all textured and ready to go, with new fail animations for constantly missed notes. The mocap data from the female dancer is being cleaned up, meaning soon Tiger Girl will have her own set of unique moves.

Fully textured models of "Felicia", "Damian", and "Dino Guy" - the DJs

But all of this is just words...you need to see it to experience the true Sultans of Scratch!

Drifters Team: BEARD-OFF! Week 3

Another week, another few centimeters of hair!

The beards are progressing just as smoothly as the game's final stages of development!

Drifters Team: BEARD-OFF! Week 2

This is the current roster of contenders:


As you can see, the stubble is coming along just as nicely as the game!

4 Week Countdown!

There's been lots of excitement around the cohort this week. From the hype of the Orlando Magic games taking place across the street to rumors of confirmed interview companies all the way to extensive (and competitive) play testing, quiet moments within the cohort space are becoming few and far between.


The museum environment is looking more and more realistic by the week, with nearly all the exhibits and aesthetic pieces making it into the current build. Next week they plan on having all the placements finalized so full work on the final lighting and shadows can be completed. Currently 8 new lights have been added to effect the characters: 1 directional light and 7 point lights to help with shadows.

One of the biggest additions this week is the 3D sound effects within the game build. 3d sound is basically a technique used to create a more realistic sound within a game: as a player gets closer to the item creating the sound, the sound gets louder, as they back away, it gets softer, just as it does in real life. Aside from the already impressive custom music score, many of the exhibits have been augmented with an audio tour guide voice over that explains the story behind each artifact on display, telling its history and how it was used as an 'instrument of death'. This is how it works in normal corporeal vision; switch into Drifter Vision and walk past the same display to hear the sounds that occurred when the item was used to kill its unfortunate victim (or victims, as with the heavily used guillotine).

The second biggest addition is the new Drifter forms for Luther and Sid. They now work correctly in-game (no more double model) and they're reacting properly with players being able to select a specific Drifter over another and have that one show properly in form. The character select screen shows slots for all 4 Drifters and when a specific Drifter is selected it will also show their bio and unique stats. Not all Drifters are created equal: they have 3 categories of stealth, drift time, and strength that will effect how they perform in the environment.

The cinematic team is ready to begin production, as their camera and shot layouts are finalized and a basic mockup of the storyboards has been rendered with stand-in models and a basic untextured environment. They're working on getting the finalized assets into the cinematic builder and then it's full steam ahead.

Testing is starting to be the next big thing with the game, with strike teams created for various sections to consider when looking at gameplay. One of the biggest focuses is optimizing the game to run as seamlessly as possible. A few of the ideas they're working with is the reduction of the character texture size (each piece of each NPC is a separate texture) to free up video memory, and also optimizing collision checking by dividing the areas into zones, having the characters only check collision on the zone they're in rather than the entire environment.

A few of the bugs that have been worked out since last week are the same time attack that would cause the game to crash when players attacked each other at the same time. The Drifter form was fixed and glow shaders work with the alpha on the environment during Drifter Vision. Load screens have been added between match start and the actual game load, so there's no more confusion if the game build froze or not.

Within the game, taunts are now active and also done in 3D sound, so a player can activate a vocal taunt near a group of NPCs and quickly move away so it resonates from decoys and not their own body: a great tactic for throwing off a pursuer! The game menu was updated again with animations, transitions and sound effects. More updates to the NPCs paths have been made, so they now stop at exhibits, examine them, and continue on, which is a behavior pattern a player can easily emulate to blend in while stalking targets.

The next steps for the team are to continue testing and tweaking the game play to get the smoothest, best version possible ready for Alpha stage testing. The last exhibits will be placed and sound added and the final texture sets for the 3 NPC Voltron rigs will be finalized and put into the randomization cycle. New animations from the last mocap shoot are almost cleaned and ready to be added for the final animation sets to finish off the pathing. The 3rd drifter model is being textured, everything is getting a cleanup and quality check, and the final image of the game is definitely coming through!


Last week's mocap session should be the final one and created a whole new set of dance moves with a female dancer, giving Tiger Girl her own personal move set with a more feminine feel. Data was also created for more unique idle states, giving each dancer a total of three unique idles, as well as more crowd actions and new data for the 3D menu navigation. After this session, the final animation lists are now finished and finalized.

Lots of texture updates this week with the warehouse environment and record store menu environment having been completely textured and ready to roll.

The textured and partially lit Warehouse stage

Various angles of the record store menu environment

The sexy clown is even hotter now with his textures added, and two new crowd members are modeled and ready to be textured.

Admit it, he's even sexier with the tie.

Concept sketches for 2 more crowd members and their 3D modeled counterparts awaiting textures.

In-game they've got a new scoreboard running along the top of the dancer's stage that not only has an incrementing score but also the timer for when the round is over. While the game is playing, the announcer will now pop in with comments to cheer on good performances or encourage failing performers to step it up. One of the most positively received turntable concepts, the gears turntable, has been modeled, textured and animated to become the second turntable style available in the game.

Perhaps one of the biggest changes in the game demo this week was the addition of camera pans to transition from one crew to the other. The first crew is performing at a light board stage with a DJ booth. After they perform for a set time limit, their session pauses and the camera sweeps behind the light board to reveal another DJ booth and a stage set back by the bar, where the 2nd DJ/dancer crew can begin their performance. Once their time limit is up, another camera pan back sends the gameplay to the original crew to finish out their performance.

Production Week 9

Nine down, five to go in the countdown to the end of production. Testing is gearing up, assets are being finalized, animations are being cleaned up, and beards are growing as the teams ramp-up to industry speed.


The Drifters opened this week with a look into their current organization and task management systems. They're using a modified SCRUM along with planning poker and tasking with "user stories". User Stories are short descriptions of various types of user experiences that could take place within the game (i.e. "I want to kill someone while in drifter vision"). Each Story is assigned a level of importance from 1-3 and the top priority Stories are assigned a Strike Team who break it down into the tasks needed to accomplish it. These tasks are assigned to individual members who work on them until all components are complete and the Story can happen. Tucker, the scheduling and analysis master of the team, has calculated that the team accomplished an extra 23.5 hours of work this week with a total of 154.5 more man hours this sprint.

The organizational board

The Voltron rigs for the Maria and Howard NPC types are active in engine and nearly every geometry variation is working on each rig. The Agnes NPC is also nearly complete and almost ready to be placed within game as well. Currently, 40 NPCs are being placed within the game, each with their own unique path and randomized texture configuration. Shadows in-game are slowly being implemented in, as they had been turned off for testing purposes to keep the frame rate up to snuff.

New shots of the more polished museum interior

With the main part of the museum almost finalized, work on the back part of the museum, which is slated to be a bathroom area, is getting underway. The team decided this lesser-seen part of the environment should be something serious like a bathroom area to keep with the realism of the game.

Modeled layouts of the bathroom area

The central focus of the museum floor - an ornate fountain - has been base modeled, positioned in the environment, and is ready to be textured.

The fountain model

On the cinematic side, basic play blasts of some of the camera paths for the various scenes have been created for testing and reference. The paths have been finalized and the voice work is all ready to roll once the scenes are assembled. Some of the camera and animation work for the cinematic is also serving double duty as the menu screens get a wonderful motion upgrade. A preview video was shown of how the new menu will act, hovering outside the museum before the game starts, then rushing into the blinding realm of the Drifters beyond the doors.

During the initial game demo, 2 players were in-game to show playability with the ability to enter drifter vision, make a kill, respawn, and have a game status with kills/deaths and current score. Prior to starting the game, a player can choose to host or join an existing game, give themselves a unique player name, as well as choose their drifter. A player who hosts the game can set game parameters such as the game name, number of players, time limit, and number of kills to win. Improvements on the drifter vision were shown with the glow effect in place with the environment and on the NPCs, as well as a new 10-second waiting period in which the drifter has to stay in drifter vision for that cool-down period before switching out. The tells system is also actively working, with the player's currently controlled body having a coughing action that increases over time as they possess the body.

After the 2-player success, the team was challenged to try out 4 simultaneous players just to see if it would work - and it did! With four players being the target goal for the end game, it was a great success for the team to see their goal already met so far.


Sultans had a lot of new content to show off this week including environments, props, characters, and shiny new peripheral prototypes. Heading full steam into the new Warehouse stage, a slew of new industrial props are being concepted, modeled and textured. One of the big focuses is on speakers, as they're not native to the environment like they were in the club, so some great creative approaches have been taken to keeping with the urban feel.

Models of some of the new props and speakers

The new environment's textures are coming along as well, with light maps and graffiti sprays on the warehouse walls.

The warehouse interior with basic textures

The 3d Menu concepts have been modeled out and assembly of the interior of the record shop has begun, including props and placement of the menu elements.

Original menu concepts

The exterior of the menu shop and interior construction

The rack where you can select your turntable

The new DJs and characters mentioned last week have got further life pumped in to them as they enter the realm of 3D. Godzilla and Damien are modeled and now all the characters can be textured and ready to roll in-game. They've gone a long way from paper concept to 3D and they look great!

Godzilla's concept sketch and 3D render

The DJ concept art and Damien's final model

Within the game, some of the low-poly crowd models have been placed and animated in scene with a potential of 16 identical models in without performance issues. The target goal is to have 5 unique crowd models each with texture variations to create a diverse crowd each time the game is loaded. Along with the crowd's normal animation, their actions will increase as they get more pumped up when the players perform well; the tiered performance system at work!

Textured crowd models

The initial club stage has a new view which places the DJ more at floor level of the dancer and includes a progress bar for the Synergy Notes to fill up and activate the "Pass the Spotlight" feature. Basic announcer vocals are functioning on a randomized basis, giving players encouragement or criticism as they compete.

A tutorial mode is also being developed to give new players an overview of how the controls work, the combo system, rewards (crowd hype, pass the spotlight, and scoring) and overall game play. The messages that appear during the tutorial have been written in an easy to edit XML script, perfect for anyone on the team to pick up and change instantly.

A few things coming up in the next few days include a female dancer mocap shoot which will not only produce new moves for Tiger Girl, but also help with making more idle dance states so the same action isn't repeated as often. A 3rd stage is on the timeline for implementation and so far the team is confident they're on schedule to begin developing on it shortly to make a total of three unique environments for players to choose from. The second peripheral prototype is currently being held by the UCF Engineers as they further develop on it, but it looks great so far!

The 2nd peripheral prototype

The final iteration is slated to be a modified actual electronic turntable which is much smaller, lighter and durable.

A preview of what the final turntable should look like

The team's urban photoshoot for their website