The first major addition to the game has been the exhibits, with over 30 pieces added to create the "Instruments of Death" collection that's currently on display. The interior has been slightly redesigned with a new bridge crossing from one side to the other in the upper level, new textures, and better lighting. To create the proper lighting the environment had to be split into 12 separate pieces, each uniquely lit with over 80 individual lights to bypass Gamebryo's lighting limits. The resulting effect is stunning and not ambiently lit like most environments. The lighting is also being reconfigured within the Maya models, as it needs to be lit properly for use in the cinematic as well.
New interior shots of the remodeled museum, fully lit and textured
With the Voltron rig ready to assemble, the artists have been working on many texture variations on the geometry used to create 3 unique NPC body shapes - Agnes, Maria and Howard. With 4 pieces to each rig and multiple versions of each piece, there's a huge number of combinations that can be created by the design team using the Character Builder tool. Currently, the design team loads the tool, flips through the various pieces until they build a model that looks correct, and can save it as a unique NPC.
Pieces for use in the Voltron rig and the Character Builder tool
Then, using their Path Builder tool, they can assign that NPC a unique path within the environment, including pauses and animations, essentially creating non-repetitive, natural looking crowd interactions to further add to the need to blend in with the museum-goers in order to avoid detection as a Drifter. To better create all this content, "strike teams" have been created to handle pathing batches so no one person is burdened with doing all the work.
The Path Creator tool with pathing diagrams
A new user interface has been created for the main screens using an exterior shot of the museum. No longer a static image, the new UI is animated and has effects as the user interacts with various menus and choices.
The new menu screen
The four Drifters are shown on the character select screen and they are starting to get personalities of their own through new animations and designs. The team's most recent mocap session produced over 40 new animations for combat, some unique to each Drifter and some generic.
John provided some great combat moves for the mocap shoot
The Drifter models have also changed, no longer a skeletal-armor style, but now they resemble more of a full body suit.
The new look of the Drifter form
Drifter Vision has also received an overhaul with a new temporary glow map serving as a base for the final product. Instead of just desaturating the environment, the altered perception resembles glowing runes on the walls and objects, with the glowing accentuated on Drifter-related items within the sight of the player. The Drifter form of their character is also shown, and their animation for walking changes slightly to a stalking motion.
The new Drifter Vision concept
In regards to the previously mentioned cinematic, the shot lists are done, layouts and camera placement is in progress, and the script recorded. As soon as the environment is ready and everything finalized, production can begin with a mid-June target set for completion. A final voice acting session is wrapping up this week, with most of the already recorded dialogue in the cleanup stage.
In the non-visual realm of things, the programmers have been hard at work refactoring their code to produce version 2.0 of the game's build. Many of their changes allow for smoother networking and easier integration between the values created from the producer tools and the game engine. In testing, users are now able to input a player name for the multiplayer, join or host a game, and wait in the lobby to see other players. The tools are all working with XML, allowing live changes to be made during gameplay. An internal script was also written to control the number of NPCs and their starting placement at the initial load of the game. Another major addition to the control of the NPCs was the inclusion of a behavorial steering script which will detect when 2 NPCs are going to collide and adjust their paths to avoid each other.
With the programmers hard at work finishing their internal overhaul of their code base, the artists churning out great designs for the characters and museum exhibits, and the producers developing the audio and NPC behavior, Drifters is shaping up to be a highly immersive game experience.
Showcasing spiffy painted peripherals fully functional with the game controls, the Sultans team delivered a great post-break presentation. Promotion-wise, their website is ready to go live on Friday with a final team photo shoot scheduled for that afternoon. Over the break they were busy with weekly scheduled play tests every Friday, during which their workroom was filled with the sounds of hip-hop and thumping feet.
Tons of new artistic content was shown off, including more concepts for environment props like speakers, a new dancer/dj combo, and DJs for the 2 current dancers. The new dancer, the "sexy clown" is partially modeled and being textured while his DJ counterpart, "Godzilla Man" is concepted and ready to be brought to life in Maya. The current dancers now have DJs of their own, the Tiger girl having a similar-looking girl, her sister, as her music maker, while the original dancer has a DJ that enjoys his sense of asian-inspired style. One thing the team had been debating on and decided to go ahead with was the mocapping of a female dancer for the 2nd dancer model, and they've scheduled that shoot to complete their animation pool.
Speaker concepts
The "Sexy Clown" concept sketch and model
Leopard Girl's model
One of the major updates to the environment has been with the layout of the user interface elements. The dancer notes are now light bars streaming down screens on either side of the dancer, while the DJ notes appear on a panel between the on-screen turntables. Everything has been re-laid out and scaled so the dancer is proportionate, and even the turntable on-screen reacts on a 1:1 ratio with the turntable controller's movements.
Two new environment-related game elements have also been introduced, the "environmental response" and the "pass-the-spotlight" which both activate based on the success or failure of the players. The environmental response focuses on the club's elements to reward good player performance; the speakers will animate and thump with the music, the central spotlights will activate and put on a light show. Pass-the-spotlight is implemented on the back end and soon to become available in-game; a major spotlight will pass from DJ to dancer as they cooperate by hitting the white "synergy notes" in time with each other.
Some other things in the works on the visual side would be the concept and base construction of a 2nd environment, a warehouse. One of the most requested environment types during the focus groups, the warehouse has been sketched out in various designs and a basic model constructed in Maya, getting ready for preliminary textures.
Warehouse concept sketches
Modeled warehouse environment
The main game menus, static at the moment, are planning on being transformed to an interactive 3D menu system designed to look like a record shop. Users will select their music track by flipping through a record box, and character selection will be done by picking a pair from the customers in the shop. Low-polygon models for the crowd members are being modeled, textured and tested within the game. Currently, 23 models can be placed within the scene before any lag is apparent, so there's going to be quite a crowd to impress in-game!
The programmers have been putting in a lot of work on the back end of things, prepping systems to be implemented within the next few weeks, updating current tools, and working on the functionality of the controllers. Both input controls work completely within the game, although keyboard controls can also be used. The tools for note placement have been updated for ease of use so the songs can now easily be prepped for in-game play.
