Production Week 2

You would think that with the programmers being buried under end of semester final projects and the artists swamped with work on their portfolio pieces, work on the games would grind to a halt. Not cohort 5! Our teams have managed to keep their personal classwork and game tasks in balance, allowing for them to focus on keeping their grades up in their track-specific classes, but also still show some great progress within their game's development.

Drifters
One of the major targets the team was challenged to reach for last week was to implement the combat and ability to make a kill within the game - and it was done! The programming team has also created a tool to place graphical spawn points for the NPCs so they don't spawn randomly into exhibits. Coincidentally, the programmers next project within their non-game curriculum is to build a tool for the game they're tasked on, something the team is taking full advantage of by creating a list of appropriate tools that the game could benefit from so the programmers can decide on which tool to work on.

Design has been hard at work in various areas, the environment has been populated with the artifact displays so characters have obstacles to navigate around.

The main platform of the museum with artifacts on display

Sound has also been hard at work, having 9 of their 11 callbacks for voice talent being scheduled and cast with the other 2 being finalized by the end of the week. The team met for a DevTrack overview and the accounts and assignment system are active and functional for QA testing to begin at any time. Website infrastructure is also up and running with a basic layout and content shell in place, login active for all team members, and the ability to add content active.

Website structure with dev team profiles

The cinematic team has met several times to script the opening scenes in preparation for storyboard treatment - a great collaboration between the design and art teams. The concept of the drifter form, while previously appearing as a skeletal shell or armor over the main body, is being reiterated to a more flowing, ethereal design by way of a glow shader with particle effects - one of the art team's current tasks.

The new concept for the Drifter form

More touch ups were done on the museum interior with the floor texture updated, lighting retouched, and the introduction of a great melding of programming and art: the "Voltron" rig. This 3-piece NPC creation system allows the artists to produce any number of torso, head and leg pieces and the programmers to randomly assemble them on an animated rig to create nearly endless amounts of visual combinations. The animators have also finished cleaning up the mocap data and have it ready to attach to the Voltron rig.

Sultans of Scratch
With the character decision made and 2 playable models decided, the team can switch focus on development of the club environment and camera systems as well as other essential pieces such as the DJ table, environment props, and particle effects. A tool was created by the programming team to allow the design team to easily program note streams for each song, shaving off a considerable amount of time and reiteration in the gameplay testing. The team got their hands on the first prototype of their DJ turntable controller, thanks to the UCF Engineering department, and spent the weekend integrating their input system into the current code.

The team gets their hands on the peripheral for the first time

Lots of work is going down with the artists including 3 turntable concepts being modeled, as well as the Tiger Girl character's full 3D model with textures.

Tiger Girl, fully rendered in Maya

The spinner and fish turntables fully modeled

The in-game environment is being expanded with a concept drawn and a basic model created and lit with textures being worked on.

A better render concept of the stage area

Concept sketching is also in progress for club furniture and stage elements and once designs are approved they'll move into being modeled and textured. Particle effects are also further developed with a short concept video produced to give an idea of how the graffiti-esque trails will work.

Some tests have been run with the camera system, creating mock fly-throughs around the expanded environment. These sort of movements will create transitional clips to use between dancers, songs, or gameplay events.

The final parts of the mocap data have been cleaned, named and assigned to combo sets - all ready to go in game. The animation blending system is rough but working and being adjusted through rigorous testing.