Birthdays!

Back when Cohort 5 was formed, our admissions advisor, Shawnna, asked for everyone's birthdays. Periodically we'd get an e-mail from her reminding everyone of a FIEAn's special day. Sometimes there'd be after-class parties, signs on desks, and other birthday shenanigans.

Today was our birthday herold's special day and Cohort 5 took her place as the bringer of birthday wishes with not one, but two cakes and a plate of cupcakes!

The birthday brigade assembles

Hugs all around!

The cakes were moved to the break room for all to share.

The birthday girl and her loot

Portal cake! The suggestion was made to sing "Still Alive" rather than the traditional "Happy Birthday" but vetoed.

Moving Day!

A state of equilibrium has been reached within the halls of the FIEA cohort area. The teams have been finalized and everyone has found their home for the remainder of the Cohort 5 era. With team restructuring also comes seating rearrangement and that has been the focus of the team leads for the past few days. With 49 FIEAns working in the front space, we were already nearly at full desk capacity. Unequal team size, coupled with the walkway separating the two desk areas, created the need for Cohort 5 to spill over in to the space formerly used by Cohort 4. After many days of seating charts and discussions with the FIEA faculty, the slightly larger Drifters team has gotten the green light to move their entire operation into the next room and set up shop.

This week started with a flurry of boxes, chairs, action figures, cardboard cutouts, Nerf weapons, mini-fridges, and equipment being shuffled from desk to desk. Chaos was organized, both with desk toys and team member "cells" created. Meanwhile, Sultans of Scratch also got to regroup and organize their newly expanded team into their respective "cells" as well.

At the start of Cohort 5's first semester, students were seated according to track - art, programming, production - so they could assist each other and get to know their fellow track mates better. When the teams were formed for pre-production, everyone moved to sit with their teams, but the track groups seemed to stick together still, although in smaller concentrations. Now, the number of teams has decreased but the partial separation of tracks is still in place. While this may seem counter-productive to isolate the tracks, each team has taken steps to designate a producer to act as a liaison between the art team and programming team and the production team, to keep everyone on the same page.

The Day of Reckoning

February 16th was a landmark date in Cohort 5’s history, full of surprise, triumph, and a bit of disappointment. Dan O’Leary of N-space was on deck to act as Executive Producer as our four game teams put forth their best effort to pitch the games they had been working on for the past 6 weeks. The FIEA Bridge was nearly at full capacity as the cohort, faculty, previous FIEAns and other special guests got to experience nearly 2 months’ worth of development on 4 unique projects.

Each team was allowed 25 minutes of presentation and question/answer time, during which they would have to convince Dan that their game was not only viable to create within the next 6 months, but that it was also worth the effort to keep it as a finished portfolio piece for FIEA and the cohort students as well. The teams showed amazing progress for the short amount of time they had been in pre-production, each one being able to show an in-game technical demo. Many unique prototyping styles were showcased, as well as different development and organizational methodologies. With no two games alike, Dan was faced with a difficult set of pros and cons to each one and had many options to weigh when considering his final decisions.

The presentations began at 1PM and concluded around 2:40, with most of the teams going out to unwind after a long weekend of preparation for this event. By 3:40, the call went out to all teams to return to The Bridge by 4:30 for the announcement. In that hour-long period, Dan met with the FIEA faculty and discussed each game individually, consulting the professors as to their knowledge of the teams’ capabilities and resources. Based upon what he saw in the presentations, as well as the input on the viability of each project as it related to the teams’ talents, the decisions were made.

One of the major surprises made at the announcement was the decision to cut two games, rather than the predicted single cut. The faculty decided that rather than allow one game to survive 3 more weeks and then get cut at Spring Break, they would rather see the energy spent on 2 games that would be seen through to the end of production. The next announcement was the official word as to which two games would see life through the end of the Summer 2009 semester…

Drifters & Sultans of Scratch

It is with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to the recently titled “Hell Bound” (formerly “The Chain Game Project”) and Delirium. But as they say, when one door shuts, another opens, and the teams of Drifters and SoS are now doubled in size with fresh talent, more resources, and the comfort of knowing they no longer have to fear being cut. The producers and programmers from Hell Bound and Delirium have been reorganized into Drifters and SoS, with the artists to be assigned soon. Teams were encouraged to take the rest of the day off and take advantage of a little team socialization time before starting a new chapter in their game development with a bigger team.

There are no status reports this week, as Monday’s presentations were sort of an early progress report, and the teams are encouraged to take this week to analyze their new structure and put their newly acquired talent to good use. Tuesday will now be Drifter’s status report, while Sultans of Scratch will be reporting on Thursday, each team getting more time to present if need be. Look forward to more exciting, in-depth news about these two games as the weeks go by. Don’t be surprised if next week the teams announce some major changes and additions to their original plans!

Pre-production week 5

The PhysX conundrum has been solved and the teams are over their first major hurdle with the Earth Engine! With less than a week left until Dan Day, the focus has been mainly on getting to their presentation milestone and having everything ready to show. Many of the teams have also begun showing off assets and ideas to other teams or groups, trying to get outside opinions on various parts of their game. Some focus groups, mock play tests, and experiments were run to get feedback and analysis on important issues such as gameplay mechanics and player behavior.

Also coming soon will be video! We will be releasing small segments of the status reports and footage from various team meetings, or just general work days around FIEA. Expect behind the scenes interviews, candid looks into the inner workings of a team, and general antics around the cohort space. We’ll try not to tie up too much of your time!

Drifters
Starting off the focus game trend, they held a Q&A session and got general opinions on how the environment looked and would be for gameplay, how the blending in of drifters and NPCs was working, the Drifter abilities, and how the feeling of paranoia was in the game so far and how it could be improved. They also did some prototype testing using current games such as Halo3, Counter-strike, and Age of Empires2. Within Halo3, they created a custom map designed to look like the museum of the Drifters game, complete with powerups that acted like some of the artifact abilities. They had 2-3 players as the Drifters and the other 5 players acting as NPCs with set walk paths. With Age of Empires, they had the ability to set actual AI and had 5 NPCs with 3 Drifter players trying to attack without giving away they were an actual player and get attacked themselves.

This week they’re working on expanding on level design based on the focus group input, with the potential to add hallways, basement areas, and corridors. To help with this, more paper prototypes are being developed and used for testing the new additions and layouts proposed. The Drifter designs are being reiterated upon based on the focus group findings, solidifying their fiction and justification a bit more as well.

In the art department, a second body type was modeled and textured to create another NPC variation in the game. This model is already rigged and working with the current animation set, plus a few new cycles to distinguish it from the original model. In game, the lighting has been fixed up and better shadowing is now visible. The drifter mesh is set on the main player and the drift function is working on the static NPCs. Texturing on the environment has started and collision now works on the major geometry as well as the characters.

To show off next Monday, the team is working on a staffing plan for potential team growth and how they’ll put their new talent to its best, most efficient use. They’re also getting in more collision, a working upstairs level, texturing the rest of the environment and more character textures for variation. Combat mechanics are also in the works, but more importantly is networking so multiple Drifter players can be shown in the environment and create the challenge of the game.

Delirium
The design team reanalyzed their plan and worked on best balancing the 3 personalities with their strengths and weaknesses in regards to the three main obstacles of the game: environment factors, enemies, and navigation of the level. Each personality now has a strength, a weakness, and a neutral reaction for each of those obstacles, making it sometimes necessary for the player to force switching personalities or wait for it to happen for them to pass a certain part of the level.

One of the more unique attempts at prototyping their game, the team developed a live action role play version of the game and tested it out on their unsuspecting team lead, John. He was put forth in the building with the lead designer playing the role of Mr. Buttons and telling him things such as personality switches, puzzle information, and AI alerts. To represent the different personalities, things like sunglasses and headphones were used to change the environment perception. Other students acted as nurses and doctors and various areas were set with puzzles that could only be overcome by a certain personality. Through playing, John said he definitely felt the frantic pace they were going for, as well as the help and hindrance each personality brought to the game.

The art progression has a fully modeled Mr. Buttons complete and normal mapped:




Edward now has 2 run and 2 idle animations, each set unique to a certain personality to show further distinction between the various stages. In engine they have a fully laid out level with the elevator in place. Collision is functional on the geometry and lighting works throughout the area. Two of the environment effects that were functional before porting into Earth are now back, the desaturation of the screen and the camera distortion zoom effect are now able to be toggled while playing in game. The elevator is in the process of being UV'd so texturing can begin.



Sultans of Scratch
The name conundrum has been solved and yes, “Sultans” is now plural. Other finalized decisions include the environment which has been set as a new-age club sort of venue with a stage and flashy lighting effects similar to the videos of last week. This choice was made to keep the urban, modern feel without distracting the player too much from the actual gameplay.

A sample of the new test venue and dancer cues

The new UI design keeps the bottom table with 2 turntables and the fader and introduces the familiar “dance arrows” behind the dancer avatar. The scratch mechanic for the DJ was previewed and works similar to how most rhythm games have a scrolling pattern they have to match as it hits a certain point. Sound waves scroll across the record and the DJ has to scratch up and down to follow them as they hit the edge. During play, they have the power to increase and decrease difficulty for the dancer. As the team works better together, the dancer can improve and move up in difficulty, earning more points and boosting their combo meter.

A flash prototype was shown with the dancer arrows functional with the DDR pad controller and the DJ scratching functional on the keyboard. The difficulty controls and combo multipliers were also shown and the score increase could be seen. An important change to the gameplay is that only one team will be playing on the screen at a time. Competing teams will switch off controls, so only one set of turntable and dancer has to be shown on screen at once, reducing the cramping of the previous layouts.

The visual style has been polished further with a new iteration of their main character concept fully colored. A toon shader is being used in game to add the non-realistic feel to the art and also help with the surreal club atmosphere. A mocap shoot is scheduled next week with Nelson, their previous breakdancer, coming back for another session with new moves choreographed.

On the musical front, custom tracks are being mastered specifically for the game. This negates the need for copyright research and licensing, as well as allows the team to be able to adjust the master tracks to correlate with improper scratch moves and such.

The team has also been polling various sources outside of FIEA such as dance clubs and DDR fans to find out their opinions on rhythm games, dance competitions and their character style. This information will be included in the Dan Day presentation to reflect their progress toward the popular trends and style of dance-offs.

The Chain Game
One of the major programming hurdles The Chain Game faced from day one was the actual chain itself. Getting an independently reactive chain in-game without having to control it link-by-link or breaking the engine was a serious task that the team has gotten one step closer to solving. This week was the debut of an in-engine chain stretched between the two players, not to mention the fact that they now have both players in-game and independently controlled with jumping. As of right now the chain is infinitely stretching and not really hindering the players, but it reacts to movement and doesn’t kill the framerate, so it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

More progress on the art front is Sophie’s finished texture with a better designed face and more dramatic contrast on her clothing. The environment textures are being updated to allow for it all to blend better and look more uniform. New jumping animations were created for both characters: Melvin jumps and runs a little bit at landing while Sophie jumps and stops. The difference was created to see which transition would work better. Sophie’s jump animation will be blended with the next animation (idle, run, walk, etc.) while Melvin’s will transfer into run and then blend into the next animation. Whichever looks best will be the standard for both characters.

To further explore some of the design facets of the game, a “rip-o-matic” video collage was created using clips from the movies Clueless and Legally Blonde to give the designers and artists a better idea of the Sophie character. One of the more unique design exploration exercises the team has been working on is the analysis of cooperative gameplay on a platformer-style game. To study this, two players were asked to play the first level of Mario 64 using only one controller. One player acted on the analog stick and Z button, moving Mario, while the other handled the right side buttons including attacking, jumping and camera control. At various times, the players switched places and resumed control of the other side. Most of the time each side did their own thing and very little communication was done between the two players, almost as if it were supposed to be intuitive. These observations and continued tests will help shape how the two characters react and certain moves work.