Drifters
Drifters status report this week began with heavy emphasis on the design process. The design team has worked on hammering down several aspects of the game to end the ambiguity of some mechanics and allow for solid development to take place on them. The first major plan laid out was the makeup of the crowd wandering the museum floor. They’ve set a solid number of 48 NPCs to be present, 20 in pairs and 28 walking alone, with each category broken down into the various classes. The classes themselves have been broken down into their features as well as their strengths/weaknesses.
The Drifters have also undergone a change, with 4 new types added to the original 4, each with their own inherent ability, plus a slot to pick up a secondary ability during gameplay. The Driver Vision mechanic has gone through a new iteration, with this version allowing players using it to see auras and Drifter-related things that normal human vision cannot and also is the only way to pick up a secondary ability. The possession mechanic has been tested and adjusted, altering the radius of where a Drifter can jump to as well as the time it takes to drift and the frequency at which the drift ability can be used.
Last week, the team was challenged to provide proof of concept for the claim that players could effectively hide within a crowd of NPC and not be detected by other human players. With this being one of the major components of gameplay strategy, it was critical that this claim was proven to be true. To show the skeptics that it can be done both in previously created games, and in their own game, the team presented two demos to the audience.
First up was an 8-player Bomberman match, where the human player set all of the players to AI except one that he controlled himself. Two play rounds later, no one in the audience was able to tell which color the human played as.
The real proof came within the Drifters game itself, where our professor, Ron Weaver, was given an Xbox 360 controller mapped to control the main screen camera. The first test was run with Anthony DiMento, the team’s design liaison, playing one model walking around the museum floor with several other models on AI paths. Ron couldn’t tell which one Anthony was, but just to prove that anyone could manage to do it, Anthony handed his controls off to a member of the Sultans team to see how well they could mimic the AI. In a room full of 30-some gamers, not one could correctly identify which model on screen was controlled by the human and which were AI. These two demos were more than enough to satisfy the criticism of the concept.
Artistic formats have been further defined and improved upon, with the 3-piece model construction mechanic in place and defined. One of the big challenges was to keep high quality models with a low polygon count so the engine wouldn’t drop the frame rate with all those assets on screen. The current model had an average of over 7000 polys, and has been redesigned to trim down to 6000. The team has also taken into account the combinations of the 3-piece system, and created thresholds for each piece so the combined total would never peak above their current average. A new female model was shown off, as well as an elderly head design for her body, and is in the process of being textured.
The mocap team has been hard at work adjusting the previously recorded animations and has already scheduled another shoot to provide unique animation sets for each class of NPC.
The environmental design team has been tasked with a new project of designing the exterior of the museum for use in the opening cinematic. The partial model was shown, along with some texturing, and set in a demo setting to show scale and design. Inside the museum, the textures are nearly finished and set pieces such as guard ropes and stands are being completed for placement by the design team.
For the end of pre-production, the vertical slice the team hopes to showcase will include 2 playable Drifters, networking for each player to be able to play on a separate machine, the finished museum interior, at least 5 character models walking within the museum, and the basic Drifter Vision implemented. The programming team currently boasts a “Do Not Disturb” sign as they vigorously work on the networking framework. Currently, they already have basic message passing working in a test game, and hope to port it into the Drifters game by the end of Spring Break.
"Stop! Programmers are not to be disturbed from 1:30 - 6:00 Mon-Fri. You can leave messages with their secretary & he will make sure they get it. Effective until: Networking is implemented."
Sultans of Scratch
After analyzing their current game mechanic, and gathering input from faculty, Dan O'Leary, and the whole team, Sultans has a new twist on an old standard. To allow for freestyle dancing, the dancer's note streams are beat-driven rather than button driven, allowing them to successfully connect with a note no matter which arrow they push. This means any 3-note combo can be performed during a 3-beat stream, allowing dancers to do any sort of move they want as they play. The notes/beats are also inter-dependent between the DJ and dancer. If the DJ fails to scratch on a beat, the dancer will fail to receive that note to dance to.
To continue with major updates, the DJ interface has been improved with each turntable divided into 3 colored parts where the user must switch the fader to connect with the correct revolving colors. This system was prototyped with actual turntables to determine feasibility and the results were good enough to make it in game. The falling stream of notes that's become a standard in dancing games has also been changed to a scrolling combo line that gives the dancer more opportunity to work out their combos.
Scoring was also improved and better defined, with the dancer gaining points by delivering their moves on time with the notes, as well as doing unique combos instead of using the same moves over and over. The more variety of combos, the more points are scored; points are gained on repeated combos but on a much lower scale. Rewards for the winning pair are being discussed with some ideas being the winner chooses the loser's costume (anything from Godzilla suits to nerd outfits) or the crowd ignoring the performers and going back to their own dancing. Bonuses for awesome performances are also being discussed, with the suggestion of an extra boss level in the works. The crowd is also a new addition to discussions, with them present on the very lower part of the screen, enjoying a good performance. But if the performers start doing poorly, the crowd will slowly advance up on the screen, blocking it from view as they resume their own dancing and ignore the performers, ultimately generating a game over due to the obscuring of the screen. A single-player is also in development with the player controlling either the DJ or dancer on one side, and the computer controlling the other side of their crew, plus the crew on the other side of the screen.
In the programming side, a user-interface flowchart was created to show the layout and connectivity of all the menus the player will have to interact with. The toon shader has been completed and implemented in game, and the flash prototype now reflects the new mechanics as well as allows for scoring incremintation.
Artistically there's been a lot of progress. Another mocap shoot is scheduled for March 20th for crowd animations, dance transitions, and errors. The formerly captured animations have gone through cleanups, separated into groups of moves, and have been set to a seamless transitional state for smooth chaining between moves and idle states. A vinyl shader is in the works for the turntables, as well as a reflective shader for the environment, which has basic textures and has lighting all in engine.
New characters are in the process of being concept sketched, thanks to the addition of their new concept artist, Donald.
The first character, named "Mr. Hat" has been modeled and is in the process of being textured and UV'd, while a turntable has also been modeled, animated, lit and textured.
The "gun case" turntable
The table with textures and lighting
Particle effects have come in the form of a graffiti-style spray generated from the dancers' feet as they perform combos - a visual representation of a successful move.
This week's report has seen perhaps the 2nd biggest amount of changes to the Sultans game since they moved from their original Resonance idea. However, each change has been researched and discussed, and already shows progress down their new path. Spring break is approaching, giving both teams a well deserved rest before they make their final push to end pre-production with a healthy looking vertical slice that will give the FIEA faculty and friends a chance to see what's in store for the end of summer when these two games make their Gold Master debut!
