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

Drifters Team: BEARD-OFF!

Further proof that FIEA is never all work and no play, even in the home stretch our teams find ways to keep themselves motivated. Team Drifters has made an official Beard-Off competition:

For those men and women interested. On Tuesday, June 2nd, we will be starting the first annual Team Drifter’s Beard Off. For the last 4 weeks of production, those who choose to participate will be growing our playoff beards to keep us warm on those late nights as the game nears its completion. Don’t worry we will be shaving before industry interviews. So here are the rules:

1. You must have a clean shave on Tuesday the 2nd (if you have some facial hair you don’t want to lose, trim it down as short as possible)
2. During the 4 weeks you may only shave your neck to keep things clean
3. Shaving or any trimming during the 4 weeks results in disqualification
4. There will be multiple awards and fantastic prizes for the winners of numerous different categories including The Grizzly Adams Award and The Patch Adams Memorial Trophy, so anyone can participate
5. If ladies want to play, creativity is welcome
6. At the end of the competition, shave the most creative facial hair for bonus prizes (ex. Fu man chu, handle bars, etc.)
7. If the faculty thinks they can hang, let’s see it

A special celebrity judge is rumored to have signed on to the event. We'll keep you updated on the weekly growth!

UPDATE: Tuesday, June 2nd - The Shaven!

Production Week 8

No, it's not a time warp. The teams enjoyed a partial break between summer classes during the week of April 27th up to May 18th. But just as the game development industry never rests, neither does Cohort 5, and those weeks were spent making major improvements, additions and changes to the games. This week marked the return of status reports and with that we continue our series of updates with some major content. The clock is ticking with only 5 weeks left before the games need to be 95% finished to be used during interviews for internship positions. July 6th will begin the interviews, so both teams are working toward that as a deadline for a playable, bugless release.


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.