Drifters Team: BEARD-OFF! Final Week

No photo yet, because tomorrow (Thursday) ends the Beard-off!

Here's the latest update to the contest:

Hey All,

Just wanted to pass along the official Beard Off Update. The Beard Off will end on Thursday July 2nd so that everyone can be clean shaven by Monday when industry interviews start. Beard Off ceremonies will take place in the bridge directly following the Sultan’s presentation. I also encourage participants to bring in clippers, shaving cream, and razors, to shave some fun into this mess following the festivities. Rick, Shawnna, and Donald have agreed to be the three judges for the competition and will be deciding the winners of the following categories:

The Billy Mays Memorial Award (formerly the Grizzly Adams) – Grizzliest beard in honor of the greatest pitch man ever
The Patch Adams Award – Given to the participant with the saddest and patchiest beard
The Colonel Sanders Award – Given to the participant who looks most like this guy

The Ron Jeremy Award – Given to the participant who most resembles a 70’s adult film star
The Chameleon Award – Given to the participant who you cant tell is a participant
The Man Scaping Award – For whoever shaves the most creative design into their beard after the initial judging

Each Beard Off participant will briefly tell the story of their beard and their five week journey.

If anyone can think of additional awards, please reply to this thread and we will add them to the list.

We’ll buy some pizza and soda and prizes will be awarded to the winner.

Thanks,
AD

2 week countdown!

It's content insertion and polish time for both games! With 2 weeks left, there's no room left to add new features, it's time to really hammer down what's there, add the last minute shinys, and smooth out the wrinkles to make it into Alpha/Beta/Gold Master stages. Blogger's video system didn't like the several clips we had to share this week, so YouTube it is!


The first glaring change in the game was the addition of Lenore, the fourth and final Drifter. Once in game, the next large change was the huge increase in the variety of the NPC models. Through two gameplay sessions it was difficult to see a duplicated combination of parts, thanks to the magic of the Voltron rig and the design team's creations. Another addition to the gameplay was the drift radius highlight: when a player is near a driftable NPC, that NPC will have a faint blue glow on them...especially useful when you near a body that doesn't glow, giving it away that they inhabit a Drifter without having to switch to Drifter Vision.

Lenore, the 4th Drifter

After looking through the questionnaires from the focus group, listening to the Q&A tape, and starting to watch the player footage, a number of suggestions for improvement were brought to light. One of the major things the test players found was that attacking was a bit slow with the extended animation times, and when killed, the time to respawn in a body was also a bit too long. Also, when a player is killed while not in Drifter Vision, there's very little in the way of feedback to tell that has happened. The team has brought these issues up to the designers, who have formed a task force to adjust these parts of the game and eliminate the confusion and lag.

Some polish details in progress include baking in the lighting within Maya rather than the 80-some lights placed in scene designer. The artifacts are almost finished being re-rendered and placed in the museum, along with a few ambiance pieces such as benches and banners to add some color to the interior. The exhibit audio which used to project in a sphere from the podium, will now project in a conical 3D shape instead, originating from the new speaker boxes on the new podiums. The audio team is also working on adding a distortion filter to make the voice sound more speaker-like rather than the clear sound it has now.

All the models are being weight painted so the animations for their walks, tells, and environmental cues all flow more naturally. The attack/fail animations are also being retouched to help with the feedback timing and transitions between animation. While the Drifter models are complete, some slight detail work is being done to further push their individualism and iconic look, as well as the addition of particle effects unique to each Drifter. The finalization of the environment with the lighting and exhibit/prop placements will allow the cinematic team to get that in and render out the entire cinematic movie for inclusion in the game.

The website has also gotten a bunch of new content, including a new introduction video with the 4 updated Drifters and gameplay footage, art pieces, and of course, a mirror of these blog entries.

And now, your moment of Drifters play footage zen:

This week was a lot of gameplay tweaking and feature additions for the Sultans game. New art releases aren't scheduled until next week, but we managed to snag plenty of in-game footage to illustrate the new additions to gameplay and the user interfaces!

The team leads sat down and analyzed the polish backlog tasks, categorizing them by type and then by priority. This allowed the team to tackle the issues that were most critical and shift focus on the more elaborate and involved issues. Some of the small things that were adjusted were the look of the DJ notes, which now have colored flames spinning around them as they drop. The motion blur for pass the spotlight is now applied to the dancer:

And the end-game score sheet is now in place to show each crew how well they did:

Last week the transition from crew-to-crew was a sweeping camera pan, but that's no longer the case. The transition will now allow the current DJ to be shown at their table and then cuts to the current dancer performing a few of their moves before cutting over to the other side of the stage where the new DJ is shown at their table, then their dancer warms up and gameplay for the second crew begins.

Both environments has the textured and animated instances of 5 unique crowd models running during the game and the female dancer is now playable with her complete dance move, fail states, and idle animations all functional.

The menu now allows players to select a difficulty on their song by spinning the record that pops out of the sleeve at the top.

And, some full gameplay footage:

Drifters Team: BEARD-OFF! Week 4

There's been rumors of unnecessary trimming amongst the competitors...does anyone look specifically well-groomed to you?

3 Week Countdown!

Both teams are now nearing alpha stage for their timelines and that means extensive testing can begin. Currently, daily sessions are taking place with each game as the teams get to experience the fruits of their labor and look for their next improvement task. We were able to sneak a camera in to the status reports to show you some in-game footage - exclusive here!


Play testing is now a daily event in the Drifters half of the cohort space. Crowds can be seen gathered in whichever hex is hosting a game at the time and cheers of victory and defeat can be heard throughout the halls. However, the team knows that testing your own game is easy, so they've brought in some fresh testers, unrelated to FIEA and unfamilliar with the game. This way they can get an unbiased look at the gameplay and have a fresh set of eyes look things over. Last Friday they had a group in to cold test the game: they were given a brief presentation on what the game is and how to play and then let loose on two 5-minute and two 10-minute matches. After, they participated in a written and verbal Q&A session, and were provided with free pizza as a thanks for their participation. The team is currently analyzing the video and questionnaire data to make more improvements to the gameplay and balance.

The Drifters team testing their game along with some of the Sultans team

As with last week's promise, the team delivered on optimization of the game in many ways. Their two major changes were the conversion of all .tga textures to .dds files and also the size reduction and sharing of the environmental texture maps. Both of these changes produced a cutdown of 50% of the video memory used, a huge improvement! Many of the exhibit models are also being redone to drop their poly count and add to the reduction.

New exhibit pieces, now with lower poly counts

Graphically, small improvements are being made as most of the assets are complete and are undergoing a bit of polish. The bathroom area is now completely textured and the team is working on a new display case so they're uniform in appearance. Small details like the audio tour guide speakers on each exhibit are being added in as well as just small cosmetic touches to add to the realism of the environment.

The textured bathroom

Two new models were also released this week: the Sovereign and Gideon, the third Drifter. The Sovereign is completely modeled and textured and awaiting placement on her throne. Her audio files are getting their final adjustments and her haunting voice will be heard during the match, updating the Drifters on their progress and egging on their competition.

The Sovereign's profile and throne

Gideon has been added into the in-game play with his own image on the character select, complete with his unique stats.

The final renders of Sid, Luther and Gideon

A lot of bug fixes took place this week as well, with all the NPCs now correctly pathed and spawning, resulting in no more walking into walls. There are currently 50 unique paths each with behavior nodes where a NPC will stop and interact with an exhibit before continuing on. The team hopes to get another 30 paths in so they can potentially increase the number of NPCs in the environment as well once all the final assets are in and play testing can focus on value adjustment.

Since the NPCs will randomly stop to examine the various parts of the museum, the team implemented a keyboard command to let players do the same. By pressing the Q button the player's current body will stop and lean in and examine whatever they are near, or if they are in the open, they will play another context-sensitive animation such as checking their watch. Another control option added this week is the free-view camera which can be a useful strategy if your player is stopped at an exhibit. You can perform your environmental animation and while that is taking place, quickly hold down the F key and use your mouse to take a 360 degree look around you, identifying any suspicious behavior that may be taking place behind your head.

A player approaches an exhibit and uses their environmental action command to interact with it, making them appear to act like a NPC

On screen you can now see statistics as to who is in the lead, how you stand compared to their number of kills, and a report in the bottom left updates constantly with the latest "Player 1 killed Player 2" announcement. These can be brought up at any time during game play with a tap of the shift key. Another addition to the user interface is the inclusion of loading screens which show the keyboard controls while the match loads. A player tutorial video is also in progress to explain the finer points of gameplay, including blending in with the crowd and drifting strategies.

Loading and tutorial screens, as well as the on-screen current score update, which can be toggled on and off

Drifter Vision has also gotten a huge update, mainly in how the transition to and from corporeal vision works. Now instead of a jerky switch to glowing NPCs, the glows on other bodies slowly fades up, as does your own. Your Drifter form fades in after the waiting period and soon other Drifters are also visible. When drifting in Drifter Vision, a bright flash of light disorients you for a moment as you switch, leaving you slightly vulnerable for a second as you adjust to your new location. When switching back to corporeal vision, the glow on the other bodies slowly fades to a shell and disappears completely.

Updated Drifter Vision

Next up on the plate is further testing, additions of the final art assets, and biggest of all is the final Drifter reveal, Lenore. For now, we leave you with a little in-game footage!

The presentation this week started off with more of a show-and-tell approach, because Sultans is down to adding assets in-game and tweaking the mechanics to find that playability sweet spot. The 3D menu we've been seeing concepts and renders of is now a reality with fluid camera movements between each area. The player begins by selecting their crew, then flying over to the turntable rack, and finally to the record bin to select a song and difficulty. The second crew sets up their characters and turntable and the match begins! Right now, the Sexy Clown/Dino Guy models are in place and animated with textures to follow and the other 2 crews coming soon. The three turntables are in place with the rotating rack, and several song album covers are in place and will be selectable.

The gameplay has gotten another update with the 2-player crew vs. crew mechanics working, complete with the crew switch during the song. Each crew has its own area of the level where their individual multiplier status, score, and note streams appear. The DJ notes now stream top to bottom directly on to the turntable records, rather than in the center console. This allowed the notes to be larger and more directed toward where the DJ has to look for scratching rather than all jumbled in the center. As for adjustments to the peripheral interaction, the fader is now a required part of the controller, as the DJ must switch the bar to the side they're scratching on to activate it, making the experience more realistic.

When the crew members reach a high synergy level (constantly hitting the white notes) new environmental effects are visible with the turntable records getting flame effects, spotlight activation, and floating money particle effects. The crowd members, including the currently textured and in place mohawk guy, also react to the performance by jumping around more or less. The crowd is also in place in the fully functional Warehouse environment, which is also selectable alongside the Club environment. New songs are now marked with notes and ready to play, and loading screens have been added between the menu and the start of the round.

Early render of the Warehouse with crowd

The dancers and DJs are all textured and ready to go, with new fail animations for constantly missed notes. The mocap data from the female dancer is being cleaned up, meaning soon Tiger Girl will have her own set of unique moves.

Fully textured models of "Felicia", "Damian", and "Dino Guy" - the DJs

But all of this is just words...you need to see it to experience the true Sultans of Scratch!