Realistic Character Experiment - Initial Ideas

I want to take a little break from working on Dead Metal Punks, so I have decided to investigate how long it takes to make some sort of realistic character. This is to see if it would have been possible to make a game within my time frame in that style.

I have chosen to use an Aardwolf as a main inspiration for making this character.  I chose that animal because it's uncommon and lots of artist that use well known animals like rabbits/cats. Hopefully it will help the piece stand out more. 

Other than that, I want to go down the fantasy route (since my game is sci fi it will be a nice contrast) this is still a bit open whilst I experiment with different looks.

An initial idea for the overall character. The armour uses a lot of furs and the trims are made to mimic the stripes on an Aardwolf's body.

Some further ideas for hair, make up and ear placement. The one on the right stands out most to me at the moment, the very thick eyelashes give her eyes more definition and the hair using the lighter colours highlights it well.

Dead Metal Punks Demo Finished!

In the last few days before the 18th I managed to get all of the player home and map models finished. Then I finished the UI, added some text boxes to give the levels a bit of context and polished up the final few bugs and problems.

If anyone feels up to giving it a test and some feedback here's the link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_G669l78r4YMHlTUURpZm9sUlU

Video Link:

Also I decided I wasn't happy with Lily's face textures so I recreated those with more detail to help with her comic look (These textures are used in the thumbnail image for the video). These new textures also will make any story cutscene images require less Photoshop work and just make looking at her closely not look a bit off.

Lab Model Building Part 5 - Animated parts and finishing off.

The lab assets are now done! This includes all the static models, the giant robot hands throwing planes, the turret models, checkpoint models and finally the Boss model. Also today some animations a friend offered to do for my were finished, so Lily now has some animations for being in the menus. 

The main things left to do now are; get the player home modelled and textured, create some UI backdrops (instead of brown buttons), change difficulty for easy and hard mode and attempt some text dialogue in both levels.

Starting area

 Hanger left

Hanger right

End of gauntlet 1

 Control Room

 Start of gauntlet 2

Checkpoint robots. They are animated to float around and when the player gets close they do the salute Rimmer from red dwarf created.

Lab Model Building Part 4 - Platforms and Details

Last two sets of static environment stuff are done!

 The emissive model in the top right is the base model for signs (I will add text in engine to save on making multiple textures)

 Square monitors in casings are really 80's sci fi so I decided on them for my equipment too. 

Lab Model Building Part 3 - Doors,Traps and Trims

This is the final set of major parts for the static interiors done. All thats left is detail stuff like monitors and animated things such as the boss.

Lab Model Building Part 2 - Walls

A set of walls are finished now. They were a lot more texture work than I initially thought they would be, because of the amount of edges and shading I had to do it ended up taking around 7 hours to get everything up to par. Originally I was going to keep them fully silver/blue but it looked boring, so I've used the colour for enemy trims to give them small amounts of colour to break up the desaturated areas. The curved wall was also an excuse to improve the feel of 80's sci fi by adding cloth panels along the wall and they also make going down a corridor not look dull!

Also to save the annoyance later on in development. I've built a library of over 100 new sounds (from various copyright free sources, my own effect mixes and effects I've bought) so I don't have to go hunt for a new sound every time I need one.

Finished Assets.

Wireframe. All the basic panels are only a single poly since I knew that I could achieve the look I wanted with just textures.

Lab Model Building Part 1 - Flooring

Onto asset building for the lab! Since this stuff is going to be a lot bigger on screen it all need to be a bit more detailed than the tank level environment. In the tank level I used a Edge highlighting on very few assets (Only the really big ones such as the rocks and garage) as it wasn't worth wasting time on detail that will not be visible at the cameras distance.

The first kit for the lab is done. It is a set of 3 types of floors with a bunch of panels and cables that I can fit into the platforms to create a bit of easy variation and to hide any clipping that can occur. Since I needed a lot of detail in these textures to make them pop nicely I created all the base textures and masks in substance painter, then went into photoshop to manually paint in the highlighting and painted lighting detail. I could have done this in painter but it is a bit slower than photoshop because its having to keep a lot more information active whilst I paint manually, where as photoshop is just a single image. 

Finished Assets

Wireframe view. Pretty much everything in these assets is done with maps so their poly counts are extremely low.

Example of the difference between the base version baked out of substance and the additional work on the edge highlights and manually painted detailing.  

Submission Update Fix

Turns out I couldn't have a 20 minute video until I verified. Fixed it now. Hopefully it's the same link as before but just in case I've resubmitted to the blog.

Timings for events:

0 - 1:40 - Shows new unlock and purchase system for weapons, difficulty modifiers and the new stage locked out until the previous is done.

1:41 - 5:30 - Tweaked version of desert level, feels much faster/fun to play and has less hang times.

5:31 - 8:24 - Adjudicator boss battle, shows some new effects and sound speed ups when game speed is higher than standard. Also shows boss scrap rewards.

8:25 - 9:07 - Proving that the scrap and purchased weapons are consistent after loading between levels. Also the Labs are unlocked after beating the previous level.

9:08 - 16:22 - Lab level play through at standard game speed/difficulty.

16:23 onwards - New boss and check pointing system

Submission Update!

For the submission I have been improving many small problems I had in terms of gameplay, programming and feel. My brief is all about the design and programming side of it so that is why it is my focus. As previously stated I'm going to create pretty assets over the next week or 2 to give the Lily level a nice polishing.

A list of general changes and improvements done to old areas:

• Changed the tanks projectiles to the new square tipped type, personally I think it looks a lot better than the old one. 
• Changed the tanks special projectile from the missiles to big bullets again for same reason. Also improved their speed for better feeling. 
• Added collectible scrap to the tank level in areas that are used to give the player a rest. They are also in platforming sections and hard to reach areas.
• Enemies on the tank level now drop a lot more scrap, this was part bug fix and balance issue. Initially they could only drop a max of 7 scrap due to the actor being destroyed too quickly, this has been fixed. They also got a small bump in minimum amount to drop so that the numbers at the end of the level are roughly in line with Lily's scrap amount.
• Bosses now actually reward scrap.
• Scrap now gets banked at the end of each level for purchasing equipment in the base.
• Made the tank camera a lot more user friendly after the experience gained on Lily's mode. This easier to use camera makes things like check pointing a lot cleaner in terms of programming.
• Improved the clarity of the numbers on the tank UI that display the current number of special projectiles.
• Created a unified level selector that knows is a level has been unlocked.
• Added in difficulty modifiers for the player to increase game speed and change starting lives for increased or reduced rewards.
• Fixed the Camera Bug in player base that disabled camera movement if input keys were pressed.
• Unified the fonts on all UI for a more consistent look
• Made it so the fuzzy dice on the tank are physics based. In my opinion it adds a surprising amount of character and fun as they bounce around when spinning the tank in the base. It was annoying me that they were static as it stood out as weird considering the underwear and flags were waving around.
• Created an unlock and purchase system for buying tank upgrades (at the moment just weapons) it is pretty concrete at this point, works well and is easy to expand.
• Fixed Texture problems with the luck cat accessory and also animated it to make it more interesting.
• Fixed Normal map problems with all the turret types and cleaned them up to look more refined.
• Fixed Boss sounds so that they sync up with game speed up properly
• I felt like the machine gun and sub machine gun were great but were used up so quickly, this was very noticeable in the elevator section where the sub machine gun lasted less than a quarter of the way. I didn't want to up their damage because it's fun filling an enemy with a mass of bullets, so I multiplied their ammo counts by 2.5 and they last as long as I think is right now (About the same as the shotgun)
• Checkpoints in both styles of level now work as intended consistently. Death isn't a major setback now, nobody wants to go through a load of level work again and again to fight a boss they are struggling on.

The fully up to date hacknplan. As you can see its basically just pretty stuff and extra mode stuff left to do.

Finally, this level has taken a lot longer to do than the original one, but I think this is down to a lot of things being groundwork. In the tank level it's enemies don't require much (aside from the boss) but in Lily's level many things such as AI, properly skinned rigs, tonnes of animations and sound work had to be done.  

Now that all this ground work is in her levels should be a bit quicker to come together as most enemies will fall into the 3 categories that I already have, with a few extra things in their unique blueprints. 

This work wasn't just solely focused on a level either (unlike the tank one) a lot of the UI and save systems had to be created, so I'm glad that's out the way. After working with those 2 aspects a lot more they've started to make more sense in the way they work.

In the next brief I will continue to create this game, using each of its levels to experiment with different ideas to see what works well in either of these gameplay styles and to continue improving all of the skills I've used on this game.

Level Design Part 16 - Building Progress Part 3

Since yesterday the level has been completely finished off in terms of enemies and sections. The gated sections are working really well and thankfully don't slow down the pace of the game. I decided that the doors can be destroyed if the player can hit it enough  and I'm enjoying the choice to either defend until the door opens or destroy it for more scrap. 

There are 2 new enemy types, to start with a knife wielding soldier that runs at the player and needs to get very close to attack. This enemy works well as fodder and spacing out the more difficult gun wielding enemies. I added them after looking at the games that inspired me and noticed that a lot of enemies either do very little or act as fodder for actual enemies. The second new enemy is interactive turrets that activate when the player is in the right area, initially they were just for the elevator but seeing their pods in a small room is very intimidating so I've placed them around the rest of the level to break up the soldier onslaught.

Other than that, a few small niggles in the boss and enemies have been ironed out. The pistol soldiers now shoot one bullet at a time instead of two, this just makes life easier in crowds of them. The enemies now are always in the combat state and are spawned ahead or behind of the player instead of being persistent on the level. This method is working much better because the enemies are always in the right place instead of wandering around the level. In hindsight, they should have never had an idle state and it was a waste of time setting that part of their AI up. 

Next, I've added lots of minor scrap pick ups throughout the level, this is because some areas felt quite bare. This is the same reason crash bandicoot introduced wumpa fruit, it just makes the level feel more full and rewarding even if it is a minor thing.

Finally, arguably the most important part, I have created a checkpoint system (Currently Lily only) and each of these checkpoints offers the player lives for scrap, much like the garage for the tank. It's definitely useful, I've even been using it when testing the game and fighting the boss. Dying now feels a lot less punishing which is great! The 5 lives are stretched really thin so having points where the player can reset from or spend their scrap for lives makes it so I can keep the difficulty high, but not force the player go through everything again to attempt the section again.

Level Design Part 15 - Building Progress Part 2

All the level is finished in terms of structure now, only doorways and population left. I decided to have a gap between the entrance of the boss room and the room itself. This is so that I could have aspects like the introduction or dialogue happen with the player in the right place to start the fight.

The boss fight has turned out well in my opinion, it feels very over the top and has a nice balance of focus between fighting the arena and the boss. At the moment it is difficult to judge a few things, such as if the platforms are going to rotate but that will feel better once I have sounds to warn of it happening.

After thinking of the possibility of checkpoints I've came round to the idea as without it the game could become punishing instead of difficult.

I don't think I will get everything I want done by the 9th for the deadline but since we are not back in until the 18th I'm going to use that 9 days to polish as much as possible to get the demo build.

 Full view of the second half of the level.

The secret section underneath the second gauntlet. The hatch that opens it is very weak so 2-3 bullets in the right place will reward the player.

A small and simple platforming section is the part before the boss. It works as a breaker between combat sections without slowing down the players pace.

Boss room. 

Hack'nPlan