From Analog to Digital, Part 1

Posted: December 5, 2012 in MGS
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For the next few posts, I’ll be focusing on the portions of the level as they were translated from paper to digital form. This is the final playable level that you could play at EAE Open House and it is on the Unity server.

In the beginning of the level, I wanted to create the feeling that you were beginning your adventure. After a few turns you rise up out of the canyons into a valley that is very spacious and populated with trees and flowers. There’s an ideal path to the right at the first fork, which will take your character through the level much faster by about 15 seconds. The other path, with its twists and turns and its cave, proves a much longer journey for the player. The valley gives the player a sense of openness and I like the dynamic it gives them during the first minute or two of the experience.

Beginning Area of the level

Beginning Area of the level

EAE Open House Feedback & Unity Observations

Posted: December 4, 2012 in MGS
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The EAE Open House was definitely a success. People really enjoyed our game and we got great feedback. Even though our game is targeted towards kids, their parents enjoyed playing it as well. It was fun to see kids play the game, especially the hyperactive ones, and I saw that their parents enjoyed watching them play it as well too. Overall, our goal was for people to have fun, and they definitely did.

Some feedback that we got was that we should make a GUI that informs the player how to do the poses – we’ve been talking awhile about implementing some sort of messaging system, but it’s definitely been put on the backburner. Now that the public is suggesting it and that we have more time, we can hopefully get this into the game next semester. Currently, we have the Kinect’s default GUI that shows a body made of floating balls that indicate the hands, joints, head, etc. It makes sense to us as adults, but it could possibly be beyond the grasp of younger kids. This is definitely something important for us to get in before we publish the game.

We were working on this level up until the midnight hour. The engineers were finally able to place the tracks down and get the game running without any disasters. After that it was up to me  to place all the obstacles and collectibles, which took quite awhile. Finally, Ashley and Brandon placed all the art assets of trees and such within the level, along with the caves and grass to create the rabbit and tiger areas. One of the reasons that it took awhile is that Unity only allows one person to work within a scene. That means that Anurag can program the track tool in another scene, Pace can work on occlusion in one scene, and I can edit the game level in another scene, but we can’t work on the same scene at the same time. Thus, this creates a lot of dependency for when the artist wants to tweak and modify the environmental art. This unfortunate situation makes for a lot of sitting around for the team sometimes.

We overcame all of that though and made a level that was ready for the public and I’m happy to say that the response was positive. There is a lot of work to do for the next semester, especially considering that most of our team will be gone on internships, but I know that we’ll be able to further add to this product and make it a solid gameplay experience and thesis project.

In the gallery below, you’ll see a variety of people in age and gender playing the game. The child in the picture particularly enjoyed the game and played it for quite awhile. Once he figured out the poses, he had a lot of fun, and even when the Kinect didn’t recognize his poses, he still seemed to enjoy transforming into the animals and jumping around. We had an older guest play the game, and with guidance from Ashley, she went through a complete run on the game. However, she couldn’t jump very high, so her characters weren’t able to jump. This could be something that we change in the Kinect – currently it looks for the hip bones to elevate above a certain level and people who aren’t able to jump to that point will find their characters can’t jump. The goat will ram through anything with no speed slowdown, so hypothetically they could play as the goat during obstacle heavy areas, but who doesn’t like to jump? This would be something we could assess in next semester’s build. You’ll also see that we have a young man playing the game. I think we intrigued people and had a wide demographic (for the event) play the games.

Summary of what I learned from the Open House:

Kids are unpredictable: They’ll play the game any which way they choose. Even if the poses aren’t recognized by the Kinect, the kid will keep pushing on until that pose is recognized. We should allow for a wider range of the Kinect’s motion detection next semester. We also need a clear messaging system in place that tells players “Almost there” or “You got it!” when they’re attempting the poses. This could be resolved by a simple voice over and on screen graphic.

Certain moves are harder for older players: As I mentioned above, the older woman had a harder time jumping, so her characters onscreen couldn’t jump. Going further, I wonder if it’s harder for older people with bad hips to squat and strike the goat pose. On the other side of the coin, partnering with a physical therapist, one could think of how a Kinect game can be therapeutic for older players. There were many reports of senior citizens playing the wii so why couldn’t we think of ways that the Kinect can help increase their movement activity in a safe way? Our game is too far along I think to really tailor it for older people, but in the future, a Kinect game at retirement homes could be a worthy project.

Unity is weird: This is kind of a side note, but one thing that I’ve been having a lot of issues is that when I place obstacles or collectibles in the level, they show up completely differently when the game is running. I don’t know if this is an issue due to visual perspective when populating the scene in Unity’s engine, but where one thing might look fine in the scene, it looks completely out of whack when the game is running. As a result, I have coins floating in weird spots. Not quite sure what is happening, but hopefully it’s something that we can nail down. I also hate that only one person can edit the scene at a time; it creates a lot of moments where people are stuck sitting around waiting to get in the engine while another finishes it. Something for EAE to consider when using Unity in the future for capstone/thesis programs.

Mom joins in on the fun
An epic mustache will give your character a stat boost.
Even old people can get into Zodiac!
One of our young fans bouncing around
The family comes together to play Zodiac
The Team Strikes a pose

Zodiac Documentary

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My friend Moses needed to produce a documentary for his film production class on something of student interest at the University of Utah. He asked to do a documentary on the program and our game so he came into the studio and interviewed me with his group. I hope you enjoy it!

What I think is great about this documentary is that it has potential for various uses. I see documentaries as a way to highlight and showcase our work and why we do it. We highlight the Zodiac game within it, we highlight the program within it, and it comes from the mouth of the students rather than published by the University so it gives potential candidates and students a candid view on how we as students see the program. I did this also because I can show employers a quick video on the project, program, and why I make games. I view it as a highly valuable and relevant tool within my process for this project.

Video  —  Posted: December 3, 2012 in MGS
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Modular Design!

Posted: December 3, 2012 in MGS
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These are some of the hand drawn maps I did for the game. One of them is from early in the semester and the other four are from the final level design that we are building in Unity. You’ll notice that I’ve marked areas where the level ramps up, see hash marks for log and coin obstacles and collectibles, areas where there are caves and notes that mention areas where a specific animal should be used. Also, if you put the four maps together, one could draw what they think is an ideal path to get the fastest score possible. What was great about this process is that I could draw out maps, show them to the engineers for feedback and change them as needed. Sometimes when inserting the maps into Unity, the engineers found that sometimes the map wasn’t possible so we adjusted them as needed. This has been an extremely useful process. Very low tech, but invaluable for the engineering team to get the level into the game. 🙂

These maps are relevant and important – I developed them because we found building the level from scratch in Unity was NOT efficient. Instead, it was easier for the engineers to have me draw out the maps and we could discuss them afterwards for feedback. At times, parts of the level I had drawn would not work within the game’s engine, so the engineers would then modify it in game to fit as close as possible to the original vision. This iterative process was helpful in playtesting and also much more efficient than our previous attempts at level design.

Another valuable lesson from these hand drawn maps were that we could discuss what types of environments we could implement on these maps. Would they be valleys, grasslands, lakes, mountains, etc? We were able to create visual dynamics for the player as they journey through the level by this approach. I went through a lot of graph paper in creating these maps, and honestly, this was the best way to build the levels. The programmers and I could look at the maps together and plan out our approach in Unity rather than going into it haphazard. Since Unity has decent environment building tools, we will build the track into Unity and build the environment around it. We can also color the environment through Unity as well, so we can create snowy mountain areas and such. All very helpful as we push through this crunch time into the EAE Open House on December 7th.

Zodiac IGF & The Future

Posted: November 6, 2012 in MGS
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We submitted the game to IGF (Independent Game Festival) on October 31st. Attached to this post is the launch trailer and a screenshot of the game. It’s been a long road getting to this milestone, and there is plenty left to polish, but it definitely felt good submitting it to the festival! zodiac

This moment is significant because it represents so far all the work that me and my team have accomplished. Though the game has changed in many forms since its conception, we’ve created a fun rails game that utilizes Kinect, is in line with our art theme, and is fun to play. Creating the game design has been invaluable experience for me, both in terms of gameplay and level considerations. I would say that we nailed down the Kinect movement mostly last semester and that this semester found me thinking about level design, obstacle and collectible placement. I had a lot of help from Anurag originally in regards to placement, but when we created the new area and track, I did the all the design of the level and obstacle/collectible placement.

We still have a lot of work to do towards EAE day – while this build represents a lot of the work that we have done, there is much more to be created:

Zodiac Trailer:

Areas of Focus Post-IGF

  • Remastered level: Our level will feature elevations for EAE Open House. Currently, the playing field in this level is very flat. By adding elevations to the game we will be able to create new areas (valleys and mountains), which gives the player more rewards for traversing throughout the level. It’s a cheap way to add dynamics to the level. However, the challenge is that the engineers must build a track and tweak Anurag’s track tweener so that the animals movement on those elevated planes are smooth and not break the game. It creates a dependency, but I think it will be worth it when we finally achieve the result.
  • We will be brightening up the color pallette- our game looks like it was constructed with dark construction paper, so we need to turn up the color value in a majority of our game’s assets right now. The characters need to be brighter, the landscape less dark, and it needs to be populated with more than just dark trees. The artists are aware of this and will be creating flowers and lighter textures for the animals and environments.
  • I will be designing new maps that feature new gameplay areas – there will be mountains, valleys, and cliff areas. As mentioned, this will look nicer for the player. Also, it gives me more intent and purpose in designing these areas. Won’t it be nice for the player to ascend out of a canyon area into a beautiful grassland and then ascend into a snowy mountainous region? It gives the game more scale and adds to the magic of the Zodiac Race. Also, these hand-drawn maps serve as a good tool for the engineers to quickly place the track and also offer feedback when certain turns may create an issue for the player.

Skill building in Unity

Posted: October 16, 2012 in MGS
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Unity is definitely giving me more control as a designer. Before I had to rely on engineers, but working in it myself now gives me control over the obstacle and collectible placement. Like I said earlier, the controls are similar to Maya. I wish we had been given Maya as a class a semester before, because I would have been able to do much more work in the game at an earlier level rather than just the map and movement design, but oh well. I can now say that I’m comfortable tweaking around in Maya with Level Designs and object manipulation. I have been even taking assets that the artists created and cleaning them up in Maya per Kevin’s request. This is an asset pipeline that allows us to find issues with the art that that might give the Unity engine any problems. For example, I make sure that all of the polygons have proper faces and that there are not any double faces. Stuff like that. Useful skills to have as both a designer and producer and a way for me to analyze problems in future projects that may arise.

Skills I’m actively building while working in Maya:

  • Communicating with engineers: While I will never be a programmer, working alongside the engineers in Unity has given me an understanding of how they approach problems. For example as I noted earlier, Anurag approached the development of the track system from a mathematical perspective. Pace looks at the scope of the game design and makes sure it’s something the engineering side can create within our time limits. I would say that Kevin is a technical art engineer and has helped me learn how to place the assets in the game, what to look for, and ways to optimize them for the game engine. Jorge has shown me how the Kinect works and what it looks for on the body.  This has helped give me a solid understanding of what is easy and not easy for the Kinect to detect when playing with the system. By understanding the engineers, I am laying down a framework for future jobs in which I learn how to communicate more effectively with them even though I may have no idea of what they’re talking about half the time when it comes to code, engines, and systems.
  • Working with the artists: Since I’ve been learning Maya this semester, I’ve been able to help place the art assets within the game and even take them into Maya to modify them as needed under the guidance of Ashley and Kevin when needed. This frees up time for the artists to create art and the engineers to code. Also, by being within the art of the level, I have a better feel for it and can see problem areas or anticipate how a certain part may be played. By walking the talk with artists, it gives me more credibility in my analysis and input on assets and will be invaluable for future projects within the industry.
  • Confidence: Finally, delving into Maya and Unity not only gives me a new set of tools with which to work and talk about in regards to game development, but they also boost my confidence. I feel like a more valuable member of the team beyond just designer. By utilizing these skills, I can help alleviate work for others and put more of my stamp into the game.

nity 3D

More fun with Unity and asset manipulations

Posted: October 15, 2012 in MGS
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I have finally begun to dabble within Unity in a more hands on sense as our track’s have been placed out by the engineers based on my map designs. Since many of Unity’s controls are similar to Maya, it’s easy to manipulate level objects as needed and place obstacles and collectibles. Playtesting is essential and something that we need more of as we go along. The level works when being controlled via the keyboard controls but when it comes to actually using the Kinect the game gets pretty hard. We need more space between obstacles and collectibles so that players can efficiently dodge obstacles whether that’s through jumping or lateral movement. Soon enough we’ll have it submitted to IGF. Can’t wait to hit this milestone!

nity 3DBelow are some sneak peek photos. Actually, not really. I just wanted to highlight some of the tools and way that Unity works similarly to Maya. You’ll see that I’ve got a coin collectible highlighted, and it is currently in the movement tool. What I like about Unity and Maya is that they have similar controls. The movement tools allow you to manipulate the objects position on the map, the scale tool allows you to make them large or small, and the rotation tool, drum roll… allows you to rotate them. These are all very simple observations, but here is the point: The use of these tools give me more skills with which to produce and design games.

What’s great is that I’m getting to the point where I can create assets for ingame use, place them within the engine, and see how they look. Texturing is still a large challenge for me, but eventually I’ll get to the point where I can get these assets in game. It’s great to see how certain programs build upon each other. Maya allows me to create the art assets, but it seems to have set a standard so that I can create and manipulate environments easily in Unity. The next challenge is learning to program, but honestly, I think my efforts should be spent more on thinking about design and polishing my art skills in Maya.

coin screenshotAnother fun thing that I’ve been using within Unity are pre-fabs. These are tools where you cancreate a set of assets that you can populate easily throughout the level. This eliminates tedious copying and pasting of placing every single coin on the track. However, this does come with its drawbacks as well- these prefabs can be inflexible. However, they save me from the work of copying and pasting every coin. What I’ve been doing is placing a prefab down and then editing by adding or subtracting coins. We also have a zig zag coins prefabricated as well and it plays nicely through keyboard controls. However, when playing with Kinect, these are placed too close together when physically moving from side to side. I can stretch out their spacing by adjusting the prefab, but it’s not always optimal. Many a time I have had to go in and still tweak each asset one by one. So hypothetically, the prefabs make for less work, but I find that I still need to retouch most of them when placed so that the experience is better for the player.

Another thing I can help with recently is by doing quality assurance for the art. Kevin has had me take all of the assets that have been submitted into Unity and make sure that there aren’t duplicate faces, useless faces (ie, faces that we’ll never see in the game – like the bottom of the tree trunks -so they can be deleted to save on polys), and also that there is a standard nomenclature for the assets that we’re using. This helps the artists so that they can work on other assets and also helps me practice the skills I’ve been learning in Maya.

 

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! What happened to that coin?

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! What happened to that coin?

 

California & Zynga Visit

Posted: October 10, 2012 in Life & Beyond, MGS
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I went to LA and San Francisco these past few weeks before and during fall break. While in San Francisco, I reconnected with my Burning Man friends and I also had the chance to visit Zynga and meeting one of the development directors of Atari’s new social game division. Zynga’s an interesting studio because I kind of get the vibe that while it’s a bright colorful place with a lot of cute dogs running around while their owners work, I don’t get the vibe that people love the games that they’re making. They all seem very tired and exhausted. However, it was a great opportunity to get insight into the workday of social game studios and opportunity to learn about metric definitions such as MAU, DAU, etc.zynga

My friend’s roommate is the development director for Atari’s new social game division and he gave me good insight into the difference between producers and project managers when it comes to social games. He told me that in his experience, PMs usually are involved in a lot of the number crunching and metrics of the games as well as development of their features and that producers usually keep them on schedule and give pushback to let the PMs know what is possible given the actual resources of the team. Definitely got a bunch of useful information while on my trip to San Francisco.

Iterations X Infinity

Posted: September 20, 2012 in MGS
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We have continued to iterate on the game. Rather than having multiple track types (ground and water), we are going to only have a ground track and cut the idea of the animals running/swimming through water as that set of animations would be too time consuming right now. I have also advocated for a forking path that will give players the opportunity to play the level differently. It also givers us the ability to create an “ideal path” where players can achieve a higher score via a faster run through the level. There are newish poses for the game’s new animals. The goat’s pose is still similar to the bull, the rabbit’s pose is your arms wide over your head still, and the tiger’s pose has players holding up their hands like a cat getting ready to pounce.

Finally, our modular levels are proving useful; we can quickly lay out a track for the game so that we can test to make sure the tracks are working efficiently. Since Unity has a terrain builder within it, we can also create a landscape of sorts around the track to give the level life and make it something more than just flat landscapes. We’ll be adding lots of art assets to it hopefully in the form of trees, caves, buildings and maybe other animals so that our Zodiac becomes alive.

Below is a picture of us in action with the poses that I’ve finalized.

Ashley is in the goat pose. The pose itself is grounded and actually very similar to the bull’s pose in the first build of the game. However, Jorge and I are tweaking it in Kinect so that it is more forgiving. That allows players to place their first wider (ie, outside of their hips) or more narrow (to the midline of their body). This creates a more enjoyable experience for the player so that they can focus on the game at hand rather than fighting with the pose.

Troy is in the bunny pose – it’s silly and elevated pose and hopefully elicits a connotation of surprise and excitement. Rabbits are hyperactive creatures, so in my mind this pose reflects the excited mind of a rabbit. It’s a higher pose than the others and creates a different feeling in the body (a stretch through the upper torso), and such activity is stimulating for the body to add to the game’s level of activity.

I am in the tiger pose. Gameplay tip: You don’t actually have to lift your leg, but you can if you want because the Kinect is actually looking for how your elbows and hands are in relation to your shoulders. That being said, hypothetically, players could do different things with their bodies as long as they’re doing the poses’ distinctive features (torso grounded and low for the goat, hands high, separated and spread apart for rabbit, and hands and elbows in their appropriate position in relation to the shoulders). This is another strong pose, it’s aggressive, and when I do it, I like to tense my body. This gives the sense of a tiger’s strength. Granted, players don’t need to tense their body when they strike the tiger pose, but it was a guiding idea in the design of the tiger.

Some of the emerging gameplay that can come out of these poses is for players to hit these poses while playing the game. Can they turn into the goat will scampering side to side to dodge the rocks and collect the coins? Can they jump and turn into the rabbit at the same time while avoiding logs? And can the player rapidly change from the tiger into the rabbit to maximize their speed in grass areas but also jump over logs quickly? It’s fun to see how fast you can switch between poses and what that makes for gameplay as you travel through the level.

poseswlogo

Maya & Unity & Dependencies

Posted: September 15, 2012 in MGS
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One class that is proving to be useful this semester is our Production class in which we are studying Maya. While I will probably never be a professional modeler, I’m happy to learn the tools in Maya despite how daunting it is. It’s nice being able to understand how modeling works for the artist and it gives me more insight into the art production pipeline. I think my biggest challenge in Maya is the whole process of unwrapping UVs so that I can texture them. There’s some process and workflows within that where I have the hardest time mastering that skill.

Unity, as always, is full of little roadblocks. The engineers are working on getting our track system programmed and laid out. However, since we are approaching the game on a modular sense (ie creating tile sets that we can lay to create the track for the player), we can at least get the map laid out quickly. Once the programming magic is laid out, we should easily be able to create levels for the game.

So far I have finalized the poses for the games and have worked alongside engineers like Anurag as we place obstacles and collectibles in the game. He has started to give me mini tutorials on how to use the program to play test, so that has been very helpful. I’m learning a lot from him, and using Unity is a skill I can add to my resume.

In addition to showing me how to use Unity, Anurag is developing a programming tool that actually makes our level one that we can easily edit. One issue we encountered last semester was that when our characters turned along a path, it was never smooth and not conducive to a fun user experience. Thus, that was the reason our game was a straight-forward track that had no turns present in the gameplay. This issue affected the design greatly – even though people at EAE Open House had fun playing the game, we could sense that if the entire game was just a straight path, it could get boring very quickly. The levels become a bit lifeless. Here’s the secret though – even though the majority of the game will be played on a straight track, the addition of curved and forked paths give the player the illusion that they’re turning and give the level a new life. It seems simple, but there is so much work ahead of us to get the game to that point.

Anurag is crunching through heavy math to figure out this tool’s development for implementation within Unity. It makes me see how interconnected our skills are when we are making a game on any platform. We have rough drafts of level designs that we’re shooting for to test with these tools. However, those levels can’t be made until the tools have been completed and tested. Meanwhile, art is being created and iterated upon so that when the level design is ready, we can place the animals (with animations) to test bugs within the level. But there’s more – because we need the new poses implemented. That part isn’t too hard – Jorge and I partner and I do the poses and he sets them into the Kinect. However, we can’t efficiently test them until there is a working example of the game where the animated animal is running along the correctly tweened path. So as one can see- there are sooooo many elements to this game’s production. I haven’t even touched upon the production tasks that Karratti works on (powerpoints, scheduling, touching base with everyone). Our game falls heavily upon well-designed programming, which in turn needs solid art assets, and those parts need a solid level design for them to run upon. It requires that we are in constant contact and making sure that we run as a well oiled machine.

nity 3D

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