Last blog with last months progress

This last blog update will contain everything from the last four weeks that should have been blogged on a weekly basis.  So in no particular order here is what I’ve  been tasked to do in the last month.

I had been charged to unwrap a whole load of assets and texture them as I go; once done upload them onto the online drop box that we have set up.

Some of the textures that were unwrapped and textured are: the floor texture, the end gate asset and texture, the bowl and texture, broken bottle unwrap, the cheese grater asset unwrap and many more.

Also all the assets were divided three ways between Sam, Adam and myself, we each loaded the textures onto the assets, took a screen shot of them and then added the file names of both the asset and the texture. The image is at the top and the relevant information underneath the image. 

During the final stages of project blend, I’d played through a hand full of the last builds from 20 all the way up to the latest one. Each time taking notes of the bugs and passing the paper to the others to try and reduce the bug count.

Lastly I proof read the final document and edited a few chapters with the amendments that myself and the other group member who proof read the document found.

Play Test for Build 20

There are a whole host of moving bugs, there are a vast amount of objects that Logan bounces off of in many ways, as follows:

The steak at the start of the level if “down” is pressed; Logan continues to run until the end of the steak sometimes walking off of the edge.
Not 100% certain how regular or what is the actual trigger, as it seems to happen randomly even though the start place is the same and the movement button is only pressed once.

As Logan walks through the lanes, in all sections of the level. There are multiple points where an asset intersects two lanes, if either the up or down keys are pressed (Depending on where the Assets is in relation to Logans current location) Logan will walk into the asset and bounce back.
For example if Logan is in Lane 2 and there’s a slice of Pizza half in lane 2 and in lane 3. If the player pressed “Up” then Logan will attempt to walk to the third lane but bounce back off of the asset that is in his way.

The fix to this problem is to move around the positions of the assets so that they correspond to the same X & Y co-ordinates as the lanes.

There are also a few places where Logan can fall through the individual assets and become stuck inside the two, so the player can’t get back out without having to restart the level.
The places where this was found to have happened are:
In-between the battery and Bottle cork.

In-between a battery and Bottle Cap

In-between the Egg Cup and Coke Can.

The fix for this is simple just replace the colliders with the relevant ones to ensure the player can’t either fall through or walk into assets and become stuck.

Also as already touched upon in previous play tests the jumping is still clunky. (Still needing to be fixed – I’ve decided to mention it again because it’s got much worse in the respect that it happens on more assets and more NPC’s are far more regularly)  Logan will sometimes randomly jump up an object when in midair causing him to jump again throwing him right up into the air. It’s not just assets that this happens to it’s the NPC’s as well.

Also the movement is clunky with regards to the jumping. Sometimes like the encounter with the Elite as the player gets half way up they have to jump just right to get up the plates otherwise there’s no jump or movement at all Logan just stands there like the player is not pressing anything.
Same happens when slightly further up when on the bottle cap. When Logan is standing on the bottle cap there are a lot of key presses that go unregistered, and sometimes even the down key that the player wants doesn’t seem to work; if the player tries jumping and holding down this still doesn’t work as Logan just jumps straight up and back down.

Build 16 - Thoughts and Feelings

Handling / Gameplay

Apart from some jumping issues and collision issues with the avatar, movement is good and works very well. It has changed from our original vision of movement in lanes but it works much better with free roam movement, as the avatar has a much smoother motion.

The jumping is of a nice height and length. It doesn’t look unrealistic even though the height of the jump is high and wide, this helps to jump over most of the obstacles in the game and eliminates irritating sections where you fall and have to start again.

It’s not to high that all the jumps are easy, the player still has to concentrate but it’s no longer overly difficult. The player is free to concentrate on the assassinations and other gameplay elements.

Textures

There doesn’t seem to be much continuity when it comes to textures as there is a miss match of colours everywhere. There was a colour palate drawn up before texturing began, but evidently not everyone who has been doing the textures has been following the colours originally assigned.

Bugs

1. Logan jumps twice randomly, jumping up the more complex of the games jumping sections caused Logan to double jump even though the space bar (Executes the Jump command) was only pressed once.

In addition to this the wall bounce back is still present, if the Avatar collides with the wall before it gets to the top of it Logan will bounce backwards.

2. There are certain sections of the game environment that Logan will get stuck in and all movement is completely frozen. This only happens with the assets that run at odd angles and the character can fall in-between them causing movement to stop.

3. Logan has a whole host of problems that revolve around charging the sword.

When Logan is charging his sword his movement is restricted and this indirectly causes problems with all the games terrain that’s not perfectly horizontal. Also charging is canceled when falling off of terrain and if you move before you release the charge button.

Project Blend Playtesting Build 14 Michael and Alan – Movement and jumping

Movement Speed tests

We played through and decided to try and make Logan move faster so we changed the movement speed from 350 to 650.

650 was to so fast, it was possible to run past all types of enemies and not have to confront them.

So we decided to move it back down to 500. We noticed it was still too fast and some of the jumping puzzles were made unnecessarily tricky due to the speed of movement. Causing the player to either jump late or miss-judge some of the jumps.

Next we tried 400 it solved the jumping puzzles meaning that the player can still jump around with precision and move faster between objects in the level.

Fixing Tests

Ground Friction 1.15

At 3.00 it was far too slow

1.30 – The animations play smoother and it seems to be a nicer frame rate.

We then tried to see 1.25 but the animation went back to being a bit clunky and the animation went back to bobbing. So it has been decided that 1.30 is the best ground friction frame so far.

Current Setting: Move Speed = 400/ Ground Friction = 1.30

Jumping

Air Speed = 350.

Air Speed = 400 We changed it so that it was equal to the movement speed . and it worked pretty well but we wanted to see if we increased it a bit more that it would help with the jump.

So the Air Speed at 450 makes things a lot easier, jumping across the levels jumping puzzles, maybe to easy we want the jumps to be tricky but not so much that they annoy the player or get in the way to much.

Jumping Height

Jumping height = 450

475 improved

We wanted to make the jump as high as possible so stop the player having to repeatedly spamming the space bar to jump up an object.

We went to 500 but it proved to be too much so we changed it back to 475.

And we tried to jump up object that had an angle and because of the following two function

Slide angle 0.15

Slide force 120

We had problems as the spatula we were trying to jump up was in-between jumps sliding us back down meaning more jumps to reach the top of the object.

Life would be much easier if we took a banjo kazooie approach to this project either there’s slip and we can’t do up the object or there’s no slip atall.

We changed the air speed to 370 to compensate for the increased jump height to 475.

So that the player can’t cover too big a gap with each jump.

Gravity Strength -20

We changed it to -27

We tried it a little higher but the character didn’t jump very high off of the ground and at -30 the player sprite just seemed to shake up and down violently and quickly.

But after a few play testing sessions we changed a few things and then noticed that the player bounced off of most of the object populating the world. And couldn’t cover the gaps in the game and eventually we worked out that it was the gravity that was doing it as the player was returning to the ground faster than he could jump up an object so we changed it back to -20.

When gravity was set to -25, jump height had to be set to at least 495. However airspeed (which is 370) is now too weak to make jumps.

Airspeed barely works at 400 but it seems this won’t work any higher. Air resistance will have to be altered next.

Air Resistance

Originally 1.5 it was altered to 0.5, however this completely broke the game as the play flew through walls.

At 1.0 it works but there is not enough resistance. It works pretty well at 1.2.

Other issues

If gravity is too high, players smash into walls when using shifts and as a result bounce against the wall.

Conclusion

When gravity was increased to -25 it made jumping more believable and smooth, not the slow float as it looked like before. But to compensate for this increased gravity; the airspeed had to be increased drastically and air resistance had to be decreased by a small amount. As a result, the jumping feels a little too fast and free like being blown away by wind. This will need to be revived at a later date.

Textures

In today meeting the team showed off a full level five but there was a lot of place holders and untextured assets, so the next job is to start finishing off the interface and add textures.

Interface designs

We talked through the research I had gathered and started to make plans for which idea to implement for the health bar. We decided on making a gradient map with images of a full health bar and an empty one. As shown below in figures 1 to 3.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Textures 

I was originally assigned three textures to draw and upload to the drop box but after I finished the first one, (Even though I told the rest of the team those were the ones I was doing) I found that the other two I was going to do were already done.
This has been happening for the last few weeks and it's also happening to other team members; tasks are being assigned and others are deciding to do them and no bother telling the person who was originally assigned them that they have been done.

Figure 4 - Knife and Bread Textures

Interface - Various Backgrounds

So I have further edited the background that was selected my Sam and myself. I've added a basic vine outline in figure 1 and various other kitchen bits and bobs in figures two through to five.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

There will be more designs drawn up, but yet again it's time to show the team and see what they think.

Interface In-development

So I got to the guys house and started work talking about which design is best and we decided that we like figure 5 and 6 so I joined the two together, shown below. 

Figure 1 Distorted and Distressed

Interface and Background Textures

Due to commitments outside of University, I had gotten a little behind on my tasks. So I have taken the opportunity to catch back up on the tasks. so I can carry on with this weeks tasks. There has been an extra meeting set up for tomorrow that I will attend as I feel I need to do some extra tasks to catch up on what I have missed.

Task 1 - Set a fortnight ago. - Interface 







When I was issued this I got together with Sam and Hieu and we brain stormed about the Interface; we looked at the UI designs I had done on a previous week and thought about which ones  best suited the project. So we chose one of our favourites and decided to start making prototypes of the design. Below is the designs we can up with the first one being the one we finally decided upon.

 

 
 

 

 


In addition to this I have collected research from various places on how we could go about implementing the health bar into the game the information is shown below: 

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/4456

This is a basic bar fill it in real time without having to swap images

(Downside is it’s a straight line)

3D platformer tutorial on the Unity Website Pages 50 – 55 are the pages that detail the Heath bar and give an example of how it works and how to implement it into your project.

It uses images combined with Alpha channels
The health bar is a series of 8 images. But there are 16 stages each bar has two states full  and half opacity.
through the script Alpha channels are manipulated to give the illusion that heal that is being drained.

Though if we still go with the sword template then we will need to make something more fluid (Pardon the pun) as blood will go transparent but not in chunks.

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/7449/creating-a-circular-progressbar-timer

Creating a circle cross bar

For Project Blend we do not want a circle cross bar we want one in the shape of a sword to fit in with the level.

So we will just adjust the alpha gradient texture to be the shape of our sword instead of circle.

This is perfect to implement into the project but it is complex and very time consuming so the 3D platformer may be used with the image propped more regularly instead of 8 segment maybe 10 – 12 for example so the alpha effect appears less blocky. This will add more data to process and may cause some unnecessary latency issues but it’s easier to implement.

Task 2 - Background Images for the game.
I deliberately haven't added the extra details into the images yet as I feel that they will come after the team and I have decided on a style and a size that appropriately fits the designs of the game. So below is a collection of concepts for the game to help decided what to start using for the games levels. 

Figure 1 - Normal - Small

Figure 2 - Normal - Medium

Figure 3 - normal - Large

Figure 4 - Slightly Distressed

Figure 5 - Distressed

Figure 6 - Distorted

Figure 7 - Wavy Lines

Things such as Vines, kitchen windows, cupboards, etc... Will be added as aforementioned after the team has come to a decision.

Play Testing

This week I have been assigned the task of play testing the basic level build of the game for Project Blend.

There's simple objects and basic movement in the level to get as many various assets in to be play tested as possible.

So during my play testing I found that 90% of the problems stem from the jumping of the player throughout the level. As there are side of surfaces that if the player jumps into bounces off of and the ability to jump up walls and out of the level.

Below is a short concise list of what I had found and the possible solutions to each of those problems.

Bug Report

1.     Jumping against the blocks – causes bounce back, stops player reaching max jump height. 

(Solution – If jump height is increased to a height that the player can successfully get to the box 99% of the time. However the player can now jump across objects to reach another level of height over a gap in the level. Not intended to happen.)

2.     Jumping against the games side-wall – If the player jumps on the side wall he can jump up to the top of the level.

(Solution – Restrict jumping to once per press until the player is re grounded with the floor the play cant jump any more. However this will be problematic once play is up on asset and tries to jump multiple times as each climbable asset will need to be added to the script as a floor object.)

3.     Sliding – Slowing down sliding to very little not every surface will be covered in ice and the raspberry will not slide down everything. As this will only serve to confuse the player.

(Solution – Restrict fast sliding to Ice objects)

In addition to play testing the level I have been tasked with obtaining a deeper understanding of how the code works so that I can be a part of the coding team. This is so that I can help the coding team to complete tasks and help with giving them feedback on how to change the code to remove bugs and improve certain aspects of the games design; also to help with the general coding and talking about how to go about coding things such as the play movement through the level and interaction.

I have been going through text books tutorials on Unity I did a few chapters last week when I was assigned the task and I'm going through more and more each week until the end of the semester as any last minute key information will come in handy.

Interface - Cursors

All Cursors will be the same size, they have just been drawn differently, the only thing that will change is the design not the height or width. 

Figure 1 - Various Concepts for Cursors. 

A few of the concepts are the same just with a different style of art or a slight adjustment. There's not much in what you can do with regard to the look of just a basic cursor; but no.3 through to no. 6 are based on the shape of a raspberry which has been abstracted to fit into more of a cursor shape.

Project Blend – Level Encounters

The smiley Ice cube face represents blocks of Ice inside the freezer. 

The Snowflakes represent Ice on the Freezers floor.

Level Four - Part Four

As logan enters the Freezer there are more dangers than in the kitchen. There are Ice Blocks that get in the way of Logans progress and Ice on the floor that prevents Logan from treading.
He must navigate around and over these obstacles to get to try and find the Raspberries.

Figure 1.1 - Part 1 of 4 

Logan is presented with Ice Blocks first, he must use his wits to find a way around them without making contact, as contact means he will get stuck and be unable to safe the Raspberries.

Figure 1.2 - Part 2 of 4 

As Logan traverses deeper into the freezer to free his Raspberry friends, he encounters Ice on the floor. He must carefully jump over this otherwise as with the Ice Blocks he will get stuck to it.

Level Four - Part Five

Note:

Boss Elite Fennel: Due to image being flipped his bad eye appears on the wrong side.

R = Ramp. 

Logan is at the top of an ice ramp; the player must go down the ramp to find the Boss of level 4 Captain Fennel.

Figure 1.3 - Part 3 of 4 

Boss Fight (Concept):

When Captain Fennel engages Logan in a fight, he has three phases; only the first two are in the first encounter.   

Phase one, Fennel moves around the level erratically, during this time any attack Logan makes is deflected and inflicts no damage.

Phase two, Fennel moves for Logan and goes for the attack but there is a slight delay to allow Logan to move to safety. After Fennel has made his attack, he is confused for two to three seconds.
This gives Logan time to attack Fennel’s (bad eye side), blind spot. Which side depends on the defection Fennel and Logan are facing.

Fennel takes two hits before the next phase can be initiated.

Level Four - Part Six

After all the other Blueberries come in to help Logan (fighting around and behind Logan and Fennel) the final phase of the fight commences.

Figure 1.4 - Part 4 of 4

  

Boss Battle Encounter 2 - Phase 3:

The fight is the same as before attack phases 1 and 2 are still present and active. But now when Fennel attacks and misses he is wise to Logan’s side attacks; so immediately afterwards he attacks to the side of his weak spot.

After attacking towards his weak spot phases 3 initiates, Fennel then jumps backwards two movement blocks.

The idea of this fight is to get Fennel stuck on the surrounding Ice; once stuck Fennel no longer poses a problem.

Interface Health-Bar Concepts

This week I have been tasked with gathering information on interfaces and drawing some concepts for  Project Blend.

So first I started with the research, I looked at loads of different health bars using different styles. Below are the ones I thought stood out the most for Project Blend.

1.1 - Battle Fantasia 

1.2 - Multiple iterations of Interface Designs for Bayonetta 

1.3 - Dragon Ball Z

1.4 - Eternal Sonata 

1.5 - Kingdom of Hearts

1.6 - Max Payne 

1.7 - Prototype

1.8 - Street Fighter IV

1.9 - The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker

From this research I started making concepts, I’ve not done many concepts in the terms that I have been vague but hopefully I’ve covered the breadth of the design ideas I wished to get across. All these ideas are hopefully useful and will aid in the quest for a good well implemented interface; through a big team discusion. Hopefully the team will either chose a design or bits from multiple designs and I will redraw it as a new concept will different colours and styles in time for our next meeting. 

2.1 - The first four Interface concepts 

2.2 Interface concepts 5 to 10 

Art Style – Level Concepts

This week I have been assigned to do a concept for a level at the end of the last lecture I was asked to make it for the good kitchen and two other artists also did a level each. Upon leaving the class the next day I went on the forum to have a conversation about the level like we talked about but all that got done was a list of things for the level was generated. This didn’t help me at all.  I think I just needed a proper to do list because I didn’t grasp what to do from a quick chat and a list. We have talked in previous meetings about the three main games that we are using for our inspiration towards the design and colour of the actual look of the game. So i'll be using these as my main inspiration. 

Sly Cooper
The legend of Zelda the Wind Waker

And Super Mario Bros

So since the others were doing concepts for the level I would focus of the type of style and design of the level and the perspective. For the perspective I chose to go with Little Big Planet like we said we was going to do because it’s a nice angle and it suits for gameplay well for our game. This keeps it vague enough for me to work and useful enough to not be a waste of time for the other team members as I don’t want to create something that will not be of use.

So after trying the forums I edited the set-up of the level so that there are less sub-layers, make the code so the NPC’s use the sub layers around the main layers the player is on as opposed to having two sub-layers per main layer.
Blue representing the main layer and Green representing the sublayers. 

Using this I then made a quick sketch of the potential final look of the camera design with the little big planet setup to make sure it all fit and looked good.

The green lines representing the perspective slowly increasing in angle as the camera moves further away. Three Logans were added,  just to make sure that there would be enough room for him three times plus room for NPC’s to gather around him. As the image below shows there is plenty of room.

Next I made a sketch of how I though the (very) basic outline of the good kitchen level would look.

The poster won’t actually be in the game but it’s a placeholder to get an idea for stuff to put into the background.

Then I though add a little flavour to the level the kind that the team hopefully wants.

Thankfully I feel this gives everything a nice edgy look.  So funny with this theme I intend to draw a toaster a single asset a few times for you guys to try and get an idea of how it looks and what kind of level of abstraction the team wants. 

Then add a little flavour.

  

Next I tried adding a (Poorly drawn) sink to get a feel of how we would present it.

Then add some flavour.

Hopefully you team have thought about which ones they like, upon looking at the other concepts as well. From the feedback I will make a bigger design for the level next week that utilizes the chosen look.