Sprint #1: First Draft

After some time doing some drawings and quick planning, I have the first draft of what the final boss will be for the dungeon I'm on and the dungeon layout.

For the dragon, this was really fun to draw. I really hate the legs though, because I suck at drawing feet and the sockets look absolutely horrible. When I have time, I will probably redo the legs and tone up on the textures to be a bit more cartooney. I definitively won't have time to rig it up and add animations. That would be nice, but I will probably just design a fire ball that will spawn at his mouth and just follow the projection. I will show more improved versions of this. 

I really wanted to keep the dungeon simple yet engaging. I was inspired by the first Legend of Zelda (by ripping them off). The two adjacent rooms will hold a key for the boss and a bow and arrow that will allow killing the dragon a lot easier. This is definitive not done yet as I have to standardize the square rooms and keep them consistent. This will be good enough to at least bring in and test some physics out on. 

Ze Deutschbag Beginning

I have finally been assigned to a team for my Machinima final film and the basic story has been laid down. Ze Deutschbag who loves music (especially da untz) will battle the evil Baron von Autotune and save the world from his horrible music. This is a fun idea and I am happy that I got to work on it.

My responsibility is Video Editing and Effects. During the battle scene between Deutschbag and Autotune, they will get into a battle much like that in Scott Pilgrim vs the World with the battle of the bands. For the effects to work, I will need to use After Effects and a process that I will need as much time as possible. Therefore, we all decided that I should just focus on After Effects and don't have to deal with Hammer and Faceposer (A blessing and a curse).

Although the script is basically nailed down, there is an idea that I don't know will be in it or not, but I want to be in it. At end when the evil Autotune is defeated and Deutschbag is walking away; I want to reveal the next villian, Monsieur Dubstep.

That is all for now as the project is just under way. I will update as soon as I start After Effects (I will do some practice files to experiment). If anyone has any good tips on the subject now will be a good time to talk.

Cake Dream Sprint #1

Today is the day that I start work on the Final project for CS3505. The project my team is doing is Cake Dream. This game is an evil wizard steals your cake and you must go get it back. Unfortunately, the wizard locked his door and spread 3 keys out to wilds and you must go through 3 dungeons to get each one.

Since we do only have 4-5 weeks to complete the game, we can do only so much. For this first sprint, I have been tasked of creating one of the dungeons and some level design artwork for my dungeon and the main map (I will post pictures at a later date).

The three dungeons will incorporate three different dimensions and playing styles: 3D Maze, 2.5D side-scroller, and 2D Top-Down view. I will do the 2D Top-Down view. I expect this will be the easier ones to complete and I will design it to be like original Legend of Zelda's dungeons.

I will have 6 rooms. One room will have the weapon needed to defeat the boss, three rooms will have just basic enemies in it, one room will have the key to the boss, and the final room will be the boss.

The boss, I've decided will be a dragon and I've already drew some concept art (Will be loaded later). The level design is very simple and I hope to have the level that you can walk around in and go room to room in 1.5 weeks. I hope to add enemy and boss AI in about another 1.5 weeks. After that a basic dungeon should be complete and playable. If nothing else needs to be done to make sure the whole game can play, then I hope I can do more work on the game and polish it up and add some more features, such as more rooms and add more keys to get to more important parts of the dungeon; however, I feel that would take too long.

For the first sprint, I plan to have the dungeon be loadable and the main player be able to walk in it. I also plan to be able to have the enemies and boss ready to put in and add AI to by the next Sprint. I will update you later when the next sprint comes next week.

First Machinima Film and Game Engines for Machinima

I finally got my first Machinima film done with my team. It was hard work and I absolutely hated the story (A parody of an infomercial) but hell, I still worked on it an I still am going to display it. Hopefully I will get to do a story that I will enjoy for the final project.

Note: I would love to post the video, but blogspot says there's a problem with it. 

Basically what I did was the scene where the couple light on fire and the boy who is accepted into ITT Tech catches on fire (serves him right). I also did all the voice acting. I also did all the editing in premiere. There really isn't much to say about this except that I hate Faceposer and Hammer. They are the worst programs ever.

I am currently downloading CryENGINE 3.0 right now which used the engine from Crysis. It has a great enviornment and outdoor scenes. Plus I can create models in DAZ 3D and import them in. If I can be able to work on this for the Machinima final, then my life will be so much easier. The only problem that I hear is that since it is new the TA won't be able to help out as much as they could when they helped with the Source Engine.

Another engine I would like to try would be the Dragon Age/Mass Effect engine. If you see the cut scenes from Dragon Age and Mass Effect, it really shows the Machinima that must have been used. I also did hear of an authoring tool, but can't get find it. If the authoring tool for the Dragon Age engine works as well than I hope, then Machinima could actually be fun again and I can use an engine that is actually up to date.

That is all for now. I'll update you more on the Final Machinima work and my final CS3505 project that is coming up. Next time, when I decide to blog, I'll also mention at QT project that my partner and I are working on. Its basically adding an audio visualizer and a playlist to an already existing basic media player. The algorithms for that seem interesting.

Introductions are in Order.

Hi, my name is Kyle Ray, I am currently a sophomore in the Computer Science EAE program at the University of Utah. I created this blog so that I could log my projects in the program from my CS assignments relating to game design to my Senior Project in approximately 2 years. This will not be limited to just programming, but also  art work like 3D models, game design documents, and other projects that relate to EAE.

I will start off this blogs with three of my classes. Film 2700 (Intro to Video Games), CS 3505 (Software Practices II), and CS 3660 (Machinima). In the Machinima class, I am currently finishing up a project in anticipation for my final project. I will document this Final Project as my team gets started on it. The Final Project is a 5 minute machinima film.

The Software Practices II class will just entail my Final Project as well. I have already completed three projects: a Team Generator, a Spell Checker, and a Web Crawler. The next assignment I have to do for that class is a QT application. I don't know if I will be documenting that or not yet. Although I think that I might. After that projects, my team will be making a game for our Final Project. I will definitely be documenting that process.

The Intro to Video Games will be bit more tricky. The final project for that is a 20 page game design report which I do plan on documenting. For the mean time the class will entail video game critiques which I might or might not document. I am still deciding.

That is all for now, I will update as time passes.