CSG: Game Dev

After seeing the build and how the army plays I see we have a good starting point. I Am sure that there are mistakes but given time those mistakes will get fixed and we will have a even product. as far as the things I can improve on in game design period is playing more games out the norm. but stuff the pertain to this class is understanding the game more so my design won't be bad to start off with. Things I think I did well is that figuring stuff out on my own. but overall I could improve a lot.

Two more days until demo day and our game is looking pretty good. doing this game has been tough but with anything you do in life will be tough. at the beginning of the semester we kind of struggled with sprint 0 it was instances that communication was lacking in the pipeline causing slow down in velocity and not planing well for mocap which prove a lot of doubt and hopefully we don't do until we get the pipeline issues solved. my main fixes for next semester is that we fix pipeline things so over the break I am going to look over different art pipelines to make better suggestions to leads and or PO. Have a Great winter break.

Around this time it polishing time and documents and art have to be finalize. I was finalizing my scenario, objective cards and terrain models that I made. I change a lot of things on my scenario by the feedback from playtest sessions. change the deployment zone were each side has the same amount of space on each side. Change the primary objective to compensate for the tactical objective. change the fog special rule to have a little bit of impact on the game. old one new one

So the end is coming for the semester and demo day is around the corner. At this pint the team is trying to polish up aspects of the game. besides waiting to get textures, getting all the animations into the build that is the only thing I had to do. I did run into problems with the animations the programmer working on the animation in engine came across some problems with bone hierarchy issues. Which in the future should get straightened out in the art team next time.

This actually happen couple weeks ago but due to putting everything being put in the wiki the art lead had to transfer the pipeline documents onto the wiki. We added some new things to the pipeline like mocap requirements, reworked some of the requirements that was already in the document. Also we added guidelines for concept. Because we did it in short time a lot of things we wanted to add did not get implemented in. I think in the next sprint 0 we should start adding those things in.

When thinking about terrain i think of natural elements that are neutral on the battlefield. But looking further into terrain it more to it it multi-layered and could hinder other armies. Many models in the Citadel scenery range have a datasheet that provides the information you will need to know in order to use them in your games. creating terrain datasheets was pretty fun to make even though I didn't make many. What I learn from was that there different types of terrain and not all terrain get datasheets.

With the animations completed I have to next get them the game engine through the art pipeline. this was my first time dealing with mocap animations and I learned a lot about the biped system that I didn't know before. what I could've done differently was worked with the designers and programmers more for input on what animations was needed in detail.

A special rule might improve a model’s chances of causing damage by granting it poisoned weapons or a boost to its Strength.Whenever a creature or weapon has an ability that breaks or bends one of the main game rules, it is represented by a special rule. which can affect how objective cards, play Conversely, a special rule may improve a model’s survivability by granting it resistance to pain, or the ability to regrow damaged flesh.

After I figured that motionbuilder wasn't going to work I asked a couple of my animation instructor for help. He showed me an easier way to put the mocap data on models with effecting the structure and the skinning of the model. All I had to do was save the raw mocap data as a BIP file and import the saved Bip file into the model biped. That save a whole lot of time. After that i was about 60% done with the preferred mocap files.

After I was the lucky guy to play against the teacher's assistant, I lost by the way, using the feedback I change a lot of things in my first scenario "Gods Of The Swamp" I didn't touch my other two because I didn't feel confident in them. the changes I made was in the deployment zone, I was told that one of the zones was to big and the other was to small. The fog fight didn't make sense so redid it, I pretty much redid everything from first turn to victory conditions.

While searching the internet I found an tutorial on youtube that allows you to import mocap in the form of an fbx file type, not bvh on to any mesh no matter the size and it will adjust the model accordingly with the animation. this would help speed up the time but the computers at school and my PC did not have the right option (3ds max biped template) for what the tutorial had.

Tactical objectives cards was also of importance to level design. their original design is to add another dynamic to the already layered game of warhammer. my task was to create 23 objective cards. this task was difficult because most of the ideals that I may have ether a rule or a tactical card. so I look online for some ideas and didn't see anything that was of relevance. So I tried coming up with ideas and the feedback was not good but helpful in understanding. Here are the standard tactical objective from the rule book. it goes by a D66, that is when you use 2d6 one after the other and you combine the two rolls and you get your result. Below that are my tactical objective first attempts

After doing the mocap we have to import the raw mocap files".bvh" on to the rigged model where then we have to fix any inconsistencies like sliding foot, placement of bones and any hyperextension to name a few. me and another animator on the team had the pleasure of taking on this task. ere below we have a short clip of the raw mocap file. what I learned from doing this is that how to edit the mocap data where I can get any model follow the mocap. what I could've done a little bit better was come up with a more effective workflow for mocap.

After finishing my level playtesting it out in vassal, which is a great program but hard to use if you don't fully understand the game, I asked the my team to take a look at them. from the feedback I ve got was telling me to do more research and understand the game. A lot of things in my scenarios did not make sense as far as the other rules the was in the rule book. So what I did was go back at different battle reports on youtube as well as watch tutorials on how to play Warhammer and read the rule book. what I learn from the videos is that i do well at understanding things better by someone showing me how to do something rather then reading a book.

Hello again, this week we set up a time do mocap. We planned on doing all the animation that day because of schedule reasons. but we had an instructor to help us out with set up and pretty much everything. We didn't use the conventional mocap with the whole suit and camera setup, instead we used an neron setup where it tracks the markers without using a special camera isn't that awesome. Below we had our actor who is also a part of the team get suit up. Zachary Friedman I say that everything went great but for future reference having well thought out gameplan and understanding mocap more would help make things run smoothly.

  Their is a program that allows you to play many tabletop games for free, all you need is internet. this would become my place of where I can playtest. what i like about it is that most of the content is there and it open source so it constantly getting updated with content. what don't like about and mainly because I am a noob at Warhammer 40k is the learning curve is a little difficult. i had to look at video on youtube, which are non existent to get some help. below there's a map of my scenario on vassal I believe I played with Chaos Space Marines vs Tyrnids 500 pts Tyrinids HQ TYRANID PRIME ­ 125 Points Troops 5 GENESTEALER BROOD ­ 85Points toxins sacs 3pts 5 genestealer brood 85 pts toxins sacs 3pts 20 HORMAGAUNT BROOD ­ 270 Points toxins sacs 3pts Chaos Space Marines HQ  Huron blackheart 170pts 7 Possessed space marines 212 pts possessed champion 10pts icon slaanesh 20pts Elites 5 chosen chaos space marines 110 pts icon: chaos glory 10pts ...

After the model is done the bones groupings or skin the mesh to the bone objects. this can be a daunting task as well as time consuming but it help the mesh flow with the bone rig. Before I even skin the mesh I make sure the bones work than I animate it, just simple animation motions. During these past eight weeks has been a challenge for me but like my mother said "just gotta keep trucking."

Concept By Alex Dionne After finally getting added to an feature that is class two armor torso part, I had to take concept image above to create a 3d model of upper torso shoulder area. given a little history about the armor that it draws inspiration from the garments William Tell wore. the drawing didn't have a side view which makes a little hard for me.

This week the level team had to make three mission or scenarios and playtest them. since I have no experience in warhammer it was going to be a difficult task. my three mission was supposed to capture the fantasy side of what the lizardmen provided. Here is the my three missions I was looking thru the main rule book and it mentions mission tables so I made my missions like the rule book. my first scenario, Gods of the Swamps, was supposed to be an protect type of mission like most of the fantasy scenarios with an natural element. the second one is Warpath that one was supposed to be more like survival with a tropical storm takes place. Finally Hutai Domination was going to be an all out blood bath a lot of victory points with bombs falling from the sky.

My feature is done and I am moving today. I guess I will wait for another feature show up, but that wasn't the case. today is the end of sprint 1 time to start sprint 2. Since my feature was the only feature to make it into the build, other features will have to roll over in the next sprint. after poker planning we decided new feature teams, I had to leave early to move so I wasn't around to pick a feature which left me with nothing to do.

While watching a lizardmen match on YouTube I ve notice the difference from fantasy and the 40k universe. First their phases are different they have dnd style as for different checks and encounters were it more story than 40k. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vmTNLquusxksbDlwslvYcWRaZbiQFSEjXBdn8jeoBOA/edit?usp=sharing

This is my second go at level design and its in warhammer40k and I thought dungeons and dragons was hard. We have a pretty small team which would have workload on us but think we're up to the task.

In my first feature team which had representative from every meta team working together to get a feature done. As part of agile the dev are supposed to pick a feature ourselves instead of having someone choose one for you. My feature was character customization, this is where the player chose their armor and weapon. in my feature there were a designer and programer. The designer come up with the layout the programmer gives feedback on it as well as the art guy which is me. Then we deliberate on ideas until we came up with a layout that is player friendly. As part of my task for that feature I had to make placeholder UI icons for weapons, armor and none. Here are the images:

Today we give out pitches for a warhammer mod. Were were supposed to come up with race difference from warhammer univers or a race from the fantasy edition of warhammer and give it new lore and new mechanics.  I didn't have anything to pitch because i was still getting the fill for the game. but the idea my peers had was great ideas, from a race with amazon women to candy race but one race beat all, Lizardmen.

After deciding the technical requirements for art we started to concept for the art bible because in the past we've had a hard time with constructing a art bible. by doing this we misunderstood what sprint0 was. we started deving without testing the pipelines in engine. What I learn from that experience and still learning is sprint0 and what sprint0 means. just for fun here are some concepts I came up with for characters.

This is our final week of learning Warhammer40k we had to come up with 1500pts army. in the armies we had to have fliers which are how they sound, "They Fly." the tyranids the army I was a part of had fliers called harpies. To my knowledged fliers can move in the movement phase up to 10".

In sprint 0 were as meta teams are supposed to get pipelines established. since we're doing a 3d game we have to come up with system that will get assets in the build without any problems. We came up with tech requirements document to help with formatting assets so the team can be on the same page. In that doc we mention unit scale, poly count and file types. as a whole we put this document in the art bible as well.