Game Dev Video #6 (Continuing from where I left off with Unity)
I switched to UDK for game development , been building a texture library and ordered an Oculus Rift !
I loved using Unity but lacking even simple shadows and network functionality was driving me mad , I've worked out my content development pipeline and have started scripting functionality and shall continue to do so while I wait for my Rift to arrive.
What do you guys think about the Oculus Rift ? Shows promise or do you feel its another gimmick ?
I switched to UDK for game development , been building a texture library and ordered an Oculus Rift !
I loved using Unity but lacking even simple shadows and network functionality was driving me mad , I've worked out my content development pipeline and have started scripting functionality and shall continue to do so while I wait for my Rift to arrive.
What do you guys think about the Oculus Rift ? Shows promise or do you feel its another gimmick ?
Comments
The Next in the series of videos documenting my game development attempts.It includes new textures,art assets and a melee weapon :)
I have decided on a first person fantasy adventure , strongly influenced by Arabian culture and folk lore. I am starting to pull a story together that is based in a 1930's - 1940's era middle eastern setting .
The gameplay will focus on exploration, puzzle solving ,and co-operative melee combat against supernatural creatures such as the Ghul (which means demon in Arabic)and the Nasnas .
I am a big fan of zombies but I didn't want to do the usual George Romero or 28 Days later kind of creatures being either mindless and shambling or rage infected sprinters. In the Ghul I found a creature that has a sort of cunning that you wouldn't expect from the undead.
The Ghul is a shape shifting demon that lives in burial grounds and uninhabited places , luring unsuspecting people into the desert or into abandoned places to kill and eat them , they often take the shape of the most recently eaten individual.
The Nasnas is believed to be the offspring of a demon called Shikk and a human being , they appear as half of a human(as though cut down the middle) and they hop around with surprising agility.
I'd like to have the world exist as a persistent sand box , with creatures and resources replenishing themselves but that's me getting ahead of myself.For now I want to work on scripting some of the mechanics and create art assets and prefabs that will help me flesh the world out a bit.
I hope that I answered your question , sorry if I do tend to ramble on a bit.
Back with another game dev video.
This week covers what I discussed in the post above and I show you some art assets that I've been working on. I will be digging into UnrealScript IDE this next week to get up to snuff on scripting and start tinkering with some cool game mechanics.
If you have any comments or questions please feel free to ask :)
-Mr Nexy
Back with another game dev video.
This past few weeks I have been diving into UnrealScript using Visual Studio 10 (quite an experience !), this video documents my progress :)
If you have any comments or questions please feel free to ask :)
-MrNexy
Back again with another update !
Sorry for sounding a little tired this week , late nights of reading the references on UDN will do that to you ;)
This week's video deals with creature navigation , NavMesh pathfinding , AI and timers.
Once I have some more AI functionality implemented I will move on to a setting up a resource and creature respawn system. Thank you for watching and I hope that you enjoyed the video , if you have any questions or comments please feel free to let me know :)
-MrNexy
What are your thoughts on this device ?
Today I'm gonna show you some of the work that I've done on the AI in the past week.
My Steam account is GreenLight enabled now and I'm just waiting on confirmation of my Unreal Engine 3 Commercial License application.Also the Rift starts shipping in May ! things are starting to fall into place. Right now I am working on integrating scale form into my project so that I can make a HUD to help me visualize the inventory and crafting systems that I have in the works.
Questions and comments are always welcome ! :)
-MrNexy
I haven't set one up yet so I'll log into my hosting solution and set one up today , seeing as its weekend here I can take some time away from coding and research to take care of that. I normally self host my own WordPress , will that suffice or is there a more popular solution out there ?
I'd love to see a weekly screenshot or two and a short write-up on what you're up to (like here). I'll also make sure to feature you on Indie Game Blogs if you get that running. This is an interesting type of project and I'm sure lots of people will enjoy reading about it.
I did set up a blog on blogger which is empty right now and will be for the next couple days as I wrestle with GUI in UnrealScript.I wouldn't say that WordPress is very complicated when it comes to blogging (from my personal experience) and I've used it to decent effect (I would hope) at wakinghourmovie.com .
What experience have folks here had with making GUIs and HUDs ?
Seeing as this is a VR project I don't think that a traditional GUI or HUD would work quite as well. I have been toying with the idea of displaying an inventory screen by having the player model actually open up a ledger and rendering an inventory hud on that surface.In much the same way as the map works in MineCraft , that way the player isn't confronted with this odd two-dimensional popup and they can read the inventory as they would a book.
Keeping GUIs and HUDs to a minimum would certainly help keep the player immersed in the world but at the same time , one is faced with the challenge of finding other ways of communicating this information to the player. Having a Game Menu is a necessity though and that's what I'm working on now , though going through ScaelForm & UDK's reference material is a real schlep.
You're right, WP isn't complicated but the fact that blogspot doesn't give you all the options WP does means I won't take hours and hours to install dozens of plugins, notice a minor detail about every one that doesn't suit me, go into the source code, fix it, etc...
Anyway, good luck on your UI work!
Its been a while since my last post but I have been a busy boy :3
From comical looking Sand Cats to Huge terrains,new art assets and particle effects, things are starting to come together slowly but surely :D
I am still having a few issues upping the terrain's shadow map detail without it crashing , so shadows on the ground shall remain simple until I figure something out.
As always everything is still Pre-Alpha and WIP but please feel free to drop me any suggestions , I won't be releasing a build again until I have gotten the Ghul mesh game ready and written it's AI Routines but I will continue to post screen shots.
** I had a functional GUI but I scrapped it for now as it 2D GUI's don't test well on the Rift , making a GUI that's both rift and non rift friendly at the same time is quite challenging ! :)
I found myself bogged down with editing work this week so I didn't get too much done(gotta pay the bills ;) ) I included some screen shots of the WIP Ghul in-game. I've got time this week to rig and do preliminary animations for the Ghul , as well as put together some AI-Routines :D Pushing for an early early alpha release once I've got some game mechanics in place,that should be within the next week or so. If I can get that sorted I will focus on refining the art assets while I eagerly await the arrival of my Rift ( June-July :_: ).
-MrNexy
As part of an effort to further gauge interest in the game itself and try and build a community of supporters , I've added the game to Steam Green Light - Concepts and IndieDB.
The trailer has some extra footage in it and yes I'm aware that crabs walks sideways , its a remnant from when I was doing it's AI routines ;) Any feedback and support is greatly appreciated ! <3
Green Light Concepts
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=149896315
IndieDB
http://www.indiedb.com/games/atajrubah
Much Love
-MrNexy
I agree with you there and have been brooding over it for most of the evening.Having done so I think that fighting may fall under survival , being more about defending yourself from very real dangers in the world rather than simply fighting against an opponent.
There are all manner of creatures that can harm you here in the desert , outside of the everyday struggle that it would already have been in the 1930's-1940's gathering water,food,crafting materials and trading supplies.I like some of superstitious and supernatural aspects of the culture , there's a lot that I hope I can translate into an immersive and engaging experience.With feedback and critique like this I am sure that I pull it off :)
The work that lies ahead of me is challenging to be sure :3 like finding a way to visually represent a crafting,trading and inventory system without using a traditional HUD.Once I have enough content and game play to keep someone occupied for 30-60 minutes then I'll try and get alpha funding via Desura.
My trump card for where I am now in terms of getting some backing and buzz relies on my Rift getting here , sometime in the next month and just before Ramadan (Most folks go away during Ramadan , meaning the media zone will be a ghost town).They're looking for projects to develop and I'd love to see the look on their faces when I put this thing on their heads and they find themselves transported. I've had some good responses on the Oculus Development forums too , minus the mistakes made due to not having a Rift to test the demo on I feel that I'm on a good path with the visual feel and scale.
User 1 User 2 There's not much of an Indie scene here as its still early days for the industry , so I really do appreciate the feedback that I get from the good folks of MGSA <3
P.S: @bigbadwofl you can find my blog here http://atajrubahgame.nexymedia.com/
Interaction in 3D like that is tricky: I used to do oldschool virtual reality with early HMDs in my first ever job out of highschool and everything always felt abstract and odd - even the systems were you were holding something you were supposed to interact with the world with (wands/guns/tracking gloves, etc).
I think your best bet is to embrace the fact that you're going to be breaking the immersion anyway, so why not do it in an interesting way? Now, you probably don't want to get me started about how terrible FPS object interactions are (I can rant forever about how frustratingly stupid the whole picking up items and rummaging through containers gameplay is in the Bioshock and Fallout games, for instance) but why not show player character "imagination" through ghost objects? For instance, if you were glancing at something you could pick up and use, tell the player that by showing a "ghost" of a fully-crafted item near the object, with that object's place in the final setup clearly indicated. You could even do neat stuff like show other objects that you're currently carrying as less ghostly in the imagined image, indicating that you can tap a button and build this thing if you want to.
The other thing that might be worth doing would be changing the viewpoint once you went into "crafting" or "interaction" mode: Zooming the camera up and away from the first person view and highlighting objects you could interact with from there. That's my preferred solution to bad FPS interaction/rummaging that leaves you playing like a dog sniffing around nooks and crannies for possible items instead of enjoying the views a game is trying to present you with - but I can understand not wanting to break that first person perspective for the sake of immersion.
What are players going to be crafting in the game? Are we talking technologies that mess with each other or single-use items? Have you played with stuff like Gary's Mod much? That's got great open-ended crafting going on :)
Thank you for the detailed response dislekcia and thank you for taking the time to share your experience with VR ! :)
You have some very valid points :) For the time being I have chosen to go with a floating hand approach for player interactions. I plan to extend this floating hand concept into the crafting and trading systems and I will post concept images for that a bit later on. Players are going to be able to craft a range of items , ranging from single use items such as different kinds of food to ropes,bricks ,clothing and weapons.I have seen videos of people playing Gary's Mod and I love the idea of being able to cobble structures and functional items together using a range of items.
Update time :)
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Further to the last video I posted(a good 30 days or so back) , I have started integrating the sfx and music that I received from one of the amazingly talented artists that has been collaborating with me !
The audio levels still need adjusting but I like the direction its heading in In addition to that I really need to get to work on a new and improved water shader !
I spent the morning doing some more programming and replacing the blue debug sphere with a floating hand. The hand turns green when it is collides with a surface :) There is some glitchy movement in the floating hand when you walk over uneven terrain , that's because the source of the ray cast is the head socket of the player's character.I'll see if I can make a smoothed out version of the sockets vector :P
I also started implementing the custom inventory manager that I made a couple months back, it has a simple debug message representation at the moment but I hope to put together a slick and functional version using the floating hand (I have something sneaky in mind ;) )
On top of this I've managed to squeeze a few extra hours in this week to do more mesh detailing (I have the most amazing and patient girlfriend ....EVER ) *Renders attached*
Last but not least I've got some more good news ! A very talented concept artist has joined the team ! (its grown from only me to 4 people now :O Its very humbling to work with such talented artists :) ) He's a recent graduate of the Feng Zhu School of Design and is already hard at work , producing concepts and rotations for the rest of us to model from
Let me know what you think !
Best Regards and Much Love
MrNexy
I've also ordered a Razer Hydra to experiment with and if all is well in the world I'd like to include support for it in the next Pre-Alpha release :)
I've attached a low-res version of some of the work that the concept artist sent me recently , please consider the following WIP and subject to change.
MrNexy
Back with another update , I wanted to share some concept art with you and give you a run down of whats been developed and whats still in the pipeline.
@Thaumaturge - Thank you very much for the support <3
- The player now grows hungry and thirsty at different rates , once the hunger or thirst is too high the player begins to lose health.At the moment the player can regain health and stave off hunger and thirst by collecting water and dates , this system will expand to include other food items some of which will change the rate at which you grow hungry or thirsty. At the moment the UI consists of debug messages that spawn in front of the player at the appropriate time , UI is a tricky thing to design for in VR.
- Groundwork for the crafting system has been laid out and there should be a prototype done by weeks end, expect to see a video update once this is done !
- Various mesh assets have been detailed and there is quite a back log of meshes , all of them awaiting detailing and texturing in Zbrush.
- More concept art is in the works ranging from player designs to starting area and creature designs, right now there are only sketches and thumbnails for those but once they're more fleshed out you can be sure that they'll be shared with all :)
I do hope that you all enjoy the concept art below and if you’re interested please feel free to track the project on Facebook and Twitter , more updates are coming and myself and the other team members love the feedback :)
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/Atajrubah
Twitter : http://twitter.com/NexyMedia
NPC Guard Concept:
In Atajrubah you are able to build outposts in the desert to use as home bases,store your equipment in, raise animals and farm food in.
The world is a dangerous place though and to keep whats yours yours , you may have to hire guards to defend your outpost,escort you through dangerous areas or maybe just the bazaar.For this there will be an easy to use tiered guard system.
Coastal City Environment Concept:
An updated dynamic piece created by the concept artist to illustrate a coastal city , a new environment for the player to explore as one of the stretch goals of the soon to be launched funding campaign.
I did a rift demo on the 28th of August and invited the IGN ME guys to come check it out , to my surprise it turned out that they came to interview me about my game and not the Rift.It was a very humbling experience and I wasn't at all prepared for the interview so please let me know if I sound like a douche :3
http://me.ign.com/en/feature/14974/meet-atajrubah-the-middle-east-themed-game-for-the-oculus-rift
-MrNexy
While there is so much more that I wish I could have ready before another pre-alpha release , I am long overdue to put another build out there. I’ve set a tentative release date of the 24th October for the pre-alpha v 0.2 .
I like the idea of these 2 week crunch cycles , while I don’t get quite as much sleep as I would like (who does ? ;) ) I feel they really help me focus on getting stuff done come hell or high water :)
Now on to the change log !
Change Log - 10/13/2013
[Models]
Arrow
Rough Stone Hammer
Waterskin
Furnace
[Crafting Recipes]
Arrow
Rough Stone Hammer
Slingshot
Waterskin
[Coding]
- Optimized AI NavNode collection.AI now searches for NavNodes within a certain distance and adds those to its list of known nodes.This also applies to palm trees and their respective nodes.
- Dates can be ‘farmed’ by interacting with Palm trees once you’ve crafted a [ Rough Stone Hammer.]Each one contains a random number of dates with a maximum of 6 , after all the palm’s dates have been ‘farmed’ they will regenerate after a random cool down period of up to 2 minutes.
- Water can also be collected from Wells once you have crafted a [Waterskin].Each Well has a random amount of water and once it is expended the Well will dry up, use with care and take only what you need !
- Boulder’s can be mined for [Rough Stone] with a random maximum number mine able , once expended Boulders are destroyed.
- Coded Furnace with preliminary crafting functionality(requiring further refinement).
[R&D]
-Day/Night Cycles
- Razer Hydra Integration
- Improved Terrain , streaming.
What are the next couple days reserved for ?
- Debugging
- Rebuilding NavMesh Paths
- Refining the demo for IGNCon on Friday the 18th & Saturday the 19th.
I’ll finish this update off with some of the concept art that Irsyad(as always the best and most generous concept artist ever !) has prepared for me to print out for IGNCon .The prints turned out great and I look forward to posting pics from my trip in the next update.
Best Regards and Much Love
Mr.Nexy
I've been crazy busy working on the new build of Atajrubah and preparing for a Steam Greenlight page and IndieGoGo campaign launch for later this month. I just wanted to share the new trailer with you wonderful people <3
I’m back with another long overdue update on the state of development for Atajrubah. Before I get into update details I’d like to give you a recap of the events of the past month or so.
[ATAJRUBAH GREENLIT !]
Myself and the team are very happy to announce Atajrubah has been Greenlit!
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support in helping make this happen.We understand that we still have a lot to prove, that the road ahead is long and will be filled with challenges.We are humbled and grateful for all the support that you have shown us. We hope that you’ll stick around as we march on with development.
[COMICON]
On the 3rd and 4th of April I was fortunate enough to get some space at Comicon Dubai to demo Atajrubah and the Rift.While I didn't take many pictures I certainly had a great time and I’m very grateful to all of those that made the trip to Dubai and stopped by the stand.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the folks over at AlterEgo, they’re an awesome locally based Anime production company who allowed me to share their booth space. You can find more information about these amazing folks at the link below.
[AlterEgo Productions]
https://www.facebook.com/Alteregoabudhabi
[Torkaizer] (The first Arab Anime)
[ENGINE UPGRADE]
Up until last month Atajrubah was being developed using the Unreal Development Kit or UDK. While the UDK is still a very capable tool-set it has a number of technical limitations that were hindering areas of production.
Last month Epic launched the newest iteration of the Unreal Engine with full source code access and many other improvements. I have been considering switching engines for a while and had been in the process of looking into using CryEngine when this news was announced.Due to a number of factors I have decided to switch to Unreal Engine 4 for continued development of Atajrubah. You can find some early in-engine screenshots attached to the post :)
[CROSS-PLATFORM AVAILABILITY]
In addition to a plethora of graphical improvements the new Engine will also allow me to deploy the game to more platforms than originally planned. I’m excited to announce that Atajrubah will be made available for Windows,Linux/SteamOS and Mac with the possibility of future support for the next generation of Android micro-consoles.
[CLOSED BETA ACCESS]
So when can you expect to get your hands on a newer build of the game ? Over the coming months myself and the team will be working towards a closed Online Beta, if all is well in the world we should be launching this closed Beta for testing around mid-late August.
[EARLY ACCESS]
Moving beyond the closed Beta we’re hoping to launch Atajrubah through Steam’s Early Access program at the end of November. I think its important for the team and myself to state why we’re doing this and what our intentions are. When we launch Early Access we hope to have the core gameplay elements in place, we do not intend to be in Early Access for longer than 12 months.
We do not see Early Access as a way to make money off of our game while it is incomplete. It is a support structure that allows us to develop the game in a more sustainable way while gathering valuable feedback from players. We get help funding the continued development of the game, you get a game that is constantly evolving and being polished at a deeply discounted rate and your feedback helps shape the final release. Making your thoughts,ideas and feedback an important part of how the game is developed !
[GUI,ART ASSETS & MULTIPLAYER]
Even though I’m currently in the process of making the switch from UDK to UE4 and do not plan on continuing to update the UDK version of the game, I wanted to share with you some of the work that was being done on the GUI.
Over the course of a week or so I took the time to design and code a drag-drop inventory system. It works as you would expect, you can drag and drop items that you’ve picked up, use items that restore hunger/health/thirst levels and equip items in-hand or any of the other body slots.
In addition to the Inventory GUI I also put together a new indicator icon pictured above in the bottom left corner of the screenshot. The strip in the middle represents your health with your hunger and thirst being indicated on the right and left respectively. The yellow outline indicates your over-all body fat content which is something that I plan on implementing in future updates.
Multiplayer functionality was also updated and is now compatible with Steam’s Server Browser and a rudimentary in-game server browser that allows you to see,host and join Atajrubah games being hosted online !
Dan has been working hard on creating modular pieces that he can use to rapidly put together whole buildings. The results of his work are impressive to say the least and I’m very happy with how the buildings are coming together. They are wholly explore able spaces that we plan to populate with NPCs and everyday items. As it stands we have a large back-log of items to get textured and in game, now that we have a good workflow for creating buildings we can focus on putting together the player starting area.
[CONCLUSION]
Myself and the team are really excited about pushing development forward over the months leading up to closed online Beta. The following areas will be overhauled and polished making for a much stronger core gameplay experience :
- Story Elements
- Environment and World Design.
- User Interface Design and Functionality.
- SQL Integration for Player and World persistence.
- Character and Creature Animation.
- NPC and Creature AI.
- Crafting,Construction and Survival Mechanics.
- Sound Design and Scoring.
Thank you all so much for your support, you can find more updates for the game by following me on twitter or liking our Facebook page. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to connect with us because we want to hear from you !
Best Regards and Much Love
Mr.Nexy and the Atajrubah Team
Somehow I kind of feel that getting Greenlit was easier than getting this update written hahaha :P
I'm working on another update article with plenty of content, in the mean time I wanted to drop by and share some screenshots with you wonderful folks :D
The past two weeks have been spent working on a solid landscape material and setting up foliage meshes with LOD. After some plenty of experimentation and some forum time with the folks at Unreal Engine, I've got a flexible and extensible landscape material setup with a pallet of 50 colors with which to paint the landscape. In addition to this I added feint moving clouds to break up the start blue sky.
Let me know your thoughts.
-MrNexy
You too can enjoy the sweltering heat of Atajrubah for .... far less than the cost of a ticket to these parts costs :3 Bring plenty of water !
New Team Members
Before we get stuck into the details of what’s been going on since the last update, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our new team members. They're all fantastically talented and I can't wait to share their work with you all!
Tien Chi is our new concept artist and he’s been hard at work creating all sorts of concepts for us to work from.
Portfolio: http://www.artoftienchi.com/portfolio.html
Dan Hitchen is our new Character Artist and he has taken on the task of overhauling Atajrubah’s character assets.
Portfolio: http://www.danhitchen3d.co.ukJeremy
Davidson is a talented and experienced rigger and animator and he'll be handling the rigging and animation needs for the project.
Portfolio: http://jezdavo.blogspot.ae/p/portfolio.html
Comparison Video
Below you will find a comparison video showing just how much of a difference there is between the prototype made previously in the UDK and the current version of the game in Unreal Engine 4.
[Comparison Video : Atajrubah UDK Vs Atajrubah Unreal Engine 4]
Technical and Programming
I have been working on a wide range of things this past month. A great deal of my focus has been in the following areas:
- Hunger/Thirst System (Code re-integration and improvement from prototype)
- Inventory Manager (Code re-integration and improvement from prototype)
- Death and Respawn System (Complete re-write)
- Player/World interactions (Overlapping Actors and Trace based)
- UI R&D (Epic have chosen not to use Scaleform for UI in UE4 , so I have been shopping around for a new API)
- Player Character State Machine and Root Motion based movement.
- Day/Night Controller improvements.
- Underwater post process effects & Player buoyancy.
- Stamina System and improved player movement mechanics
Over the coming weeks I will be focusing more on Player/World interactions as well as UI research and integration. Once this work is done I can go about re-integrating and improving on both the crafting and drag-drop inventory systems that I had in the prototype.
Character Assets,Rigging and Animation Test
Dan Hitchen has finished texturing the game ready mesh for the male player character. In addition to that he has just handed off a game ready female character mesh for rigging.Once Dan.H has completed the textures for the female character mesh he will begin work on clothing assets with concepts supplied by Tien Chi.
We have chosen to go with fairly neutral features, this will allow us to go either way in terms of skin tone and facial features during character generation and allow for a degree of player customization.
Jeremy has finished rigging the male character and has been hard at work further refining the rig, we have been doing tests and working out any kinks in our animation pipeline.Once we have all the kinks ironed out Jeremy will get stuck into building the animation library.
[Male Player Character : Game Ready Mesh Textured ]
[Female Player Character: High Resolution Sculpt]
[Character Rig]
[Early Character Animation Test
Art Assets
Dan Reese has been hard at work detailing art assets that the world of Atajrubah will be populated with.
[Art Assets]
Concept Art
Tien Chi has been hard at work creating awesome environmental and creature concepts for us. recently he has created a prop sheet for us to use in the creation of ruin assets and will create an environment concept painting , this should be completed before the week is at an end and will help guide us as we work on the environment art.
[Ghul Concept Art]
[Ghul Second Form Concept Art]
[Oasis Environment Concept]
[Environment Concept Art: Ruins Prop Sheet]
Conclusion
Atajrubah has come a long way in just a few short months and the community has grown substantially even at such an early stage. Thank you for taking the time to read this update and check out the images and videos, we've got some exciting things happening and the next couple months should see a lot of progress. As always feedback is always welcome.
Best Regards and Much Love
Mr.Nexy and the Atajrubah Team
I just wanted to drop by and share a mini-update with you before I take a break over the weekend :)
- Our environment artist Dan.R attended the Austin Dev meetup and I hear tell a great time was had by all.
He'll be starting work on the ruin environment assets that we posted concept art for in the update above :)
- Our character artist Dan.H has also been hard at work on our initial set of player character models , these have been handed off to the Rigger/Animator Jeremy and are all set for the first animation pass. I've included a render of the characters that Dan.H sent me today , rendered in Marmoset ofcourse. Dan.H will also begin work on some clothing items for the male character shortly
- Atajrubah v 0.1 was uploaded to steam for distribution to the team members yesterday, its the first build of the game that has been uploaded to our steam depot since the UE4 prototype hence the 0.1 version number. I'll be updating that build every 1-2 weeks depending on how much gets done, its still in a rough stage and there are some issues that we'll be addressing over the coming updates.
- As I mentioned above Jeremy is getting a start on the first animation pass, covering all the critical locomotion animations that will be used by our bipedal characters. Myself and the other team members are all very eager to see these character come to life :)
- Tien has begun work on some new clothing designs for the male player characters, I'll be sharing these in the thread and in our update post as I get them.
That's about it for the time being really. If anyone here wants access to the v 0.1 build to have a look around ,follow development,find all our failings or see what its like inside the Rift please feel free to add as a friend on steam as MrNexy.
Please do let us know your thoughts :)
Best Regards and Much Love
Mr.Nexy and the Atajrubah Team
I just wanted to pop by and share some of the work that my character artist Dan Hitchen has been doing ^^
This is Dan's interpretation of the Ghul taking some inspiration from Tien's concept art but taking it somewhere a lot creepier and in keeping with the style of the work he has done for the project thus far.
Dan has just delivered the game-ready mesh for rigging with a basic AO and Normal Map, he should be digging into the texturing side of things this week(including alpha maps for the clothing).
Please do let me know your thoughts on this :D
Best Regards and Much Love
MrNexy
I wanted to drop by and share some screenshots with you of the Ghul in engine. Its been a while since there was any AI in the game and I'm slowly starting to get it back in there and debugged. Hopefully I'll have some video to show soon , please do let me know your thoughts.
Best Regards and Much Love
MrNexy
But seriously the detail on that model is amazing, well done!
BTW you guys using blueprints/C++ or a mix?
Dan Hitchen is crazy talented.
Seeing as I'm the only programmer I'm using both. Custom classes and functions are created in C++ then exposed to blueprints, the same goes for base classes. I also use blueprints to prototype functionality and later move them to C++.
On the UI side of things I'm using UMG for the menu based stuff and a standard HUD BP. Inventory management is a bit of a tough one at the moment, in the UDK version of the game I was using Scaleform to make use of the Drag-Drop interface that I wrote using ActionScript and Flash. UE4 doesn't have Scaleform integrated so I'm doing some back and forth with a contact at Autodesk to see if there is something that we can sort out. I hear that their Unity plugin is $290-ish so I'm hopeful.
I have explored other UI options but UMG isn't documented well enough for me to be able to put what I want together. There are also issues with CoherantUI,VaQuoleUI and RadiantSDK being JavaScript and HTML5 based. JavaScript is as close to OOP as its going to get. However unless you're a seasoned veteran using it for web development you are going to have a bad time.
During the day Ghuls tend to hide in dark places emerging at night, not haplessly searching for the player but rather more hunting and setting traps for them. In Atajrubah they tend to collect things from their victims as trophies. Knives,clothing,armor etc. If a Ghul happens to have a weapon they will make use of it, I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that they are particularly masterful. That said though it only takes a slash or stab with a blade to cause some serious damage.
If a Ghul doesn't have a weapon then they will use their hands to attack the player with their sharpened nails, biting is also something that they'll do.
This opens up the door for introducing infections and disease to the player.While they may not die immediately it can become a challenge fairly quickly.
I hope this goes some way to answering your question :)
I don't think referring to your lore addresses the problem I was pointing out: When I look at that enemy, as a player in the moment, I have no clues to guide my expectations of what that thing is going to do. If it's going to bite and slash, then I'd expect to see longer arms and fingers, scarier teeth, etc. If an enemy is going to infect me with something, I'd expect to have elements immediately identifiable from a long way away that would clue me in to that specific danger - venom/toxins streaming from its mouth or clouds of flies and miasma particle effects around it, etc.
Right now, that enemy looks like something I should try to talk to, but the way it's standing doesn't make that feel like a good idea either... Compare the feral ghouls in Fallout 3 to their friendlier NPC brethren for an idea of what I'm trying to emphasise here... I guess if there was a more concrete expectation of gameplay elements, then you'd be designing stuff with that in mind? If you are, it's not obvious right now. It sounds like you're listing things that you want as features in the future, rather than stuff you know the Ghul has to achieve as an asset.
[Ghul State Machine Test]
[Ghul Patrol Nodes]
[Ghul Follow Player Initial Implementation]
This is where I believe we may disagree with regards to design. Design is indeed crucial when it comes to all things game related, the design should stay relevant to the style of the game and over designing would be the equivalent of a stage actor telegraphing their every move while shooting a film. It may look dramatic but its not necessarily going to work well. There are cases where there is information that one doesn't want to spell out for the player with visual detail, information that is best portrayed with a combination of visual style and manner of movement.
Though the game is stylized there are some things that I want to keep grounded in reality more or less, with regards to the biting and slashing by looking at the character you can clearly tell that its not the picture of cleanliness. You can also reference information about human bites having a high risk of infection below, never mind what a bite from that thing's mouth would do.
[Information on Human Bites]
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000035.htm This is most certainly not the case, there is thought and design behind the Ghul and all the other assets that have been created thus far. My style of design and development may not be as traditional or as micro-managed as most but coming from a film and vfx background I could liken it to shooting a documentary. If you force things too much then you run the risk of it feeling disingenuous and unnatural (in the case of the Ghul, unnatural is a fitting term I suppose).
There are other factors that need to be taken into account, myself and the other team members haven't been paid yet for the time that we've invested thus far. When it comes to design and implementation we don't have guidelines that are as strict as a good deal of developers may, we know what direction we want to head in and with a few guidelines we head in that direction.
Having this sort of creative freedom has worked out well for us thus far and keeps the team members productive and happy even under tough circumstances.That said though we do take the time to do due diligence on whatever task we do tackle.
The team and I are primarily working on the kind of game that we want to play, its more open world and is less structured but still has some story elements.
I do of course respect your opinion and you have some very good points, I'm not above admitting that there is still a way to go before the game is complete.
@dislekcia As usually your scratching deeper and trying to understand what makes a game tick is once again awesome to observe.
I prefer having dyslekcia "dysekt" (tm) my game and provide valuable insight and a perspective that is usual very detailed and relevant as opposed to someone just saying wow dude, this is just awesome, which does not question or provide any feedback that can be considered valuable and possibly improve upon the overall experience. (not saying you don't appreciate it here - just a general observation). I just wish I had some real constructive criticism to provide without sounding like a jealous troll... haha.
So an interesting observation and a comprehensive response here. Keep making awesome games guys (and gals) and providing the feedback necessary to make local devs push those boundaries. Very excited about this game, this space in general, and our vibrant local community.
The ghul model looks scarier when it does that crouch-roar, although the stretching of the face feels really comical. The mouth is opening too wide and you're not doing much to make that as scary as it could be: Imagine if the ghul's lower lip slid down over its jaw and the whole lower jaw jutted out past the (now less strained) lip line; Or, maybe having the ghul's cheeks be obviously ripped and shredded would allow the stretching to feel more natural and also telegraph how strange this thing's mouth structure really is, creepy++.
That walk animation has got some slide going on there, speed it up/slow down the forward speed? I'm assuming you're going to add in some blending and acceleration/deceleration around the sprinting animation, right? The sprinting speed seems pretty scary though, definitely more alien than it looks when not moving. This would terrify me as a project philosophy... To use your documentary analogy, it seems like you're spending time on the credits and visual theming of the lighting setup rather than, y'know, actually filming source material to cut together. In games, resources have tangible weight. What happens when you get around to implementing combat and the way the ghuls move no longer makes sense because mobbing the player is less fun than a tiered engagement system that puts some enemies directly in front of the player, more to slightly behind those and the excess circling around at a distance to set up flanks? Basically - if combat is just swinging a thing every once in a while, that's not a properly fleshed out mechanic, so building content to interact with that mechanic before you really know what it is is probably going to make changing that mechanic later on something you're not going to want to do.
Just listen to your inertia right now that's playing in your head: You're hearing me critique your ghul model and you're going "What does this guy know? We've put a lot of unpaid time into this and he wants it changed now? Why? We can't do that!" - my point is, maybe you're going to need to. And making that call is going to be harder now, much harder than if your ghul was just a capsule that chased you. Focusing on the looks of the capsule doesn't help you make it chase you in interesting ways, but once you've got interesting (and probably emergent) behavior coming out of that, then you'll have a ton of stuff to base that ghul's looks on to make it really unsettling/uncanny/worrying/tragic/whatever-you-want-players-to-feel. By all means, explore, but explore in the axis that's not going to make your later explorations of a different kind even harder to do.
P.S. Unpaid time? Ye gads man, don't spend that time making the most expensive parts of a game - make the cheap bits first.
You can find my response here:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/282960/announcements/detail/163582966674738934
Anyway I'm rambling . Game looks very cool. We have a potential backer who is wanting oculous support. Its the way of the future I guess.
Sorry man, I think the best thing for Atajrubah right now would be to really SHOW what gameplay is like. The core stuff, even if with cubes and blobs.
Edit: That said, that response you posted was great, kudos for not turning a shitty situation worse like so many have, and it's certainly earned you and the game some respect points. Though at the end of the day, I wouldn't have been happy with paying $15 to see what he saw. It had to do with the "game", not so much promises (which also weren't there)
You had access to a community of like-minded developers that could have helped test your game and give you feedback about the EA-readiness. What made this place a resource that you didn't want to use?
I feel like your response to the video, while commendable for not behaving like a 5 year old (this should totally not be a thing) doesn't really address the issue that Sterling has with the game: Even if everything in it worked the way you wanted it to, would it be worth the $15 price tag? You're responding very much from your own perspective of the game, to a reviewer whose interest has been poorly rewarded - there's really not much from their perspective that informs about where the game is going to grow or how it will improve. And you can't convey that with text, you have to deliver with the game. I'm not quite sure how to turn this into a thing you can use to your advantage (it feels like it's basically an opportunity burned) but I'd need to think about it a bit more, maybe there's inspiration somewhere.