Holiday Scraps

I will be trying to do more digital and traditional art over the semester break, so come back with a cold beer (or a cold orange juice if your young or don't like beer) and glance at the blog when you've got time.

It's ok, i'll wait here for you.

Bullet: Post Mortem

What went right:

With the team spread out on different schedules we used web based technologies such as Pivotal Tracker, Google Wave, MSN, and even Team Fortress 2 to keep in touch, share ideas and get instant feedback.

Rapid pre-vis: Many of our ideas lived and died as scrawly 2d sketches, or as finger drawings on the circle table at 2am. This helped us to either pursue an idea further in Unity, add it to the Icebox for later, or dump the idea totally. Originally we had a more realistic environment that the bullet could explore in, but this proved too time consuming, which then lead us to the 3D 8Bit theme, created in layers in photoshop using our colour palette and created in Unity using our Qblock replica

The menu system was spawned in one of those 2am circle discussions, where we thought it would be cool to have an infinatly dropping menu. It ended up looking OK in the prototype so we ran with it.
Nic and Tyson did an amazing job coding the game, as what seemed like a never ending vomit of problems were eventually solved through many late nights

The final product has really given all of us a great sense of achievement, as the original pitch being "explode stuff & score big points" has still been the primary focus and we're glad it shows in the gameplay.

What went wrong:

Alot. You can find the details at
https://wave.google.com/wave/#restored:search:in%253Ainbox,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252BruXF0zufA

What we would do again and where to from now:

It was such an awesome experience that the learning process in making Bullet will help us in creating better games, whether it is to continue to improve the game we have or start with a new idea, and as far as next semester goes, we might be looking at big, better and more bad ass games before the end (and the course) is finished.

I think what we definitely will be doing again is trying to keep our time management consistent, I believe we did great for a team of three and we were able to reach deadlines fairly well. A well-oiled machine is better that a rusty one (O_o)

Achievement Unlocked: completed semester 1 of 3rd year.

So after a tough week of finishing up on CGI environments and Bullet, today has ended nicely with projects from both team and personal have been sent off to be scrutinized tomorrow.
After a quick post-mortem on the game, i think a well deserved coma is in need (not only for me, but for every person in 3rd Yr games design.

stay tuned to personal works ill be doing on the uni break.

CGI Environment Final Render (smaller size):

Progress Report 13/6/2010

Last week of the first semester! It has gone by so quickly, soon enough it'll be November and i'll be scrabbling to find a job (O_o). CGI environment and the Bullet game are the remaining assignment, and both will leave a sense of achievement after this week.
CGI priorities:
-texture houses
-lighting
-last refinements
-render.

Bullet Game priorities:
-create few more assets for temple level
-last bits of refinement.

Less talk, more pics this week.

Progress Report

Got the roofs done on my enviroment, but looks like ill be finishing this bastard child at uni, my computer won't put up with me anymore. A few more bits to refine in Bullet, mainly the levels. So basically just juggling those priorities this week before both subjects are due the next week.

Progress report:

And in words of NPH:

Menu Funsies

So *sings* "IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!" to the end of the uni semester, and Bullet is looking tops, for Nic and Tyson, the priority is to do winter game-cleaning, codes are currently being dusted, the addition levels will eventually be polished and put in and all assets will be in the final build.

While that has been going on, my job was to complete the menu assets, HUD design and menu button designs.
The assets made for the menu are part of a fun shooting gallery type menu system, where the player is able to shoot the objects that are located inside the menu box for fun, or get straight into the game's levels or instructions by shooting the buttons. Because this is currently a game that is not going to be shipped, and only shows our abilities in creating a game, a few of the assets made are from other games, this is purely for the novelty of shooting recognizable characters.

Not too long now, check in to see how it goes.

I hate blogs that have no pretties, so here are the menu assets (some are separated through layers):

WIP is still a WIP

Slow but steady. Thought i had lost my work today, im safe from the Maya demons.....for now.
So far: