The Cast List. Now looking pretty.

Another long one here. The last couple of weeks from my end have been on the characters; our spiders and ever patient Dwarven hero, who had been sitting on the sidelines for far too long.

Firstly, our spiders. The problem I discussed here a couple of weeks ago has been fixed. While still not 100% sure what the problem was, I narrowed it down enough so I could fix it. The main issue was with the .fbx export, where the skin were coming away from the spider bones on one side. The bones still animated the legs, but because the legs were off line with them, the legs animated into the spider. I'm pretty sure that this was due to way the spider was modeled. Not everything was fully attached, and the legs and torso objects were separate meshes. Though why this only affected the legs on one side, I still don't know.

But that's been fixed now. The spider had to remodelled in places so it forms one complete mesh, with each vertice connected, extra edge loops added to the leg joints as well as numerous other minutia that's far too boring to go into. Unfortunately this meant that after all that had been done, it had to re-rigged and re-animated which took up more of our ever decreasing time.

So we now have two different types of spiders, with the brown one pictured above a slightly flatter version of the smaller ones. A simple material was added to each to give them some distinction. In future for my own portfolio of work I will probably add a more detailed material, with eyes, fangs and more stylish abdomen, but with the view point of this game being the way it is, none of these features would be visible. So for time reasons, the spiders have been left as they are.



On to our character. With the deadline being the way it was, it was felt that we didn't have time to rig and animate an entirely new model. I attempted rigging Paul M's Dwarf character, but editing the envelopes was taking a lot of my time up, and I would not have been able to get that done in time. So a simple dwarf character was found online here that was already rigged and animated, which saved us at least a couple of days work and allowed me to focus on character equipment and stats.

Of course, things are never that easy, as the .fbx version of the Dwarf was missing his head.

One of those bizarre problems. But it could be worked around. The dwarf character also came with .obj versions of the model (which is simply the unanimated mesh). From this file, I detached his head and brought it into the .fbx version of the file. To this file, I then added some head bones, skinned them to the head and then attached both the bones and head to the headless dwarf. Amazingly, this all worked out perfectly.

This character came already with all the animations we needed and some extras too which was great, and saved me days of work.


Following this post will be another one, going more in-depth into the character and equipment mounting.

More Environment, Attacking Dynamics and Spider Crawling

All sorts of things have happened since my last blog. So here's one super blog.


The environment is properly up and running now, with lighting, particles systems and clearer textures. All the edges needed to be smoothed so the textures could be painted on and look correct, not skewed like they were before. Lighting really brought the mood we were talking about when designing the game. It really turned it from looking like a 3D programme to looking like an actual game.

The fighting mechanics are up and running, making some liberal use of state machines. All work was done with a demo skeleton found for free on the asset store (a pretty nice pack which can be found here). This was mainly done so we could prototype as much of the code as possible, with animations as well.
The code was also done up in a way where anything that could be summed up into a variable was, so hopefully once we start bring in .CSV files to store all our statistic information, that will help with the work load later on.

We haven't had a chance to demo the character attacking animations yet, but everything else with the character code is working, bar a few GUI additions. A navigation grid was brought in to help with pathfinding (the enemies also make use of this). Once that was added, the camera follow script needed to be changed to get it back to the way it was, which ended up actually improving the control of it.
Attacking works with a simple click and raycasting, which is the method used for all control of the character (such as picking up items and eventually, using levers, etc) to keep it all as coherent as possible.


At the moment, I'm working on our first enemy, the spider. After a day or so spent modelling and animating it (learning how to rig it was the hardest part, my 'ctrl Z' keys are in tatters), I've brought it into Unity and am encountering a few problems, mainly with the animations not being as clear as they are in 3DS Max. But the good news is that they are importing and working with the code.

The above is the Spider in the middle of its attack animation. As you can see, some of the legs actually move into the Spider's abdomen while doing so, which doesn't happen in 3DS Max. Something similar happens during its walk cycle as well.
Though as least these are all cosmetic problems, which I'm confident of finding a fix within a few days.

Character Modelling

Hey all, this past week I have been character modelling. I spent quite a lot of time building my own character from scratch, by following youtube tutorials. The model was ok but very messy in parts and almost unfixable, vertices and polygons all over the place. So after this ordeal I decided to begin editing a pre-existing character model I had into a little dwarf looking fella, here he is:

He isn't fantastic looking but he's getting there. He needs to be smooth looking. While admittedly the detail required for this particular model isn't huge, I still want it looking as good as I can make it, with the time that I have. As you can see I have started texturing the model now, and then I need to make animations for the characters various states. An update in the form of a post about animation will be coming soon, so stay tuned.

Stay classy, Paul M.

3D Modelling Pt. 2

So another week, another weeks worth of models created. As it stands at the moment I have made over 20 models now for the game and counting. There's still a number of models left to make which I'll be tipping away at. Here are some examples of what I have done over the past week:

Lantern:

Treasure Chest:

Battered Rectangular Table:

^ For some reason a lot of the detail in this model is not rendering, don't know why.

So it's been a pretty productive week modelling wise. I have gotten a lot done. Not only have I made a huge chunk in the static objects that needed to be made, I began work on items that are interacted with, such as the treasure chest above, varieties of potions, and a lever. There are still important items to be made, in particular weaponry, but for the moment my focus has changed to creating the main character, the Dwarf. First opportunity I get I will be starting work on him, and he will be a bad ass. He'll be as strong and haughty as a true Dwarf should be.

Next week, I will have some screens of the character to show, so watch this space.

Stay classy, Paul M.

3D Modelling

So over the past couple of days I have begun creating some 3D models. I'm currently working through a list of 3D models which includes various mining equipment, furniture, rubble and stone etc. Here are a couple of models I have completed so far...

Campfire:

Minecart:

Barrel:

I have a couple other models made too, different types of rubble, a torch, a round table with many more models to come. There's still many more models on the list to work through. Thankfully I've become very comfortable using 3D Studio Max, and I feel that I am growing in confidence with my ability to use it. I have found it quite enjoyable thus far creating these models and look forward to creating more 3D models and completing the list that we have, and more. I'll undoubtedly be blogging about this again soon, posting pictures of newer models and progress I have made, so watch this space.

Stay classy, Paul M

Environment Ver. 2 & Making it Interactive

This week I've been mostly working on the Environment again, modelling the large items integral to the level and honing the rest of it. All modelling work thus far has been in 3D Studio Max.

I was reluctant to use this programme because it is PC only but I gave in and installed Windows 7 on a Bootcamp partition on my Mac over the weekend. Predictably this took almost two full days to do due to the usual Windows related technical problems, but the initial awkwardness should be worth it. This will make the group's workflow more streamlined from now on, as we are all now working in the same modelling environment and it is on all college computers.

The main part of this is the broken bridge. This is an integral part of the level and its storyline, as it is the cause of the orc group being separated and means our hero has to venture into a deeper (and scarier) part of the level to circumvent it.
Integrating it with the Unity Terrain editor was initially flagged as a potential problem, but it turned out to fit in perfectly on the first go.
The bridge was created unbroken initially and then broken manually in 3D Studio Max.


As well as the Environment, I've been working on some other prototypes.

The first prototype is a simple pickables script, where the character is able to interact with items, pick up weapons and potions. This was easy to implement, with a function OnMouseDown()doing most of the work. Integrating this with Petr's Inventory and GUI code however will be the difficult part.

As well as this, a simple enemy AI script was created based on Vectors, with a working prototype at the moment with a cube chasing our ever valiant capsule hero, stopping when it reaches a certain distance to him. It also looks at our character as it moves around.

Audio (Soundtrack)

So I thought that as we are working on a game that is inspired by the likes of Baldur's Gate and Diablo, why not do a version of one of these themes for ours?



So I'm thinking the Baldur's Gate theme, why not? It's sweeping and epic, and thankfully very easy to play on guitar so I've learned! So combining guitar emblazoned with effects, and Petr's idea to add war drums to give a big fight feel, this should result in something suitably epic and fitting.

Also some other ideas I got knocking around for the soundtrack, mostly for just wandering through the environment are inspired by the likes of The Dark Knight's Joker theme, and cave music from the Pokemon game series. True story. Sounds ridiculous, but it'll work. Trust me. ;)

More to come soon, Paul M