Homework 7: Blender Animation in the Game Engine

Blender Files located here (.rar format) Click on this link and press 'Ctrl-S' to download the whole .rar file

The video above is an updated version of my previous submission and my submission for assignment 7.

Parenting- While the previous version did have parenting (the empties which added doors and spit to the scene and the camera were parented to my character, Jimbo), this project added an additional empty (called 'throwBall') and a new arm which are parented to Jimbo.

Animation-  The arm that has been parented to Jimbo animates a throwing action and a ball is thrown (from the 'throwBall' empty) when the 'Q' button is pressed.  This is difficult to see in the video (because the quality of the recording is apparently too low), so I have include still of this this process below.

Linking from another file: I linked in an object (a blue tennis ball) from another file. (tennisballfile.blend).  This object is thrown (addObject logic actuator from empty parented to Jimbo) at the same time that the above animation is played.

Materials- I added some materials to my scene. I used a brick material on the Building (the roof has a gravel material, although its not visible in the game) as well as a grass material on the ground.  I did these using UV mapping the UV image editor.

How it fits in our game: Parenting and animation will be integral to our game since our game will likely be in 1st person perspective.  Therefore we do not necessarily need to create a character that can be seen by the player but instead can use a series of animation for arms, weapons and accessories to give the player a sense that they are controlling a character.  Linking will help us stay organized and efficient by allowing us to edit objects that we have placed in our game and having them automatically update in our game.  Materials are used to make our objects more realistic which I believe is very important in horror games. No one is afraid of a tacky haunted house.

Homework 6: Chapter's 4&5

1.  For each of the four elements of the Tetrad, explain how it is addressed by your game. If one of the four elements is not used, please state this. 

• Mechanics- this is how our game is going to be played.  The player will control the character (most likely in first person), navigating around a discoverable map, trying to find locations of interests.  Once the character finds these locations the complete tasks and discover story content.  The player must pay attention to some kind of health (or ward) meter that is attributed to the character. 
• Story-  In our game, the character is a women who awakens in a city after a disastor has occured which leaves the city city destroyed with a mystical fog that surrounds everything except the sanctuary which is protected by a large ward (gem/metal allow/etc...).  The character must navigate the ruins of the city to find other survivors and discover the cause of the fog in order to rebuild society.
• Aesthetics- this is what the what the player experiences.  In our game, the player will feel connected to this post-disaster setting through interaction with scenes which depict broken-down buildings, distraught people, and a dark atmosphere.  The mysterious aspect will be conveyed with strange creatures, spooky music and sound effects, and, of course, the creeping smoke that surrounds the city and threatens the remaining survivors.
• Technology- this game is being created with the Blender game engine, possibly using blender's python programming integration.  No additional technology are planned to be used at this point.

2. Do the four (or less) elements work towards a current theme? 

           I believe so.  Our theme isn't entirely developed at this point, nor does it need to be at this point, according to the book.

 3. In your own words, describe the meaning of a "theme", and how does it differ from an "experience" (see book for examples in Chapters 2 and 5. 

           Theme is the unifying idea that describes the lesson, moral or subtext that should be taken away when you play a game.  The 'experience'  is the tool that game designers use to convey the theme to the players.

4. What is your game's theme? 

        I'm not entirely sure at this point but if I had to venture a "guess" I would say something the lines of "resilience and overcoming fear in the face the unknown for the greater good".

5. What are the elements in your game that are meant to reinforce this theme? 

        The elements of the game are designed to invoke a feeling a fear and hopelessness through ruined cityscape, dark mysterious scenes, creepy music, etc... Neither the player nor the characters of the game know why this is happening and are haunted by a mystical black fog that creeps among remains of a once bustling city and consumes the buildings and people.  The character (and thus the player) must overcome a fear of the unknown to navigate the black fog and overcome this mystical force that they don't understand.

6. What is it about your game that you feel makes it special and powerful?

A combination of strong story development, puzzle and task related levels, and unknown force that both the character and player must discover together.

Homework 5: Game Engine

The Blender file for this assignment can be found here

What I did:
For this assignment I created a scene which includes a floor, a building with a revolving door, a character (named Jimbo) who can create doors in front of him and knock them over with projectile spit.  Jimbo is a amorphous blob character that I created as part of the Blender tutorial offered on lynda.com (available free through FSU Blackboard Secure Apps).  I parented to him, an empty which shoots out a spitball when the spacebar is pressed and a empty which adds a door (the item I created for assignment 3) to the scene when the 'E' key is pressed.  I also created a basic building with a revolving door that is constantly revolving in my scene with an 'always' sensor and actuator which rotate the object on its z-axis.  Jimbo can move only forward and backwards using the 'W' and 'S' keys, respectively.  He can also rotate clockwise and counter-clockwise on his z-axis by pressing the 'A' and 'D' keys, respectively.  In this way he is able to move around the entire map.  You can delete all doors and spitballs from the map by hitting the 'Z' button which ends all of these objects.

The idea behind this project is that Jimbo can setup doors almost like dominoes and then knock them over by spitting at the door closest to him (this is demonstrated in the video).  The revolving door rotates  but the whole building is mostly for aesthetic purposes and doesn't interact with my character.  In addition, I parented a camera to Jimbo so that the game could be played from a first-person perspective (if you switch to camera perspective prior to launching the engine).

How these things relate to our game:  
A level in our game may consist of our character doing a task, discovering story elements, or completing a puzzle.  I thought that the domino simulation that I made for this project could be extended to one of these tasks of puzzles.  Maybe our character would need to place objects in her inventory onto the floor in a particular arrangement or must toss supplies to other survivors across a chasm.  The revolving door represents a dynamic environment in which background objects are moving even if our character is doing nothing.  I also wanted to try parenting the camera to Jimbo in order to play around with ways that I might accomplish a first-person game perspective.

Homework 4: Teamwork

1. Do you love your project/game. If not, how can that be changed? 

 I don't know that I would say that I 'love' my game, mostly because horror is not a favorite genre of mine.  I think it can be changed if we merged styles of other games into our game (like puzzles, or simulators).

2. Does the team as a whole love the project? If not, what can be done? 

I think the team as a whole likes the idea, based solely on the enthusiasm that I see when we meet and discuss game ideas as a team.  My team members seem passionate about getting their ideas for the game included which comes across as a passion for the game.

3. Are the team members communicating with each other?

For the most part, almost all team members respond to group messages in a timely manner and attend our group meetings.  We have one group member who hasn't been responding to messages, missed the last group meeting and who I haven't seen in class recently, so I'm not entirely sure that he's still in the course.

4. Does the team have a regular meeting schedule? What is that schedule? 

Our regular meeting time is on Wednesdays at 3:30pm in Strozier Library 2nd floor.  Right now this is the best time for us to meet as a whole team, but as the game progresses we may have regular sub-group meetings with only certain members of the team to work on particular elements.

5. Describe the modes of communication between the team members. 

We created a facebook group with only the members because it was decided that everyone was most likely to check messages if they were on facebook.  We use this page to schedule meetings, poll group members on decisions, and make announcements pertaining to the game.  We use the game notebook to take notes during our meetings and as a place to put our ideas when we are not together.  We also have most of each others phone numbers in case we need to make more urgent communication.

6. Regarding game documents, what must be remembered while designing your game?

It must be remembered to record all ideas in the game document.  People can't remember everything that they say and you don't want that gem of an idea you had while talking about your game over a beer to be forgotten just because you didn't write it down and forgot about.  Also, recording all ideas allows you see all ideas that were presented and combine ideas that may not have worked individually but work well together.
Also, the game document is an important part of communicating with your team members.  Everyone puts their ideas on the document, including text/pictures/video/blender files which demonstrate these ideas.  Other group members use these ideas and included media to shape their own idea (for example, members who are modeling characters/objects in the game might look to the artists' interpretation of the game universe (through drawing/videos/etc..) to determine what style their models should adhere to).

Homework 3

For this assignment (click here for the .blend file), I created a door.  I started with a cube, scaled it to the appropriate dimensions, and then subdivided the object.  I deleted everything to the left of the z-axis and behind the y-axis and applied a mirror modifier so that not only would the left and right sides of the door be symmetrical, but also the front and back. I extruded specific regions of the quarter-prism, scaled, transformed, and extruded again to create the panel-effect that is seen on many doors.

 Next, I created a doorknob for the door. Starting a with UV sphere, I removed circular faces from the top and bottom of the sphere. On top, I cut another sphere in half, extruding and transforming it to shape the button/lock/ornament of the know.  On the bottom, I added a cylinder and the top half of a UV sphere to create the handle and door attachment.  These elements were joined together after color was added.

Finally, I decided to add some effects to the door to make it look like its been through some tough times.  I created a cube with fractal subdivisions and used a Boolean modifier to take this fractal chunk out of the top corner of the door.  I also used a landscape mesh (ANT landscape plugin) and the Boolean modifier to create a crack in the door.

In our horror game, the main character navigates the 'ruins' of a post-disaster city to find other survivors who may have taken shelter in the city's tattered remaining buildings.  Therefore the effects on the door (the missing chunk, crack) , represent the state that this city is currently in.  You might imagine these doors lying in rubble next to a building, or barely hanging on its hinges, or perhaps scarred with the markings of some creature that may lurk behind it.  In horror games, a door can symbolize the character's fear of whats on the other side.