Some of my 3DS Max Work

OK so on entering this course in September 2013 I had NO idea about 3D modeling, but through lectures with Dave Pimm and through my own research (and occasionally hitting random buttons) I have managed to get a grip on the basics. Bellow are a few of the things I have made, I have tried to keep the in order of creation

This is my first full mesh, it was from a tutorial in a lecture on how to make a tie advanced from the Star Wars series

Theses are my 5 assets that I made for my first assignment paired with reference material and Poly count

Bellow is a combination of techniques that we learned in one go, how to make cross section assets (trees in the case) for LOD etc, scattering them on a warped plain and alpha texturing (so you can see through the branches of the tree)

This was a lighting rig I made with some of my previous assets imported to test it out 

And most recently this was a quick 300 poly land speeder put together and textured for a demonstration on how to import assets to unity, when making this the only issue I had was that I didn't change the object name away from box 1, other than this the model was a game ready asset with no x view issues. I did however run out of time texturing hence the funny black and blue crosses on the engines.

Remediation

A few weeks ago we had a lecture on "Remediation". This put another way from bellow is using techniques from one type of media to use in another, for example using the video camera to film a stage production or play. Taken from the perspective of the audience with a static mounted camera and focused on where the actors were primarily on stage. This did not work as the thrill of the stage is that the audiences eye can wander around the stage, all over the props and background etc. I believe this revelation gave way to the common use of subtle references and nods in the background of modern day films such as props in the vault of Asgard in the film Thor, which depicted the infinity gauntlet, missed by most but the attentive observer would see this and possibly recognize the reference which would then give clues as to future films (this also gave rise to a storm on the internet which accounted for allot of free advertising for the film).

This is why I like to look to board games when it comes to inspiration for mechanics in computer games, board games have been around, iterated and tweaked for thousands of years, computer games only a handful of decades, remediation is the quickest way to progress through ideas that already exist and find out what works with a new type of media and what doesn't

"The change of a media's conventions based on the established conventions of a different medium."

la decima vittima (the tenth victim)

So a little while back we watched a film called La Decima Vittima aka The Tenth Victim. This film was silly but fun to watch. It is set in a world where licensed contract killings was a legitimate job and the best of them were held up like rock stars. The idea was that anybody with violent tendency could join and get a licence, then periodically they would receive the name and photo of another licensed killer and their task was to assassinate them, thus focusing the violence on other violent people and not on innocents, knocking down the violent population and I'm also assuming making lots of money via broadcasting etc in the process.

The film itself sparked off a whole heap of games known as Pervasive games. These are game that cross over into every day life. One populate such game is the game of killer. It has its players role playing as an assassin taking contracts on other players in the game. Anything can be used for assassinations such as Nerf guns, balloons as bombs, springs to represent traps etc.

There are a few books out there which explain in great detail this game and I highly recommend it if you have enough people to play with. I am currently trying to rally enough of us to play an extended game over several weeks :)

Iterating Ancient Games

Hi, So a little while ago now we were asked to iterate one of the ancient games we had been studying in our critical games studies module. I'm not 100% sure on what I am allowed to put due to most of the material being used within my actual assignment so for now I am just putting up an extract which explains the game and its rules etc.

"For my ancient game I chose Tablut which is a game that Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus witnessed being played in Lapland in 1732. He then reported the rules in his diary. H J R Murry noticed similarities between this game and hnefatafl, a game played, according to Murray, before 400AD in Scandinavia.
Tablut simulates a battle between Swedes and Muscovite's. The Swedes are defending and represented by white pieces in the middle of the board. The Swedes include a king piece bearing a cross and starting in the centre. The Muscovite's are attacking and represented with black pieces and start on the outside of the board as shown below.

The rules of the game according to Linnaeus are as follows:
Starting with black, each player in turn moves one of his pieces. Pieces can move any number of squares horizontally of vertically (similar to a took in chess) and may not jump over or land on other pieces. No piece except the king can occupy the ventral square known as the konakis (throne), but piece can pass through the throne when it is empty.
A player captures an opposing piece by sandwiching an opposing piece between two of his or her pieces horizontally or vertically. This is true for all attackers and defenders except the king, who is taken by being surrounded on all four sides. A piece that moves itself into a sandwich of opposing pieces however is not captured.
The defending side wins the game by getting the king to one of the vacant edge squares of the board. When the king has a clear path to an empty edge, the defending player announces "raichi" or "check" in the same way that "check" would be announced in chess when the king can be taken. If the king has a clear path to two different edges of the board, the defending player announces "tuichi" or "check mate", again in much the same way as when playing Chess. In Linnaeus version the king can be taken the surrounded on three sides when the forth side is the throne. In this case the throne is used as a wild card in lieu of the forth attacking piece.

I will update this with my full paper on the iterations to this game as soon as I receive my mark back.

Games Britannia: Joystick Generation

This is the final part of the Games Britannia and it covered the origins and evolution of computer games (as opposed to board games from the previous episodes) 

It covered the creation of Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) and Games Workshop in the 70's. It then went onto how Sinclair helped get home computers on the market. 

Games covered included:

• Elite (1984)
• Black & White (A god game by Peter Molyneux)
• Tomb Raider (arguably the first game where a player cared about the character Lara Croft)
• Wipeout (a futuristic race game that revolutionized the race game, it had high tempo music with bright colors and fast, fluid movement.)
• Grand Theft Auto (this game brought open world sandbox games to the nations attention with its controversial themes and characters)
• Little Big Planet (this game allowed players to create entire levels with an extensive array of of customization and programmable elements, this game also allowed players to share their creations online with other players)
• World of Warcraft (this is a massively multi-player online game, it has one of the largest online player/fan bases for MMOs in the world, it opened all new social opportunity previously unavailable in games)
• MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons, these were text based RPG's that were played with other players over the internet via chat rooms etc.)

although insightful I found to my amazement that this installment of the series didn't interest me nearly as much as the previous two, the board games sections both on history and mechanics seemed far more engaging, however this my just be the perspective of the producers or others with influence over the show. I will however be looking to the past of video games more in-depth from now on as some of the origins are really quite fascinating.

City Slider

Hello Again

This time I thought I'd spend a little time showing you my assignment for Scripting. The assignment was to create a small game with the core mechanic being either pushing sliding jumping or collecting. I chose sliding and fell upon a puzzle game that would see the played sliding city block around the screen to try and get the small building to the end zone. The assignment was not about the art (thankfully) but the actual coding behind it. Considering that I knew nothing of scripting and Flash AS3 when I undertook this (and I was struggling to learn anything to do with it) I feel the game to have come out quite well. there are some fundamental flaws such as blocks moving irregularly under certain circumstances however I now know how to correct them for future games. I spend about three 16 Hour nights on it along with a handful of extra hours across several days. You can play the game here: http://www.waterfrontgames.com/game/index/94
Feel free to leave comments but I do know that its broken and most of the issues (music is one part so if you cant take it turn your speakers off...... sorry)

Semester 1 Group Project

Hi There

In my first semester at UCS Computer Games Design we had to create a game with a team of individuals, two first years and one (or in our case two) second years. The game itself highlighted a lot of issues that can arise during development of a game, many of which I have taken forward with me to my new project. The game went through several iterations before arriving at the final build. A lot of the features we wanted to put in were left out due to time constraints so this time round we are trying to keep the game to its core and only if we are happy with the entire game will we test different additions and look to implement them into the game. Our team members were Seb, Myself, Mike and Chris. I was responsible for character design and animation as well as composing the different menu screens and instructional screens.

Play the game at http://www.waterfrontgames.com/game/index/92

again please feel free to comment and leave any feedback.