Puzzle design and UV-map

This week I was supposed to continue on the UV-mapping of the different robots. I had a meeting with our graphic teacher, Jonatan this tuesday and he gave me some advice on how to make the UVs in such a way that I could use them for both the fusion and the base version of the robots.

Instead of making an extra UV-map with the added details in the fusions, I UV-map the fused version of the robots. I also make sure to add any details that might only be visible on the unfused version in this UV. Then I can apply the UV for both the fusion and base version.

On wednesday I was asked to design new puzzles instead since we feelt that the UV-maping wasn’t as urgent as the puzzles. Our producer, Mathias, is also our level designer and makes the different levels in Unity. Now that it’s almost time to start on the next level, he needs some new challenges to use in the design of the level. Therefor, I spent the rest of the week designing different challanges for the player and figuring out how to use our differnt robot combinations in such interesting ways as possible.

Design for the last room in the first level.

Sketch of a city area.

Sketch of extra challanges for the factory area.

I made some different sketches. It was a bit tricky to come up with new puzzles, since we only have five different robots and three different fusions, but we also want to have different solutions to every puzzle. If I were to add all the different robots in a room, the game would be too easy, but if I add too few, there won’t be different solutions, which is one of our goals with the game; to have a different solutions for every puzzle.

While designing these puzzles I came to the conclusion that we won’t be able to keep that goal in every challenge. In the beginning of the game the player need to learn about the different robots to make sure that the player has enough knowledge about the different robots before reaching the more difficult challanges. Therefore, I designed some puzzles with only one or two different solutions, to give the player a moment to learn about the different ways to use the robot combinations.

Mathias will start to build the new level next week, so I think we’ll discuss my different designs then!

Shield, Grabber and more Fusions

This week as been…MORE ROBOTS! Yey!

We had our Alpha this friday, so my goal was to have at least all the base robots finished and hopefully the fusions too. When we talked about it in the middle of the week, after I finished the shiled and only had the grabber left of the base robots, we decided tahta it was more important to have some of the fusions for the alpha. Therefore, I finished the fusions between Stationary + Shield and Stationary + Grabber, before finishing the Grabber.

Also, I’ve put the UV-maping on hold while maing the modells, since it was more important to have the modells done for the Alpha. I also want to make sure that I make the UV-maps as good as possible. Would be nice if we could reuse the UV-maps to the base robots for the fusion versions, but I’m not completely sure how to do that. I’ll talk to one of our teachers about it next week!

Here’s some quick pictures of the fusions I mentioned earlier; Stationary + Shield and Stationary + Thrower.

The fusion Stationary + Thrower will throw away the player and other robots if they stand upon the scope of the grabber. This will make it possible for the player to travel across different gaps and traps.

The Stationary + Shiled fusion will protect itself from any incoming projectiles and bounce them on the shield. This gives the player the possibility to reach certain points that was unreachable otherwise.

Our lead artist, Ylva,  has started on the textures for the Controller and the Thrower and it looks really good. It will be great to see these guys with textures and movement. Hopefully we’ll be able to see some of that in one or two weeks.

I finished the modell for the Grabber too, so now all the base robots are finished. So for next week I’ll finish all the fusions and fix the UV- maps for the different robots.

But first it’s time for easter which brings candy and family! I think we’ll do great after this break! Very excited to see our final version Mechropolis, which will bee finished next by the end of next month!

Stationary and Fusion

Hi!

So the first Sprint is over and I’ve almost finished all my tasks this week. I had decided to make the Controller, Thrower, a fusion version of these two and also the Stationary robot. As you can see in my priviously post, I finished the Controller and the Thrower quite quickly and I thought that it would go even quicker to finish the fusion version, since I only had to build it from the two earlier meshes. I was a fool.

The finsihed version of the fusion of a Controller and a Thrower.

It was rather tricky to find a good solution for how the fusion would work and once I had made the changes for the fused version, I had to UV- map the new versions, which just didn’t go as fast as I had thought. Now that I’ve finally finished the UV I feel like I could have worked with it in another way. I think I could have used the UV for the normal versions to make the new UV more readable and I think I’ll remake the UV after the Alpha.

We’ve set our Alpha for next Friday. Since it’s easter next weekend, I’ll visit my family in Uppsala, so I’ll try to finish my sprint by the end of thursday next week. For the Alpha I want to have a finished modell for all the robots. I there for have to finish the UV-maping for the Statonary robot and then make the Shield and the Grabber, before I can make the different fusions. Hopefully it will go alot quicker to make the other fusions now. Every fusion consists of either a Controller or a Stationary Robot as base. Therefore, once I’ve made the fusion version of the Controller and the Stationary, I’ll be able to use these meshes for all of the different fusion combinations.

I’ve already finsihed the Controller version for this, and I’ll make the Stationary next week.

Working on the UV for the Sationary robot.

Controller and Thrower Robots

We’ve now started on our first sprint and, as I told you in the last post, I’ll work on the modelling of the robots in our game.

Since our games mechanic focus around fusing these different robots together, I’ve started off by making two different robots that I’ll now use to make one fused version of them both. The two different robots I’ve finished these past two days are the Controller and the Thrower.

Controller

The Controller, when fused with another robot, makes it possible for the player to controll the fusion and use the different robots abilitiet for her own use.

Thrower

The Thrower attacks the player with its scoop once the player gets to close.The player will have to stun the Thrower to be able to pick it up and fuse it with another robot.

When fused, the Thrower will toss the player and other robots. If the player use this the right way, she might be able to get the robot to toss her in the right direction and in this way use her enemy to solve the different levels.

The modells are quite simple, since we want to keep down on our polycount. Moste of the details will be added in the textures, so I’m excited to see how these turns out once the textures are ready!

The modells will have some schnges once they get fused together, but I’ll always be able to work with the two separate robots as a start. I’ll have to be carefull and think about how the different fusions will move, what we want them to be able to do and also how they will look in the players perspective. Since this is my first time working with a first person, I try to think about it alot. I also prepare fot the possibility that we might need to change somethings on the modells once we see them in action. Hopefully we won’t need that though.

I other news; We’ve changed our name to Mechtropolis. I think this is a good choice, but I also feel like the name needs us to push our environments even more, to make sure the player feel like she explores a new world and atmosphere. It’s an interesting challenge and something that I believe will only do us good in the end.

 

Big Game Project

This week is the beginning of our big game project this year! We’ve been assigned an office and started on the backlog for our game. We use Scrumy to keep track of our features and the workflow. We’ll try to fill out our whole backlog this week so that we can have our first real sprint next week.

So what kind of game are we making?

Temporary loggo.

Right now our working title is Mech World. Mech Worlds is about our protagonist Vale, who sets out to explore an underground civilization. Once underground she finds that the old civilization used robots to help them build their city. Vale finds a tool that gives her the power to fuse robots together. This helps her create new kinds of robots that she can trick, or even take controll over, to over come different puzzle challenges.

Mech World is in First Person, which feels exciting since my last game were in 2,5D. I’m really excited to work with a new camera and think that I’ll learn alot!

I’ve been assigned the roll as lead designer together with Simon Wulf. I’ll also have the main responsibility for modelling the different robots for our game and (hopefully) work with the sound effects.

Today I’ve made some sketches of how the Robots will work. One of the thinks I had to work out was how the controller Robot would work in a fusion, when recieving another robot. I don’t think will make this whole animation, but it is a good reference to have for further work on the textures and the modelling.

1. The Controller as closed. 2. Streching out the equipment inside. 3. Recieving the other robot, equipment becoming a bit squeezed. 4. Grab the new robot and pull out the platform that the player will stand on.

I’ll start modelling the robots tomorrow! Hopefully I’ll be able to show you some of them soon!