Plannit - Officially Accepted into Dare to be Digital 2013

Aaaaaand that's my coursework done, and a good relaxing weekend without work. Now back to blogging and everything else. Sorry for the hiatus, my wonderful readers!

Some of you might have missed the news that I tweeted last week: My team, Orbit Games, and our game Plannit, have officially been accepted into this year's Dare to be Digital competition!

What is Dare to be Digital?

Anyone in the UK gaming industry has probably heard of Dare to be Digital, but I know some of my readers are from overseas or outside the industry, so I'll summarize. Dare to be Digital is a huge, prestigious competition held over the summer at Abertay University. 12 teams from around the UK and 3 international teams, each of five students, compete head to head to develop a game over 9 weeks. Even getting in to the competition is difficult, and requires an application, pitch video, and interview. Teams are accepted based on the quality and feasibility of their game idea as well as the strength of their team.

During the competition, teams work together in an "office" at Abertay University. Teams are expected to work at least 9-5, every day of the week, so it's similar to a real games job. In return, we will receive free accommodation and a weekly stipend for living expenses. In addition, industry mentors are available to advise teams over the course of development. At the end of the competition, games are made available to the public during a hugely popular event called ProtoPlay, which is now three days long due to popular demand and overcrowding. This event is free and open to the public, but is also attended by all sorts of industry personnel.

At the end of ProtoPlay, three teams are chosen as winners based on the criteria of innovation and creativity, market potential, and use of technology. These winners are are then nominated for a BAFTA - basically a video game Oscar. They get to visit London for a massively fancy, televised award ceremony and rub shoulders with the likes of (using some of last year's guests as an example) Game Newel, the creators of Journey, and many other industry greats depending on who has been invited to the ceremonies that year.

What will Orbit Games be doing?

Orbit Games is creating a mobile Android game called Plannit, in which players take control of a team of astronauts and travel to unstable planets, drilling to their cores and draining out the dangerous lava inside them, thus saving settlements on the surface. The game involves two distinct control methods: Turning the mobile device to change the game's gravity; and platforming using touch controls. We originally conceived of the game as a multiplayer, cooperative experience on two handsets, with one player controlling the gravity and another controlling the platforming character. However, feedback during our interview caused us to consider the possibility of a single-player and competitive version of the concept where on player controls both gravity and platformer, and competes with friends for score. We are still open to both ideas and will be experimenting once we have a basic prototype.

You can see our pitch video below:

The competition starts on the 10th of June, but we'll be bringing you updates before that since we are allowed 40 hours to work on the game prior to the competition start date. The team is just fantastically excited about this opportunity, and thrilled to have something so awesome to work on over the summer. I'll still be progressing on some side projects as well, so stay tuned for more information about those in the coming days.

Thanks for reading!

Crunch Time!

I promised some cool blog posts this week. However, I've gone into panic mode for coursework, so I'm off the radar until it's done. Sorry :(

When I get back, expect to hear:

• Post-Project reflection for Pollinator
• Progress to date for Solar Sojourn
• Discussion of my DirectX 11 font engine for Solar Sojourn (request via Twitter!)
• How-To: Billboarding! (since it took me FOREVER to figure this out)
• Post-project reflection for my PS2 fireworks game
• Update on my dissertation progress (post proposal)
• Post-project reflection for my Havok group project
• Discussion of my Dare app results (interview next Thursday!)
• Overview of what I'm playing these days (birthday presents Skyrim, Pokemon Conquest, Don't Starve, Sim City, and more! I'm spoiled.)

Sorry to go on hiatus like this, but it's needed. See you all in a few weeks!

Pimp my Work Space

I've been chugging along on my various projects, and will be posting some updates this week. For today, I'm going to talk about something I'm planning to do to improve my work space.

I don't know about other developers, but I have a lot of trouble working if I don't like my surroundings. I need to have at least somewhat clear desk, lots of light, and preferably a window. Blank walls depress me, and I tend to cover them with colourful posters and hangings. But aside from all that, I haven't paid much attention to what specifically decorating the area around me when I work.

In my reading of game dev articles around the internet, I came across a recommendation that even programmers keep concept art for the game they are working on up around their work space. The idea is that good concept art can not only keep devs inspired, it can help maintain the overall aim and feel of the project. Because of this, I've decided to cover the bulletin board above my desk with concept art for the projects I'm currently working on.

Having not worked with professional artists before this year, it's really awesome to look up and see a bunch of concept art all based around something I'm working on. Hopefully this idea helps keep others out there inspired! If anyone else opts to try this out, feel free to post pics of your work space in the comments!

Pokemon 4e - Pokedex Cards

It's been a LONG time since I talked about my Pokemon 4e project here - and about an equally long time since I've worked on it much. As a refresher: I'm modifying the D&D 4e rules to accommodate Pokemon. This is a purely fan-made, not-for-profit project to stretch my game design muscles and have fun in the process.

This week, my good friend is coming to visit from England, and I plan to give my rules a test run. We'll be playing starting in Pallet Town in Kanto, up to the first gym in Pewter City. To that end, I've been figuring out exactly what materials I'll need ready to go for next weekend.

In particular, I've been thinking about how I'll handle pokedex entries. I want players to have a more granular breakdown of knowledge about a pokemon than the three stage knowledge in the games (nothing, name/photo, everything). To that end, I've decided there will be 6 potential pieces of information the player can know (have in a pokedex) about a pokemon. A party of players will share a pokedex, so one player learning a fact lets the whole group learn it.

There are several ways to gain this knowledge. The first time a pokemon is seen, mentioned, etc, a player can make a Pokemon (knowledge) check to see if they know anything about it. The rarer the pokemon, the harder this check is. The check will determine how much of the 6 potential pieces of information the player knows.

After this initial check, there are four other ways to gain information. First, the players can gain the information from NPCs or books/computers, but this isn't always possible especially for higher tier info or rare pokemon. Second, the players can actually encounter a pokemon of that species. This automatically reveals the first tier of information about it (name, classification, size, and appearance). If the player manages to catch a pokemon, this reveals the second tier of information about it (ability scores, evolutions, type). Finally, a player can make one extra Pokemon check each day to try to study their Pokemon and learn more about it. That pokemon's happiness is added to the check as a bonus, signifying that a Pokemon who has been with the trainer longer is easier to learn about.

Once I'd figured all of this out, I had to decide how to get this information to the players. It would be horribly cumbersome to ask them to write it all down, and I didn't want them to have to manage a ton of little strips of paper. Thankfully, D&D 4e has already solved this issue in the way they handle powers and items - cards. Receiving a card from the DM (or PM, in this case) is instantly gratifying - you get something physical, and if it's printed on card stock and nicely formatted, it's also aesthetically pleasing. You get something "cool". I'm hoping this will make filling up the Pokedex interesting and fun. I can also easily make some rewards based on how many pokedex cards the players have collected (just like in the games).

Once I'm satisfied that the game is finished, I'll be releasing it to the internet in general. Expect more updates here as I start the playtesting process, but development will be slow since this is probably the lowest priority project I've got going right now. For now, I'll leave you with the pokedex cards for Bulbasaur.

Plannit - Dare to be Digital Application

Today is the last day to submit applications for the Dare to be Digital competition. My team, Orbit Games, has officially submitted out pitch for Plannit - a cooperative puzzle game played between Android phones. We'll be developing the game in Unity.

In Plannit, the players take control of a team of astronauts to save the inhabitants of various planets from deadly lava. The team must work together - one player takes control of a platforming character who can traverse the planet and dig down to the core. The second player controls the planet itself, manipulating gravity to help their partner reach their goal. Along the way they must overcome obstacles such as deadly spikes, undiggable bedrock, water, and of course the lava itself. Once the team reaches the core, they must dig a tunnel back to the space ship, so the lava can be safely drained and carried away by the ship.

The controls are fairly simple. The environment player rotates the planet by rotating the phone itself, taking advantage of the gyroscope. The platforming player moves by touching the sides of the screen to move left or right, and by swiping up or down to jump or dig.


I think our idea and pitch is pretty strong, but there are a lot of other good entries as well. It will be exciting to see how we do. I'll definitely post an update here when we hear one way or the other!

Wish us luck!

Solar Sojourn - Framework Work

I've been focusing heavily on my Solar Sojourn project over the last few days. This project is a continuation of my DirectX scene from last semester, and will be used for my coursework for my procedural terrain generation module this semester.

While I had a working graphics framework at the end of last semester, it was becoming very unwieldy and I wasn't happy with it. The main work I've done this semester has been to reorganize the framework into a more useful method. This was helped significantly with the work I did for my Building Breakout project last month. Based on experimentation, examples from the Rastertek tutorials, and my knowledge of object oriented development, I've finally settled on a class set up that I'm happy with.

Obviously the end product will have more shaders and possibly more graphic sub classes, but this should give the framework's general idea.

I've been working hard over the past week to get the basics of this framework implemented in the project code. Unfortunately, it's been a lot more work than I expected, and I've been very busy with Dare and other projects. Right now, I have a project that builds, exits, and displays a black window of whatever size has been set, but it doesn't yet render objects. I'll be posting an update as soon as I have more.

Of course, in the module labs I have been practicing other code that will eventually be incorporated in the project. This includes procedural terrain mesh generation based on noise, perlin noise, midpoint displacement, smoothing, and other techniques. We've also practiced post-processing techniques such as blur and glow, which will be essential in making the bright light from the sun believable.

I'm really excited to get working on the meat of this project, since I am hoping to build my dissertation on it.

Monster Merchant - Player Concept

It's been a while since I've talked about my personal project, Monster Merchant. That's because I've been trying to focus on coursework, Dare, job applications, and my GDS game. However, today I took the time to finally scan and touch up the concept art I drew a few weeks back for the lead female character of the game.

This leading lady will be one of two choices for a protagonist in the Monster Merchant story. Both stories will be identical, aside from small dialogue changes. Currently, we plan the main story to revolve around the protagonist's relationship with her mother, acting Grand Devil of the fantasy world they are living in. The mother wants the protagonist to join the family business, as the leading evil overlords in the world. However, the protagonist would much rather spend her time raising monsters, and runs away to a small town in the wilderness to do just that. Through the story, she will prove to her mother that she can still bring fame and success to the family name through her chosen path, while being much happier in the process.

The art style, as you can see, is inspired by anime/manga. The clothing is influenced by ancient japan. I'm really excited to see what the game artists and character designers come up with for all the supporting cast, since all the characters will be humanoid monsters (devils, mummies, vampires, satyrs, etc).

I also had a conversation with a designer who is contributing to this project, and ironed out a lot of issues with our stat system, mutation system, and possible solutions for sprites/models/animation.

I don't have much more to report for now. I've done a bit of concept art for the male protagonist and the mother, but nothing I'm happy with yet. I probably won't have much more on this project until after this term is over, but this summer I hope to work on it constantly.