Maya Exporting

We've made a lot of progress in our game, Rush Week, however thats not what I'm here to talk about. Today we're gonna talk about getting a level from maya into a game. There are many approaches to this but for our game I decided to export the whole level as layers. So my logic is I'll export all the trees as one layer, and I'll export all the scenes as such. And it works!!! Thats all

Yikes! too much on my plate

After countless hours of working on the music game, my team missed the development turn in for the indie game challenge. Unfortunately we all had a lot on our plates and balancing school, work, and a an amazing game took its toll on the whole team. It was a dire situation, however we're not giving up we're still working on the game, and we even have a sequel planned.

Currently my main course is my Final Project, every game development student at Full Sail goes through "Final Project." Its a 5 month game project which focuses on every aspect of the game development process from the initial concept to shipping. I'm excited, especially since I'm the lead designer for my group. My group consists of a bunch of amazing individuals and so far it's been a blast working with them. We still have a lot of communication issues that we need to kneed out, this is due to the fact that we all have amazingly strong and unique personalities.

I would say that I am the feature creep guy. I'm passionate about making this game and I my goal is to make this the best game that has come out of Full Sail. Unfortunately we only have five months, and its been hard because I can come up with an amazing gameplay concept or innovative core but it would be unfeasible for the scope of this project. After a few days of brainstorming my group came up with two ideas. The first one was a third person hack and slash with a satisfying combo system and platforming elements. The second idea was a real time strategy game in where you control a fraternity and you have to recruit different students throughout a college campus, the only problem is that your opponent is trying to do the same thing. You have to use your wits and recruit enough students to take down the opposing fraternity. Did I mention that it's multi-player? The second idea was picked and although the core may seem simple , it is solid. In addition, we're pumping a lot of personality in our game. So far I've created a paper prototype, and a fully working prototype in Warcraft3. After this prototype was created we were able to make the appropriate changes, and pitch new ideas.

I'm still working on my robber board game. I've started a flash game on the side to simulate my definition of love. This is really an experiment in portraying an idea through gameplay. Usually, games have a story which ties into the gameplay, however I want to simply portray an idea through gameplay, I'm still in the prototyping phase but this is partially due to the fact that Im also learning flash while I'm prototyping.

I'm also very enthralled about the release of Unity3D and Unreal for FREE!!!! Its great, and I have to refrain from starting a game, and hopefully I have enough willpower.

Music

I've started development on a music based game. I'm really happy that everything is going well so far. A few days ago, I heard of the Indie Game Challenge and I was very excited, however, I realized that I couldn't enter on my own. So, I assembled a team. I am the team leader/representative/lead designer/producer/programmer, and I'm currently managing a team of 6 people, four other programmers and 2 artists. For our project, we're taking an iterative design approach, this is only because we're short on time. The contest ends in 26 days! and we started production yesterday. I'm not too worried however, because we're all Full Sailers, and one thing that Full Sailers know is crunch time. As a Full Sailer, I believe that I can do absolutely anything in a month.

I've seen how far organization and teamwork can go in a short period of time, especially when everything is organized. Which is what Im trying to do, even though everything is being rushed, organization and a clear vision of our goals will be what will pull us through this project. I'm very excited and I cant wait to show off the finished project. Yesterday we set milestones and cut some ideas, today I wrote 80 percent of the design doc (which I really really really enjoy doing), and we currently have a prototype in the works which I have to work.

The currently there are a few pressing issues, for a music game we need music, I have to do some research and meet up with some people and see if I can use their music. Otherwise I'm excited for the resulting product!

Contests

I'm going to enter a contest. More details soon!!!

My own web design

Today Im still working on the site. I must admit that I'm only 80% satisfied with my layout. I feel like it only captures the professional part of my personality, and I must admit that Im a very complex person. So I've decided to tell design to take a back seat and focus on content, mostly on the websites that I've created. From that point I'll make the video game page and upload all the games that I made with summaries and screenshots.

I love that wordpress is one of the easiest cms systems that I've ever used. Its very intuitive and their support is in readable english, as opposed to Drupal where their support is horrendous.

New Site and Updates

From this point forward this blog, will be my development blog. Currently, I have a new site in the works. Kvermeille.com, it took me all day to set it up but I'm very proud of the outcome.

Asteroids Like game pt 2

So I added a bunch of new power ups, I modded the AI so that it can be challenging, and I have the opponent ship seeking powerups.

I love that I kept this game very modular, because as I was playing it I realized that this game can be mutated to become anything. As it stands right now it is an asteroid game. However, it can be a game about killing zombies, it can be a game about exterminating bugs, it can be a game about killing runaway fugitives, the themes can go on and on. What Im starting to realize is that the core mechanics of a game can be its own entity. Although themes, art, and the players perception play a huge role in the game, the core gameplay is the game itself. Which is probably why most first person shooters seem very similar. They all have different themes and there are differences here and there but the core gameplay is the same. Its interesting how Half-Life2 broke the mold by adding one gun. The gravity gun. Once the gravity gun was added to the game, the core morphed. Now the player has an enormous amount of freedom and possibilities. It also allows more opportunities for variable play.

For the Asteroids game, Im exploring new possibilities, and I've realized that this second player/partner is the "gravity gun" for this game. I realize by having an AI counterpart the type of play can be changed. With this character you can interact with it cooperatively or competitively. There can be levels where your ability to shoot has been taken away and you have to rely on this partner. Compete with this player to get the most points. Or it can be a vs game set with obstacles in the way. I have a couple of more ideas but I'm not going to spill those yet. I'll be working on the third iteration and we'll see if I can find the most fulfilling core concept of this game.