EAE Capstone II

Hello!

David McCall here  I am writing my blog for the second half of my year course. I actually took this class backwards believe it or not. This semester just like last semester I joined a team of talented individuals, this semester I got to experience how it was like in first weeks of establishing a concept for a game from the very essence of where it came. I got to experience as an individual what game console we were presented and was able to experience off hand how I would approach the pitch to my game.

In the beginning of the semester after we were told that we were going to create a game for the PS VITA, I knew right off the bat that I needed to get familiar with what games were already out there and see what kind of control scheme i wanted for the game I had in mind.

The PS VITA is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is a successor to the Plantation Portable as part of the PlayStation brand gaming devices.

During the process of having to pitch a game each student in the class had to come up with an idea that they wanted to create on the PS VITA. Each member left and came back with fantastic ideas, our mission was to to learn how to pitch a game and learn how to keep our audience excited with such little information.

My ideas for games were very random i was unable to establish a connection with the VITA as I did with the Xbox360 this game needless to say my ideas were an off shoot of what the class came up with.

After grouping up and going through our pitches together in a group I found that most people really like the idea of the last game pitch i came up with which was  "Special OP's Princess"

         ***SPECIAL OP'S PRINCESS***

The story behind this game was to not follow the traditional norms of what we think is right and actually what always seems to be the case but to take a leap behind the norms and branch out.

Special OP's Princess! You are tired of being the damsel in distress you are tired of waiting for that "Knight in Shining Armor", to come and save you,  and you are suppose to thank him for all the time you've spent locked up in this castle waiting for him. Pfft'.. your thinking of a different kind of story, Specials Op's Princess finds away to sneak out of the dungeon she is trapped  and goes out gun's a blazing  till she fully gets out of that Hell hole herself.

I wanted people to picture the movie "Kill Bill", and think of the destruction that Female lead caused destroying all the men that came in her way this is her Story alone not yours!!

The pitch actually had a lot going for me at the time, no one forgot my pitch but it just didn't have the visuals as the other games that were picked which  I regret not doing. I noticed down to the last 3 games that were picked in the beginning pitch it already had a "game mechanic" and some type of direction.

After the pitches were done we were told to vote on the games that we really liked and would like to be a part of, the game I really enjoyed right off hand was the Drunken dwarf game because In my earlier years I played NeverWinter Night's and roleplayed a Drunken dwarf and would of had a lot ot bring to the table.

My second pitch i really enjoyed was Meteroid which later became "The Galatic Labors Union" also known as G.L.U. this game was so fascinating, it took a more educational approach to the galaxy with a mix of "Google Skymaps"

 

This game had something really amazing about it and it was the essential game mechanic which was the use of the gyroscope. I was taken back by how fantastic that sounded, I pictured everyone playing that game and moving all over the sky scanning things  and destroying them.

Needless to say I jumped on that project as quickly as possible and chose it to be my second pick if the dwarf game was not picked. I came to class the next week and Roger and bob showed us what teams were picked and what team i would be on for the rest of the semester and i was extremely excited to see that I got picked for the Meteoroids team.

The group started out as two programmers and two artists. 

Kira Booth - The Lead idea and foundation of where the game came from and programmer

Russell Canning - Programmer and very hard working

Ryan Jiang - A Great Sketch Artist and Character Modeler.

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In this small group we wanted to get something together where we could pitch  work together to try and put something together some of are concept art in the early peroids of the game was like this:

We had a lot of ideas for concept art that I put together which were very vivid and colorful...

We left the mechanics of the game up to Russel and Kira and Ryan and I made models we wanted to see in our first game sprint.

The first sprint ended up being  a 3D Skybox with meteroids inside of it where we would interact with them and touch and make them dissappear.

Kira put together a full video showing the movement that would be approached in the game on her GO Pro which was pretty awesome and we also let everyone know that the D-Pad would be useable as well.

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Our game was picked out of a group of different games by the judge panels to create for the bigger aspect of things, we were extremely stoked about it because we at one point didn't believe that it would go that for and were happy, Roger and Bob had our backs.

Our group extended from 4 people to 10 people. the workflow reminded me of last semester where would have continuous sprints to get things done and important stand up meetings to tell everyone what were doing and working on and if we had any issues.

I began cranking out more skybox's for the game below or 2 screenies..

 

I was put on tasks which involved modeling of Asteroids, making of sky boxes, and making comets. Also i looked up information on what we could do and couldn't do on the Vita and came up with 50 names for our game.

When i made the comet that had to be my most cherished piece, unfortunately i dont think it will make it in the game due to  PS Vita's Rendering.

I can't wait till next semester!!!

Avatar Trials: Ninja Uprising - Early Game Play Footage

After the level was constructed how we wanted we all began playtesting on what became  the first level.



Play Footage of Level 1

EAE Senior Capstone

Hey,


David Mccall here I am in Senior Capstone this class is a 1-Year course I actually started it the second half of the year, so I ended up getting on a team of talented individuals that had been blue-printing the game out the first year and were just starting to get in the design process during the semester I joined.

The game that my team  was in the process of building was called Ninja Royale which got renamed later to Avatar Trials: Ninja uprising, this game takes your Xbox360 avatar and puts him in a level where you have ninja physique and you allowed full control of your character where they can run and jump and do parkour stunts off obstacles. The main goal in the game is to get your Avatar to the end of the obstacle course as fast as possible and have the ultimate time.

Team Members Include:

Ross Marabella - Project Lead and  Marketing Director
Paulo Matos - Animator
Max Locher - Lead Artist
Derek Young - Artist
Adam Durant - Artist
David McCall - Level Designer / Concept Art
Thaddeus Beck - Programmer
Blake Sleight - Programmer
Ron Romero - Programmer
Zbynek Dusatko (Also known as Z) - Programmer
James Hulse - Programmer
Mavin Martin - Programmer

12 Combined minds in this group we were able to work together and work as a team




In Senior Capstone we have a group that was made up of artists and programmers  we were then grouped together with our certain skillset, meaning that artists were grouped with artists and programmers were grouped with programmers.

Every class we would have a 10 minute stand up meeting letting the class know each task that we did over the weekend or in-between tuesday and thursday.

After our stand up our teacher talk about whats coming up in a couple of days and what we have to look forward to.

We have two teachers in Senior Capstone, including Kessler and Roger, they are both really great teachers and they always keep us updated on whats new and whats happening in our groups. They are both easy to work with and talk to.



My first task in Senior capstone was to come up with a level that would be simple and easy for the chracter to work with, basically we just wanted to blueprint out some designs so we could get a look at the playground where our character could roam.

My first design was built in Unity using some of the models that were created last semester for the game and I designed a playground.


Above  are two pictures of what I designed in unity. In the beginning of the semester we wanted our game to be design around quests and  and obstacles revolving around it, we wanted our game to be more like a popular game called "Assasins Creed" in the pictures above you can see little scrolls throughout the entire map which at the time would give the Ninja certain attributes.


The playground level evolved a lot  in the beginning working with Max our artist lead in the beginning was a lot of fun, because we all had different ideas and Max wanted us all just to come up with ideas and we brought everything together and worked as a team.

In the beginning of  Senior Project we had two groups, which one was made of artists and the next programmers.

As an Artist not having much skills with free hand drawing and using photoshop as a main tool. I excelled in level design as the class went on I was put on production making different levels.




One of my favorite projects  I was put on was making a big city that the avatar was able to roam around and do quests. The pictures shown is the grand city I made in Unity that we decided to scrap but i enjoyed every second of it.

In the beginning of this level I was just told to go make a big level and I had so many ideas that i just needed a little help on where we wanted to go with things, working with Derek Young i was able to focus on what I wanted after he threw up a blueprint for me which looked like this.




I still felt that the pictures were pretty vague in so I talked to Ross at this point and asked him what he was thinking about the current blueprint, I talked to him and he really wanted some high points and low points where the character could jump on top of buildining and roam across the map and have the ability to run on connected buildings, which came from the emphasis on our mindset of the game Assasins Creed.
 where the character was freely able to get on top of buildings and move freely to the next building by obstacles such as wires,boards and side panels off buildings. As I  am a avid player of Asssasins Creed I knew where he kind of wanted to go with the design aspect.

The design of this level was going to have a main dojo where it was the tallest building and was somewhat unreachable and scale downwards to smaller buildings and a few random taller buildings where the player could climb to the top of and admire the view or look around for quest items.

The level I came up with is shown here:

This picture was just a teaser through a long catacomb that gave you a glimpse of the level and I took this shot to make it feel like you wanted more.

The top-overview of the level I created showed the bases of what stuff we had in our level, at this poing i wanted to add more buildings and left them a little higher and not leave so much space in between buildings.

This picture is a view of the  the graveyard where we wanted the one of the quests to be the whole idea at this point in the game was to have the player go to this part of the city and find or dig up ancient scrolls. Another idea of this was to be able to encounter some type of enemies in the graveyard at night time. 

The graveyard was there to resemble the fallen great ninja warriors who were there and had become heroes when they had fallen. It was a honor to be buried in this place graveyard and only the few and proud were to be able to be buried in this place.

In this picture it is where the ancient scroll of Wuzu was to be held and it was heavily guarded by the guards of the city and no one was suppose to even walk up to the gate without being looked at suspicious. We wanted to have a mission where you were to sneak past the guards on a quest and capture this ancient scroll and find out it's hidden secrets.

The next to shots so a top view and side view of the the City.

 

 Side View

The small building above we anted to represent some type of portal where the player can get to a different level in the sky.

After showing this level to the team they really liked the idea but wanted it kind of broken up into quadrants and they wanted everything closer together.

As the game progressed we wanted to to move away from the models that were created by Kelly because our Prison level was having issues with lag and there were a lot of things we had to change.  So we decided that we would scrap all of the design created by Kelly and move on to an obstacle em phased based level.

I began scrapping ides together on what we wanted to do because with the game how it was at this point was to hard for the player and we had to get  it a little more player friendly.

Immediately after this task was given to us I threw together some blueprints on where we wanted to go with the game. We jumped  on Skype and began throwing out ideas on what we wanted to go with  the outlook of the game. 

The pictures below include  some of the ideas we focused on that I created in Unity.

 

 After Accumulation of Ideas we got Max went ahead  and started building the level from all of our ideas and we went from there.

We wanted to have a skylevel in the game that we didn't end getting to add but Max and Ross put on the project to make something so i came up with these ideas and kind of ran with it.

After the submission of the Skylevel blueprint we again decided that we wanted something else. So with the help from Rodger and Kessler we decided to drop the quests and the scrolls and base all of our attention on creating a level with obstacles and keeping the focus on Parcour.  

We all submitted ideas for level 1, 2, 3 and  all of ideas were submitted to Max and max looked through all of the levels and mixed everything that each person submitted and built the levels based on that.

After level one was complete we went ahead and started play testing. 

After play testing began we just ended up fixing bugs and other stuff we had a cut on more incoming artist work  and that is when hardcore gaming began in our game and getting our game Finally submitted to Xbox Live :)