Introduction
My group consists of four
members: myself, Shulav, Abby and Jesse. For our BETA game project we wanted to stick with our theme of a horror western. So
we all agreed to use the same 3D game environment but we plan to make it a
smaller scale and an enclosed area, which would be more suitable and idealistic
for game play. Our game will be a “first person shoot em’ up” game.
Characters
Cowboy
The player will be using the
Cowboy character who is the main hero of the game. “He” is an old man in his
late 60’s but with a bad attitude. “He” is fearless, tough, short tempered and
will not stop at nothing to get rid of these monstrous goblins. “He” is a man
of action rather than words. Players will be equipped with one hand gun and
with this they must try shoot and kill all the goblins. Since this game is a
“first person shooter” the play will only see the cowboys hand, his gun and
part of his forearm.
Goblins
These goblins are incredibly
quick and agile. Once they see you they will chase and hunt you down like a
dog. These goblins move in a rather strange and weird way since they are
monsters, they run and jump around with their arms waving about in the air
above their heads, which is similar to the way an orang-utan would usually
move. The goblins attack by striking with their massive sharp deadly claws.
Their claws are lethal enough to chop off your limbs; they can easily tear
through human flesh. There will be a dozen of these horrible disgusting goblins
in the game level we are creating. They will all chase after the cowboy and try
to slash him with their fatal claws. And the player’s goal is to eliminate each
and every one of these monsters in order to complete the game level.
Story
In a small Western town
called “Rockville Rockville
Genre
The theme of the game is a horror
western. The initial idea for the game was to create a western shoot em’ up
game but after further development me and my team decided to make things more
interesting by adding the horror element to it. The game was made to give off a
scarier and gory feel. We did this by adding creepy monsters to the level and
we also had our western town covered in splatters of blood. We intentionally
model our town and buildings with crooked and broken pieces to create the
impression that the town is run down and abandoned due to the infestation of
monsters.
Aim of the game
At first I and my team
initially had a lot of ambitious ideas of what we wanted to do for our game.
One of our original ideas was to have the cowboy character shoot and kill all
the small goblin characters. Then he would have a final showdown with the boss
character that was my character. But after further discussion and debating we
realised that this game idea would be too much work for everyone to do since we
would also have our final major projects to worry about also. Instead we change
the game plot to try and make things easier on us all. Our previous ideas were
too ambitious so this time we wanted to go for something more realistically achievable
with the amount of time we had. Our final game idea which we went with in the
end was to have the playable cowboy character shoot and kill as many goblin
characters within a certain time period. The aim of the game is to get the
highest score by killing as many goblins as possible.
(Abby’s Goblin top left, My Boss Monster top right, Shulav’s
Blacksmith bottom left, Jesse’s Cowboy bottom right.)
Programmers
I and my team would meet up
with the programmers every week on Wednesday afternoons to discuss matters
about our game ideas and to just check on how everyone is doing in terms of
work.
On our first meeting we
basically pitched our game idea to the programmers to see what opinions and
thoughts they had about it. We would listen to their ideas too and made changes
where it was appropriate.
After we finalised our
expectations and aims for the game level, we began planning how we would go
about and accomplish these aims. Then we started assigning individual work
roles for everyone in order for the work load to be shared equally and
efficiently amongst our group.
In the end the programmers did
not actually get any coding or scripts done for our group because their
deadline for their part of the course finished much earlier than ours.
Three outcomes
As part of the brief our game
level groups are required to set three outcomes that we wish to achieve and
complete for the creation of our final game level. So as a group we all
agreeably decided that our three main outcomes for the game would be to design
and construct a brand new environment, add a countdown time for game play and
to also add in gun shot sound effects. Those are out three main outcomes for
the game level.
Redesigning the goblin
One of my roles within the
group was to make changes to the appearance and design of the goblin characters.
We all agreed that the original design seemed too colourful and cute because of
the bright green and red colour scheme. We wanted to go for a more dark and
creepy looking appearance for the character.
I made changes to the
appearance and design for the goblin character.
I edited the goblin’s textures
using Adobe Photoshop and I went for a scarier and creepy look.
So for the design I used my
graphics tablet and digitally painted the textures on. Abby’s original design
did not appear to be scary looking enough to fit the horror theme of our game
level. The goblin’s bright colour did not seem appropriate. I wanted to go with
darker colours for the goblins’ skin and clothes. I painted the skin a light
purple. Then I highlighted the eyes with deep black paint strokes and made the
colour of the eye balls a strong yellow. My intention of doing this was to make
the eyes stick out and appear really creepy and intimidating. So now with the
new design I believe it looks more gothic and suitable for our horror themed
game level.
New environment
I and my group thought it was
appropriate to completely change our previous environment for the actual game
because the old environment seemed too big and spread out. We wanted to make
the game level as a smaller and enclosed area in order to prevent the main
playable character from wondering around. We kept our old buildings that we had
modelled and textured but just shifted them around and created fences to block
enclose the entire area.
My other roles include
helping out with properly constructing and combining the 3d game environments
into the Unity program for our game level. But I also had to take on extra work
roles since some group members were unable to properly complete and finish
certain tasks on time. Some members did not fulfil their roles because they
were more focused on their final major project.
Me, Abby and Shulav all went
in to university to attend one of Al’s and Alex’s game level tutorials. We all
worked together to properly assign our textures to our newly designed game
environment. This took quite some time since there were so many different textures
to assign.
After finally texturing the
entire environment we then imported the game level into the Unity program. I
attached all the models together to make one complete game environment then I
exported the Maya file out as an FBX format in order for it to be compatible
for importing within the Unity program.
There were a few problems
when adding the game level into Unity because some models had way too many
polygons, which caused things to slow down when using the Unity software.
We went back into Maya to try
to find out what was causing this. We eventually discovered that it was due to
Abby’s high density model. She had created small accessories for her stables
which had far too many polygons for Unity to handle. So in the end Abby agreed
that she would remove these parts from the level in order for the game to run
more smoothly.
Afterwards I also went on to
add colliders around the environment to prevent the player from falling through
floors and walking through walls.
Importing the main playable character
Then we went on to add the
main cowboy character into the Unity program as well. We ran into a few
problems when trying to properly import the cowboy as well. The dilemma was
because of the different scale sizes between the cowboy character and the
actual game environment. Also the animation did not seem to play properly at
first. The cowboy was supposed to appear as though he was firing his gun but
the animation was extremely slowed down and did not run as smoothly as the
original animation. So we switched the animation type to legacy in the Unity
program.
We then decided that for the
game we would put the cowboy character behind the stable doors and from there
he would be able to rotate around and shoot but he would not be allowed to walk
around. We chose to do this because we wanted to hide the fact that he had no
his legs and it also prevents us from having to animate a walk or run cycle of
the cowboy.
We asked Al to take a look at
our work and help us out on various problems with the main cowboy character. He
also gave us advice and tips on what else we needed to have done and completed
for the next time we see him.
Game button controls
The button controls for the
game are fairly simple
To make the character walk
around you must use the W, A, S and D controls on your keyboard. Press the
spacebar to make him jump up and down. You use the mouse to aim the gun and
then press the left click mouse button in order to shoot the goblins.
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