Out of town

Im not sure if we are meeting today but I am sorry to say I cant make it. There is a family emergency and I have to fly down to Tulsa today, I would be back till sunday the 30th.

Amanda

No Meeting on Saturday July 24

hey everyone, the meeting this weekend (July 24) is canceled. some stuff came up and i need to head up to UTD around the time of the meeting.

Graveyard level update

Added an asset list, reference sheet and a color palette to the graveyard level.

graveyard level

Big Announcement

There's a big indie game competition. I think we should enter. The deadline is October.

http://www.indiegamechallenge.com/

Iron Titan Update 2

Hey, I just updated my Iron Titan post with an Assets List.

Found here:
http://codename7up.blogspot.com/2009/05/midboss-event.html

Character design - Amanda

Posting some of the sketches I have done so far, most of these are just roughs and ideas, so if you have anything you wanna add/suggest, just let me know. I will be updating this thread as I go.

Aslo, just FYI, today (July 11th) got company in town so I wont be able to make it to the meeting. Should be able to next week.

Grunt:

Charlie or possible saloon girl?:

Graveyard Level

Graveyard Level

Description:
It's here in this level that our hero will face off against the ghoulish-type member of the Wild Aces. The level itself will be a large cemetery, with a mausoleum. There will be occasional opportunities for the hero to take cover behind tombstones while fighting enemies. Along the course of the level, there will be a few spots of “endurance challenges”. These areas (designated on the map) will feature points where the player will be barraged by a slew of enemies and cannot advance until he has defeated them all. There will also be divergent spots where the player can choose to go up or down hills in their path to the finish.

Mid Boss:
The mid-boss fight will consist of the player facing off against two enemies that balance off of each other. There is the large brute-ish/gorilla style character, who carries a smaller more agile chimp like creature on his back. Both of these characters are done in the style of mechanical zombies. The large enemy will shoot out large slow shots while the shorter enemy will be lunged at you for quicker attacks. Injuring the smaller zombie will cause the larger zombie to be distracted while trying to re-awaken the smaller one. It's during this time that the player will need to unload as much ammunition as possible at the larger zombie. Once the smaller zombie has come to, the same pattern will continue. Once you have killed the smaller zombie, the larger zombie will go berserk and lower is guard while charging the player. Player will need to double jump to get over him... bullets will do damage, but will not slow him down. When he has been defeated, the mausoleum will collapse and the player will move on to the next half of the level.


Boss:
The boss will be fought like a puzzle fight. When entering the last main mausoleum, the lighting will be dark, only to be lit by the lightning storm occurring outside. When attacking, you will see 4 pairs of eyes. Only one set will have a set glowing a different color. When the lightning strikes, lighting up the room, this is when you will attack. The second version of his attack is yet to be determined.

Environment:
The environment will be a graveyard setting with a giant moon in the background, along with tombstones and a mausoleum.

Asset List:
1.Various Tombstones
2.Mausoleum
3.Trees
4.graveyard gate
5.caskets
6.lamp posts (outdoor)

Reference Sheet:
















Color Palette:

Unable to make meeting

On account that I am not feeling well, I dont think I will be able to make it to the meeting this saturday, the 27th. Just giving a heads up.

Amanda

The Dreadnaught in the City

here is the dreadnaught for the city stage. i have the short story about the level and the dreadnaught as well as just eh basic shape layout. i ll come back in and add in more stuff about the level itself as i work out more details.

The town of Steamwall is one of the largest cities located in the New West. If one is seeking wealth and knowledge, they can both be found in Steamwall. Originally founded to support the building of railroads, the discovery of large amounts of gold mines has allowed this city to grow and prosper. An easy target with an abundance of wealth, it was only a matter of time before the Wild Aces would make their appearance. The Wild Aces have picked a weapon of true destruction for this job, The Dreadnaught. A fearsome site to behold, The Dreadnaught is used to place a city under siege. Its sheer size and firepower could easily overwhelm most city defenses. A common tactic used by the Aces is to let The Dreadnaught attack a town and place it under siege while continuously sending out henchmen to rob the town until there is nothing left.

Iron Titan Update

**UPDATE**
Edited the post to make my entries look prettier.

Updated My Iron Titan Level... I'll eventually change the background to nonwhite, but I need sleep.

http://codename7up.blogspot.com/2009/05/midboss-event.html

No Meeting on Saturday June 13

hey everyone, the meeting this weekend (June 13) is canceled due to an event i am attending.

Level designers please have the rough-outs of the levels ready by next week with a short description for the mechanics of your midboss fight/event and your last boss fight as well. If you can, please post what you have on the blog so we can all take a look.

Artists, please have your work in progress for the character you are working on ready for next week. Character backgrounds and discriptions will be up this coming week.

*IMPORTIANT* I would like to have a really rough alpha ready to go for the GDC meeting in Austin on September 15-18 (that is our deadline goal). i would also like people to attend if possible, so plan your time off now and lets get to work so we can have something to show this GDC.

have a good weekend everyone and see you next weekend.

Here is an article on the way a design document is put together. Figure this might be a good reference for you Tony (if you don't already have one)

http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/747/book_extract__creating_games_.php

Iron Titan

**Update**

Added Assets List
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Just compiling all my images in one thread, I will keep this thread updated whenever I have new stuff to add, pertaining to this level.

Assets List



Level Layout + Midboss



Horizontal Version Per Request:



Boss Fight Mechanics

MegaMan 2.5D

Not completely related to our project, but thought it might be cool to see some tricks that this guy did using 3D inside of a sidescroller. Might even give you guys a few ideas on the level design, who knows.

Also the idea is pretty sweet.

MegaMan 2.5D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6KMAm_228s

PS Just found this, and this one looks sweet too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj8UXwe80PY

Check this one out...

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/finished-projects/9864-trashman-back.html

No Meeting on Saturday May 23

hey everyone, the meeting this weekend (May 23th) is canceled due to a few people (including myself) are out of town. have a good weekend long weekend.

Train Level Rough Draft

Here's my rough draft of the train level, it may not make sense right now cause it's just a rough draft... I'll try to explain some of the more confusing parts (such as the midboss event) later, I'll be out of town this weekend.

I also don't know how I want the boss to play out yet, just that there will be lots of explosions... woo!

Here's what I got so far:



Criticism is welcome and appreciated!

Competition

Hey guys, here's a game I found that a group of students in Sweden are working on. Granted that their degree focuses on game creation, and I think this is actually something they have to do for their degree, they're still competition, or at least something to compare to. They're a smallish group (I think maybe 8-10 people? maybe more maybe less) that are making a sidescrolling hack and slash action rpg, like Golden Axe or something along those lines.

The game is called Penalty of Heroes, it releases on xbox live in Fall of this year. This is what their blog looks like:

http://blog.penaltyofheroes.com/

Just thought I'd share

No Meeting on Saturday May 14

hey everyone, the meeting this weekend (May 14th) is canceled. have a good weekend.

Something worth reading

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4017/10_game_design_process_pitfalls.php

Meeting on Saturday April 11th

everyone wish antonio a happy bday and a reminder that there will be a meeting on Sat April 11th. once again, please post a comment if you can not make it.

No Meeting on Saturday April 3rd

hey everyone, the meeting this weekend (april 3rd) is canceled. have a good weekend and we will meet again the following weekend (april 10th).

Badguys Refrence Ideas (Ghoul Guy)

Badguys Refrence Ideas (Explosive Guy)

Badguys Refrence Ideas (Big Guy)

Meeting on Saturday March 28th

a reminder that there will be a meeting on Sat March 28th. once again, please post a comment if you can not make it.

Freesound

Hey guys... here is the sound site I was talking about on Saturday

http://www.freesound.org/index.php

Amanda's Info

Hey all, just wanted to say it was great meeting you this weekend. Also posting my messenger info so you can get ahold of me if need be.

AIM - AerisMcCain
Yahoo - aerismccain
msn - a_calico@hotmail.com
googletalk - aerismccain@gmail.com

Looking forward to working with you all :)

Unreal Tournament 3 Black

Hey guys, this is really important, considering we are going to be using Unreal Tournament 3's engine for our project.

Starting from now til March 22nd, you can buy UT3 Black for a 40% discount off of the Steam network. Supposedly, this includes the original game, a patch up to 2.0, and some new content, like new maps and characters and such. This brings the price to $11.99, which is certainly a very affordable investment to a program we'll be spending the majority of our project working with.

I can't say 100% whether or not it comes with the Unreal Editor; I can't seem to find a clear answer on Google, but general forum consensus is that if you buy any copy of the actual game, it should include the editor with it (because it basically needs to flip a switch in the editor in order to run). Just don't hate me if it's not included! Heck UnrealEd may even be downloadable online somewhere, I dunno.

If anyone knows for sure if it is included please comment, but other than that if you don't have it this is a prime opportunity to obtain it, but don't forget, the offer ends on Monday. See you guys on Saturday!

Meeting on Saturday March 21st

a friendly reminder to everyone that we will have a meeting on Sat March 21st. please try to show up and we can try to pick up the momentum on this project. if anyone can not make it, please post it in the comments.

Introduction 2

Hello All,

My name is Zain and I am a friend of Adam and Phil. I graduated with Phil from Trinity with a degree in Comp. Sci. and I am now working in Houston as a IT Consultant for Energy Companies/Banks.

I've done some game programming before, and I've also done a bit of modeling/rigging/animation using Blender. As far as UT goes, I made a couple simple mutators back for original UT back in '99, but I have not seen UT3Ed and I'm sure modding the game has become a lot easier now.

Unfortunately, my work schedule keeps me pretty busy and I can promise only a few hours on weekends to working towards this project. But I figured that may be true for many of you all.
Anyway, I look forward to working with the UT SDK and creating a fun mod with you guys.

Meeting on Saturdat, March 14th

just a quick reminder that there will be a meeting this Sat (March 14th). everyone please attend if you can as our team is getting very close to complete, thanks.

Introduction

Being as Adam is the one who recruited me and I haven't met most of you yet, I figured it would be a good idea to introduce myself. I'm Phil and I went to Trinity with Adam while he was there, and majored in Computer Science.

Currently I'm a grad student at TAMU working on my PhD in AI. I have a bit of experience with game engine design. I helped program a 3D RTS back in undergrad. Also, when I can pull myself away from SF4 I mess around with Flash and Photoshop.

From what I've heard from Adam and what I've seen of the Unreal SDK, I don't think it will be that difficult to come up with something pretty decent. Right now I'm trying to work up a rough sand box, where we can test the camera and movement settings.

I'm excited to help in what ever way I can.

Speed sketch...

I've shown this to Tony and Adam already, but it's a speed sketch I did for the Hero. Based on discussions of what we liked I kind of came up with this rough sketch. I have some more that I haven't scanned in yet...

Another Character Artist

I talked to my friend and showed her the link to our project and she says that she would be interested in being a character artist. Her name is Amanda, she used to be my roomate... she's pretty cool. Would you guys like to set up another meeting soon for introductions?

Rough Sketch

Here's another rough sketch I did to sort of picture more of how bigger chunks of environment would flow together:

Enviornment Quickpass

Here's a real quick color sketch of how I imagine the environment. Questions/comments/critiques welcome. I may add more detail, not sure if I'll continue with this idea or try something new:

Technology Considerations

While browsing the FAQ on the unreal tournament engine (http://www.unrealtechnology.com/features.php?ref=faq) I am concerned about three things: cost, performance, and portability.

My background as a developer typically has me working in a GNU/Linux environment. If we develop against this particular engine we shut out quite a bit of market with regards to GNU/Linux and OS X users.

As for performance, I have a feeling that this particular engine is going to all but limit our market yet again to users capable of running DX10 based games (ie. high performance capable machines).

And then there is cost to contend with. If we go the mod route, I am not sure how that works as a viable platform for commercial development. Also, without access to the source we may be unable to do the level of customization required to support the type of game play you want.

On a final note, I don't have much experience with mod development, or game development in general. Mostly I deal with systems level programming and front end UI development. What I have done is some browsing and modification of the Quake3 engine. I am not entirely sure the Unreal Engine 3 is suitable for this type of game. We can achieve parity in features and graphics with a much simpler platform: SDL. SDL runs just about everywhere. It does GL. It is performant. And it is open-source. Plus there are bindings for a variety of languages. Overall this lowers the cost of development (I don't have a copy, nor do I want to purchase a copy of Unreal Tournament 3 as my computer is too slow to adequately play it).

Environment Reference Images

Alright guys, I looked up alot of reference for the environment, and i'm gonna split this up into two parts. The first part is samples of old western buildings and locals that could be a good basis for our environment (and then we make it all hip and steampunky). The second part are samples of pictures with nice color tones that we could take inspiration from. Here goes:

Western Locals:








Those were the location refs, here are the color examples I was thinking about (you can mostly ignore whats in the actual pictures besides the colors):






And as for level of detail this is the sort of detail we could put into a western style setting (if we wanted to):





**some concept references are the property of deviant art members, and these examples are for reference only**