Plan for Justin Mette
by Justin Mette · 01/30/2002 (8:23 am) · 10 comments
Artificial Intelligence
The first AI "mode" for enemies was developed this week and is affectionately called "Wander Mode". In this mode, the enemy will wander aimlessly around a specified area which is ideal for random encounters. Next up is the "target acquisition" and "attack" modes.
Characters
The basic Myrmidon model was integrated into the game this week. This means that all three major characters (Myr, Terran, and Bug) have been properly exported into the game, which is the first time we were able to see all the characters next to one another.
One of the first things we noticed was that the scale of the players needed to be adjusted. What we thought was to be a simple rescaling job turned into a painful lesson in the character modeling process: scale needs to be approved before animations are started! It seems that scaling the skeleton and animations in MAX results in many errors and essentially these elements need to be recreated from scratch to ensure an accurate export. Therefore, we have introduced an in-game, "scale review" step in the art development process to avoid this in the future.
This week also saw the integration of our first home-grown SFX, the Myrmidon footfall. A great deal was learned about how the footfall SFX are synchronized with the different movement animations which resulted in yet another addition to the character animations footstep triggers. We now have four separate footfalls SFX (slightly different from one another) that are played in a looping sequence with each subsequent footstep, resulting in a very realistic walking sound.
Continued integration of the bug model occurred this week, as well. The bug is a melee attack creature and therefore doesn't have a visibly mounted weapon but instead attacks with either its long pincers or bites. To accommodate this melee style attack and keep the Torque changes to a minimum, a Melee "weapon" was created that has no visible model but integrates and mounts on the model just like a regular weapon. This new dummy weapon simply hangs off the "fire" hook and engages the appropriate bug animation and will ultimately calculate melee "to hit" and "damage".
Finally, in Characters this week, we have the Support Ship Bots that have been modeled but not yet textured or animated. The bots currently act as merchants and healers (different skins, same model) NPC's for the player to interact with while on the Support Ship. We all like the bots so much, that we are planning on introducing them as a main enemy character in Phase 3!
Intro Movie
Cells 6 & 7 (Space Battle) started heavy development this week. To prepare for the scene, 10 different space craft were modeled representing the Terran and unknown enemy fleets. The scene depicts how the Terran Empire has grown and is spreading across the universe to "cleanse" it of those that would defy them. First drafts of the scene have already been orchestrated as well.
Mission Generator
With our recently added T2 Mapping experience to the team, we took some time to assess the features planned for the Mission Generator in Phase 2. A few new concepts were designed over what was already planned and included: Dependencies between Interiors and Scatter Fields, different dispersal patterns for objects in a Scatter Field, and randomly chosen Spawn Sphere locations.
This week also began the development of Mission Objective generation. This feature will randomly choose objectives for the players each time the mission is played and proves to be one of the most valuable features in terms of replay ability. As well, some exciting techniques in interior/object collision were developed this week to help ensure randomly placed interiors/objects do not overlap.
Research Station Mission
The development of the Research Station pieces (scattered across the moon surface for the players to explore) is an area we should have paid more attention to earlier on in the development of Myrmidon. As a result of our procrastination, we still find ourselves approving basic concepts for the station and just beginning WC/Quark development of them. Thankfully, for this Phase, we only need a few interiors to show the Mission Generator in action.
Some work was started on laying out the overall mission design. With the Mission Generator in mind, this is a more difficult task than standard T2 mapping, for example, as every possible location for each interior has to be planned out and balanced as appropriate. Other dynamic factors include spawn sphere starting points and scatter field locations.
Support Ship
This interior is being wrapped up this week and work included further optimizations on size and loading speed, new floor lights in the hallways to help brighten things up, and some tweaks to textures and ambient lighting.
Torque
We have been chasing a couple nasty Torque bugs for a while but have recently come to realize that they are fixed in Torque 1.1.1, which leaves us in somewhat of a predicament. First, the game was crashing on a few of our machines when a mission was launched. A new ASM file from the 1.1.1 release fixed that problem (whew!). Second, the terrain editor is freezing up or crashing after a few minutes of editing on our level designers machine. After trying the editors in 1.1.1, it appears that the problems have been fixed. The dilemma is facing the upgrade to 1.1.1 with only 6 weeks left in Phase 2. We have ultimately decided to try and use Torque 1.1.1 Editors for creating our terrain and hold off on merging the 1.1.1 code base into Myrmidon (which took almost 4 weeks last time).
User Interface
Good strides were made this week on the user interface almost no Torque 1.1 UI is left (I mean that in a good way)! Changes this week include the addition of Audio Controls to the options dialog, skinned versions of the Start Mission and Loading Mission screens, and two new common controls; the edit control and progress control.
The Heads-Up display (PlayGui) was also re-designed this week to accommodate Myrmidon game play. HUD elements include health/shield/weapon stats, compass and coordinates, chat, objectives, target display, pattern buffer (back pack) contents, and character management (equipped items and stats). This week, the health/shield/weapon stats and chat windows were implemented.
Weapons
The weapon model sheets were created this week and are looking sharp. We even have names for them now! I put the concept work on the Myrmidon gallery on the 21-6 web site.
The two weapons in this phase have been almost completely coded and integrated. There is a small amount of work remaining to get ammo usage working with the new stackable item inventory, which is currently being developed. Once the art assets are developed and integrated, the weapons for this Phase will be complete.
The first AI "mode" for enemies was developed this week and is affectionately called "Wander Mode". In this mode, the enemy will wander aimlessly around a specified area which is ideal for random encounters. Next up is the "target acquisition" and "attack" modes.
Characters
The basic Myrmidon model was integrated into the game this week. This means that all three major characters (Myr, Terran, and Bug) have been properly exported into the game, which is the first time we were able to see all the characters next to one another.
One of the first things we noticed was that the scale of the players needed to be adjusted. What we thought was to be a simple rescaling job turned into a painful lesson in the character modeling process: scale needs to be approved before animations are started! It seems that scaling the skeleton and animations in MAX results in many errors and essentially these elements need to be recreated from scratch to ensure an accurate export. Therefore, we have introduced an in-game, "scale review" step in the art development process to avoid this in the future.
This week also saw the integration of our first home-grown SFX, the Myrmidon footfall. A great deal was learned about how the footfall SFX are synchronized with the different movement animations which resulted in yet another addition to the character animations footstep triggers. We now have four separate footfalls SFX (slightly different from one another) that are played in a looping sequence with each subsequent footstep, resulting in a very realistic walking sound.
Continued integration of the bug model occurred this week, as well. The bug is a melee attack creature and therefore doesn't have a visibly mounted weapon but instead attacks with either its long pincers or bites. To accommodate this melee style attack and keep the Torque changes to a minimum, a Melee "weapon" was created that has no visible model but integrates and mounts on the model just like a regular weapon. This new dummy weapon simply hangs off the "fire" hook and engages the appropriate bug animation and will ultimately calculate melee "to hit" and "damage".
Finally, in Characters this week, we have the Support Ship Bots that have been modeled but not yet textured or animated. The bots currently act as merchants and healers (different skins, same model) NPC's for the player to interact with while on the Support Ship. We all like the bots so much, that we are planning on introducing them as a main enemy character in Phase 3!
Intro Movie
Cells 6 & 7 (Space Battle) started heavy development this week. To prepare for the scene, 10 different space craft were modeled representing the Terran and unknown enemy fleets. The scene depicts how the Terran Empire has grown and is spreading across the universe to "cleanse" it of those that would defy them. First drafts of the scene have already been orchestrated as well.
Mission Generator
With our recently added T2 Mapping experience to the team, we took some time to assess the features planned for the Mission Generator in Phase 2. A few new concepts were designed over what was already planned and included: Dependencies between Interiors and Scatter Fields, different dispersal patterns for objects in a Scatter Field, and randomly chosen Spawn Sphere locations.
This week also began the development of Mission Objective generation. This feature will randomly choose objectives for the players each time the mission is played and proves to be one of the most valuable features in terms of replay ability. As well, some exciting techniques in interior/object collision were developed this week to help ensure randomly placed interiors/objects do not overlap.
Research Station Mission
The development of the Research Station pieces (scattered across the moon surface for the players to explore) is an area we should have paid more attention to earlier on in the development of Myrmidon. As a result of our procrastination, we still find ourselves approving basic concepts for the station and just beginning WC/Quark development of them. Thankfully, for this Phase, we only need a few interiors to show the Mission Generator in action.
Some work was started on laying out the overall mission design. With the Mission Generator in mind, this is a more difficult task than standard T2 mapping, for example, as every possible location for each interior has to be planned out and balanced as appropriate. Other dynamic factors include spawn sphere starting points and scatter field locations.
Support Ship
This interior is being wrapped up this week and work included further optimizations on size and loading speed, new floor lights in the hallways to help brighten things up, and some tweaks to textures and ambient lighting.
Torque
We have been chasing a couple nasty Torque bugs for a while but have recently come to realize that they are fixed in Torque 1.1.1, which leaves us in somewhat of a predicament. First, the game was crashing on a few of our machines when a mission was launched. A new ASM file from the 1.1.1 release fixed that problem (whew!). Second, the terrain editor is freezing up or crashing after a few minutes of editing on our level designers machine. After trying the editors in 1.1.1, it appears that the problems have been fixed. The dilemma is facing the upgrade to 1.1.1 with only 6 weeks left in Phase 2. We have ultimately decided to try and use Torque 1.1.1 Editors for creating our terrain and hold off on merging the 1.1.1 code base into Myrmidon (which took almost 4 weeks last time).
User Interface
Good strides were made this week on the user interface almost no Torque 1.1 UI is left (I mean that in a good way)! Changes this week include the addition of Audio Controls to the options dialog, skinned versions of the Start Mission and Loading Mission screens, and two new common controls; the edit control and progress control.
The Heads-Up display (PlayGui) was also re-designed this week to accommodate Myrmidon game play. HUD elements include health/shield/weapon stats, compass and coordinates, chat, objectives, target display, pattern buffer (back pack) contents, and character management (equipped items and stats). This week, the health/shield/weapon stats and chat windows were implemented.
Weapons
The weapon model sheets were created this week and are looking sharp. We even have names for them now! I put the concept work on the Myrmidon gallery on the 21-6 web site.
The two weapons in this phase have been almost completely coded and integrated. There is a small amount of work remaining to get ammo usage working with the new stackable item inventory, which is currently being developed. Once the art assets are developed and integrated, the weapons for this Phase will be complete.
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#2
01/30/2002 (9:13 am)
Thanks Tim! It's simply awesome the amount of talent this team collectively posesses, if I may say so. We are still getting used to the complexities of working in a virtual office, across 4 time zones, but already the team is showing some amazing progress and dedication. I couldn't "be" more proud!
#3
I have a little questions. For your AI, have you used to AIConnection or have you written one be yourself?
01/30/2002 (9:13 am)
well, this project sounds great!I have a little questions. For your AI, have you used to AIConnection or have you written one be yourself?
#4
01/30/2002 (9:51 am)
Thanks Marco, we're using the AIConnection and AIPlayer classes in the current tourque release, modified slightly. Outside of that, we're using script to control the behavior with various "think" events.
#5
Sounds like you guys are doing an incredible job. Let me know if you want to try getting it up and running on the Mac, and maybe I can help advise ways to minimize merge issues.
d
01/30/2002 (1:53 pm)
FYI - if it really took 4 weeks to merge your project, you may want to look at what is taking so long to merge, and find ways to compartmentalize it, subclass things, etc., to better isolate merge issues. As the engine continues development, you'll want to be able to merge every 6 weeks or so any way for new platforms (Mac), new features, bug fixes, etc.Sounds like you guys are doing an incredible job. Let me know if you want to try getting it up and running on the Mac, and maybe I can help advise ways to minimize merge issues.
d
#6
I can relate to the timezones thing...we have people in the netherlands, america, london...it's very hard to coordinate. Hotline (www.bigredh.com) helps a lot, as people can drop by and leave messages, chat, etc. at any time.
Pretty soon we'll start putting our beta interface into Torque...any suggestions from what you discovered? Anything we should avoid?
Thanks, and good luck! :)
-Evan
01/30/2002 (3:29 pm)
Another very cool Myrmidon plan.I can relate to the timezones thing...we have people in the netherlands, america, london...it's very hard to coordinate. Hotline (www.bigredh.com) helps a lot, as people can drop by and leave messages, chat, etc. at any time.
Pretty soon we'll start putting our beta interface into Torque...any suggestions from what you discovered? Anything we should avoid?
Thanks, and good luck! :)
-Evan
#7
Evan - we are actually starting to use the phone more and just eat the phone bill. It's kind of funny as we have tried to use the internet for communication in many, many ways and its just not up for the challenge witha team this large. I am unsure what you mean by "putting our beta interface into Torque", could you elaborate?
01/31/2002 (5:50 am)
David - thanks for the advice. We have indeed been doing our best to try and minimize the impact of Toruqe engine changes in the future. As you can imagine, the more code we add to the engine, the more difficult the merging becomes - It's all just a matter of timing. Evan - we are actually starting to use the phone more and just eat the phone bill. It's kind of funny as we have tried to use the internet for communication in many, many ways and its just not up for the challenge witha team this large. I am unsure what you mean by "putting our beta interface into Torque", could you elaborate?
#8
My team is kept fairly well in contact. I add them all to my email address book and usually send out an 'newsletter' email once every other day. We also have a staff-only section of our site with weekly objectives for each part of the Sylvantec team, and an agenda for our weekly meetings, as well as a section that modelers can view all the concept art we have made and model based on it. Most of us have instant messaging and communicate through that frequently.
Email is a better way to stay in touch than I used to think. A lot of issues can be addressed in email and answered fairly quickly. Often I talk to about every member of the team on a daily basis. It is hard though, for the guys in Europe to make our chat room meetings because of time zone differences.
But that's the problem with us virtual teams. Nothing beats being there in person. :/ Can't really help it, though.
And also, Justin, I find it amazing that your team is making so much progress. In every update you make there's something new going on. Programming in Sylvantec started off slow, and it's pretty cool to see that you guys maintain it so well.
01/31/2002 (12:46 pm)
For the footfall sounds...do you loop the same sequence over and over again, or play them in a random loop? Random would keep the player from being annoyed by the same sequence of sounds while they're walking or running.My team is kept fairly well in contact. I add them all to my email address book and usually send out an 'newsletter' email once every other day. We also have a staff-only section of our site with weekly objectives for each part of the Sylvantec team, and an agenda for our weekly meetings, as well as a section that modelers can view all the concept art we have made and model based on it. Most of us have instant messaging and communicate through that frequently.
Email is a better way to stay in touch than I used to think. A lot of issues can be addressed in email and answered fairly quickly. Often I talk to about every member of the team on a daily basis. It is hard though, for the guys in Europe to make our chat room meetings because of time zone differences.
But that's the problem with us virtual teams. Nothing beats being there in person. :/ Can't really help it, though.
And also, Justin, I find it amazing that your team is making so much progress. In every update you make there's something new going on. Programming in Sylvantec started off slow, and it's pretty cool to see that you guys maintain it so well.
#9
Sounds like our teams are structured in similar ways. We are always looking for ways to improve communication, though, as it is the main source of inefficiency we are experiencing. If anyone stumbles on good voice conferencing solutions - internet or phone - that are cost effecitive and reliable - we would love to hear about them!
01/31/2002 (12:56 pm)
The footfall SFX in Myrmidon are played in sequence over and over. This actually mimics the reptitive sound of foot steps in real life from our observations. Note that the four individual SFX that make up the sequence have a left/right/left/right distinction that is also very realistic and helps with the overall effect quite convincingly.Sounds like our teams are structured in similar ways. We are always looking for ways to improve communication, though, as it is the main source of inefficiency we are experiencing. If anyone stumbles on good voice conferencing solutions - internet or phone - that are cost effecitive and reliable - we would love to hear about them!
#10
01/31/2002 (1:05 pm)
About the foot fall, again...if you're going to loop, just be sure that each step sounds very realistic. Almost to the point that the player thinks that it sounds like a real footstep. I say that because a cheesy or bland sounding one is annoying in the first place, and gets a lot more annoying if it's repeated over in the same sequence. Repetitivity of sound is risky in game design because it's the first source of making the game monotonous. If it's done well, though, it can be a powerful method of portraying the surrounding environment. The risk can be worth it...but if the sound effects guys and designers on your team produce like the rest do, you shouldn't have too much worry about.
Torque Owner Tim Gift