Bid Farewell Project
by Ashley Sidebottom · 08/20/2011 (5:40 pm) · 4 comments
I usually post blogs onto my website. I am going to post this new one on here :) then onto my site. If you want to read the old blog, Please check here
I left the last blog off mentioning that the AI now spawned attacking with their fists rather than with a rocket launcher which was to be honest, not very "zombie" like. And further improvements were added so that the enemies have their own data block, which means different enemies can be easily implemented with different variables, such as speed, jumping distance, health, view distance and damage. Let's start things off with what's new in the level, on the last screenshots it was just a plain piece of terrain..
The level, "The Beginning", now has had objects added to the scene, starting off in a grave like level. The player starts off outside a crypt, which looks like he has come out of the crypt, this is hoping to get changed to a entrance to a graveyard, such as big gates, like you would normally expect. The level is bounded off too, as their is fencing all around the level, restricting the player to the graveyard and the entrance to the church, which will be unlocked after the completion of the first level. Graves have been added, along with paths drawn on the terrain. A new church has been added too, which looks better than the last, to find out why click here to read Liam's blog. Other snippets were added to the level that you might normally find in graveyard, such as crypts, tombs, benches and lights. The level now contains proper ambient lighting, making the level look eary , and rain and lightning has been added along with a moon.
The menu is still to be updated, it is a screenshot containing the first level with "Play","options" and "Quit" on. We recognised a flaw with this as not every level is going to be in a church yard, so the main menu immediately gives off the wrong impression to our game. the game will consist of driving levels, as well as a planned ice rink, so we need to make a simple yet appealing menu that is still related to zombies.
The loading screen has been changed too, it shows a better render of the first level. The previous looked nice, but the church changed and the new render was changed and we decided it looked better than before. The loading screen will change for each level. A loading bar has been aced, however this is alpha, and I personally do not like the new loading bar, so this will most likely be changed later on but serves a nice placeholder, now knowing how to change it when we plead.
Music has been implemented into the main menu. We do not have music for the game yet, so I converted one of my songs to a ".ogg" format and quickly figured out a way to add this to the menu and after a small amount of testing worked flawlessly, however I couldn't find a way yet for music to play on the loading screen, level and score screens.
The zombies now spawn in 3 random places, causing a challenge for the player. Multiple code functions have been implemented to this AI data block so that it can work in a number of ways. For example, only 10 zombies can spawn and be on screen for one time. However when one dies, this increases the amount of onscreen zombies by 2 so for every one you kill, 2 spawn, this could add challenges like surviving for a long time, trying not to kill zombies as this decreases your changes of surviving. We've been playing around wit ha few techniques and I think were rolling out a 3 minute time limit for the demo trying to kill as many zombies as possible without dying. The zombie doesn't yet have a model or animations of its own, so we need to model, rig and animate our own.
The UI looks different too. There are new features such as a timer and kills dialog. There's also a infection ratio down at the bottom, which changes according to the damage taken. The UI still needs a few changes but were still in Alpha stage at the moment so they serve as good placeholders. Apples are also dropped by enemies, incase your feeling a little hungry, or in need of health.
A death screen has been added, this is simple, you die and have to restart the level so it displays a small dialog requesting you to go back to the level select screen, along with a helpful level select button
A score screen had been added, which now shows the time you have been playing it and the kills you have done, it also shows the unlocks underneath, such as more health, or a new level/area. I have spent weeks trying to code the game to display the score screen when it needs to be, finally achieved this And the game doesn't stop, so the death screen appears in front of the user. I spent a few more days stressing over it and finally sorted it today using a simple yet effect function. I first tried pausing the game, however the time still kept counting up or down, depending on the case, on the score screen. I now have a variable that is declared false when the score screen is shown, and the AI's spawning and thinking pattern stop running, as they, along with the timer, only run when the variable is true.
Now for the bad bits. The text we are wanting to use for the timer and score screen will not work. A profile is made for these and works, however there is a bug within the engine we are using that needs to be fixed to enable custom fonts. We checked this a while ago and it was reported but a fix wasn't out, wether this is the case today, I am still unsure. I haven't had the time to check.
The whole project is coming along nicely, however it was nearly scrapped a couple of weeks ago. I broke the program with my awesome skills, and was loosing my hair, literally, over why it was not working. After days of searching through hundreds of files and thousands of lines of code in each and seeking help, I found a random letter 'F' amongst the code. Now this was probably my clumsiness, however I'm going to go ahead and blame the cats for this one. Whilst the code was broken we were debating wether to start again. There was not slot of planning that went into "Bid Farewell" as I had got hold of the new engine and wanted to test it out, Liam was making models in 3D, I chucked them in with normal maps seeing how the engine rendered all his and we starting, slowly making a game.
Were hoping to get a demo out soon, but we still have slot more features to be implemented.
Now for the other personal stuff. Along with this game I have a long list of things that need to be done. We have recently been approached to help in another project, of which I can't say much, however we are looking forward to it, but hoping that the work will not slow down with Bid Farewell. O. Top of that we are trying to get a few T-Shirt designs done and out there, a
Character modelled, textured and rigged ready for my 2nd year at uni, along with other personal things so it is really starting to get busy, also Minecraft won't mine itself
Cheers for reading,
I would also like to thank everyone for their help in the Forum, Especially Steve Acaster for helping with almost, if not, everything.
If I have done anything wrong with posting this blog please let me know and I will correct it.
Thanks!
-Ash
I left the last blog off mentioning that the AI now spawned attacking with their fists rather than with a rocket launcher which was to be honest, not very "zombie" like. And further improvements were added so that the enemies have their own data block, which means different enemies can be easily implemented with different variables, such as speed, jumping distance, health, view distance and damage. Let's start things off with what's new in the level, on the last screenshots it was just a plain piece of terrain..
The level, "The Beginning", now has had objects added to the scene, starting off in a grave like level. The player starts off outside a crypt, which looks like he has come out of the crypt, this is hoping to get changed to a entrance to a graveyard, such as big gates, like you would normally expect. The level is bounded off too, as their is fencing all around the level, restricting the player to the graveyard and the entrance to the church, which will be unlocked after the completion of the first level. Graves have been added, along with paths drawn on the terrain. A new church has been added too, which looks better than the last, to find out why click here to read Liam's blog. Other snippets were added to the level that you might normally find in graveyard, such as crypts, tombs, benches and lights. The level now contains proper ambient lighting, making the level look eary , and rain and lightning has been added along with a moon.
The menu is still to be updated, it is a screenshot containing the first level with "Play","options" and "Quit" on. We recognised a flaw with this as not every level is going to be in a church yard, so the main menu immediately gives off the wrong impression to our game. the game will consist of driving levels, as well as a planned ice rink, so we need to make a simple yet appealing menu that is still related to zombies.
The loading screen has been changed too, it shows a better render of the first level. The previous looked nice, but the church changed and the new render was changed and we decided it looked better than before. The loading screen will change for each level. A loading bar has been aced, however this is alpha, and I personally do not like the new loading bar, so this will most likely be changed later on but serves a nice placeholder, now knowing how to change it when we plead.
Music has been implemented into the main menu. We do not have music for the game yet, so I converted one of my songs to a ".ogg" format and quickly figured out a way to add this to the menu and after a small amount of testing worked flawlessly, however I couldn't find a way yet for music to play on the loading screen, level and score screens.
The zombies now spawn in 3 random places, causing a challenge for the player. Multiple code functions have been implemented to this AI data block so that it can work in a number of ways. For example, only 10 zombies can spawn and be on screen for one time. However when one dies, this increases the amount of onscreen zombies by 2 so for every one you kill, 2 spawn, this could add challenges like surviving for a long time, trying not to kill zombies as this decreases your changes of surviving. We've been playing around wit ha few techniques and I think were rolling out a 3 minute time limit for the demo trying to kill as many zombies as possible without dying. The zombie doesn't yet have a model or animations of its own, so we need to model, rig and animate our own.
The UI looks different too. There are new features such as a timer and kills dialog. There's also a infection ratio down at the bottom, which changes according to the damage taken. The UI still needs a few changes but were still in Alpha stage at the moment so they serve as good placeholders. Apples are also dropped by enemies, incase your feeling a little hungry, or in need of health.
A death screen has been added, this is simple, you die and have to restart the level so it displays a small dialog requesting you to go back to the level select screen, along with a helpful level select button
A score screen had been added, which now shows the time you have been playing it and the kills you have done, it also shows the unlocks underneath, such as more health, or a new level/area. I have spent weeks trying to code the game to display the score screen when it needs to be, finally achieved this And the game doesn't stop, so the death screen appears in front of the user. I spent a few more days stressing over it and finally sorted it today using a simple yet effect function. I first tried pausing the game, however the time still kept counting up or down, depending on the case, on the score screen. I now have a variable that is declared false when the score screen is shown, and the AI's spawning and thinking pattern stop running, as they, along with the timer, only run when the variable is true.
Now for the bad bits. The text we are wanting to use for the timer and score screen will not work. A profile is made for these and works, however there is a bug within the engine we are using that needs to be fixed to enable custom fonts. We checked this a while ago and it was reported but a fix wasn't out, wether this is the case today, I am still unsure. I haven't had the time to check.
The whole project is coming along nicely, however it was nearly scrapped a couple of weeks ago. I broke the program with my awesome skills, and was loosing my hair, literally, over why it was not working. After days of searching through hundreds of files and thousands of lines of code in each and seeking help, I found a random letter 'F' amongst the code. Now this was probably my clumsiness, however I'm going to go ahead and blame the cats for this one. Whilst the code was broken we were debating wether to start again. There was not slot of planning that went into "Bid Farewell" as I had got hold of the new engine and wanted to test it out, Liam was making models in 3D, I chucked them in with normal maps seeing how the engine rendered all his and we starting, slowly making a game.
Were hoping to get a demo out soon, but we still have slot more features to be implemented.
Now for the other personal stuff. Along with this game I have a long list of things that need to be done. We have recently been approached to help in another project, of which I can't say much, however we are looking forward to it, but hoping that the work will not slow down with Bid Farewell. O. Top of that we are trying to get a few T-Shirt designs done and out there, a
Character modelled, textured and rigged ready for my 2nd year at uni, along with other personal things so it is really starting to get busy, also Minecraft won't mine itself
Cheers for reading,
I would also like to thank everyone for their help in the Forum, Especially Steve Acaster for helping with almost, if not, everything.
If I have done anything wrong with posting this blog please let me know and I will correct it.
Thanks!
-Ash
About the author
Student @ University of Huddersfield | Games Designer | sidearse@live.co.uk http://www.sid3bottom.co.uk http://www.bashgames.co.uk
Torque 3D Owner Tuomas Kaukoranta