Jeremy McConnachie's Dev Blog @jeremy-mcconnachie-dev - Tumblr Blog

Posts

Penthouse (2014) - Modeled and Rendered in Maya

#Portfolio

Poe (2014) - Character Modelling in Maya

#Portfolio

Kidd.0 (2015) - Digital Sculpture in Maya and Mudbox

#Portfolio

Thursday 28/10/15 (Tori)

Kind of work: Game polish and final playtest before presentation.

Time worked: 6 hours.

Task deliverable: Get all sound into the game, check for any bugs, and finish final animations.

Task goal/purpose: Tidy up the game and make presentable.

Most important factors affecting the outcome: Are we ready to present?

Unknowns / things to learn / things to do: There’s still a few minor jobs that we’ll need to do over the extension period, but for now- we just need to present.

Current issues and problems: Animating like always has been a pain in the ass. We weren’t able to get everything we wanted done, but we’ve made sure the build is completed and we’ve now got all the sounds in. The only big issue for us is that we would have liked a little longer to practice presenting the work, but we both feel fairly confident with how we know the project and feel that we’ll be able to do it justice, especially at the standard it is now.

Things discovered or learned: A few of the big jobs will have to wait until next week to be finished, but at the moment we’re incredibly happy with what we’re presenting. While we feel like there are a few things to still put in to help the game structurally, the game is in a good enough position that there’s enough to show to games intention and direction, and I feel as though Jeremy and I have managed to pull off a miracle with getting the game to a presentable standard.

Putting the final music in has been probably one of the best experiences of the project. Zac’s completely blown us away with what he’s created and hearing everything put together and working has just been such an amazing thing to watch. The game feels like it’s come alive and has much more depth then before. I’m really excited to showcase the work Zac has done for us tomorrow.

Wednesday 27/10/15 (Tori)

No work done – Zac is handing all finished music over today/Working on final project for industry.

Tuesday 26/10/15 (Tori)

No work done. Working on final project for Industry.

Monday 25/10/15 (Tori)

Kind of work: Game polish continued, talk with Zac.

Time worked: 7 hours.

Task deliverable: Continue to tidy up game menu, work on trailer and discuss additional sound requirements with Zac.

Task goal/purpose: Get game finished with minor jobs remaining, get game trailer finished and help Zac with any last changes.

Most important factors affecting the outcome: Is there much left to do? How confident do we feel about the project?

Unknowns / things to learn / things to do: Few more animations, swap out placeholder sounds for the proper ones.

Current issues and problems: Today has seen us working on getting the rest of the game cleared up, with a few tweaks to values here and there alongside us finalizing the game menu. Today we’ve locked in our cart and character select and gone through and replaced all placeholder text, and as such the menu screen is completely finished and ready for the final build.

In addition to this, we’ve begun work on our trailer and are identifying what areas of gameplay we would like to show. Jeremy and I feel like showing actual clips of gameplay and close ups of players using ability items will best convey what our game is about and as such we’re going to be focusing on getting these in along with some shots of the actual tracks.

Finally, we’ve been in final talks with Zac in regards to our sound work. He’s sent through a bunch of examples and is just fleshing out the final work now. We’ve got all the systems set up in the game so that when they come through we’ll just have to replace our placeholder items and we should be good to go. Basically all the work has been to our satisfaction, ignoring a few issues with the ice level background noise.

Things discovered or learned: We’re really satisfied with how the menu is working and honestly it’s exceeded expectations. It feels and looks good while complimenting the rest of the game, and I feel like once we get all the sound into the game, almost everything we’ve set out to achieve for this presentation will pretty much be finished and ready to present. There’s a few animations that we still need to work on and I’d like to go back and populate some areas of tracks a bit more, but these are relatively minor jobs. Any other major jobs at this point that we can’t have complete by Thursday night are just going to go onto the backburner to finish during our extension week. We’d rather present a polished build then have half finished jobs in place.

Sunday 24/10/15 (Tori)

Kind of work: Game polish.

Time worked: 4 hours.

Task deliverable: Continue to make adjustments from the list made on Friday, playtest changes.

Task goal/purpose: Continue work and test the changes to see that they still feel good.

Most important factors affecting the outcome: Do the changes feel good? Will other players enjoy the experience?

Unknowns / things to learn / things to do: Get sound in, get animations done.

Current issues and problems: Today we’ve looked at adding extra depth to our levels- this was something that we had discussed in class last Friday as a means to slow down the gameplay and keep players within working distance from one another.

We’ve decided that we want to have a different feature for each level, and as such- the Japanese level with have sticky goo in particular locations, the sunshine port will have raising blocks as demonstrated in the poster (and one of our original design concepts), while the ice level will have falling boulders and stalactites.

At the moment, the main issue with this is just making sure that they all work the way we want them to. We’re trying to playtest each feature as much as we can to insure that they feel right and don’t negate the racing concept while still keeping players in close enough distance to one another that combat is possible. It’s a bit of a balancing act, but I feel we’re getting there.

Things discovered or learned: With the addition of the new frog ability and the obstacle items, I feel like our levels are not only a bit more interesting and dynamic, but they also do add an additional challenge for players and encourage awareness as opposed to mindless driving. With a few more tweaks, I feel as though we’ll definitely be able to find the perfect sweet spot, which ideally will mean that combat will be fairly regular within gameplay.

Saturday 23/10/15 (Tori)

Kind of work: Game polish.

Time worked: 5 hours.

Task deliverable: Begin to implement changes discussed in class on Friday.

Task goal/purpose: Take feedback from class and begin to make appropriate adjustments.

Most important factors affecting the outcome: How much will this effect gameplay? Can we do this in the time remaining?

Unknowns / things to learn / things to do: Continue to make adjustments, get sound into game, and get animations done.

Current issues and problems: One of our main issues at the moment is that while we got a lot of amazing feedback on Friday, it’s given us a lot of additional ideas that we could work with, and as a result it’s left us trying to prioritize what we should work on first.

Both Jeremy and I both agree that getting our listings (first, second, third) working is going to be the key to getting a lot of the extra jobs done, and as such Jeremy has been trying to tackle this. Unfortunately, that’s been a lot easier said then done and it’s causing quite a few issues for us. Given our placements are going off the heart trail length compared to actual positioning of the carts, we’ve got to find a way to try and get the information of each cart length to update consistently so that we’re able to give positions to our players during gameplay.

Things discovered or learned: While we’ve managed to tick off everything that we wanted to show for the last class, we’ve still got a few little jobs that will just elevate the game from it’s current standing to something much more polished. Our biggest concern is going to be figuring out the order of taking on these jobs, and also identifying what ones are going to take the most work. Obviously we want to try and get as much in and ticked off the list as possible, but our main priority is going to be identifying what will allow for us to show off the best of the game at the presentation, and then working on the rest in the remaining time we’ve got from our extension.

Friday 22/10/15 (Tori)

No work done excluding class.

Thursday 21st, October 2015

Task name:

Play-testing In Class with peers.

Kind of work:

Unity work, programming and Play Testing.

Time worked:

5 hours.

Task goal/purpose:

Today I just got friends who I could grab to play-test all the new changes and give feedback as they played.

Current issues and problems:

n/a.

Things discovered or learned:

A lot more positive reaction today than last week. Got Brandon to playtest the changes since he played it on Friday and he found a general improvement across the board on clarity and consistency. New players found it much easier to get into and conceptualise. However work needs to be done to fix the visual impairment from the cloud and lighting, the issue of going backwards is still there and the rocket shoots over the player when right next to each other. Otherwise quite positive feedback.

#Unity #Playtesting

Thursday 21/10/15 (Tori)

No work done – more of Jeremy working on programming. Had a big class for industry & a committee meeting for end of year.

Wednesday 20th, October 2015

I took most of today off to relax and regain sleep after everything but I did showcase the heart system for Tori and made adjustments based off her feedback (as well as added the animation spin the the hearts).

#Unity

Wednesday 20/10/15 (Tori)

Kind of work: Play test, contact Zac, and discuss work with Jeremy.

Time worked: 2.5 hours

Task deliverable: Play test current iteration, talk with Zac, and discuss work with Jeremy.

Task goal/purpose: Test feel of the game at current time, touch base with Zac and continue working through list.

Most important factors affecting the outcome: How does the game feel with the changes made? How is Zac progressing?

Unknowns / things to learn / things to do: Get in finish screen!

Current issues and problems: Our hearts are working now and looking amazing! There were a few issues with how we wanted them spaced, and we’ve decided that we’re still going to have an UI element on screen that will show the number of hearts you have, as you’re unable to see the length of your own trail. I just think it’s really cool watching us play test at this point and seeing the other players hearts trailing along behind them as you race.

We’ve decided that we’re going to make the fireworks shoot backwards as well at this point- I just feel like it’s going to help enhance gameplay between two players. Ideally, we’ll want people to be always having four player races as this will be the more dynamic setup, but just in case, we’ve decided that we’re going to try and bring this in, alongside limiting what sort of items you can get when in first place so that you’re unable to exploit items like boosts to lap other players.

We’ve still got to find a way to get our placing system working- as our game’s winner is determined by how many hearts a racer has, we need to be able to base our system off this and have it able to change accordingly. Unfortunately Jeremy is having a bit of difficulty with this, so hopefully we’ll find a way around it soon.

On the sound front, we’re definitely having a few issues. Due to Zac’s unexpected loss of a family friend last week, he’s struggling with the workload and has decided to bring in another contact of his to help him. Unfortunately, the contact is currently in the UK and therefore there’s a bit of hassle with time difference as the two try to collaborate. At this point in time all I can do is keep my fingers crossed that the work will get done, but I’m starting to think maybe I should start to look around for alternatives should the worse case scenario arise and Zac is unable to get the sound to us in time of the provided deadline.

Things discovered or learned: The game is feeling like a game and I’m excited! Having the hearts working has honestly really cheered me up this week, as it’s something I’ve been dying to see within the game and I think it’s something that visually just adds a lot to the gameplay. Readability is definitely not as big of an issue this time around, and just comparing last weeks play tests to ones conducted this week- there’s a huge change in feedback and even our own feelings in regards to aspects of the game.

I’m a little worried about Jeremy and his lack of sleep, but I’m so incredibly proud of what he’s been able to achieve. Once again I wish I could play a bigger role in the programming side of things, but I’m glad that I can still give my opinion in regards to the overall game design and help with the choices concerning this. I feel a little bad that he’s had to spend so much time programming when it’s not his preference, but what he’s been able to do for this project has been incredible and seeing that after all his hard hours of work that he was able to get the heart trail working has just been amazing. Our game wouldn’t be where it is right now if it wasn’t for Jeremy’s determination and I’m just so pleased with how on track the game actually is. I feel like it’s worlds apart from what we showed in class last week.

Tuesday 19th, October 2015

Task name:

Super-Crunch 4

Kind of work:

Unity work, programming and Play Testing.

Time worked:

15 hours.

Task goal/purpose:

Today was spent excruciatingly programming and testing the heart trail animation.

Current issues and problems:

While yesterday I got the list to work so that the heart list flows in response to it’s relevant game input the hearts spawned from this system just sat static and attached to a node at the back of the kart, not moving. This while functional is not the aesthetic appeal we wanted. So i spent upwards of 14 hours today trying to get the trail to follow the kart along it’s positional and rotation curve to create a proper “tail”. This took immense amounts of trail and error and various different concepts. I tried to use hinge joints, various follow scripts that adjusted the position and rotation of the hearts by to the kart and then offset as well as parenting the hearts to various tiers within the hierarchy. Eventually I got them to work without exploding or drifting away after the third heart.

#Unity #Programming

Tuesday 19/10/15 (Tori)

No work done- Jeremy is working on programming today.

Monday 18th, October 2015

Task name:

Super-Crunch 3

Kind of work:

Unity Work, Animation, Programming and Design

Time worked:

16 hours.

Task goal/purpose:

Today I continued work on the list with the focus on completing the placement system I outlined on Saturday and completing the heart trail system.

Most important factors affecting the outcome:

Today I made a variety of small adjustments as me and Tori went through the game and playtested the various additions of the last two days. However the big focus for me was the two number systems, health and placement. These are big coding trails that I have been dreading, the heart trailing specifically for some time.

Current issues and problems:

I ran into huge issues with both systems, I got the placement information all collected and stored however I can’t figure out the code required to sort them. I have realised why robots will never overcome humanity and it’s because when shown 4 numbers a huge can point at the biggest within a second but to programming a robot to do so is going to take a few days. So the placements are on hold for the moment and I moved onto learning lists and arranging the heart trail system. It took huge amounts of time to get the list working so that when a heart object is added it trails the correct object, the correct distance behind and with the correct ability to remove and add hearts when needed but it works!

Things discovered or learned:

I learnt all about the functionality of Lists in unity programming today. Much like arrays but with more uses and more flexibility. I have no idea why I have been using arrays all this time.

#Unity #Programming #Design

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Jeremy McConnachie's Dev Blog