Daine, Game Design

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MDU119 - Blog 2 - Origins of the Internet - ARPANet

The Internet is probably one of the most revolutionary breakthroughs of the computer and communications world. The internet has allowed us to transition into the age of information where individuals are able to collaborate and interact with one another without having to take their geographic location into account. But where and when did it all start? Was it always so simple and was it always so accessible?

(n.d. (2006))

The original concept of “a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site” (Leiner, Cerf, Clark, Kahn, Kleinrock, Lynch, Postel, Roberts & Wolff (2016)) was discussed in August 1962 by a researcher at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) called J.C.R Licklider who later went on to work as the first head of the computer research program at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). In 1965 Leonard Kleinrock from MIT was able to convince Lawrence G. Roberts from DARPA of the feasibility of communications using a form of packet switching by connecting a computer in Massachusetts to a computer in California over a Dial-up Telephone Line. These three visionaries along with others such as Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor and many more were able to bring the internet online in 1969, then known as ARPANet.

(Heart, F., McKenzie, A., McQuillian, J., & Walden, D. (2004))

ARPANet initially was contracted to connect four major computers at the US universities of UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), Stanford Research Institute, UCSB (University of California, Santa Barbara) and the University of Utah. Later continuing to connect universities all over the US and even universities such as the University of Hawaii, London’s University College and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norwa

Hence ARPANet (an infant form of the internet) was born and was largely designed to provide a communications network around the world for people such as computer experts, engineers, scientists and librarians as the use of ARPANet required the user to learn to use a very complex and unreliable system.

References:

History.com Staff. (2010). The Invention of the Internet. Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-internet

Heart, F., McKenzie, A., McQuillian, J., & Walden, D. (2004). Arpamaps 1976. Retrieved from http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/history/arpamaps/f14july1976.jpg

Leiner, B.,Cerf, V., Clark, D., Kahn, R., Kleinrock, L., Lynch, D., Postel J., Roberts, L. & Wolff S. (2016). Brief History of the Internet. Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-internet.

n.d. (2006). Arpanet Title. Retrieved from http://classes.design.ucla.edu/Spring06/161A/projects/camile/arpanet/arpanettitle.gif

Howe, W. (2016). A Brief History of the Internet. Retrieved from http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html

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Web Design, Week 1 Blog Post - What is Telnet?

What is Telnet? As defined by Margaret Rouse, “Telnet is a user command and an underlying TCP/IP protocol for accessing remote computers” (Rouse, 2006). This allows for administrator or another user (such as an IT Technician or Program Developer) to access someone else’s computer remotely whilst only providing them with the same privileges for specific applications and data. This is typically carried out through a text based communication between the client and the server.

Something that this sounds very similar to is a remote login (RLogin). Whilst both are used to remotely log into and access another server or computer, Telnet requires both a username and a password before being provided privileges for the server or computer and all users on the same network will be able to see your password, RLogin on the other hand doesn’t require any form of authentication if the account name is the same between systems.

References:

Rouse, M. (2006). Telnet. Retrieved from http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/ Telnet.

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Dev Blog Catch Up - 2nd - 17th March

So, the last couple of weeks have seemed to be a big blur of motion to me with both the work from my last Studio Production and my Major Production going on at the same time, I guess with all this i forgot to write a couple of my blogs but here we go, let's fill that gap in.

So when it comes to my Major Production assignment, last week was our first pitch date where we were tasked with the job of giving our first formal pitch in front of our discipline lecturers. I believe this went well from a programmer's standpoint due to there being no issues with the amount of functions or any lack of confidence to carry out them. The only issue that occurred during the pitch was that we hadn’t had a real narrative or level design ready for the pitch. Whilst having this small issue we were greenlit to work on this project on the condition that this issue was fixed by next week's presentation to show our progress. When it comes to working on this project over the next week I plan to work on getting all documentation finished as well as have a small demo of the anti-gravity function ready to show.

As for my Studio Production, the last couple of weeks have largely been aimed towards creating and refining documentation to back up the creation of my City Building Game. This has been made slightly easier due to the fact that I have mostly programmed all the basic functionality of the game, making the game design part of the documentation easy. On the other hand finding information to back up the need for awareness towards Civil War or War refugees and living conditions was considerably harder due to the limited information. Over the next week for this assignment I will have an alpha build ready to play and show.

Whilst doing all this I hope that I won’t forget about filling out these blogs again as it tends to be a big hassle to remember 2-3 weeks worth of blog information.

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Dev Blog, 23rd February - 1st March 2016

Second week back, lots of ideas to try and others to finish. This blog is going to be aimed solely towards my serious game and will mostly outline the outcomes over the past week for that game instead of my Major Production.

So over the past week I have been working to refine the main features of the City Building functions. This includes the finalization of a building placement system and an event system.

Other then this I have pitched my game idea to a board of lecturers and have been made to refine the overall game to provide a more serious game which raises the awareness of the situations the people in civil wars are under. To accomplish this I have made it so that the actions of the player are to build up the defenses of the village from an imminent enemy attack, this will provide the player the feeling of helping these people where at the end they will ultimately feel crushed as they find that their work was not worth as much as they thought it would.

Over the next week I will be finalizing any documentation for the game and then completing a basic alpha build of the game.

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Dev Blog, Week 1 (17 - 21st February, 2016)

So, its that time again, to be back at uni and learning all the neat things about Game Design and improving myself in this wonderful industry. This trimester looks like it will be one of the hardest yet, due to the fact that I must create a serious game (a game which will either teach others or will identify an underlying problem) as well as I will be working on my Major Production before I graduate.

As for the Serious Game I have decided to take on a game similar to 3D World Farmer where it will show the hardships of people who are worse off then in a first world country. To achieve this I am currently prototyping and getting ready to pitch a SimCity style City Builder which will be situated in the middle of a civil war. In order to achieve this I will have to do a lot of research on the topics of civil wars (especially for the inhabitants) and then manage to create this in a City Building setting.

Whilst the major production will be slightly harder and hasn’t been finalized for the product, the group I will be working with are currently designing a plan for a Dark themed, Space Exploration Puzzle Game. This looks like it will be an interesting project to work on due to the fact that Space adds in many different factors into the game that must be accounted for.

Over the next week I will be working to prototype the main features for both of these projects and then hopefully I will be able to start getting ready to pitch these ideas both to my peers and facilitators.

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Devblog December 18th 2015

So this week's dev blog is going to be all about Throwing the Habit and will be partly in the form of a Post Mortem Report. This report will outline the project's goals, a performances analysis of myself and any other aspects of the project as well as anything I have managed to take away from this project.

The project Throwing the Habit, was headed by myself over the course of 13 weeks (21st September - 17 December) to meet a brief set during my current unit. Throwing the Habits goal was to show the use of serious topics in video games, in this case I used the psychological effects of Alcoholism on the human body and mind.

Throwing the Habit as a project had its fair share of accomplishments as well as issues through its production so this next section will outline first any accomplishments that were in the project and then any issues as well as how to fix them.

Accomplishments

What worked well

Transition between Unity3D to Unreal Engine 4

Why did this work well

This went well due to the fact that the change between very different 3D game engines can be quite hard. Instead the transition well due to the similarity of Unity’s C# and Unreals Blueprint in the way that they used the same logic just one is using script and the other is using a node based system.

What worked well

Audio Integration

Why did this work well

After receiving the audio assets through FMOD from the audio students I was able to really easily add some life to the project due to the fact that Unreal allows for you to just place a FMOD Audio Component in the scene and tell it to play or stop. Despite the bump in the road of some of the event lines needing to be rebuilt in FMOD the Audio was the easiest part to integrate into the project.

Issues

What went wrong

Ineffective team communication

How was this tackled

Over the course of the project the communication between the different sections of the team (Game, Animation and Audio) was meager at least at the midpoint of production. This was tackled by attempting to meet up with team members more personally instead of using the instant messaging system of slack.

What went wrong

Filling the world with 3D assets

How was this tackled

At the beginning of the project two animation students were brought on to help in the creation of 3D assets for the scene. This didn’t work well as by 10 weeks in I had only received 9 assets to fill the world. To tackle this I decided to create more assets in 3ds Max, use the Unreal BSP to make the simple geometry assets as well as outsourced some of the assets from the Unreal Realistic Rendering tutorial.

What went wrong

Underestimating the workload

How was this tackled

From the get go this project seemed to be a very small and manageable workload. Gradually the amount of systems that needed to be programmed and integrated grew to a list too long for me to complete in the small time frame of 13 weeks. To fix this I had to reduce the amount of interesting puzzles that the player would be able to complete throughout the game. Whilst this was a less fun play environment it allowed for me to focus more on the important aspects.

The following images are a comparison between how the project looked at the start from its Alpha stage to its Final Stage.

Over the course of the project I have started to learn more about my own limitations. A large aspect that I will take out of this is that I now know that I think too large when I am making games and need to reign in my own ideas at the beginning of a project so as not to let it get out of control and end up making another mad dash at the end to get pieces completed. The other major thing that I have taken from this would be to not spend all of my time programming the game as a working game doesn’t match with a game that doesn’t look like it fits with the functions.

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Devblog 4th - 12th Dec

Another Week, another step closer to seeing the close of the current development phase of Throwing The Habit. In a weeks time I will be showing Throwing the Habit (along with Tether Trouble) and the SAE Perth Student Showcase. Over the past two weeks I have started to see exactly how unready Throwing the Habit is for this type of situation.

Over the past week I have made a mad dash to finish up a working build. Ready to be submitted for marking today. So over the past week I have exhausted all my resources into, fixing all the last bugs in the game, implementing audio through the use of FMOD Studio integration in Unreal Engine 4, alongside finishing the last touches to the visual effects. But to my own doubts I did manage to the game working and ready for submission (despite some of the event-driven audio not importing into Unreal properly).

Due to short time frame in which I had to finish the project I had to end up cutting out any extra puzzles except the physics pickup puzzle and the piecing back together a picture puzzle as well as the withdrawal effects that can affect the player. This allowed for me to focus more into getting the more clear and more important requirements for the final submission. Hopefully I will be able to plan my workflow and time better from this moment on (as well as not aim at such unrealistic goals).

Over the next week I will be putting any finishing touches as well as any feedback into Throwing the Habit to have it into a finished state for the Showcase. Alongside working on Throwing the Habit I will be working to have the mini-map ready for Tether Trouble to allow for players to traverse the mazes easier.

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Devblog 28th Nov - 3rd Dec

So from the end of Perth Games Festival on Saturday I have started to truly feel the strain of how much I have to do and how little time I have to do it. So over the past week I have been working on Throwing the Habit with a small amount of Tether Trouble.

When it comes to Throwing The Habit I have been working on two parts at once, the visuals and finalizing the programming. Whilst working very slowly, the two pictures below show a comparison of the main area in the apartment.

Unlike the modelling I have been working to have the game play by itself before I decide to add any new mechanics which will rely on the audio to be be conveyed.

As for Tether Trouble, I spent yesterday solidly bug fixing the bugs from Perth Games Festival, this was all in effort to show Tether Trouble at the official SAE Perth Launch last night, after bug fixing it has started to feel more like a complete game.

Over the next week I hope to have finalized the visuals and programming for Throwing The Habit in preparation for its due date.

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Dev Blog 2015 Perth Games Festival

So yesterday was the 2015 Perth Games Festival, over the course of the day I spent all of my time helping out at the SAE booth both as a student and a developer, this ended out to be a great learning experience as well as a good way for me to network with all the different people and developers there.

For the larger part of the day I was manning the booth to show off Tether Trouble, which ended up being a great success, drawing a lot of the younger crowd, as well as a lot of people interested in learning to make games.

On the other hand I did use the time that Throwing The Habit was on show to find bugs and get feedback on the early beta build (and there sure was a lot of it). I will hopefully be able to take all the information in to count over the next few weeks to get the game into a finished state.

So after this experience I have taken away a lot, how to present a game (both successful and not so successful) as well as the ability to plan more over the coming weeks.

Over the next week I will be focusing on finishing the puzzles as well as funneling the players more in Throwing The Habit, whilst I spend a small amount of time adding a few more features to Tether Trouble before the SAE Showcase at the end of the year.

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Dev Blog 20th - 27th Nov

Another week, another dev blog. So over this past week I have been frantically getting Throwing the Habit and Tether Trouble (the yarn ball game) ready to be shown at the SAE Student Showcase for the 2015 Perth Games Festival

When it comes to getting Throwing the Habit ready for the festival I have managed to let myself down, I didn’t end up getting all of the puzzles ready to show but I did manage to get all of the level set up and ready for the public to explore and destroy.

Whilst the creation of Tether Trouble has come along exponentially over the past week. Over the course of Wednesday afternoon I have managed to program all of the major mechanics for the game, this includes the main features of a line of yarn trailing the player along with the rewinding mechanic to roll back up that trail of yarn.

My next update will be shortly after the 2015 Perth Games Festival to outline the success and failures of the day. I will also put my next weeks list of work in this next update so that I don;t change preset plans.

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Dev Blog 13th - 19th Nov

So this is a little bit of a late blog update. Ends up I have been doing too much work lately and ended up crashing (guess it was inevitable). So over the past week I have continued progress of Throwing the Habit along with starting a new project for a DevJam that will also be shown at Perth Games Festival.

This new project is basically a game where the player will be placed in a maze as a yarn of ball, the player will be tasked to collect keys to unlock them self from a central point. So for this project I have been tasked with the programming of the game. This will be a very tough project due to the 2 week time frame along with Throwing the Habit.

When it comes to the development of Throwing the Habit I have mostly placed it on the back burner so to speak and have only been working to populate the level with new assets using Unreals built in BSP system and then exporting it into 3DS Max to UV for texturing. This will allow for me to populate then world quickly without the use of any animators. Over the next week I will be programming the puzzles ready for testing at Perth Games Festival and hopefully have the world populated.

As for the DevJam Project, I have the next week to have a tether which will be able to interact with the environment as the player moves around along with creating the major game play features such as the win and lose conditions.

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Dev Blog 6th - 12th Nov

So as I planned last week I worked solidly this week to get a large part of the final programming for Throwing the Habits Day System ready for the end of this week. Along with programming the Day System I have also been improving the visuals in the grey box so that it can be in a reasonably finished state for the Perth Games Festival where the game will be tested through the public.

When it comes to the Day System, this took a lot of guess work in order to get it working. I found that it may never be the most efficient way to perform each action but the UE4 Blueprint isn’t a perfected system for this style of work. In order to reference each task in the scene I used polymorphism (where I am able to reference a parent blueprint but still allowing for each task to be referenced simultaneously).

In this image it shows how at the start of the level the Tasks and the individual components are divided into arrays dependent on what day the task or component references.

Whilst in this image it shows how it checks if the current task or component is part of the current day, if it is it will make it visible and collidable or invisible and uncollidable

This is an example of what the first main room in which the game will be played in with updated BSP’s and other placements of the assets.

Over the next week I hope to complete all of the Withdrawal symptoms as well as work on getting additional puzzles ready and implemented in the scene. Other then this I hope to use BSP’s and any assets created by the animators to fill the other rooms and make a fully playable environment before the Festival.

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Dev Blog 30th Oct - 5th Nov

So despite last week saying that I would be spending this week to work on getting all of my puzzles complete I ended working on completely different systems for Throwing the Habit.

Whilst I was at Uni to meet with Hadyn for my KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) I worked on improving my drunken state in order to improve its impact on the player, with the help of Hadyn (and the use of three different SIN wave graphs) I was able to make the drunken sway more of a sway and seem less loop-able. Alongside this I took up Hadyns suggestion to change the field of view using a similar function, this has allowed me to easily disorient players alongside the sway and other post process effects in play.

Alongside all of this I have been working to get the Day System to make sure that the game is fully playable even with the use of only 1 type of task. This has been coming along well seeing as I have figured out how to transfer my knowledge of Polymorphism in C# to UE4s Blueprint system, this will allow for me to easily reference tasks and transfer them between levels whilst using a previously made teleport script which teleports the player at the end of the days tasks.

Over the next week I hope to have the Day System finished and have made solid work on the final step of the programming, the Puzzles as I have been putting them off. Once this is done I hope to help my animators and audio students to get all the assets in the scene for beta.

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Dev Blog 23rd - 29th Oct

So, over the past week I have been working to have all of the functionality for Throwing the Habit ready for the alpha build this week, I believe I have been completing all the functionality at a reasonable pace but I have been a little bit behind in terms of creating a decent amount of Tasks and Puzzles to show in the alpha.

(Placeholder Cylinders for Alcohol (Left) and Water (Right))

The main feature I have been working on is showing the difference between being drunk, sober and undergoing the effects of withdrawals, to show this I have been using the two cylinders shown above to symbolize alcohol and water, by drinking the alcohol the player is able to gradually move into a drunken state whilst if they drink the water they will both sober up and later exhibit a small amount of withdrawals (still have to finalize what the overall effects will be, am currently just showing how the system will work).

(Current player view when fully impaired by drunkenness (it also has a sway left and right for the moment to help disorient the player))

The other feature I will be working on to show during the alpha is a working inventory system where the player will be able to pickup key items allowing them to carry it around and then drop it or interacting with a scene object will use this item in a specific way.

(Current player view of withdrawals, this part hasn't been worked on as much as the drunkenness but it will be using very similar code)

Over the past week I have found that I have been slacking a little bit in my workload and need to pick up a little bit. So during the next week (currently moving into a study break) I will set myself the task of having at least 4 different tasks or puzzles ready for the beta build due in 3 weeks time.

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Dev Blog 16th- 22nd Oct

Over the past week I had set myself the task to have the Design Documentation for Throwing the Habit ready for submission by tomorrow.

Other then working heavily of the documentation mentioned above I have been largely working on getting all of the main functionality for Throwing the Habit done for the Alpha build due next Friday. In the ways of getting functionality working I have been working on making tasks for the player to complete along with getting the Blood-Alcohol Level to actually take an effect on the scene and making a working answering machine for the use by the main characters wife through the use of the interactive object scripts and audio..

When it comes to making Tasks work I have largely been working on a small scale due to the fact that I am not 100% sure on the puzzles and tasks that the player must complete to proceed to the next day as of yet. So I have currently been building a working system where the player can use the Physics Pickup System (has come to be known as a gravity gun) to place or throw rubbish into a bin through the use of a trigger. I will be expanding on this to make it harder to complete the task (through the use of withdrawal symptoms as well as making it so that the player must complete the task in a certain way).

As for the Blood Alcohol level I haven't completed a lot of work on this as I have only been working on using the post process volumes in UE4 to show different effects dependent on where the Blood-Alcohol Level is.

Over the next Week I hope to be working solely to have all of the functions for the game ready and working to be submitted by Friday, but before I can do this I must work to have my Design Doc ready by tonight.

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Dev Blog, October 7 - 15th

Over the last week I have been working to have a lot of the functionality for Throwing the Habit prototyped and ready for the Alpha that is due within a few weeks, I have also been meeting with the Audio and Animation students at Uni in order to get a team together for the game.

When it comes to functionality I have been primarily working to have any interactions with objects in the game ready, this includes a physics driven pickup system, the use of line traces to allow the player to open doors and turn on lights. When it came to the physics driven pick up system I have largely been working with physics handles which allow for the player to move the objects around the scene in a similar manner to Elder Scroll games. In order to achieve this I have been following one of the Unreal Tutorials (Ballard TJ, 2015) which does exactly what I needed. Whilst I have actually pulled the Line Trace functions from the tutorial used for the pick up system to allow me to interact with the doors and lights without the use of triggers.

Over the next week I will be meeting up with the team in order to finalize any dialogue, audio recordings as well as all of the 3D assets that will be required for the game. Other then this I will be working solidly to have the final Design Document finished to provide me with a solid plan in which to work with.

Ballard TJ. (2015). Pick Up Physics Object Tutorial. Retrieved from https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Pick_Up_Physics_Object_Tutorial

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Dev Blog, October 2nd - 6th

So last week I set myself the tasks of creating all of the documentation for the game done, I was a little vague on this as it only included the Concept Document along with a updated pitch for another presentation with the Audio and Animation students at uni, I have managed to updated this concept doc and pitch to include the use of puzzles and tasks along with the use of an inner voice to guide the player in a more game like feel rather then the game being too largely focused on the disorder (Alcoholism) as this allowed me to better explain what actual game aspects would be present within the game environment.

Along with this documentation I have been working to get the level fully grey-boxed in order to start getting all of the functionality ready for the Alpha release in a couple of weeks time. As the game will have many of its functions and story telling based around aspects of the environment I found that having a environment all ready to test in would help me more in the coming weeks. I have managed to have the level layout complete and all of the general pieces of furniture have been mapped out using UE4′s (Unreal Engine 4) BSP primitives. I will be using the apartment layout and concept designs found below (as well as in any documentation) to lay out the environment.

Apartment Layout, This will be used as the general layout of the apartment, the final product might be slightly different but I will be using this as a guide throughout making the environment.

These two pictures (Above and Below) symbolize the master bedroom of the apartment in a top down as well as an isometric view, I am showing this as an example as it will be the starting point of each day cycle that the player will experience through out the game, I hope to use a very minimalist style to furnish the environment.

Over the next week I hope to have a working day system in place, this will allow for me to walk through a trigger which will reset the environment to a different state (Clean or a Mess) as well as replace the player back at the start of the apartment without the need to use multiple different scenes, I will be working to have all objects in the scene to be interactable through the use of a pickup system similar to the Elder Scroll games (where the player is able to lock an object to a place in front of the camera and move it however they want).