#fourtheyegames

[moonchildgame]

Development Challenges

One challenges that we have had to deal with over the semester is glitches that appear while we make edits and additions to the game. Troubleshooting errors is a normal part of making a game, but it is always interesting when one appears and you need to find out what went wrong. Some issues we dealt with included: character models mysteriously losing an arm, characters being able to run up walls, being able to jump infinitely when we try to create double jump, and audio files refusing to play correctly. I will never forget the late nights we spent scratching our heads over particularly troublesome issues.

- Josh

[moonchildgame]

This is video demonstrating the Night Vision ability for our main character. In the game the player has the task of locating moon fragments scattered around the map. Some of these moon fragments are invisible making it difficult for the player to find them. This ability is designed to allow the player to see the invisible moon fragments. After the player’s night vision ability is activated the fragments will become visible for a few seconds and then disappear again. Collecting all of the invisible fragments won’t be easy, the player will need to be constantly on the lookout.

- Josh

[moonchildgame]

These are moon fragments. In our game Moonchild, the moon, the source of power for the moon children, has been destroyed and its fragments have been scattered all around the forest. In order to fix the moon, and restore peace amongst his fellow moonchildren, our main character Hound has taken up the task of collecting all the moon fragments. Finding the moon fragments will not be an easy task. Some of the moon fragments are in hard to reach places and will require hounds enhanced agility. Other fragments have been affected by the moon’s magic and will require Hound’s special abilities to find them.

- Josh

[moonchildgame]

Game Prototype

For our prototype last week, we were in a scramble to polish our assets, particularly our NPC models that still needed to be rigged, skinned, and animated. Before that, I changed our lighting so that it's actually nighttime (our game is called Moonchild after all), added a matching skybox, and added particle effects to our bonfire and moon fragments.

Our game certainly looks different compared to our previous environment screenshots. There are still some things we need to adjust, such as the low resolution of the skybox, which is a free asset from the Unity Asset Store called Fantasy Skybox FREE. We’ll probably also make the ambient lighting darker and rely more on bioluminescent lighting in the form of abstract plants, fireflies, etc.

These are three NPCs that I rigged, skinned, and animated in 3ds Max using Biped rigs. The outer characters were modeled by Julian and I modeled the one in the middle.

To add personality to our characters despite a lack of dialogue, we wanted to make the wood elf act a bit haughty. Professor Todd Harper was present and he remarked that the elf looks like he’s smoking a cigarette. His feedback made me realize that actions must be made clear and distinct from similar, unrelated ones. Either that or I could add a cigarette to the elf’s hand, but then it wouldn’t really fit the setting nor be family-friendly (lol).

Julian mentioned that making this character sit down would add some nice variety to our NPCs’ poses since they’re mostly standing. I plopped him on a log since sitting on the ground introduced major clipping on the kilt. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking by making him do a little dance, but I knew that I wanted to make the NPC below do a hula hoop animation, so I guess I made this one do something similar to compliment it.

For every Biped rig, the pelvis is the root bone, which is why I had trouble making this NPC move his hips (actually the leg bones) left and right during their rotation. This is because it causes the feet to move out of place, and I’m unable to set keyframes for moving all of the bones back to the center of the scene in 3ds Max. Nonetheless, I hope this animation conveys the fact that this NPC is either a bit of a misfit or simply likes having fun.