IAT 410 Blog

This week our team finished up all of our concept art for the game characters, enemies, and NPCs. We prototyped different movement methods in Unity and worked on enemy AI and path-finding. There was also progress made in getting the player to change states with a different set of sprite animations for each state. We wrote the Game Design Document with all of the images and diagrams required and then put that information into the presentation slides. I helped edit and rewrite information from the older document into the GDD. Using the basic enemy Thrall model made last week, I made all of the sprite image sequences for all of the animations that the Trall could do in both its normal and player possessed states. This included walking, jumping, dying, attacking, and getting possessed. With a left and right version for each and variations depending on whether or not it was holding the sword. For each animation I had to consider what animations could come before and after it and make su...

This week, we worked on prototyping player character movement and figuring out how to implement the body swapping mechanic that was the main innovation of our game. We also finally settled on the name of the game (Soulmonger) and its protagonist (Styx). More concept art was produced and many designs from last week were refined. We had a group meeting and discussed all the stuff in our GDD and started writing it. Using the concept art for the basic enemy as a guide, I modeled and rigged the the first basic enemy type that the player encounters, which also means its the first body that the player starts the game with. The model was made based on a combination of the zombie and doll designs. The rig includes finger and mouth movement. The model will probably lightly textured. We weren't sure whether to use 3d models in the game, or sprites made from 3d models but we decided on sprites made from 3d models. Also, we also decided to make most of the models ourselves instead of downlo...

This week I helped develop and refine the game concept, write the game proposal, and make the game presentation slides. I also contributed to brainstorming the name of the game and its protagonist, along with helping to ideate the mechanics of the game. I found a bunch 3d assets that are similar in tone and style to our game concept and are also free to use. I plan to modify and use them as backgrounds, props, and animated characters for our sword game. An example is this armored wraith guy who can be used as an enemy, NPC, or boss. I just have to animate it and render the frames from a side view perspective to make a sprite sequence that can be used in a 2d game. Or just export it as an fbx file so that the 3d model itself can be used in unity with its animations.