Hyper Drone Racer Log

The idea behind the endless drone racer game stems from 2 ideas blended together. The first being a multiplayer drone racing game around a city and the second idea was of a downhill endless skating game while shooting 2D aliens. These ideas combined turn into a drone racing game that is supposedly endless, the idea developed into a drone that the player controls on a limited axis of Y and X, meaning the player doesn’t move forward or backwards, only up and down. The player then flies through checkpoints to recharge a depleting battery by a small amount, while also gaining points depending on the checkpoint size. The game over event is triggered when the drone’s battery has depleted or when the player crashes the drone. 

After taking on a studentship at the university of plymouth I created an Indoor AR Navigation system which works on Android, but has the possibility to work on iOS devices too.  

The goal was to achieve making an app which aids Ocean3D in delivering an accessibility product alongside their 3D scanned product. 

After presentations on a game proposal idea the decisions were made that the class/group were going to make Martha’s game called Mechaten. The proposal was about a fighting game with mechs in a city. 

The goal was to model a humanoid character based on the theme of the automaton and place it in an environment that is fitting along with creating sounds for both the character and environment. The environment sounds could be background noise or music. I tried to go with a little of both. What I define as an automaton is a robot that looks human like. I chose to model my character based upon that theme and idea.

Robot Dylan

Why I made this character. I was assigned the task of creating a character at Uni based on the theme of the Automaton. Dylan is a baker and bakes muffins. At night he becomes a superhero, known as the muffin man. Set in the year of 2110 robots are very common throughout the city. Dylan is a Mark III autonomous droid made to replace the long tasks that humans have been doing for a long time. The reason he’s a baker is because his owner had him programmed to replace the owner after he passed away. He passed away at 69, the robot is 32.

GSASG The Narrative is now ready.

After 3 months of hard work I managed to put together a working game. A few things can be added like more voice-overs but each character has subtitles so it’s not so much of an issue. A lot of the narrative is in the main menu. To Break this down simply, The idea was to capture the emotions after death and make people aware. Watch the video to find out more. P.S I got 90% in my assignment. 

Adding AI

Creating a new level to the game, and adding an AI enemy to it. Changing up some of the UI, and creating a randomised placement of items script was the most challenging things I’ve done yet!

Immersion

Even more tweaking. 

I spent almost a week wide awake trying to figure out how to get the scripts for my items to work. It turned out I only needed one script and loads of if and else if statements. 

I also managed to put a new sound in, can you guess what the new sound is?

Tweaks here and there

I tweaked a lot of things, very subtle things, but it makes a big improvement of the feel of the game. 

One of those tweaks is the brightness, and smoothness of how the game runs.

Ambient Music

After a discussion with a friend, I decided it was about time to add music to my game. they suggested a peice that they had made. so this is it. 

https://avoidpodcast.bandcamp.com/track/02

 

Adding lights

After Realising how dark my scene was I decided to add lights and add a halo to the light, this meant that I need to light on one lamppost. very taxing on graphics. 

I also added a voice over once the rabbit had been picked up.

LiveStream

I attempt to make a  texture that I can UV wrap on the Church model that I made in 3ds max. I used Photoshop to make the texture. The mistake I made was making it at 8K. I could’ve got away with 1k.

Fixing scripts

Sorting out the LOD and fixing the scripts for a few things. 

Looking Brighter

This is where I started to up the brightness of the game. As it was a little too dark and it was hard to read what was on the gravestones.

Ghost Snatching Alien Slug Game is Slowing Taking Shape.

Moving on with the progress from the previous post, I have now added Gravestones which I modelled in 3ds Max. I decided to change the lamp as well with one of my own custom models, and I changed the lighting as it was a little too dark. 

I’ve up the sound of the thunder and rain and lowered the footstep sound.

You will also notice that I’ve added volumetric fog to add some atmospheric effects.

Making the environment

I got tasked with creating an environment for a narrative that I wrote for my Assignment at University. Having Practiced using unity I started to create my first narrative environment. 

It’s not much at the moment, I just wanted to show of what I’ve done so far. I will be adding so much more to the environment, so stay tuned as I will be posting updates regularly.

Practising in the Unity Engine

I got tasked with creating an environment for a narrative that I wrote for my Assignment at University. So before I go making that environment, I’m having a little practice in the Game Engine.

Something I've been working on for a long time

A project named Station Alpha. It’s unfinished and has taken me 4 years to model, animate and texture everything using 3ds Max, and it is all self taught.

The idea is that it will be a game with 3 teams, Police, Army and Zombies based in a post-apocalyptic environment.

I haven’t decided on what game engine to use yet, as they are all constantly changing and offering different things.

For a laugh.

I made this animation in my spare time and spent a week on it. It consists of a model soldier taken from the game Battlefield 2.

I recorded the dance moves from gangnam style using an xbox kinect, and made mocap files, I then imported the mocap files onto the soldier model and voila! a dancing soldier.

A script I made

Using 3ds Max 2011, I made a script that allowed me to “grow” ivy using particle flow.

Over 3 million polys in this one scene alone, which took me 97 hours to render. (The joys of being a student with a budget PC)

Testing physics

Rending with sound and video within the animation, as well as physics. 

The go-cart was my first proper model, with only 200,000 polys.

The main part of this animation was to test dropping the Cone and the TV.

For a laugh.

My first animation with soldiers dancing in the snow, (no plugins or Mocap) using the soldiers from Battlefield 2.

This animation is just for showing off what I could do at the time, with a budget PC, and mainly for a laugh.

Snow!

Using the particle flow on 3ds Max I was able to create a blanket of snow over everything.

I even went to the point of animating the soldier walking through the snow leaving footprints while carrying an AK47. I managed to do this by using the detection system built into 3ds max.

Recreating an iconic moment

One of the first animations that I made back in 2011, when I had no knowledge on how to use 3ds Max.

I tried to recreate the famous Pixar lamp with the ball, and even went to the lengths to texture the ball. I also tried to capture the emotions of the lamp, in the way that the Pixar lamp always subconsciously speaks to us.