zeromindz

[zeromindz]

Presentation Time

I’ve always been one of those people who chokes up at the mention of ‘public speaking’. Ask me to address a room of people? No sweat at all. But you tell me to PRESENT to a room, I shrivel up like a raisin and lose my cool, big time.

So imagine me when I find out that I have to present in front of an industry panel?

I spent the whole lead up to the big day grinding away on this slideshow, which I can say I am proud of. In retrospect, however, I was procrastinating on working out what it was I was actually presenting. That was exactly what I did wrong. All I needed to do in preparation was know what it was I was selling, inside and out.

Instead, I was stiff, I spoke too quickly, and I got caught up on over-practiced, unnatural phrases. 

Overall, it was OK. As soon as the slideshow was finished, and we were listening to feedback from the panel, I snapped right back into my well spoken, confident self, and I was able to concisely answer questions regarding the design pitch. 

The whole experience has actually made me eager to present again, as now I know the key rule; Be Cool, Jazz-Cat

[zeromindz]

Quality Assurance, the Salt and Pepper of Game Development

Have you ever eaten a plate of salt and pepper?

During this unit, I was given the opportunity to work with AIE Melbourne’s Incubator graduates by performing quality assurance tests on their game.

I was chosen as part of a small team form our class to perform a series of regression tests on their game, reporting each Monday for a month with a completed Excel Sheet packed full of testing instructions written up by the incubator team.

Unfortunately, we started on shaky ground. The build of the game that we were presented with for testing was beyond broken. It was unfinished to the point that the extensive 250+ row spreadsheet of testing instructions was irrelevant. 

On top of that, communication from the incubator team was non-existent. The first bit of feedback we received from our testing results were threats of being reported to AIE staff, and accusations that we were simply avoiding our duties as QA testers.

In reality, our priorities were tied up with the wave of documentation we had to complete for our testing unit. The testing we did for the incubator team was supplementary, an opportunity for us to learn more about performing QA work for an existing game, and a chance for the incubator team to get some quality testing in.

Neither group benefited from this exercise, which is a real shame.

[zeromindz]

Zeno Clash 2 - An ‘Out of this Open World’ Pub-Brawl

If you haven’t yet played Zeno Clash 2, then you are most likely sound of mind and a functional human being. 

You are also missing out on a ridiculously engaging adventure, as strange and grotesque as it is beautiful and unique.

Ask me a year ago, and I would confidently tell you that Zeno Clash 2 is a game that I would toss back into the bargain bin without a second glance. I mean seriously, what is going on here?

Well it turns out that this image perfectly conveys what this game is all about. 

In the very simplest of terms, Zeno Clash 2 is a first person, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em brawler set in an expansive wasteland filled with stunning vistas and disgusting, highly punch-able, multi-species beings. What I find so impressive about the game is that it is so shamelessly unafraid of following the beat(down) of its own drum.

Luckily, this year has taught me many things, one of the most important being to always expose yourself to as many ideas and perspectives as possible.

By doing this, you are actively expanding your knowledge pool, giving you new information to store away and draw from when creating your own work.

It’s only through our studies this year that I have realized the importance of this practice, and ever since I have been motivated to expose myself to games which push pre-existing traditions and design structures in entirely new directions.

[zeromindz]

Grave Terror - Game Overview

Allow me to introduce Grave Terror, a co-op action shooter played with controller on a shared screen.

You’re trapped deep in the bowels of an ancient Aztec-Egyptian-like tomb on an alien planet. Fight through dark, winding corridors, crumbling pillars and claustrophobic ritual rooms with relentless undead enemies lying in wait and ready to attack in hordes.

It’s here, the big group project we’ve all been looking forward to. We were all matched up with first year students from the art and programming disciplines, and then got cracking on making a mad little game.

Grave Terror has two characters to choose from, Chunk and Sizzle, and each has a been designed to contrast and compliment the other with their varied kits for dispatching their enemies.

Chunk - The Heavy

A dangerous, grizzled machine gunner out of his depth. He has an assault rifle which can be deployed with a tripod and ammo feed, which increases his damage output at the cost of his movement.

Sizzle - The Pyro

An unstable scientist wielding a zombie-toasting flamethrower and a set of remote bombs, making her suited to area coverage and crowd control. Her solution is to everything is to set it on fire.

Players will be put up against a seemingly endless swarm of zombies, and will have to coordinate attacks in order to escape with their lives.

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SwordTale - Narrative Overview

The story of the King’s Blade has been told throughout the land for as long as anyone can remember. It’s history and whereabouts have been lost to the slow decay of time, but many a brave adventurer has scoured the earth in pursuit of the legendary prize.

You are one of these adventurers, and you’re armed with an ancient parchment, given to you by your dying grandfather. This parchment describes the entrance to a cave located perilously among jagged rocks and rough waves from the ocean. It speaks of powerful magic in the form of immense geode veins running throughout the cave, and it warns of the mysterious beings who have developed from the magic.

You nearing the end of your perilous journey through a deadly expanse of maze like cliffs, razor sharp rocks and furious ocean swells. Now you must enter into The Old King's resting place and take glory for yourself.

[zeromindz]

Zid and Zniw Adventure - Put to the Test

For the Testing and Quality Assurance unit, we were tasked with thoroughly analyzing and testing independent, often unfinished games. The game assigned to me was Zniw Adventure, a charming, prehistoric point and click adventure for all ages.

We spent the unit learning methods to efficiently test mechanics and interactions, as well as document the results generated from such testing.

We spent a good deal of time setting up testing plan spreadsheets, creating feedback and bug tracking forms, and designing ‘sell sheets’ for the game, which are the images seen here.

The game was largely unfinished, but what was present in the demo was distinctively beautiful in the art direction. The game was made in part by a popular cartoonist, ‘Twarda’ and each frame of animation shows a level of hand-drawn care and love not often found in 2D games.

Designing the sell sheet surprised me, as well, as it was one of the more enjoyable elements to this unit as a whole. I possibly spent far too much time on it, but I’m happy with how it turned out in the end.

[zeromindz]

SwordTale - Designing a Narrative

SwordTale marks my first real crack at designing an engaging, in-game narrative experience. It’s a 60 second, first person vertical slice where a Hero finds the long-lost Sword known as Devildelete.

Planning the level, I decided to create 3 areas the player moves through to get to their goal. The vertical slice would begin in a narrow, winding canyon, which leads the player through to an open cavern area. 

Eventually the level ends at a coastal platform, where the sword is found, sticking out of a large stone.  

This project was inspired by the idea of fully subverting the classic hero/sword  trope, which is why the player drawing the sword from the stone is followed by a scream and a fountain of blood.

[zeromindz]

TimeBomb - No, not the ZX Spectrum game from 1984

!’ve been putting my C# retention skills to the test in a major way with my latest prototype, TimeBomb. After 6 weeks of C# fundamentals and programming ideals, I’ve gone for a Smash Bro’s inspired multiplayer shooter.

Although it may seems strange, I never intended the game to look so similar to Nintendo's smash hit. Originally I set out to make a single player platforming puzzle game, with explosion mechanics inspired by ‘Splosion man and Overwatch’s Junkrat. I started drafting elaborate obstacles and hazards for the player to overcome using the Rocket Jump mechanic I had in mind.

As I was setting up a grey-box stage and playing around with some simple mechanics, I realized I didn’t want to spend too much time on the level design, so I kept it simple and added a few static platforms to navigate between, as well as some rotating platforms for variety.

I wanted to focus down player mechanics in this prototype. I began coding and testing movement and shooting mechanics, and the smaller platform setup I had was heaps of fun to bounce around on. After a week or two’s work, I was happy with the way everything felt, and I wanted to see it all in action. It quickly became clear that adding a second player to the mix was exactly what the game needed.

From the moment I grabbed a mate from class and had a few rounds, I new I was headed in the right direction. The most stress inducing aspect was creating the behavior of the grenades and their resulting explosion, once I added a nice home-made particle effect and some camera shake, the bombs had real punch to them.

 Even without a functioning computer at home for the last two weeks, I’ve found programming to be incredibly fun and rewarding. Once I broke through the ‘language’ barrier and understood what was going on in the background when the code I had written wasn't working, I started to ask the right questions, and Google was able to answer.

[zeromindz]

404 Problems But a PC Ain’t One

Right in the heat of one of the most engaging Uni projects I’ve had so far, my computer decided it was a good time to poop itself.

I’m definitely no expert when it comes to computer components, so I lugged my entire rig all the way out to MSY in Mitcham, where I bought most of the parts. It was pretty clear that the power supply was dead, but I wanted them to diagnose if there were any other components which needed replacing.  

The bloke who helped me brought me around the counter and took a look at the PC for me. What a relief, when he plugged his own power supply into the motherboard, everything lit up, fans spinning, beautiful. Alright, so the gold rating on my old power brick wasn’t just for show, It committed seppuku and saved everything else. So I bought another power supply, 650w, Gold rating, for $109.

After carrying everything back home, I pull everything out, and get to work reorganizing my cables. It was time for the moment of truth.

I plug it it to a big, heavy-duty, surge protected power board and flick it on. The lights and fans power up for about half a second, and then stop. Nothing. It’s the same as before, but now I’m sure, some other component is drawing way too much power and the power supply isn’t letting it fly. Looks like I’ve got another trip back to Mitcham, but this time I’m going hard with a couple of receipts and the power of the Australian Consumer Law behind me. I’ll get this thing back online even if it kills me.

[zeromindz]

Level Design Breakdown

We’re at the end of our first major group project for first year, and the Salty Sailors have absolutely crushed the challenge.

Our objective was to create a level for a small game made by Shane and Ben. Daniel, Michael, Will and I visited the Shrine of Remembrance and we were given a day at the beginning of this unit to go to study and gather reference for our project.

As we headed out to the Shrine, Shane told us that “No previous year groups who had chosen that spot for their level had done it well”. Naturally, the game was on. 

Each member of the team was to choose a real world object to recreate as their ‘Hero Model’. This asset needed to be a prominent aspect of the finished level, and needed to have a higher level of effort and detail put into it.

I chose the pediment of the Shrine, (noun; The triangular upper part of the front of a classical building), and changed it slightly to suit our game play needs. 

We’ve come out the other side of this project with a far more comprehensive understanding of what it takes to smash out a complete level with a small team and a tight deadline.

But one thing is for sure, in future design classes, Shane will now have to say “The Shrine of remembrance has never been done well, with the exception of The Salty Sailors”

[zeromindz]

Throwing Shade

This unit gave us the chance to get our feet wet making shaders using Shaderforge, a sweet little plugin for Unity. This program quickly became one of the most enjoyable tools I’ve found in Unity so far.

For our current work, no shaders are strictly required, but we were given the rundown on a few of the basic output functions and away we went.

The Cell Sort-of

There were a few boys in class who were looking to make a cell shader. Shane told us ‘That’s a whole other kettle of fish’, and we didn’t have the time, but he gave us some tips on how to get there the cheap and dirty way.

This is quite a simple shader to create from scratch, once you know how it works. It looks a bit manky on the sphere, but the effect works well on static shapes.

The illusion is easy to understand when applied to a cube, the faces are displaced outwards and have their normal reversed so you only see the black underside. 

The Most Beautiful Shader

He’s a little gem made by panning an image of some nameless male model across a sphere, and simultaneously using the image as co-ordinates for vertex displacement, similar to the last shader.

I love this shader so much that I see it in my dreams as well as my waking nightmares. Sometimes it tells me to cause immeasurable pain to people who don’t use Unreal.

#gamedev #shader #shaderforge

[zeromindz]

Going Deep

Here’s a good way for everyone to tickle their Thalassophobia. 

The tail end of Unit 1 at AIE was dedicated to creating our first Game Design Documents, with the goal of fleshing out and communicating the core concepts of a hypothetical game of our own design. 

My game, ‘Winch’, was a 2D underwater survival horror where the player must swim progressively deeper into the hostile ocean of a broken world. The objective is to avoid drowning and falling victim to the dangerous wildlife, all while searching for the secret of the deep. Spooky.

Now, I’ve had experience with Documenting projects in this way before, (sort of, not really) but in the past it has involved multiple members of a team, all of which had no design experience, myself included.

From the get-go, I found that once you begin to elaborate on details, logic and numbers, my mechanics became less and less cohesive. When it came to breaking down ideas in my head and communicating them as tangible game mechanics, it became clear that many of the early ideas I had formed were either underdeveloped or were simply not going to be fun. 

Luckily throughout this whole unit, Shane has been opening our eyes to the design practices of taking an idea, and working it into an enjoyable experience. We were taught to follow an intensive process of drafting, iterating and improving the GDD, using feedback from our classmates to make a document which clearly outlined the aspects of the game from a development perspective.

In the end, I was happy with what I came up with. The final document describes a game which I could realistically prototype and develop. But more importantly, When I’ve shown the document to others, The are able to get a reasonably clear idea in their head of what would be involved in the development cycle of the project, as well as what the finished product may be.

#gamedev #game design

[zeromindz]

Transistor

The passage of time in video games can be managed by developers in a number of ways. Most of the time it’s black and white, sometimes a little bit grey.

I recently made an analysis of Transistor, a Supergiant Games masterpiece which unfolds the idea of ‘Game Time’ and turns it into a unique, beautiful and satisfying experience.

You can usually expect an action in a real-time game to be executed simultaneously with direct player input, introducing a time management and physical coordination challenge to the player. 

Player’s of turn-based games, on the other hand, are allowed a predetermined period of analysis before they’re required to commit to a game action, which works to challenge the player in forward thinking and dynamic problem solving.

Transistor explores the quick, explosive action expected from an action game and the careful examination and analysis of a strategy game. Combat and exploration in this game is intuitive, fun and tightly bolstered by the incredible visuals and audio which Supergiant are known for.

Transistor’s turn based element comes neatly packaged within Red’s ‘Turn’ ability, which slows in-game time to a near halt and gives the player freedom to plan out a string of functions and movement paths against the deadly enemy known as the Process. The game feels so good because you are able to switch in and out of this turn-based state into real time combat, creating some of the most unique and enjoyable pacing I’ve experienced.

If you’re like me and enjoy the romping action of real time, but are also a fan of turn-based strategy, Transistor is definitely one to sink your teeth into, even if it is only for about 8 hours.

#gamedev #supergiant games

[zeromindz]

The Design Endevour

Throwing all caution to the wind, I’m diving head first into Design and Production at AIE in Melbourne. I’ve been developing art assets and character models for two years, but the power of educated design is a fresh concept to me. 

I’ll be using this blog for updates and showcases of projects and prototypes, watch this space.

https://zeromindz.portfoliobox.net/

#game design