Jedi Academy Intership

I am seriously looking into applying for the Jedi Academy internship. I don't have amazing assets created that I would be proud of yet. I have mostly put my efforts toward being a game lead and art director in both Game Design 1 and 2. I do have confidence I can make something awesome, but I am not sure what to put in there. Should I only go for what I am best at or what I like most? For example, I really like making textures for games. Textures like normal maps, ambient occlusion maps, and light maps to improve efficiency. I also like animating, but I feel like my biggest interest is creating a tone or mood. Games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent comes to mind. It is dark, scary, 3D, and has great sound. My biggest interest is immersing the player into a word through a unified art style. I would say that my skills as a modeler and 2D artist lack. I hope that this does not disqualify me.

Game Mechanics

Game mechanics are a tough thing to understand. Even after playing many games, taking classes, and building games, the mechanics are tough to define. I have recently played Wizorb and Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes. These two games both have what seems to be an rpg element where you walk around towns and talk to people. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past comes to mind when I am playing those games. Ninja Royale feels like that right now. You have a guy who wants to help a city, there will be some parkour, and eventually some sort of boss fight. What Wizorb and M & M have is that the game isn't actually an RPG. They are strategy games. There is a whole other game than just walking around cities, talking to people, and saving the town. The important questions we have to ask are:

What do you have to do to save the town? Why are you being forced to do it that way? Why are you saving the town?

We want to make our game unique. These games did something unique. You think it is going to be another RPG/Hack and Slash. They turn it on its head by creating a new mechanic or new gameplay style. How can we make a game within what looks like another RPG?

The idea I had was to use these spirit wards. In Japanese culture they many ways to ward off evil. I want to take this a step further and create a game out of these wards. I am still fleshing this out, but this could be the reason why the character has to parkour. These spells are in all the usual places so the character has to get creative and go around them. The character can also use these spells to protect himself or others. Anyways I am still working on it.

Avatar Animation in Maya - Getting Started

This tutorial will help you get started animating Xbox avatars in Maya 2013. This tutorial is for users who already know how to manipulate a rig and keyframes in Maya.

To get started, you will need to have Maya 2009 - 2013 (As far as I know) and access to the education catalog in Xbox Live Indie Games:

http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/

Once you have both of those ready, you will want to find a tool called: Avatar Animation Rig. Click that link and it will open up a bunch of options for your to download. Download:

AvatarRig_4_0_Maya_2009.zip

Once downloaded the zip file, unzip it, and you will find: Documentation, Textures, Avatar Rig Maya 2009.ma, and the Microsoft Permissive License. Read the license at your leisure. The documentation folder is good for when you want to export the animation to XNA. For exporting please see my import/export tutorial.

Fire up Maya and open up the .ma file. You may want to create a project file so you can store the textures stored in the Textures folder. Once the .ma is open you will see a full rigged model! The trick to start is to grab the controllers and look at the channel box. If it has a field called IKBlend or IK**** change the value from 0 to 1. The IK's for the legs, arms, and fingers are locked by default.

Once those are changed you can start animating! Good luck and post any questions in the comments.

Normal and Other Maps

I found a great page on normal and other maps:

http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap/

This page covers what are normal maps, how to make them, and how they work with other maps like ambient occlusion, etc. It also gives you a few ways on how to make them. You can use all sorts of programs like a free program from Nvidia that works with Photoshop. You can use CrazyBump which is awesome, but it costs money, and I also use Blender.

CrazyBump comes with a free trial and it takes a 2D image and creates normal maps, specular maps, ambient occulsion, and displacement maps. These are crucial in making great looking textures.

With the Nvidia plugin it will only create a normal map, but with a bit of Photoshop skills you can make the other maps. Using Photoshop to fine tune texture maps is highly recommended.

I really like using Blender because I can pretty much make most of the maps I need. It can be a bit cumbersome at first, but for a free program, it's great.

First Scrum Stand Up

We had our first scrum stand up meeting yesterday. These meetings were very useful in Game Design 1 and 2. It would really show who did there work, who did not, and who is having problems. These meetings will minimize risk and reveal future problems. Everyone looks excited and eager to get started on production.

Lighting without Lights

Currently I am working on creating pseudo lighting using texture maps. I am learning texture maps like ambient occlusion maps, light maps, and shadow maps. I am hoping that these maps will help Ninja Royale look great without using too many lights. I am currently making my maps in Blender then I export them to Photoshop and put them together.

5 Indie Games

5 Indie Games:

• Apparatus - Build machines to perform simple task. This game is shows you building a machine, but I take it as building. What if the avatar had only a few things it could build and have to parkour off of that to get to a certain place.
• Sanctum - This is an FPS tower defense game. The character has a tool that can build towers at certain places. I like this because it shows that our character could run around with a tool that can manipulate crates, girders, and even walls. This game could also show a survival mode for the avatar.
• Toki Tori - This is a 2D puzzle game where Toki has only a certain amount of abilities that it can use to cross gaps, teleport, etc. to get to where it is going. This is important because maybe the avatar has only so many uses of its abilities or it shows the inventiveness of each ability. It also has a great color palatte!
• Quantum Conundrum - This is an FPS puzzle solving game. This may not be an “indie” title, but it has an indie feel to it. I think the art style is simple and great. I like how you can pick up objects and have them interact with the environment. I also like how you can switch dimensions. This could be a fun mechanic to try. Like maybe you switch into different types of ninjas, parkour types, or acrobats, but each has their own strengths and weaknesses.
• Rochard - This is a 3D puzzle platformer. This game has a great art style and personality. It is quirky and the physics make sense. The main character has a tool that allows him to control objects to help him through levels.

Now a lot of these games use many ideas that I don’t want in the games, but these are fun indie titles that have some great mechanics like: building, tools that control the environment, puzzle solving, and interesting physics. I would love to make Ninja Royale a game where the ninja has great control of himself and his abilities while being able to control his environment. Controlling his environment could include be solving puzzles like rotating symbols, using a tool that controls certain objects, or even controlling parts of the landscape itself.

Ultimately, I just want the avatar to parkour something it has created or modified. This gives the level a unique personality for each player.