Tempest Trailer!

The following is the trailer for our gaming showing the games progression in development

The Motion controller

When designing the controller we wanted the players to feel a good sense of control over the ball, this gave us the idea of making the controller also in the shape of a ball. We believe this would give the player a grater interaction with the ball because they are using the ball in their hand to control the ball in the game, making connections between witch way u want the ball to roll and witch way you should turn your controller is easy as the player just tilts the ball in their hand in the direction they want the ball on screen to go.

Orther people such as my house mates have played using the controller and they say they enjoyed using it.

Here is a picture of how i made the controller:

Here is a game play video showing the game being played with that controller (it is very hard to play the game and hold a camera!)

Inspirations and cut scenes

When developing this project I think of where I am drawing inspirations from for it, in this case it’s from things such as wipe-out and other racing games, a fast pace gamed environment!

I think a very important thing in all types of games is music, but maybe even more so in this type of game, keeping the pace, keeping the player on their toes ready to react to anything the level can throw at them. To get the feeling of our theme everything needs to be right the environment, the music, and how the game presents itself to the player.

Wipe out is a fast pace racing game.

All of this moves me and the group in the direction of having a cut scene at the start of each level to slowly bring the camera down to the ball ready for launch, my idea for this is inspired by the start of games like Gran Turismo 4 where the players car is sitting on the grid as the camera pans in, with loud sounds player on each number of the countdown making the game feel epic and making the player ready to go. 

Locking Camera to the ball Kactor

Now that i had the camera facings the ball using a offsets, after reading in the coordinates of the ball the x y and z axis where subtracted or added to using kismet to create an offset for the camera to follow at.
The cameras angle became a problem using the rotation input on the “set actor location” i managed to get a good angle for the camera to look at the ball from a better angle making it easier for the player to see the ball and upcoming obstacle.

The ball rolling down the tunnel with the camera locked to it (Its very addictive, watching it roll down there!)

Phidgets control

The phidget is now working, the reason i had been having problems was to do with the config witch i had made copies of using visual studio insted of adding them as a link in and letting them stay in their default folder.
The other problem was the UC file was looking for the DLL but had the wrong file name, it had been looking for “UDKPhidget” when the file name was “UDKPhidgets” just missing an s and the whole system fell apart!

Getting back on schedule and some test levels

After being held back by problems with Visual studio works to get the accelerometer working have fallen behind. The error was saying that visual studio didn’t have the required registry access to create a new project, after trying multiple fixes with no success I decided it was down to the other scripting programs I had installed such as visual basic interfering. I then decided to format my laptop (it was long needed anyway) this has now fixed the problem and i am back on track to getting the accelerometer working in game!

During class time we looked at some possible level designs for this game and begun to look at attaching the game camera to the phidget ball actor will little success, but its early days with that and I don’t expect it to be easy.

As for the level design we talked about having the difficulty of the level be changed by how steep the tunnel the ball is falling down is, the steeper it is the fast the game play will go and therefore harder it will become.

I will post some level shots here soon.

Getting the idea to work

Now we have our concept we need to start getting the idea working. The 3 main things that need to be done are:

1. Sorting a 3^rd person camera
2. Making the camera move on a rail in a straight line down the tunnel
3. Get the accelerometer connected 

   

These are my project killers if i can get past them then the project will succeed.

To get the 3^rd person camera working I followed a easy YouTube tutorial video, the result was just what I was looking for.

I set an offset to centred the camera just over the players right shoulder.

To get the camera to move down the hallway was abit harder, until i thought to use the same technique i used in my last project in unreal to open and close doors.

Using a mantinee i set up a movement track to move the camera along the hall.

Now I need to combine the camera movement and the 3^rd person camera, I want the camera and the player to move down the hallway automatically and leave only left and right movement control to the player. 

Ideas and concepts part 2

we worked to refine the ideas we had down to only 2 consepts, we found that ideas from different concepts could work together to make a single game. The two ideas we are left with are what we thought to me the most original and the most realistic to make while meeting with the goals we aim to achieve.

“Freerunner”

The player controls a character who must navigate levels of obstacles and enemies at extreme speeds.

The control input for the game would be a series of proximity sensors and motion sensors. The player is not able to stop moving and gradually gains speed as they progress through the level.

The player will be challenged by obstacles generated in their path, such as crates or chasms to leap over, and ledges to slide under.  The player gains points for dodging obstacles, attacking enemies and proceeding forwards.

Combat in the game is for the most part optional, the player can avoid enemies in some cases, missing out on points but preserving their health. Other times the player will be faced with enemies they cannot  avoid. In a combat scenario the enemy will attack the player, and using the same mechanic for dodging can avoid the attack. The player can fight back by using one of the phidgets to simulate striking the enemy.

Players can also break through certain obstacles, in order to access different areas requiring an attack to get through.  If the player does not attack at the correct time then they will be harmed.

Alternate pathways for each level would be available by traversing obstacles in different ways. 

For easing a player into the gameplay, it starts out slowly with few obstacles coupled with on screen prompts.

“Wrong Turn”

In wrong turn the player follows the main character as they try to escape the confines of a strange alternate reality, visiting places they once knew being pursued by sinister enemies hiding in the shadows.

The gameplay would be a mixture of platform based, puzzle based and require the player to think through the scenario before diving straight in. The player is entirely unarmed and must use the environment to defeat enemies and progress through the level.

The game will be driven by its atmosphere and ambience with the puzzles following the same theme, being interesting and well thought out and also dark and strange at the same time.

While the player is trying to overcome a puzzle they must fight against their own madness acting as a timer, the longer you spend in the game the more you will fight against your fear. Get stuck and don’t progress the faster you will go made and lose. There will be pickups or events along the way to lower the fear bar such as completing quests or defeating enemies.

Each area would be centred around a single puzzle or enemy encounter, with some providing a safe zone to allow the player to plan out their next move, however others will be impulsive and force the player to act on instinct.

This game would not feature phidgets as the functions they would provide would be catered for easily by the keyboard.

Our conclusion

Well as we as a group want to try something new and experimental, we have decided to chose “Freerunner” as it is going to be made using phidgets and i personly am looking forward to playing with them!

Ideas and concepts

I wanted to try something new with this game i would be making with my team, we had been shown devices called phidgets in class, each with a different use such as motion sensors, force sensors, heat sensors ect.

We could also make a game just using the normal keyboard and mouse input, but base it around a theme we where given this was:

“Container for Unknown Belligerent Entities (CUBE)”

And here are the ideas of myself and my team

Our initial concepts:

“kill or be killed”

A game of players stuck inside a square maze, the play must chose a good or bad path to escape from the maze using the other prisoners to help u escape or taking a darker options and only thinking of number one.

“Free runner"

Player users motion sensors to dodge or attempt to run though objects in their path, the run speed will get faster and fast until the player dies

“Labyrinth”

Puzzle game in which the player starts in a dungeon. The player is presented with 4 objects with different attributes. The player has 30 seconds to figure out what each object does before a hint appears on screen and they must solve the puzzle. The timer changes depending on the difficulty of the puzzle. The controls are 4 phidgets, each controlling one of the objects on screen. E.g. slider for brightness, proximity for size, accelerometer for movement. The objects change on each level.

“Wrong turn”

The player controls a person trapped in a strange alternate reality populated by enemies with cube shaped heads. Unarmed, the player must venture through places they once knew to escape this twisted world defeating enemies in intuitive ways through puzzles, traps and sometimes just running the other way. The cube theme would be used to explain the enemies appearance, the cube containing an evil entity is in fact the evil residing within their minds.

Welcome

THis is the first post on my design blog, working on initial consepts for our game. team "oman games"