Trying out a flat-shaded / vector style, I’m leaning towards the featureless face at the moment, could have different icons for the eyes depending on mood possibly?

Following on from my last post, here’s my first attempt at a simple, working version of some basic game-mechanics. So far you can move about a bit, pick things up when you’re close enough, restart by pressing the enter key and… well that’s all actually.

Please view the full post to see the Unity content.

Here’s what I’ve been concerning myself with over the last week or so, all seem pretty essential for an adventure game:

• Moving to mouse-click
• Pathfinding
• Obstacle avoidance / walkable areas
• Custom cursors
• Object interaction
• Inventory system

Amazingly (and thankfully!) Unity 3.5 ships with its own fancy new Pathfinding system and the above prototype incorporates a good percentage of the basic functionality I’m looking for. So far I’ve tested out defining walkable/non-walkable areas and collision avoidance between characters/obstacles. Still have to think about non-standard terrain like hills, ladders, stairs; I’m hoping to use Rune Skovbo Johansen’s Locomotion system for IK/animation blending so that’s something else to look into.

Replacing the system cursor with a new one is pretty straightforward but I still have to investigate animation and mouse-over effects. Depending on the system I come up with I may need a variety of different, interchangeable cursors for different functions, using items etc.

Most of my time has been spent working out how to move the coloured cubes to the inventory (still haven’t managed to get them back again yet!). I don’t have the most logical of brains so, although some really basic concepts of scripting are sinking in, some aren’t. Arrays, so far, aren’t. I did manage to get something hacked together in the end though, it’s far, far from a complete solution but you can pick the coloured cubes in any order and they’ll move to the inventory as you do so, I’m claiming that as a very small victory!

So after filling my head with numbers and a bunch of funny-looking brackets for the past few weeks I’m hoping to make a start on some art next, the latest version of Softimage usually appears in the next couple of months so I’m using that as a deadline. Along with another prototype the plan is to have some designs I’m happy with ready to go for the end of March…

If you have questions, suggestions or happen to know where I can get cheap, brand-name clothing, feel free to leave your words in the box below.

Over the years I’ve racked up quite a collection of “Teach Yourself…” books including more than a few on coding and scripting. BASIC, AMOS, HTML, CSS, Action Script and C++ are all things I’ve completely failed to grasp in my time, I’ll look at the words, turn the pages, nod sagely and then promptly forget all of it. In much the same way as that kid couldn’t imagine becoming a minor celebrity on the Star Trek Convention circuit when he’s a bit older; I have a hard time associating variables, functions and curly brackets with all the exciting, creative stuff that indisputably (but only eventually) emerges from them. In my most recent attempt to address this, I’m working my way through Sue Blackman’s Beginning 3D Game Development with Unity. So far, after about 10 chapters, it’s going pretty well, mainly because the book appears to be tailor made for my specific requirements, it’s aimed at 3d Artists with no scripting experience, using Unity and it’s based around a tutorial project that just happens to be a variation on a point ‘n’ click adventure game.

Again, I think this relevancy is pretty vital; at this stage I’m learning about very basic scripting concepts so the lessons could really take any form; it’s the fact that, in this case, I can easily make the mental leap from what I’m building in a lesson to something I could use/adapt for my own needs that helps the information sink in. I often find people with logical brains simplify things in the opposite direction to me when trying to explain a concept, they’ll start replacing aspects I already understand with letters, or they might use a “simple” maths problem as a “real world” example! I nearly always try and explain an abstract idea with something I can point at. By learning to script though examples that are visual and accessible but also pretty closely related to what I’ll need for my project, I’m finding myself including the code in among all the other creative problems I’m constantly obsessing over, which is progress I’m pretty excited about.

At this stage, although I could just keep ploughing through the book to the end, I think what might be more beneficial is to try and extract some specific elements of what I’ve learned and start again from scratch. It’ll be interesting to find out how much I actually understand when I’m staring with an empty scene…

If you have questions, suggestions or happen to know where I can get cheap, brand-name clothing, feel free to leave your words in the box below.

Back when I was in college I had a rather scatter-gun approach to work, especially during my final year; alongside the 3D for another student’s Sci-Fi short (watchable here) and a series of hand-drawn stings featuring a dancing bear wearing blue Y-fronts (unwatchable anywhere), I also undertook production of a retro style adventure game. Unsurprisingly, spreading myself around so thinly resulted in the quality of all the projects suffering. While, in the end, I managed to make it into film school on the back of my 3D work and the dancing bear got the odd chuckle at a couple of job interviews, the game hasn’t seen the light of day since. Calling it a game is probably a bit of a stretch actually, I didn’t get it anywhere near finished and the parts I did finish where so far from what I’d envisaged to begin with as to be embarrassing. Ever since then though, a portion of my brain has been continuously occupied with the notion that I should try again, so, finally, that’s what I’m doing.

I’ve been excited about adventure games since before I’d even played one; I remember seeing a screenshot of Maniac Mansion, that SCUMM UI, with all the verbs laid out at the bottom of the screen, was pretty mind-blowing when you consider every other game I’d played up until that point involved little more than running and jumping. It’s hard to put a finger on why, exactly, I thought the idea of opening a fridge to look inside was more interesting than being a ninja, or how the ability to talk to other characters had more appeal than shooting fireballs at them but I’ve been a fan ever since.

I have plenty of ideas (don’t we all?) but haven’t settled on a lot of specifics yet, there are a few things I really want to work towards though, regardless of what specific form the game eventually takes:

• Emphasis on exploration and experimentation.
• As few generic “use item” animations as possible.
• No spoken dialogue.
• To quote Rainier Wolfcastle: “It’s not a comedy.”

I think everybody starting on a game these days has to put that first one, I can already see pretty huge issues looming though, the reason most adventure games don’t encourage experimentation and exploration is the sheer amount of complexity that can arise from offering even limited, multiple options. The same goes for reusing generic animation, it would be great to have beautifully animated sequences for every possible combination of interactions but that isn’t likely to be feasible with limited resources. Again, this is a list of ideal goals to aim for, not precepts that the game lives or dies by, so perhaps I can find a compromise with some sort of procedural system? Reusing character animation with multiple objects maybe, or randomizing a selection of layered animation? Plenty of avenues to explore here.

The idea of having no dialogue stems from several considerations; in purely practical terms it means I won’t have to worry about localization which would be a pretty substantial undertaking for a game like this. Personal preference also plays a part, I’m not really a fan of voice-acting in adventure games, possibly because when I started playing them there wasn’t very much of it about, the first time I encountered any was the CD-ROM version of Simon the Sorcerer, being a fan of the Amiga version and having played it through multiple times previously, hearing Chris Barrie’s voice suddenly coming out was just plain weird. I suppose you could argue that if I’d played the talkie version first there wouldn’t have been any jarring disconnect, and I’m sure there are plenty of examples of excellent voice acting in adventure games where the performance really adds to the experience, but in a weird way that’s sort of another reason I don’t want it. It’s why I don’t like audio books, the person reading is making so many creative decisions for you, whether it’s something as obvious as a thick accent or a stammer, or just a subtle tweak in timbre, these are all opportunities for the reader/player to involve themselves in the creative process, tailoring their experience to fit themselves in a way an author could never hope to achieve. I love the idea of a bunch of people playing the same game with the same basic elements but with what is, effectively, an infinite variety of characters and narratives. That space, between what an author presents and how an audience interprets, is the most interesting aspect of any kind of artistic expression as far as I’m concerned.

The game isn’t going to be retro-styled and it isn’t going to be a comedy. I’m not saying it’s going to be beard-strokingly high-brow or completely devoid of smiling, I’m just not keen on making another knowing, self-referential sort of adventure game, there are so many already. Sadly, this means I will not be including a character wearing a badge that says “Ask me about Loom.” (although now I really want to…)

Finally, on the slightly more technical end of things, the game will be done in 3D, I’ll be sticking with what I know and using Softimage for all the modelling and animation. I’ve also decided to use Unity for development, primarily because a lot of the interface seems pretty familiar already; sitting down in front of it for the first time, making a few primitives and instinctively hitting ALT to move the camera about makes me feel so much more at home than the empty page of a text editor does, with its cursor blinking expectantly at me. I’m fully aware that at some point I will, of course, have to type a bunch of code somewhere, I just find having it attached to something visual from the beginning so much more intuitive than the other way round. To begin with, for simplicity sake, I’m only going to be focussing on PC, depending on how far I get though, I’d love to take a bash at porting to Mac and iPad.

Long before any of the fun stuff starts though, there is one pretty major hurdle to contend with: I don’t really have a clue how to do most of this! The first course of action then is to get stuck into some tutorials, so that’s what I’m off to do now! I promise future entries will be less rambling and may even have a picture or something, congratulations to anyone who actually made it all the way through!

If you have questions, suggestions or happen to know where I can get cheap, brand-name clothing, feel free to leave your words in the box below.

It’s been ages since my last post, where did January go!? Currently doing some freelance work in Amsterdam, a rather pleasant change from my previous walk to work along a canal…