Baking Spider Muffins

Looking over what I've got for 2a is a little messy but ultimately satisfying. I'm really pleased with my model's animation cycle and I think it looks good on a whole. Considering the method of production I may have to remodel it from scratch for 2b but have gotten my skills back for Maya that isn't nearly as daunting a task as it initially sounded.

These are some renders of the swimming recluse static and mobile:

Unfortunately the nCloth tail won't render for some reason so I can't show the movement cycle. You'll just have to take my word that it looks kickass. Unity reject nCloth too so even though the animation was baked correctly and everything it is a little glitchy because there are no joints for unity to attach the cloth verticies to.

From here I intend to clean up the model to export it for 3D print. If in doubt - triangulate... It looks like I'm going to have to cut the model in two and scale them up so it isn't so flimsy. Also, to Maya, this is why I have trust issues;

Cross-Computer Confusion

So everything was going swimmingly (ahaa!) as I was working on my recluse's swim cycle. I even managed to get a spline and nCloth to talk to each other and make a working tail. It was all sorts of awesome. Anyway, I just got home and checked my files and one of the palpus' IK stopped working at some point during the transfer from the uni computers to my own computer. Worst of all so did the tail. I only tampered with the file a little bit in this mode but that was from my computer; my usb still holds the original so hopefully I haven't lost my entire day's work to a crappy miscommunication of code.

So yeah, there's some pretty hardcore stuff going on here. The tail legs are all 8-9 joint splines with nCloth membrane stiched between them. The animation of said membrane is not the best since there are veticies flying everywhere but that's what I expected from a "low-poly" model.

My brain is melting. I'm going to bed.

Putting the "Fine" in Refinement Modelling

Going off advice from numerous sources I decided to clean up my model before I make any attempts at rigging. Unfortunately last night as I was finishing up attaching the second to last set of legs to make my model a singular polygon, Maya crash with a "fatal error" and corrupted the save file to the point where it was unusable. As Maya has a history of throwing its toys I had two back-up saves. I had, however, made a zealous attempt to get all the stitching done in one sweep so I lost about 4 hours work. Due to the setback it took me until now to finish the model properly. But here we are at last :)

...and yes it is just shy of 10,000 polys. It's a learning curve. Everything is a learning curve. Always with the learning and the curving...

Poly Want a Joint System

Well I just finished the low-poly model for my swimming recluse. At the moment it is still segmented into different parts as my knowledge with proper clean modelling is limited. Regardless, I'm really happy with the final result. Rigging comes next which should be simple enough. I feel I can get away with minimal weight painting on the legs due to their solid carapace. The tail is another story entirely and what I accomplish with that depends on how well I can get a spline IK to work.

I found a good tutorial for rigging a bat wing but there are steps the tutor skips that unfortunately limit how much use I can make of it but I will try regardless. There are lots of ways I could clean this model up but that can be part of Project 2b as it will be my sole focus.

Conceptual Surgery

This was supposed to go up days ago but I totally forgot I did it...
Anyway, after talking over my concept with Kah he pointed out something that reminded me of a base idea for design: "nothing is obvious."
Why did my spider's legs have to be equally proportioned? So here is the refined version of the swimming recluse's legs. The front two legs act as snares to catch prey at a distance. They would be highly reflexive and able to accelerate from stationary at a scary rate. The second set of legs act as a mid-way snare to keep prey from escaping beneath the spider. They would also be very strong in relation to the rest of the body as it is this set of legs that pulls prey toward the mouth and hold it in place. The palpus would be the final reinforcement to keeping prey locked in place as the spider feeds.
While the top drawing indicates the swimming recluse hunting small shrimp it would also be able to overpower (or at least hang onto long enough to kill) a small fish. The size of the spider I envision is about the size of a dessert plate with its legs spread out, give or take a little bit with the primary legs. Its actual body would be no bigger than a standard usb stick.

Spiders and Cubes

Firstly and quickly - here is the base sketch I will use to begin modelling my spider in maya:

On another note, why does blogger keep making these images grey?

We also had our first official team meet up for EOF. During the meeting we looked into a number of games that Adrian used for inspiration such as Myst, Dream, Antichamber, and Qube. We also discussed what elements we do/do not want in the game to get a clear direction.

Prior to the meeting these were some puzzle concepts I came up with. The bottom one is the main kind of perspective bending that we want to accomplish.

The three styles of puzzles listed are the basic thought progression EOF will take players through. Initially the puzzles will just be a matter of looking at things the right way. We decided that the player will have to indicate they have achieved the correct perspective change by clicking on the screen when viewing the solution. This will mean that the player has to understand when they have solved the puzzle and stop accidental solutions. Gradually we plan to introduce extrusion puzzles that require the play to adjust their environment to acquire the correct perspective to proceed. Lastly, the player may gain the ability to adjust veracities to bend shapes to the right solution but the limit of this is how well it can be coded to be functional without being easy to solve.

Reverse Arachnophobia

I think I might be obsessed with spiders. It's not that I like them. They freak me out a little to be honest and yet I keep putting them in my design work. Here are some evolutionary sketches for my next 343 project:

As EOF (the game I'll be working on) has such simplistic aesthetics I decided to do something more intense for by evolutionary model. So the idea behind this is it begins as a brown recluse spider (hey here's a joke: why don't Loxosceles reclusa go to parties? Because they're a little reclusive.... hah ;D) and develops into a an aquatic predator. This change would come from Earth's air becoming too polluted and the spider escaping to less polluted water systems. The spider would first change its habitat to coastal areas then start to inhabit rock pools. Through generations of adapting to salt water environments it would become amphibious, and then water dwelling entirely.

The change of environment would mean that the spinnerets would no longer be useful. For this reason the abdomen would shrink as the thorax enlarges, creating room to host the rest of the organs. The silk glands would disappear and be replaced with an organ that produces a membrane between the spiders hind legs. Initially this would be used by the spider to float on the water like a deadly lilly pad, fishing for food beneath it. Eventually the organ would diminish as well and the spiders would develop a natural membrane between their back four legs. These legs would also become less rigidly segmented and more flexible so it can act as a tail to swim through the water.

The spider's carapace would become far stronger. Moving to reefs would introduce new predators and it would need to move about to hunt, exposing itself. Not being able to rely on a web would also mean the spider would need to be able to overpower the prey it stalks. For this reason the strength of its forelegs would increase substantially. The end joint would also harden and shape into a claw. The spiders palpus and mandibles would grow in size and strength, the palpus developing small talons to turn them into larger forms of mandible that can hook struggling prey. the maw would widen and develop small teeth used to de-shell/de-scale prey an also to hold onto it while it tries to inject venom into it.

I also sketched out a couple of ideas I had for potential puzzles styles for EOF. Some kind of water/buoyancy mechanic would need to be introduced for the first style of puzzle to exist. The second one can be adjusted to represent any kind of door that frequents throughout the game. That, and the third puzzle, would mean to kind of interaction with objects would need to be implemented as well.

These are of course just doodles of passing ideas at this point. Once we have a proper team meeting we can rip into some legit level design.

'Acorns' Presentation Slide

So here is the slide I will present in tomorrow's class. What I'm trying to convey is the simple mechanics of the game as well as what makes it unique (or so I'd like to think). The musical prism sequence is the main idea, therefore in colour, and is what I want to spend the most time explaining. The character depicted is merely a place-holder at this point, as I want to focus on the mechanics rather than the aesthetic.
The main concepts that I've decided to settle on are as follows:

Interaction - I initially planned the game to incorporate a keyboard and mouse with the classic "WASD" for movement and the mouse controlling the character's direction of view. The mouse buttons would be perfect for hosting the "interact/select" function and that would be all that was needed. I did, however, decide that the fluidity of motion that a joystick, or as depicted - thumbstick, allows for a far more natural sense of motion from the user's input. The way I envision this prism dragon to glide through the air would need to feel as smooth to control as it looks on-screen.

Experience - the fact that the games controls can be summed up by "move" and "interact" shows that the experience I want the players to feel is less about intensity, difficulty or skill, and more a journey of curiosity, fascination and wonder. I hope to make the world in which the player inhabits seem surreal and alien. Ideally it would be interesting enough that the simple act of exploring it is a pleasure.
The collection of music prisms and the gates they are used to unlock is the 'toy play' aspect of the game. This is where the main satisfaction of playing would come from. Initially the collecting of prisms would be an incentive to start the player moving about the environment but once they start interacting with gates they are essentially given something to play with. The introduction of new prisms would allow for more complex music to be created at the gates and for harder gates that require such music to open. This would encourage players to explore more, find more prisms and experiment more at the gates.
The musical sequences don't have to be locked down to just "gates" either. There could be other musical challenges set up to reward players with bonus prisms or other upgrades so that there are more opportunities to make music.

Conceptual Aesthetic - the current aesthetic I have in mind is conveyed in terms of colour by the slide image. I want to use colour throughout the game as a mode of highlighting what is important. Most aspects of the environment would be grey-scale or very dull in colour so when a player sees something bright and colourful it instantly attracts attention.
I envision the world to be an ethereal realm of shapes and platforms floating in free space with no particular orientation. I feel it would add to the surrealism if the player has no concept of what way is down. I imagine that coloured crystals or artefacts of some sort illuminate the environment past its own eerie glow, throwing shades of colour onto nearby objects to help produce a mood.
I'm very tempted to make the creature the player controls made up of a similar material to the prisms it's collecting so it is almost like some kind of crystalline golem or something. If that means the players question whether or not it is alive or mechanical or whatever they can come up with, then all the better. The focus of the game is the experience of the journey, not on how much sense this world and its inhabitants make.

Third Time's the Charm

Here we are in my third year of study. Straight into the good stuff too - our game pitch is due on the 13th so I've spent the past week conceptualizing and sketching. This is what I've come up with so far:

While there is plenty of room to play with character concepts the main play aspect of the game is decided (after many iterations). I drew my inspiration from eclectic music videos such as the following:

I like the idea that someone without musical training but a good sense of rhythm can create some pretty incredible music. The way this would manifest in the game would be through gateways the player comes across in their journey. These gates would have a musical tune as a key, generated by music prisms they pick up along the way. The tune would not be specific but based on a score that the player can accumulate through an internal algorithm that awards creating regular rhythm and complimentary tones. The musical prisms themselves would be discovered by exploring the open world and by overcoming obstacles.