IEM Katowice

Here are some pictures from Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice, Poland I've attended. Since we're working on a competitive game I think it's relevant.

Working with Layers

At some point we're going to have a single map with everyone working on different parts of it so we should all get familiar with the concept of layers in CE3 Editor. Basically it's possible to create external layers which hold stuff and modify them without affecting other stuff. Here's an overview of layers:

Using Layers

There's also a chapter called Utilizing the layers for multiple developer collaboration  in Cryengine 3 Cookbook.

I think a good way to learn about them (and about proper CE3 development in general) is to see how they are used by Crytek. So if you have Crysis 2 install Crysis 2 Sandbox Editor and look at the original Crysis 2 levels. There's plenty of things to learn from them.

Whiteboxing and 3D Assets

It's really up to you how you create the assets, but I'd suggest looking at this first:

Assets Creation Guide

And also have a look here:

All 2D/3D Tutorials

and here:

Asset Creation

I mean using all the external tools for terrain etc. is cool and you'll get some engine-independent skills, but it's only good as long as you can easily import whatever you've created into the engine. Also I know whiteboxing can be done in CE Editor. I'm not sure about the details but here's an article you may find relevant:

UDK vs CryEngine 3 SDK: Whiteboxing

Getting Started with Game Code

I've started looking at modifying the game engine to fit our needs and it's looking good so far. All of the game code is open for modification and anything starting from the basic Entity class, through per frame updates and up to the entire game logic can be changed.

The engine is written in C++ and uses all the familiar and brain-melting stuff like matrices, quaternions, Euler angles and vector algebra. On top of that Lua (which I'll have to learn) is used for exposing entities to the game.

Going by quality over quantity I'm going to start with the most essential features and implement them properly as a part of the engine (as opposed to flowgraph based workarounds) which should give us more flexibility and greatly improve performance (e.g. no more choppy movement, hopefully). Below is an updated list of programming tasks in a relative priority order.

Programming Tasks

• Top-down, player independent camera controlled with mouse, i.e. moving mouse cursor to the edge of the screen moves the camera in this direction.
• A player (non-AI) character controlled with mouse point and click.
• A visual feedback for mouse clicks (movement and attack).
• A Spawner entity which spawns minions at certain time interval.
• Minions AI and pathing. Spawned minions go to opponents base and attack everything on their way.
• Destroyable object for the base which can be attacked by mionions and players.
• Game objective: destroying the above object ends the game (and results in an awesome cinematics!).
• Player character auto-attack.
• Turret objects which can be placed on the map, deal damage to the opposing team and can be destroyed.
• Fog of war and team shared view of the map.
• Player stats and experience system. Players will get experience by killing minions and other players and will be able to progress in levels gaining health/mana/damage output.
• Inventory and shop. Players will gain currency together with experience and will be able to purchase items to keep in inventory, which will modify their stats. There may also be consumable items with an immediate effect upon use (e.g. restoring health).
• Skill system. Players will have additional skills apart from the basic attack. The skills will have an icon on the HUD, a certain animation and an effect on the player or the opponent. Players will use the skills by pressing a button and pointing a mouse.
• Additional map objects like neutral monsters/resources on the map, points of interest which when controlled give an advantage to the team and other things we come up with.

Progress

At the moment I'm just trying to find my way around the engine (which is huge!!1) and reading all the documentation. I'm also learning the basics of Lua as far as it's necessary. I've managed to create some basic Lua object, make it use C++ code from the engine and then import it into the game through the editor. So far so good.

I'm now going to look at the camera as I've found the relevant part in the game code. Will post updates as soon as I get something substantial.

Human Base Mesh

I'll update this post from now on, rather than create new ones. 

1:57am:

5:25pm (technically 3am, but I'm only posting it now)

If Zbrush is even half as good as Sculptris (the tool I used) - I am going to love it. I love sculpting tools. 

29/01/13 Meeting with Ewan

Went over the massive list of assets and mechanics I just posted today, discussed a lot about asset creation and have formed a new list of things to be done by next week:

• Agree on a naming convention for assets: I.e. MESH_Character_Zombie_01 etc. (I'll discuss this with Jan in person soon)
• We are to White box EVERYTHING by next week to make a very basic place holder of every piece of content so that we can reach a first playable ASAP.
• Greg: make a placeholder of all of the terrain and export to CryEngine
• Tom: make placeholders of all the Characters and units for the game (and projectiles/skills?)
• Jayden: make place holder UI assets inc mini-map, HP, Mana and exp bars
• Jan: look at the list of mechanics, check the list is correct and have fun coding.
• We need to decide on the actual boundaries of the map as well as layout. but for the time being I (Greg) will make the white box version and get it into cry engine and we can change it from there.
• The elevation probably needs to be kept flat / to a minimum due to not having Y-axis aiming due to our view point.
• We need to get all of this into pivotal (again that's me probably) so keep checking.
• Tom is going to work on character concept art, and Ewan thinks we should probably focus on the Zombie because we don't have any model for that whereas we have a human prefab in cryengine already.

Things to note: (all Art related today)

• Textures should be to a power of 2 (128-256-512px etc but not necessarily square, so 256x1024 is okay)
• http://www.3dtotal.com/index_tutorial_detailed.php?roPos=1&catDisplay=1&id=1007#.UQf2-r_ZbF0 Joan of arc modelling tutorial for poly only modelling
• Dishonored modelling with zBrush: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?175208-Dishonored-The-Character-Art
• zBrush tutorials: http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/lesson/military-character-assets-with-joseph-drust/
• zBrush dishonored timelapse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJpRyOPBUYE
• Joan of arc Maya tutorial: http://www.3dtotal.com/tutorial/ebook_tutorials/joan_of_arc/joan_of_arc_maya/part_01/joa_maya_part_01_01.php
• Advanced skeleton for animation rigging: http://www.creativecrash.com/downloads/advancedskeleton

Blog formatting

Greg's offensively long blog post made me investigate the "Read more" function I've seen on other blogs. Alas, they aren't compatible with the Dynamic view we previously had (I reported the bug, since the option to enable the feature is still there - it just doesn't work). I picked a fairly nice template and changed the background to be a bit more wasteland-y. I'm not sold, but it'll work for now.

List of assets to be created and mechanics to be programmed

Asset related tasks:

Human Player Character Model

• White-boxed
• Modelled
• Finished - Textured
• Animations

• Movement
• Shooting/attack
• Level up effect
• Death
• Respawn

• Port to CryEngine

Perspective

I'm not going to lie, my brain is struggling to comprehend side-by-side XY/ZY modelling. I just spent a good minute working on the leg from the front, resizing it and moving it around... and then I looked to the right. My brain simply can't perceive them as being the same shape.

UI designs and ideas

I made some designs for the UI am not very artistic but the idea is there. I also created the tasks i need to do. 

Tasks : -

Design
- Game menu's
- Ingame UI
- Ingame shop

Research cry-engine scale-form

Create
- Game menus
- Health and mana
- Minimap
- Action buttons
-  Other UI elements

 This is a picture of the ingame screen

This is a picture of the main menu we need to decide which one to use a simple main menu or one similar to league of legends.

 

This is a picture of a skull that i found quite cool.

Map Progress update 2

Made considerable progress with my ability to use the tools in Maya now so getting along at a better pace: so here:

I've been able to start to using more interesting shapes than boxes too! (oh boy, little things. Got to start somewhere...)

Will look into porting to CryEngine tomorrow. A few more details like the boundary to the park, the walls of the reservoir and benches etc. can be added soon to flesh out the map as well as the roads. In terms of height (including stairs and ramps) we will have to agree a limit to that (possibly testing it in CryEngine) as I feel too steeper slopes and variance in height may effect the ability to see the map well or limit movement as well as making shooting more difficult to manage (whereas flat works fine with out current efforts).

It's alive! (sort of)

After spending well over an hour (probably closer to two, and this is take 2) just getting the split tool to work (that's the one where it draws a line across) -- things finally started to shape up (pun intended)!

I'm still in a foul mood with Maya's interface not meeting the standards I've adopted from other applications (such as the mouse controlling the camera by default - darn that Alt key)... but I'm getting there, slowly.