June 2019 – Page 5 – RIT German Games Industry 2019

Day 8: Otterly Terrific

Today was the end of the game jam and our last day in Paderborn. After the club, Alex and I ended up sleeping in late and arriving at the games lab around 11. I got to see an update of the game that implemented the grappling hook and streams that were going to be part of the puzzle. I finished up the animations and had to go through and fix a lot of the start and end poses. I clearly know nothing about animation blending trees (I didn’t know they were a thing until today) but I am eager to learn how to do it when I have more time. It seems like a pretty integral part of video game animations, so I’m going to start watching tutorials and reading up about it while in Frankfurt next week. After that I tried to bring my rock pile into mudbox to paint, but then I realized I would need to UV the ENTIRE pile of rocks before I could do that. I wanted to add glowing algae to highlight where the otter could enter holes, but after spending a stupid amount of time UVing rocks, I eventually gave up and went back to modeling. I should have been texturing, but I was so tired at that point that I would have rather just kept modeling, and we had so little time anyway that I had to make the decision to finish the game jam doing the thing I love the most. I created corals and sea weeds to add atmospheric aesthetic and used mudbox for the first time since the single lab day we were taught it in the fall semester. It was somewhat like Zbrush so I was able to bring over the fundamental principles of sculpting with a tablet and keyboard, but I was definitely lost with most of the UI and could only create the most basic sculpts. I would also like to learn mudbox more for this kind of occasion; I can only use the school’s licenses of Zbrush so I only had access to the student version of mudbox.

Onto the presentation. I was pretty upset about how it went; I thought the game designers and coders would do a good job of presenting, but they were stumbling over their words, not pointing out important mechanics, not explaining the story correctly, not showing enough of the environment. It was also very dark, which I felt ultimately ruined the whole game. Most of the models I worked on today were not implemented. However, we were able to implement an impressive number of mechanics and all of them worked as intended, even though they were a bit clunky. All the other games were good in concept, but there was only one that I thought was interesting and enjoyable. A lot of the other teams had a lot of infighting and wrote over each other’s code, or there were no artists on the team so they were lacking visually. Ultimately I’m happy with what we were able to do, and plan on continuing the game this fall semester as a sophomore film requirement.

After that we all took a big picture and said our goodbyes. I was really sad to say goodbye to everyone, especially the few people I had gotten really close to over the past few days. We went out for burgers with the professor and two of the German students who we had all grown attached to. I have started to have conversations about returning to Paderborn to work on the game they will be developing my senior year. It’s still just an idea, but the more I talk about it the more I’m already excited to start planning it. If it were up to me I would have spent another week in Paderborn with the students, but we are off to Frankfurt for a very fun week and our German friends can get back to schoolwork and finishing up their semester.

Sunday in Paderborn (Game Jam Day 4)

Today we finished and presented our games for the game jam. In my group’s game, Soshi Shinobi, I worked mainly on the user interface, including the pause menu, title screen, and player’s HUD, as well as the player’s controls.

Credits screen with the names of everyone who developed the game.

I created virtual keys for keyboard and Xbox controls, in which a single function that can be executed by multiple buttons would only need to be checked with one condition. (For example, I can check if a “down” button is pressed with a single statement, instead of needing if P1 Joystick is held down, or if P2 Joystick is held down, or if Down on P1’s D-pad is held, or if the actual down arrow key is held, or if the S key is held (down for WASD controls)). I also fixed a small bug with the timer, which the fellow programmer on the team designed. The timer is perfectly functional, except it displays certain numbers in a way that’s not consistent with an “alarm clock” fashion, where 4 numbers are always displayed. For example, before 1 and 1/10 of a second would be displayed as 1:1, instead of 01:10.

Here are some of the other teams that presented:

Forgive me for I forget the name of this game…

I do remember their lovely credits screen. (It says “This are the credits.”)

The team that presented this game didn’t expect the credits to shrink so much. I explained to them why that was happening. By default, Unity canvases have their scaling setting set to “Constant Pixel Size”, which means if you start developing the game in a resolution like 720p, then build the game and run it at 4K resolution, the canvas will appear much smaller. This can be fixed by setting it to “Scale with Screen Size”, so the canvas will stretch accordingly. This is what I had to do with the UI for Soshi Shinobi.

The last game, a blob-based game with custom Unity shaders, I forgot to take photos of.

Of all the teams that presented, Professor Jörg commented that our game, along with two other games that the teams developed, with a little more work would be ready to be launched on platforms such as the Switch, Nintendo 3DS, or Steam.

GameJam Part3

It was a very emotional day for me because I had to say goodbye to MY best friends Christina and Tobi.

I forgot that Sunday had a different bus schedule so I missed my stop and had to walk back to campus. It was HOT. My team completed the game a day before so we were just fixing some minor bugs and waiting for the presentation. In my last blog, I briefly talked about what I worked on the project and I will discuss the details below.

First of all, I created a method for the protagonist’s movement which the protagonist walks to wherever my cursor clicks. Secondly, I wrote a script for the camera to follow the player. Initially, I had the camera as a child of the Game Object Player, however, I changed it later so that the camera could stay inside the scope. During the second GameJam day, I encountered the problem that my player could walk out of the background, yet the camera follows it. It should not be difficult to fix it but I didn’t know how to scale an orthographic camera nicely. It either stayed stationary or cut off some of the backgrounds, like I couldn’t freely resize the camera. The problem got solved in the end tho!!! Afterward, I worked on some animations when events were tricked. For example, after the protagonist completes a dialog with the hover dog in the game, the hover dog takes our player outside and moves out of the screen. In the end, when I had some extra time, I developed a menu screen and an options screen for the game. In the options screen, the volume gets adjusted by using an audio mixer which was my first time using it. I was confused for a while about how to hook up the sound with my audio mixer until Phil showed me the way.

We received some feedback at presentation; some people appreciated the humor in the game, yet some think we could develop more to the story and the idea of timeline. The most impressive game from this GameJam was beat the boss due to completion. It’s a game where four players with different skills team up to fight a super difficult boss in an area. I was amazed by how much they completed in 3 days due to art, coding, game play and so on. In my opinion, muti-player 2D platform game Soshi Shinobi has the most potential for publishing.

At the end of gamejam, we took a group picture together to fill the last spot on Wall of Fame. Second part of the day was free time, and I decided to hang out with my buddies one last time.

Tobi drove us to his house in a sexy convertible. Since German highway doesn’t have speed limit, I kindly asked him to speed up a little bit while Sam made him race (ik he’s bad). Schloß Neuhaus is a castle that’s surrounded by a beautiful garden and a river that goes through the town. Nowadays, Schloß Neuhaus is no longer a castle, in fact, Christina and Tobi went to high school there. We were lucky enough to witness Schützenfest where townspeople gather around to celebrate the new royalty for the upcoming year. As Christina told me, it’s usually the rich people who get selected for crowns. The four of us shared a currywurst together, add on to my German food experience.

Funny part of the story was that I thought Christina could not join us for dinner so I had a really emotional goodbye with her, while they were invited to dinner. So I had burger with her 20 min later. The place had a 40 euro, 5 patties burger that can get you into wall of fame in the restaurant, which I decided to stay as far away as possible. After dinner, we tried to get ice cream but nothing was open since it was Sunday. Instead, we just walked around the town for the last time and chilled in the park.

The Barbeque (and a little bit of work on the Game Jam too)

Another day of the game jam, another round of stubbing out code and making small changes. This time, I made the fireball and crossbow essentially work as intended, and left the grappling hook ability to another coder.

The crossbow fires a single bolt normally, three bolts when charged once, and five bolts when charged twice. The fireball is very similar, but it fires a pathetically small fireball with no charge, a bigger one with one charge, and a very large one with two charges. The cooldowns, speeds, and a bunch of other things were yet to be implemented / balanced. That was the game design team’s job, or at least, that was my impression. Referring to myself as an “Intern” in the first game jam blog post really couldn’t describe my situation better. I do things, but do those things get implemented / matter? Maybe.

Today, however, there was an event, so I actually have more things to talk about! We held a barbecue out in a glade somewhere I can’t exactly name, since I was graciously driven there and back by my German peers.

I had a hamburger of sorts, with a steak (I think?) as the “burger,” a piece of bread I had to cut myself, and some special burger sauce. It was surprisingly good. Steak being my favorite food probably helped. I didn’t take a picture of it, because I didn’t think to, but I did take a picture of the strawberries.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen strawberries this red and healthy looking. They tasted good, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen / eaten strawberries in general, actually…

Besides eating, all I really did was wander around aimlessly and talk to some people. Alex went full Minecraft, made himself a small stone axe and defiled mother nature with his creation, so there’s that.

You show that tree, Alex.

Though I intended to work some more upon getting back, it being 8:30PM already—compounded the thoroughly uncomfortable heat of the game lab—convinced me to head back “early.”

It’s so bright out, even though this picture was taken at 9:00PM.

Gamejam Part2/BBQ

It was a very productive day for me.

In the morning, I walked pass a farmer’s market on my way to the bus stop. The Germans told me there was a farmer’s market every Wednesday and Saturday. It was like what we have in the US plus some flower shops. Besides that, there was a performance going on in the plaza as well. I didn’t stay long enough to figure what was it for, groups of girls danced. Compare to weekdays, downtown Paderborn was fairly busy. I got a mango smoothie for myself and it tasted like strawberry with a pink look.

By the end of this day, Our game was pretty much finished and all of us attended a BBQ together. The BBQ took place in a park that was 10 min away from the lab. It was a casual and relaxing place where people have picnics, smoke hookah, get a tan, etc. While the organizers were preparing BBQ for us, I tried out two beers, Becks and another beer mixed with sprite. Becks was slighter better compare to the other, but neither of them impressed me that much. It was a very engaging event for us and the Germans; we shared information on different food, movies, music and so on. Unfortunately, the park didn’t contain a bathroom which was a little inconvenient for me.

After the BBQ, I came back to the game lab and wrapped up my work.

At night, Christina dragged me out of my bed to a bar with a club. Since she had a friend work there, I got in for free. They didn’t even ID me, which was weird. In contrast to the bars we went to, this one had really loud music that people had to scream at each other. #relatable Most of the music was German EDM I feel like but they played American pop on occasion such as Uptown Funk, I love It, etc. I was quite drunk at the end.

Day 7: Come on and Slam, and Welcome to the Jam

It’s the next day of the game jam and another full day of work. I was mostly animating all day, which meant I wasn’t having very much fun. The space man rig I got didn’t have any controllers, and because I am unfamiliar with rigging I didn’t want to waste time trying to stumble through it. I had to spend a lot of time counter animating and trying to figure out how to create a walk cycle without my character moving forward. Ultimately, I’m not very proud of the animation and I plan to go back, rig the character, and learn how to do the animations properly. Once I’m not under a time crunch I think it will come easier to me.

My teammates continue to work hard and implement impressive mechanics surprisingly fast. Everything feels like it’s coming together, and whenever I need a break from modeling and animating, I can go and see the coders and find something new every time. I’m very happy with my models, I managed to create a ton of stuff to include in my portfolio. Also, with all the work I’m doing I’m starting to feel better about the game that’s waiting for me back home. I have proved to myself in this game jam that I am able to work long and hard for a game I’m passionate about; with all the anxiety I’m feeling towards my future after I graduate, I’m gradually gaining more confidence and this trip has only spurred that onward.

We stopped for a barbeque dinner at a nearby park. I got to catch up with everyone on their progress and relax while eating good food. I learned more about the German students and what their future plans are. I also talked to Stephen and Vulker about studying abroad for a semester in my senior year when I’m completely a full game for my thesis. It would line up really well with the work that I need to do and the process they go through. We also got to play lawn games, including an America vs German drinking game that I got roped into.

I wasn’t much help after the barbeque because of how tired I was, so I decided to leave the lab because I wouldn’t make any progress anyway. Mike and I decided to go get ice cream and stop at a general store for supplies. However, both of us cannot be trusted with directions, so what should have been a five-minute walk back to the hotel ended up being 45 minutes. At least I walked off the ice cream. That wasn’t the end of our night though, as the Germans offered to get us into a small nightclub. Although I was tired from all the walking, the prospect of spending more time with our friends before we had to leave them Monday was enough to convince me to go back out. The club was so much fun and the music they played was so much fun to dance with. I was sore the next day from all the dancing. I got to talk about music and local culture and get a lot closer with some of the Germans. It was an invaluable experience (and the drinks weren’t too bad either).

Kind of getting there a little bit

It’s honestly hard to remember what I did the second day of the game jam because most of the work I’ve done has been small or was stubbing code for someone else. After some reviewing the edit logs, I realized Friday was the day I started remapping controls and adding the Shield special. A lot of my time was spent trying to make it easy to edit for balancing purposes and other such things, time that probably could have been spent on other things if our architecture was a bit better. I sure do have a thing for attracting bad architecture, and not realizing it soon enough to call it out.

I have no pictures because we spent all day indoors, even though I personally took a couple breaks to walk outside and get some fresh air.

I didn’t get a wide array of things done, so there’s really not much else to say. I made some players slower when a button is held.

Our discord, which should have been used a hell of a lot more, in my humble opinion

GameJam Part1

I think I’ll start this blog by introducing my team. My team consists 3 programmers including me, 2.5 artists, 1.5 musicians, and 3 game designers. Everyone is very nice to me (Markus is special, there’s always the weird one on a team), even though everyone else is German but they try to speak as much English as possible to make me welcomed. After we were dismissed from the lab room, the team leader locked us into a creepy, small, hot, and terrifying room to further discuss the concept of the game. We finally agreed on a point and click adventure game with a cyber western background. It was a totally peaceful discussion without people yelling at each other.

One thing I have to complain is that the lab is soooooooooo hot!!!!!! Around 30+ computers are running Unity, Adobe and rendering at the same time. The heat generated in this room is worse than RIT’s dorm(which you know how those are). Thank God we have 2.5 fridges in the room that are filled with drinks(I promise you, no one hides beer in the lab).

By the end of the first day, I was already pretty close to my teammates and we have the tasks nicely divided. I was in charge of the character’s movement, main camera, and menu; Sebastion has implemented a dialogs system for the Game Designers to write scripts; Alex worked on an inventory class. The basic game was set up and the next step is to further develop the game logic. Very excited to see what the game turns out to be. I have always been a fan of puzzle games and this is my first time working on a puzzle game. Even though I was mainly programming for the game instead of storytelling, I’m pumped to develop a puzzle adventure game as my side project.

Day 6: Birb

So there I am, stomach full of pastry and holding a bag of fresh strawberries I had just bought at the bakery, waiting for the bus. Alex and I had a late start this morning and finally found the right bus route to take, hoping that it wouldn’t randomly drop us off across town again. A very loud thud shakes the bus shelter and a woman next to us screams as a bird flaps to the ground. I’m not going to go into detail, mostly because I am still SHOOK, but we had to catch the bus without knowing its fate. I cried the entire bus ride . . . and while walking across campus . . . and again when I had to explain why I looked like I had been crying. I’m reeling. Bird, if you’re out there, I hope you’re okay. And if you’re dead, I hope a friendly neighborhood cat ensures that your death wasn’t a waste.

Anyway . . .

Today was the second day of our game jam and the first full workday. We immediately started working when we arrived, only stopping occasionally to drink soda and chose another YouTube video to watch. I managed to get several models done, including a pile of rocks that will serve as our first otter puzzle. I’m annoyed that it took so long and I had to start over a few times because I didn’t like the look of it, and I’m still nervous that it might not be clear enough and the puzzle will not work. I also finished the grappling hook, force field generator, and various ship parts to scatter around as other wrecked ship. I’m really worried about all the work that is ahead of me and although my passion and motivation is there, I am getting very tired and working slower than I want. I still have models to complete, as well as all the texturing and creating animation cycles for our main character.

However, I am still having a great time and my models are turning out surprisingly well. Because of school and work, I haven’t been able to just sit down and make cool models in a long time. I’ve been watching Game Grumps play Undertale and the time is passing without really making me tired. My team is also still doing fantastic; from talking to my other American friends, apparently, we’re one of the only teams that isn’t constantly fighting and running into language barriers. I’m so excited that I get to work on this game that I’ve been thinking about for nearly a year. My love of maya is reinvigorated after a hard semester making a film and not being able to focus on video games.

Sam Steps Out Early

Friday was more jam time! I continued the work on our game’s Heads Up Display (or HUD, for the cool kids). Our 3D artist completed the models for all of the weapons, and our designer was hard at work blocking out levels.

Despite all the sugar in my Fritz-Spritz, I was feeling pretty exhausted by mid-afternoon. I checked in once more with my team before checking out for the day. On my winding journey back to the hotel for a nap, I stopped in an odd shop that appeared to sell only three things: cosmetic lotions, wooden figurines, and candles for baptisms and communions. I was mainly interested in grabbing a souvenir (I’ll let you guess what kind), but what I found was a nice conversation with the shop owner. He has apparently been in this little store for fifty years, and he takes pride in the tourists that he has met from all around the globe.

At 9pm I realized that I hadn’t really eaten in a while. It was hard to believe that it had gotten so late, as the sun had barely seemed to go down. A few days earlier, I had been recommended a doner place (doner, or “döner,” is very popular in Germany), so I took a late night stroll to get my kebab fix. Paderborn is very beautiful in the late evening, with seemingly the whole town eating outside at cafes if not sitting in the park by the water.