HOLY SHIIIIET one of the students in my first year games class used to work for Team Bondi, wtffffffff

didnt they make that detective game that was rubbish

Escape wrote:

He used to work for Team Bondi; the student.

nyep

This may well be a long diary Muzzy haha, before I even start making the 'big game' to any sense of 'meat' i'm assembling things I have and need to make into a sensible set of tools for making the game making (The programming aspect hopefully slight anyways) so it goes as smoothly as possible, so player's involvement in the game feels like their own individual path inside a world in which many things are happening, entirely out of their control, that need to be sustainable by themselves over a decent period of time. It's hard to talk about game stuff when it's phenomena are currently environmental. On top of that, before I start on game mechanics, my first project is making a high quality demo that both shows off the things i'm doing for the sake of those providing me with tools (Some people have been very generous) and this will be 'playable' but be largely visual

If people want in depth discussions about anything i'm talking about and what their relevance to game making is, like the previous discussion on screen coverage for stuff in the game etc, i will do my best with as many diagrams as possible.

It's also worth noting the graphics ARE an intrinsic part of the game but this might not be entirely obvious at the moment.

An example of this is, during the game the way the player percieves their surroundings relies a lot on a mix of very realistic physically based techniques (pbr) merging with very unrealistic non photo-realistic techniques (npr), and good examples of both you might find here, (I'll give you videos of both, and keeping it fair i'll keep it Unity only):



And now forgive the CBBC nature of this tutorial:



The demo will NOT reflect the gameplay in the final game, even remotely, it will teach me things that will, however. The demo will contain gameplay however, and if there are any questions whatsoever regarding the relevance of whatever I post, do ask and i'll try to explain, and if you see something and would really like a thorough explanation of its relevance or how it is implemented you are welcome to ask - at the moment i'm collating all the strands needing to be woven together to pull the whole thing off, even the demo

As a small teaser though, I can show things that illustrate some of the things that kind of, maybe, DO reflect gameplay should you be interested:







As much as I hate it, as this stage, making gameplay is making sure things will actually work, which is why the technical aspects overcome the need to tell the story just yet, i think getting all enthusiastic telling a story then finding out it is, in fact, very hard to actually do, means failure, so this is currently my journal of preparation and research rather than getting straight into something as ambitious as what i'm planning, and you still have the joys of reading the production of a tech demo first. But like I say, you can ask any question you like and i'll get technical as you want (and im able to) when it comes to explaining how its done

Well, if any of you don't understand an aspect of what I say, but would like to know, then i'd enjy explaining just for the greater good on one hand but on the other it might help explain my outlook on topics all over the forum, its nice to have some insight, and I think it's healthy that mature intelligent folk who play videogames have a little look into how they're made. There's a lot of material to cover though especially atm where I cant really show a hell of a lot that makes sense in the context of my game making. In fact the closest I can get is a large area of nw america in google earth drenched in markup.

You can live with that.

Typing huge messages is my time off Ram! I'm at this stuff all day every day, month after month, i can write this stream of consciousness gibberish very quickly and it helps organise m thoughts, not to mention give other folk insight into what the process is like for me - they might even learn something! Maybe make something themselves!

The 'big project' is going to take a big chunk of my life, a first i thought just year, but now I realise 2 years at least, and the only way it's possibly going to work is shittons of preparation, for every element I anticipate reaching throughout the game. When i'm actually authoring proper content, pulling real stuff together, everything I need to make it needs to be there, and tweaked wholly to my own needs. You have to remember i'm working with a not very tech savvy fiancee on writing duties when she knows very little about sci-fi, her personal interest lies in the humanistic undertone to the whole thing. But humanist or not, we're dealing with sci-fi, things that dont exist and science I vaguely grasp but she hasnt the foggiest, so to get anywhere when shes committed to the idea, as I have, of dumping typical narrative techniques in the bin and telling a story through experience. All very new to her, if I need to explain something mechanically that she needs to understand completely to transpose into a resonant effect on the player, it needs to make total sense to her

I really actually like these long rants they get my head together and make me a lot sharper about the whole thing

wouldnt exactly compare myself to any of the art greats in classical or videogame art i just have a lot of drive and spare time, but yes its an enormous volume of content to get through and i know its going to take a very long time and a significant amount of the process is, as described before, making systems that can look after themselves so when I actually create the meat of the game, the world is there, ticking over, doing it's thing, and i dont have to touch any of it and I can concentrate on game content, not what I suppose is my collection of systems creating a 'world engine' that i really want to adjust with the minimum of hassle, ideally in a single script and its interface and only do something fancy based on specific events

Thanks for reminding me of the abrash pdf btw, i intended to read it then got distracted but have the impression it has some important things to say about getting the OR working healthily with your game. It's not rift only but the rift is going to be a major consideration, along with binaural audio assuming its a sensible asset store price, example of which you can find in the audio and vr threads

Moving to fps from the original intention is a hard decision and means i'll have to approach things a bit differently but on some first consideration i realise it might be possible to get the best of both worlds or enhance some aspects of the concept given just finding yoursself in a HUD with no idea what youre doing there is a great deal more disorientating than automatically knowing your form, when there are plenty of ways to suggest and outright reflect your form in the game world. This has sudenly got me thinking about a recent experiment i did for a friend who is a massive metroid prime nerd - she lacked the hardware to emulate prime or use the oculus rift (she doesnt even own one and resides in america) but she really wanted to see it being run on the OR.. after a lot of fiddling I got it working and it not only looked great but was a surprisingly good way to control a system in which you can move your real head around as you look around the inside your space suit, your head articulated by the rift and the suit by the control pad. That actually could work really well with this and even helps communicate the concept a bunch more in some stages. nice! This threat was a good idea already haha, thanks for the heads up dynamite and i'll go read the article now