The Master's Eye - Part VI - After the Silence II
by Richard Marrevee · 04/21/2013 (2:14 pm) · 9 comments
This is the 6th part of my blog about the development of my game The Master's Eye. Previous parts are:
The Masters Eye - A game is born....
The Masters Eye - Part II
The Masters Eye - Part III - A Trailer is born
The Masters Eye - part IVa - After the Silenc
The Masters Eye - part V - Showing gameplay
First I will show you a video about the reworked intro, which is basically a GUI showing you some nice pics and some kind of story to get you into the game. In the video the screens are following up pretty fast, but in the game you can click through the screens after reading the story, or skipping the intro at all.
The next video I am showing you is the Options Screen. In it's pure form it is an adaptation of the stock Options Screen in Torque3D 1.1 final (I'm still using 1.1 with the 1.2 patch applied) which I modified to have the same feel like the rest of the game.
I have also added the Recast/Detour library, this gave me the opportunity to populate the villages with some AI and let them wander around in the village without the need for a lot of different paths to cover all the terrain. To let them wander away I added a seperate thread for the pathfinding with callbacks to the AI that needed a new path. The next video show you the populated village in the first level.
I also thought that the first level needed some more ambience, like flying birds, swimming ducks, animal farms and some game. The next video show you some crows flying around. I had to modify the AI-class to make them fly, the first crows were always falling down due to gravity, so I had to work around this.
The same problem applied to the swimming ducks, at first they were very happy to swim under water, so this had to be fixed also. For the other animals I developed some kind of AI-class which is more some kind of state machine than real AI. The state is random and can be idle, walk or graze also for random period of time. See the next video showing you these animals.
For added realism I added the need for the player to eat and drink or he/she will die after a certain amount of time. For fun I added the laundry blowing in the wind.
Another thing I did not like were the loading-screen and the pre-mission story so I reworked this. See this video loading the first mission and presenting you with an intro story.
For now I will say goodbye to you and hope you like the videos.
Thanks for your attention.
Richard Marrevee
R.G.S.
edit:
Changed RayCast/Detour into Recast/Detour.
The Masters Eye - A game is born....
The Masters Eye - Part II
The Masters Eye - Part III - A Trailer is born
The Masters Eye - part IVa - After the Silenc
The Masters Eye - part V - Showing gameplay
The Silence
It's now more than a year since my last post about The Master's Eye. There are more than one reason wjy it has taken so long, but the most important was what writer's call a writer's block. I was suffering from a lack of inspiration to continue the development of my game, just shuffeling around pieces of code and objects in the missions. But after all in this year a lot has been done and all is back on track now.What is done in this year?
Looking back I must say a lot, despite the block. I have implemented the Recast/Detour library, created an Options Screen more in style with the game, added flying, swimming and other animals to enhance the ambience of the game, reworked the intro story, add a death scene and added voices to the playing character and the NPC's. Furthermore I have polished to first two levels to a more final kind and designed levels for the end. In this blog I will show you some vids (all in HD) of these additions.First I will show you a video about the reworked intro, which is basically a GUI showing you some nice pics and some kind of story to get you into the game. In the video the screens are following up pretty fast, but in the game you can click through the screens after reading the story, or skipping the intro at all.
The next video I am showing you is the Options Screen. In it's pure form it is an adaptation of the stock Options Screen in Torque3D 1.1 final (I'm still using 1.1 with the 1.2 patch applied) which I modified to have the same feel like the rest of the game.
I have also added the Recast/Detour library, this gave me the opportunity to populate the villages with some AI and let them wander around in the village without the need for a lot of different paths to cover all the terrain. To let them wander away I added a seperate thread for the pathfinding with callbacks to the AI that needed a new path. The next video show you the populated village in the first level.
I also thought that the first level needed some more ambience, like flying birds, swimming ducks, animal farms and some game. The next video show you some crows flying around. I had to modify the AI-class to make them fly, the first crows were always falling down due to gravity, so I had to work around this.
The same problem applied to the swimming ducks, at first they were very happy to swim under water, so this had to be fixed also. For the other animals I developed some kind of AI-class which is more some kind of state machine than real AI. The state is random and can be idle, walk or graze also for random period of time. See the next video showing you these animals.
For added realism I added the need for the player to eat and drink or he/she will die after a certain amount of time. For fun I added the laundry blowing in the wind.
Another thing I did not like were the loading-screen and the pre-mission story so I reworked this. See this video loading the first mission and presenting you with an intro story.
The future
So what will be next? First of all we (my wife, kid and me) will be on a holiday to Las Vegas, Bryce, Zion and Vegas again very soon, but after that there will be the release of the playable demo with the first 2 missions and the start of a crowdfunding campaign. This will happen by the end of May, start of June if nothing strange happens, so if you like this keep an eye on this.For now I will say goodbye to you and hope you like the videos.
Thanks for your attention.
Richard Marrevee
R.G.S.
edit:
Changed RayCast/Detour into Recast/Detour.
About the author
Started programming in 1984 on an Oric, when time progressed switched to MSX, Amiga and finally the Windows PC with T3D. Now developing an epic fantasy game: The Master's Eye. Creator of the DoorClass pack and VolumetricFog pack @ richardsgamestudio.com
#2
04/21/2013 (7:29 pm)
Looks really nice, how hard was it to use the RayCast/Detour?
#3
Thanks for the feedback.
@Kevin:
It is not that difficult, there are some good toolkits around like Daniel Buckmaster's WalkAbout or the one from Altered Reality Software which I use. Also it might be necessary to change the scripts for the AI paths, but all in all it is no more than a few hours.
04/22/2013 (3:55 am)
@Duion:Thanks for the feedback.
@Kevin:
It is not that difficult, there are some good toolkits around like Daniel Buckmaster's WalkAbout or the one from Altered Reality Software which I use. Also it might be necessary to change the scripts for the AI paths, but all in all it is no more than a few hours.
#4
It's certainly come on over the years. I think that the animals are a really nice touch. More games need ducks!
You might try an extra grass type, there's a lot of the unbroken green on the terrain. Maybe break it up a little with a lighter or darker or browner grass texture to make it a little patchy here and there.
Great stuff. Keep slogging on.
04/22/2013 (5:37 am)
Video-tastic!It's certainly come on over the years. I think that the animals are a really nice touch. More games need ducks!
You might try an extra grass type, there's a lot of the unbroken green on the terrain. Maybe break it up a little with a lighter or darker or browner grass texture to make it a little patchy here and there.
Great stuff. Keep slogging on.
#5
Good stuff. Some things I noticed;
1. I am not a speed reader by any means, so I was not able to read 75% of what was put on the screen during the intro video. Perhaps slow it down a tad or add in a voice over in order to time it a bit.
2. Good start on the options screen.
3. Good path finding and such. Check your animation cycles though, there was quite a bit of 'skating' by your NPCs. It's likely an animation timing thing.
4. Animals are cool. Suggestion....not required by any means, perhaps a 'side step' animation for when the cow and such spin on the axis and move in a new direction.
5. The duck is good.....just remove the the 'tail splash' when it's swimming.... It looks like it has a bit of over zealous exhaust if you know what I mean ;-)
Overall, GREAT job. Most of what I pointed out was 'minor' stuff and is by no means a 'game breaker'. In fact, I am overall impressed with how far this has come! Good job! Your world feels alive, and real.
Can't wait to try this out in a demo or full game setting!
Keep up the great work!
Ron
04/22/2013 (10:14 pm)
Richard,Good stuff. Some things I noticed;
1. I am not a speed reader by any means, so I was not able to read 75% of what was put on the screen during the intro video. Perhaps slow it down a tad or add in a voice over in order to time it a bit.
2. Good start on the options screen.
3. Good path finding and such. Check your animation cycles though, there was quite a bit of 'skating' by your NPCs. It's likely an animation timing thing.
4. Animals are cool. Suggestion....not required by any means, perhaps a 'side step' animation for when the cow and such spin on the axis and move in a new direction.
5. The duck is good.....just remove the the 'tail splash' when it's swimming.... It looks like it has a bit of over zealous exhaust if you know what I mean ;-)
Overall, GREAT job. Most of what I pointed out was 'minor' stuff and is by no means a 'game breaker'. In fact, I am overall impressed with how far this has come! Good job! Your world feels alive, and real.
Can't wait to try this out in a demo or full game setting!
Keep up the great work!
Ron
#6
Thanks for the feedback. I think that such things as animals or laundry adds to the overall experience of a game, so I feel that you can´t leave such things out, even though it isn´t required for the game.
I´ve added some more variation in the grass.
@Mr. Ron:
Also thanks for the feedback. I have cropped the introvideo. Normally these screens are visible for 35-40 seconds or until a key or mouse-button is pressed, until the next screen fades in.
Regarding the animations, they need some fine tuning and some of the models only have very basic move anims, the problem is: I'm a programmer, not an artist and these things seem to slide down on my to-do list.
As for the duck, it is a Dutch duck and they have a special exhaust..., no I'm just kidding, it was on the list but it did get lost somehow.
04/23/2013 (3:29 am)
@Mr. Steve:Thanks for the feedback. I think that such things as animals or laundry adds to the overall experience of a game, so I feel that you can´t leave such things out, even though it isn´t required for the game.
I´ve added some more variation in the grass.
@Mr. Ron:
Also thanks for the feedback. I have cropped the introvideo. Normally these screens are visible for 35-40 seconds or until a key or mouse-button is pressed, until the next screen fades in.
Regarding the animations, they need some fine tuning and some of the models only have very basic move anims, the problem is: I'm a programmer, not an artist and these things seem to slide down on my to-do list.
As for the duck, it is a Dutch duck and they have a special exhaust..., no I'm just kidding, it was on the list but it did get lost somehow.
#7
04/24/2013 (1:30 pm)
Wow so much work! I really, really like the laundry blowing in the wind. 
#8
04/27/2013 (9:19 am)
looks really cool. I like the city video - the people all walking around made it feel alive. Only thing i would mention is that the grass is lime green, could probably tone that down a bit. :)
Duion
And if you want to produce nice preview videos you should use the newton camera in some cases, on the left of the "camera speed" there is a button, you can set it to "smooth rotate" and you will have a nice smooth camera.