SGD Spring 2010 Pitch Meeting Highlights

The Student Game Developers held their Spring 2010 pitch meeting tonight at 6 PM in Olsson Hall, where directors introduced their respective projects they will each pursue this semester. In case you couldn't attend, we are working on uploading a video recording of each project pitch to Youtube, with which you can watch each pitch and apply to work on each project that strikes your fancy.

The four projects being pitched this semester are:

• Dual (dir: Andrew Gaubatz)
• Impact! (dirs: Dan Magnusson / John Will)
• Laser Lockdown (dir: Chris Dodge)
• RecursiO(n^2) (dir: Dan Epstein)

Remember that you must be a student of The University of Virginia to work on a project with the Student Game Developers.

End of Semester Report: Recursion

Recently, the Recursion Development team has been hard at work enjoying the holiday season and not thinking about a certain 6-letter word starting with "SCH", but at one point there was a lot of work being done. Hard to believe, I know... Here is where we're at after our first semester on the job:


There are a lot of improvements still left to be made, which will become our first goals when we resume work in the spring. Most noticeably: the logo is still from RGB-DS, it is impossible to tell the difference between recursions and your current player, and new sprites need to be included. You can download our progress so far here, and check back for our progress next semester!

Yggdrasil Mid-Semester Update

Yggdrasil is now "functionally complete" and v0.1.1 has been released. As it stands, the server architecture is all in place to support multiple people playing in a game together. While not optimized nor secured, the basic architecture is currently there.

Videos about Yggdrasil can be found here:
https://x8.endoftheinternet.org/portfolio/games/yggdrasil/videos/

If you would like access to Yggdrasil v0.1.1, contact Dan Magnusson or John Will, at dnm5z@virginia.edu and mw6gc@virginia.edu respectively and we will get you a copy right away.

For Yggdrasil v0.2.0 (the end of Semester Expo) we plan on adding the concept of "region servers" to allow for developers to have a concept of "regions" in their world to help balance the load of their game off of the world server itself.

v0.3.0 (winter break) is a general fixup / test / fill in the blanks of all features that were cut for v0.1.0 and v0.2.0. v0.4.0 and v0.5.0 (next semester) will focus on optimization and security.

T-Cubed Mid-Semester Update

Here's a gameplay video demonstrating T-Cubed's progress so far this semester, and expanding on what we showed at the Mid-Semester Expo.

In the video, you can see the Tetris style gameplay working fully as well as our microgames and money system. In the coming weeks development will focus on adding powerups, more microgames, and balance.

Recursion Mid-Semester Update

So Recursion has made significant progress since our last update. At the mid-semester expo we demonstrated the recursion component, the Mr. Freeze powerup, future level and object designs, and art to be integrated later. We now have this gameplay video that demonstrates recursion and animation:


Between now and the end of the semester we hope to have a minimap on the top screen, more powerups added, and integrated levels. We'll be working hard to reach these goals!

Empyreal: Progress Check 11/06/09

The Empyreal team has made significant strides over the month since our last update, illustrated and explained below.

Among the features illustrated in this video:

• The first thing you'll notice is a new player ship model. Though it still needs texturing work, it's much better than it was before.
• The next thing you'll notice is the afterburner shader effect. The effect is coded in HLSL, and the size of the afterburner is dependent on the throttle control of the player. You'll also notice at the end of the video, the afterburner gets utterly massive; this is the result of the "Awesome Button", which basically is an escape mechanism for the player if he gets in a hairy situation.
• You'll also notice that basic weapons functionality is in; the player fires white cube placeholder projectiles. Though there's no clear onscreen indicators yet, weapons can have finite or infinite ammo, optional ammo recharging, and differing projectiles depending on what weapon is active. Projectiles have collision detection with other nonplayer ships based on whether the owner of the weapon which fired the projectile is friendly or an enemy; i.e. as of now friendly fire has no effect.
• Every now and then, you'll see a purple box in the lower left hand side of the screen. This is for the Empyreal Event System, which is a main driver of the gameplay in Empyreal. The inspiration of one of our programmers, Nick Wasilewski, the event system is responsible for presenting challenges and story elements to the player. Events can include the appearance of new enemy ships, text messages, audio cues (for example, voice acting sound bytes to drive a story), and more. The event system is backed by a strong in-house level editing and event planning tool which allows for the creation of many varied and challenging missions.

Much still needs to be done for Empyreal, however. Notably:

• AI for Nonplayer characters is still a work-in-progress and has not yet been implemented. This should arrive shortly.
• Unfortunately, Empyreal is still sorely lacking in content in nearly every area at this point; there is some stuff in the works, however, but the game may need a second semester to flesh out the idea completely.

Though there is still much work to be done, Empyreal is making strides and should still be ready and playable at the SGD Fall 2009 End Of Semester Expo.

Laser Lockdown Engine Demo

The Laser Lockdown team has done some groundwork towards exploring the basic capabilities of the Ox Engine. Below is a video of a very simple level that the design team put together. I've also added a script to one of the models. While this isn't anything earthshattering, the impressive thing here is that we're integrating content between the design team and the programming team in the first week of development, which has never been done before in the club as far as I know.

Empyreal: Progress Report

The Empyreal project has made significant progress since the engine proof-of-concept demonstration two weeks ago.

Evident additions in this video include:

• new player ship model (another placeholder as our artists are producing multiple ideas to work from)
• working radar (in the upper-right-hand corner; critical enemies show as red dots, NPCs to protect show up as blue dots, and non-critical enemies show up as white dots)
• working collision detection (notice when the in-game cubes flash red as the player intersects each of them)

Improvements not evident in this video:

• radar resolution is mutable (i.e. it can zoom in / out)
• front-end UI is present
• game can be paused, resumed, restarted, aborted to front-end UI
• game has a start-up screen sequence
• work on level editor is underway

In addition, a number of under-the-hood classes for entities such as weapons, projectiles, and environmental props are in development.

Notable topics to be addressed in the near future regarding the engine include weapons, enemy AI routines, and level success and fail conditions checking. Similarly, notable topics to be addressed in the near future on the development timeline regarding the game design are the final player model, the artistic theme for enemies, environment design, and weapons ideas, and the beginnings of implementing these ideas.

The development of Empyreal is on-schedule and the game is due for release in December 2009.

Gladiators Engine Test Video

Gladiators director Justin Holmes has posted the following demonstration of the work-in-progress engine that project will employ. The engine was originally to be displayed at one of the pitch meetings but due to technical difficulties with the projector this portion of the presentation was hindered.

The engine features support for two 2D sprite-based animated characters, melee attacks, projectile attacks, collision detection and resolution via hitboxes, and a working concept of player health. The video also demonstrates the WhiteCap visualizer effect, which is planned to be integrated into the game.

Check back soon for more information on Gladiators.

Empyreal: A Closer Look

Hi there gamedevs, I'm Chris Hooe, fourth-year BACS major and director of Empyreal. I'd like to take a moment to more thoroughly introduce the motivation for and goals of the project.

The goal of the Empyreal team is to take the game's spiritual predecessor, Skies of Fury, and expand on it in every way possible. The most evident expansions to the player to begin with will be the shift from 2D sprite-based graphics to 3D rendered graphics, and the freedom to roam this world on a 2D scale (in Skies, the player was locked to constant forward progression). Many changes are planned for the game mechanics as well; rather than extreme arcade-style gameplay, Empyreal will provide a more tactical slant of air combat, as players will have multiple choices of aircraft with clear strengths and weaknesses, choice of weapons loadouts (with great differentiation between available weapons), and enemies who (you guessed it) have their own strengths, weaknesses, and AI routines.

Another game mechanic to push towards this goal is the introduction of missions. Missions will consist of multiple pass/fail objectives that the player must complete to pass a particular level. Mission scenarios might potentially include: standard sorties, where either a specific group of targets or all in-range hostiles must be neutralized; escort missions, where the player must protect an NPC from being destroyed by hostiles as it navigates through a series of waypoints; base defense missions, where the player must defend a stationary target for a slew of enemies; and finally, assaults, where the player must take out a heavily-defended stationary enemy base. Ideally, several missions could be played in sequence for a campaign mode, and icing on the cake would be a story loosely tying all the missions together.

As one can probably tell, game options and variance is of utmost importance to this project; if this goal of clear differentiation and strategy beyond what was establised in Skies is not met, then this project cannot in my mind be considered a success. As such, making sure all gameplay additions add a clear, concise, and unique function to the gameplay will be mission-critical and emphasized through the development of the project.

There has to this point been significant work done on the base engine, and a preview video is embedded below:

Features showcased in this video include:

• 3D environment generated from a heightmap, texture applied to generated mesh
• 3D player character (the green cube) flies around the environment; player can turn, and player character model rolls to the side a bit during a turn
• non-player characters (the larger two cubes) are present; currently they have no distinguishing features. Non-player characters can include enemies, NPC allies, NPC characters to be escorted by the player, and environmental props.
• Culling of 3D game entities that are outside of the player's view screen; the camera is intentionally zoomed out too far to show this effect
• Spritefont messages can be drawn on top of the 3D gameplay screen

Be sure to check back for updates on the development of Empyreal soon!

Shark Attack: World Tour Promo Video

The promo video for Shark Attack: World Tour is now available. Link after the jump.


The video is embedded below. You can also use the direct link.

Skies of Fury Promo Video

The promo video for Skies of Fury is now available. Link after the jump.


The video is embedded below. You can also use the direct link.

Robot Invasion Promo Video

The promo video for Robot Invasion is now available. Link after the jump.


The video is embedded below. You can also use the direct link.

RGBDS Trailer Available

The trailers for RGBDS is now available. Link after the jump.


The trailer is embedded below. You can also use the direct link.

Expo Trailer

Well I figured it should be posted here at some point, so here is our expo trailer in all of its glory.

Skies of Fury: Progress Video Update

More after the jump.

There are a few new elements in this video. Most readily apparent are:
-yellow offscreen tracking arrows that notify the player of the presence of an enemy just outside the play area
-the player's alternate weapon; player charges up weapon by holding left trigger / tab, and when this is released orange projectiles are launched in a spreading pattern. The number of projectiles launched is dependent on how long the player charged the weapon. Also note the the player can apply 'english' to the launched orange projectiles by using the RightThumbstick left and right / A and D.
-several new enemy attacking patterns displayed in this video
-on Easy and Medium difficulties, the player possesses a shield to designate that he can take a hit without dying. When the player gets hit once while the shield is active, the shield disappears and the player enters the "Danger state".

Not shown in this video is the level transition screen, which calculates player score bonuses at level completion based on what percentage of the level's enemies he killed and his accuracy, and the SoF Formation Editor, an in-house development tool which more easily allows for the creation of enemy attacking formations.

RGB DS Mechanics 1 - The 4 colors

This is the first of a few posts in which I will outline the different mechanics found in RGB DS. In this post I'll outline the basic mechanic behind the game - the 4 colors of objects and how they interact with the two different worlds.
RGB takes advantage of the 2 screens on the DS, placing the blue world on the top screen and the red world on the bottom screen. Objects in the blue world fall downward, following gravity as you would expect in any other platformer. On the other hand, objects in the red world have gravity pull them upwards, causing them to "fall upwards."

Video and more after the jump.

A green object will perform just as you would expect - it will fall down in the blue world, and fall upwards in the red world. However, a blue object will continue to fall down even when in the red world, and a red object will continue to fall upwards even in the blue world. There are also yellow objects, which are "neutral," meaning that they are not affected by gravity, no matter where the object is.


This video gives a brief demo of how the player, a green object, can make use of traveling through the two worlds to reach the goal of the level, a shiny star. In particular, notice how speed is conserved when traveling through the two worlds, allowing you to reach higher locations by not touching the floor.
Stay tuned for the next update when I'll talk about blocks, buttons, and doors.

Skies Of Fury: Progress Report and Feature Breakdown

Breakdown of all new features displayed in the video since last website update about the game after the jump.

This video comprises about half of Level 1 on the default difficulty setting. Level design is credited to Nick Wasilewski and Steven Mond.

0:04 - though not very readable due to the low quality of the video upload, the player now has a heads-up display in the lower-left and lower-right corners of the screen. This HUD displays lives remaining and score on the left (in green), and the amount of available Overdrive on the lower right (in yellow-orange; Overdrive will be elaborated upon below).

0:05 - any time the player starts or respawns after death, he is given a brief grace period of invincibility. This lasts for a little over three seconds and is indicated to the player by the background fluctuating to a turquoise color.

0:06 - explosions added into the game. The game chooses at random between sixteen different explosion spritesheets.

0:10 - a new enemy type, the Scout. Low health, but has a rapid-fire laser cannon as its weapon rather than the standard purple blob. A bit of an aside, one of the things we're currently working on is adding more variety to the in-game projectiles.

0:11 - by holding down Left Shift (or A on the XBOX360 controller), the player enters "Overdrive" mode. While in Overdrive, the player moves twice as fast and his primary weapon fires twice as many shots. In addition, the background color fluctuates to orange to give the player a visual cue that he is in Overdrive mode. The player begins the game with no Overdrive, but earns Overdrive by killing enemies.

0:17 - when the player is hit by an incoming projectile, he becomes vulnerable to being killed. This vulnerability is made evident by the loud warning horn, flashing "DANGER" text at the bottom of the screen, and the fluctuation of the screen color to red.

0:18 - the player's primary weapon receives upgrades as the player scores more points. Currently the points threshold is squished for debugging purposes. Here we see the player fires four forward shots simultaneously.

0:25 - another upgrade, this time sideways-firing shots.

0:29 - two more upgrades are visible (remember I said the points scale for upgrades was squished; I wasn't kidding, heh); the player fires shots backwards from the reverse of the ship, and a single orbiter circles around the player's ship. The orbiter fires shots at a slow rate, but the orbiter's shots will home in on the closest enemy.

0:32 - another new enemy, the Heavy ship, makes an appearance. Its behavior, however, is not yet final.

0:36 - the player now has two orbiters as the result of another upgrade. The second orbiter behaves the same as the first orbiter.

0:43 - a third new enemy, the Doom Rocket, appears. The Doom Rocket flies in a single predetermined direction, dropping bombs off as it flies through the scene. The bombs explode and generate a massive number of projectiles in all directions.

1:00 - a fourth new enemy (if you can catch a glimpse of it, it moves incredibly fast), the Net. The Net enters the screen based on the player's current x-position and flies at a rapid rate towards the player. The Net can harm the player with either the electric beam that exists between the two subship pieces it is comprised of, or simply ramming the player. The Net has no projectile weapons, however.

1:01 - when the player dies, the background color fluctuates to black until the player is revived.

1:28 - just before the video fades out, we see the fifth new enemy at the top of the screen on both sides, the Cloud Cannon. This is a stationary enemy which constantly fires projectiles in a single direction.

With this update, most of the key gameplay features of SoF are implemented, the notable exceptions being the player's alternate weapon and a finalized boss enemy (or enemies, if times allows). Once these is implemented, level design, game balancing, and bug-squashing will become the primary areas of focus.

SoF remains on track for completion by the SGD End-of-Semester Expo.