SPM Development Blog

Engine Block

2012-01-25T10:14:00.000-08:00

It's been a fairly productive week, client work has been going smoothly and even managed to free up a full day for indie development! There are quite a few potential exciting things happening lately, but for now I'll keep them under wraps.

Pole Force One

www.poleforceone.com

This week, development has mostly been focusing on restructuring and blocking in some of the major components for the game. As the title suggest, blocking in the engine with placeholders and processes... get it? Blocking the engine... engine... block... engine block. Okay, I've been up far too late one too many nights, on with the post! Feel free to check out the latest build available for download on the website.

ART & MUSIC

So a few things have been thrown into the prototype to get things looking a little more pretty. First of all, a Splash Video was added to test the video capabilities and brand the game. Don't worry, I'll be putting in a way to skip it soon enough! Also, a bunch of trees have been added, which proved more difficult than expected. The level is still just a big mess and the assets need to be optimized and replaced... but all in due time. As well, the first piece of music has been commissioned (by Sam Watkinson). Can't wait to hear what else he comes up with! Check it out below:

Pole Force One - LVL0 - Music by shamelessplugmedia

DEVELOPMENT

As stated earlier, a lot of the effort was put towards blocking in the major game structure. At present, there is a rudimentary level loading process, splash screen control and work will continue to implement a basic menu, gui and proper asset loading routines. After a few hiccups and learning some of Unity's quirks, it will likely take another few weeks to finish blocking in the major elements. After that, the real fun begins!

Global Game Jam

www.globalgamejam.org

If you are a developer, artist or just someone interested in video game development, you should look up your local Global Game Jam! I will be in attendance at the Ottawa, Canada game jam and will be making a special post about the game that I end up working on. It should be a lot of fun, looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!

New Year's Evolution

2012-01-21T21:45:00.001-08:00

It has been two months since the last post! Things have been hectic to say the least with demanding client projects, taking time off for holidays and spending time reflecting and thinking of new directions for Shameless Plug Media and the properties being developed.

Pole Force One

www.poleforceone.com

Rather than jump right back into development, time was spent reflection on the direction Pole Force One would take. After careful consideration it was decided that scrapping mobile development and focusing on PC / MAC would be the best option. While cross-platform would be great it presents too many challenges for a small indie production that would only serve to reduce the quality of the final product and slow development to a slow crawl. One of the important reasons for building a quick prototype is to discover these kinds of things before it really costs you!

CONCEPT ART

After having done the first round of concept art, it was obvious there was much more work to be done in developing the characters. While the art produced was fantastic in quality, it lacked character. So after having re-written the character profiles and developing the back-story, work has begun on the second phase of concept art. What you see below is a collage of reference images for each character which helps to define things like their personality, style, colour palette and visual impression.

Roxie

Kiko

Monique

Development

The decision to cut out mobile support has resulted in some re-structuring of how the code functions. Over the next few weeks, most of the work will be in preparing the rest of the major features (menus, GUI, level-loading, etc...) with placeholders. The idea is to work on the game in iterations, first pass will be to get everything in place with rough values and then to re-visit each item and improve it. This week, there has been some work done to the camera, giving it a smoother follow and setting it up for both one and two player scenarios. As well, some buildings that will be used in the first level have been temporarily added into the engine to give it a bit more of a "game" feel and a frame of reference when establishing rules for the level (such as boundaries, spawn points, etc...)

Viewport Snapshot

IndieGoGo Funding Campaign

Pole Force One is being developed by Shameless Plug Media, which is a business of one man. Being a one-man-studio means that developing any project (client, independent, for fun, etc...) will always have costs associated with it when it comes to concept art, stock assets, templates, graphic design, sound effects, music and software. These are all tools that help a one-man-studio give a production a higher value while also drastically reducing the time it takes to complete. About $500 has already been invested into this project, which has prompted the question... would any of you like to donate to this project?

If you are curious about the who/what/why's of this funding campaign, please head on over to the Pole Force One DEMO, IndieGoGo Funding Campaign page where you will find all of the pertinent information.

Brainstorms a 'Brewin

2011-11-19T12:59:00.001-08:00

Not a big update this week since there were several overlapping client projects - and quite a few meetings - that took priority over internal development. The good news is that in the long run, these projects will help fund a period of full-time development in the early new year!

Pole Force One

This week was mostly going back and doing some brainstorming. During this early prototyping phase everything is in flux and the project is going to evolve as new ideas are discovered, older concepts are refined and, generally speaking, as the core of the game is discovered. Right now, it's still just a collection of ideas floating around that need to be captured and worked into a more concrete plan.

Concept Notes

Character Profiles - After having done the first round of character concepts based on a written descriptive paragraph, I felt un-satisfied with what I had. It was a great first-step and the art is solid, don't get me wrong, but they felt generic and weak. After pondering why that is, I read a great post by a film maker by the moniker MDotStrange about developing a character (click to read). Basically, it reminded me that the character's design comes secondary, first you need to understand WHO your character is. I realized that even though I was making a game where story is going to be minimal in the end product, it's still a key ingredient to having a proper direction for the game and will influence the visual style... and in the end, make a much stronger game.

Primarily, what has been worked on this week is the character's written profiles as well as the over-arching story behind the game itself. It's still very rudimentary, with some holes, and will need constant iteration until it's hit the "good enough" point. However, in it's present form, it gives a much more solid artistic basis from which to pull out visuals. With that said, here is a brief summary of each of the main characters of Pole Force One. There's more to each of them, but I don't want to give it all away!

Roxie - As the proprietor of Pole Force One's secret strip club home base, Roxie is the leader and brains behind the operation. She is a mature, intelligent, calculating and well rounded woman with a classic composure and beauty.

Kiko - As a cute, bubbly, young Japanese woman, full of energy with a wacky personality to boot, Kiko sees the world as her own personal playground. As a self-identified hedonist, her continual pursuit of light-hearted pleasures and outward appearance give the impression of an un-assuming threat, a deadly mistake for her enemies.

Monique - Her world is pain and she loves it. Dishing it out or receiving, Monique is a masochist who feels alive through rather unconventional means. Oozing confidence from her cold, quiet, judgemental and pessimistic exterior, as an introvert, she draws her incredible strength from within herself.

Rufus - A humble man with a gentle, pacifist, empathetic demeanour, Rufus is the un-discovered genius and absolute master of combat alike. Having spent much of his life on the street, he's a little rough around the edges, but he is the heart and soul the girls can depend on for combat training, technology and wisdom.

Development Notes

Game Structure - The game itself hasn't been touched this week. That's because in it's present form it can go in many different directions and properly planning out the prototype now could save a lot of headache in the future as the game gets more flushed out. I decided that to spend some time just thinking about how I'm going to build the game's logic structure while thinking of the various artistic and game play features I would like. I think I might have overwhelmed myself a little, but it was important to contemplate and have a rough idea how everything would come together. Sort of like, preparing myself for the "bigger picture" rather than rushing into it head-first with no plan whatsoever.

With that said, the next step in development is to start putting placeholders for all of the important features of the game. I essentially would like the overall structure to be functioning in the prototype so that moving forward, everything is already "in place" and can just be expanded upon and refined.

As always, you can check out the latest game at www.poleforceone.com and please feel free to comment or leave feedback if you have any. Enjoy!

She's Alive!

2011-11-11T20:24:00.001-08:00

While waiting for some clients to respond and various proposals to be reviewed and approved, managed to sneak a sizable amount of development work in this week!

Pole Force One

Foxy Boxxxy is making her gaming debut as Pole Force One's official prototype test subject! After doing a bunch of very basic, quick animations, I threw her into the engine and started to hash out the the basics of two classes which will control the player character's motion and animation / state. There were also a few bugs from earlier in the week that were worked out... but for now, check out the gameplay video!

Development Notes

Camera Bug - One major problem I ran into when I was testing the game earlier this week was that everything felt very "jittery". For some reason there was a constant, almost ghosting effect, around Foxy when I made her run. To keep a long explanation short, I discovered it was because I wasn't properly considering the update order of my camera object. To have a camera follow you need to first move your object, then tell your camera to re-position itself. I was using the standard Update() command which basically meant it got called whenever Unity decided to call it. The proper technique is to use Update() for your player position and LateUpdate() for your camera so they are evaluated in the proper order. Problem solved!

Maya to Unity Complications - After reading that Unity uses 30fps as it's standard frame-rate for animations, I went through the trouble of making sure Maya was set to 30fps and doing all the animations properly. However, once I exported the FBX and imported it and got the code working, I noticed everything seemed slow. After exporting an ASCII FBX and looking through the file, I discovered that for whatever reason, it was exporting at 24fps no matter what settings I changed. I ended up having to re-time everything back to 24fps, which is actually good in the long run since I prefer animating at 24fps anyways. So if you're animating, do a quick test with a single animation to get the workflow down BEFORE you go do all the work.

The Plan - The game in it's current form is very rudimentary, some animations are missing and others need some work, however it's just a prototype so I'm spending most of my effort focused on just getting the basics working and presentable as quickly as I can. I would expect within a week or two to have Foxy Boxxxy's basic controls all figured out and can hopefully move on to blocking out other important features such as the menu, level loading and some basic AI. I'm hoping to have the prototype in a "finished" state some time in early December.

That's all for now since I'd rather spend more time developing than talking about the game! As always, you check out the latest builds at www.poleforceone.com and please feel free to comment or leave feedback if you have any. Enjoy!

Inputs, Builds & Backups

2011-11-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

While there has been some significant first steps made in the last week, client work has been coming in like crazy so it's going to be difficult to properly budget time for incubation projects over the next month. However, this is good news in the long run as it will provide enough income to partially fund development time in December for building out the prototype. Anyhow, enough blabbering about how hard it is to have a regularly flow of client work... boo hoo, such a hard life!

Pole Force One

Development Notes

Development of the prototype has begun and our first build is available on www.poleforceone.com. It doesn't look like much right now, but it represents the first step towards creating a playable prototype.

Cross Platform - It was decided that the prototype should explore the possibility of creating the game for cross-platform release. This presents some unique challenges in making the game, namely that it will need to be designed in such a way that it is - from a development perspective - easily adapt to the different device capabilities. On any modern computer there is so much processing power that you could easily just focus on making the game with all the features you want. However, supporting mobile devices will mean that code will need to be as efficient as possible, lower resolution models swapped in and effects disabled. The goal is to support PC, MAC, Android and iOS upon release, with the possibility of seeking deals for XBox / PS3 if there is enough interest. It will make development slower at the start but it will save much more time if it can be done from the very beginning, rather than going back through the game and trying to port it later.

Input Class - The first step towards building a playable prototype was to build the input controller class. This class is designed to allow game objects to poll user input (keyboard, gamepad or touch-screen controls) so that they can then perform the appropriate function. It's still a work in progress but you can see it working if you go to the Pole Force One website.

Android - If you have an Android device it would be greatly appreciated if you could please test out the build available for download on the Pole Force One website. At present, it was tested on an HTC Desire Z and functions as expected, however given that there aren't any other Android devices lying around, it's un-certain as to whether the implementation works for other touch-screens. To test, please follow these instructions (and include your name if you'd like to be added to the game-tester credits)

Download the Android APK (right-click, save as...)
Copy the PF1_prototype_0_1.apk file to your device's SD card
Go to the Android Market and download "AppInstaller"
Open AppInstaller, find the apk file and install it
Open the game and trying pressing all of the on-screen buttons. You should see a red square where you press with red lines, as well the top notification text should display which buttons are currently being pressed.
Come back here and comment with your feedback, be sure to include what device it was tested on

iOS - At the moment there hasn't been any progress developing for iOS since that would require having an iOS device to test one. If anyone wants to donate an old iPod Touch or other iOS device, it would be greatly appreciated! The other difficulty was that to export for iOS, Unity requires that you export it from a MAC platform. Developing on Windows and not having much of a budget meant iOS development seemed almost impossible until a post on Reddit suggested looking into creating a virtual install of Leopard. A quick look around, and this tutorial had Leopard set up in just a few hours!

http://lifehacker.com/5583650/run-mac-os-x-in-virtualbox-on-windows

Testing - While in the prototype phase, I will be producing regular builds and I openly invite anyone interested to test them out. Any feedback right now is welcome and valuable. So please give the builds a try and post any comments you might have here! I'll be looking for a private testing team once the game moves into production, but until then it will be public

Management Notes

All projects, big and small, have one thing in common - success hinges on properly managing the project. Now, at the moment Pole Force One is just a one-man project and doesn't require too much management aside from a design document, milestones and keeping things organized. Thankfully, from having done years of freelance work, I have a good system in place to keep track of everything. However, I realized that two key areas needed to be improved...

Backups - I've read numerous stories of developers losing days, weeks, months and even years of their work because their systems got fried. Now, I have an external hard drive that already gets a daily backup of all my important data (client, personal and incubation projects). I feel confident that simply having a duplicate outside of my machine is suitable to ensure my work is relatively safe. The problem though, that I realized is that - what if my house burns down? - I lose everything. This game is likely going to take at least a year to make. I don't want to take any chances. I decided on the following options to ensure I am safe:
In case you are curious, I use SyncBack for all my automated backup routines. Basically it let's you point to a folder and say "make a copy" over here and schedule it.http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/syncback-hub.

External Hard-drive - As with all of my client work, the Pole Force One folder will continue to be backed up daily to the external hard drive
Manual Versioning - When a major feature has been completed, I will create a backup folder with a date on it within the master folder. This protect me in case some piece of code goes horribly wrong and I need to revert to a previous version
Off-site Backup - Created a private folder on my webhost and created a process that will sync my Pole Force One folder via FTP every single night. This is a worst-case backup solution by having it in another physical location

You can never be too safe, so if you're working on projects ensure you have proper backup solutions in place. Nothing could be worse than working years of your life on something only to have it lost in a moment.

Virus Protection - Perhaps I'm over-confident at times, but I've never installed anti-virus software. Sure, I've gotten viruses, but only when I was reasonably sure I was downloading one and was going to take the risk anyways. Recently though, I realized that with the speed of current computers, having anti-virus software isn't the resource hog that it used to be and given AVG is Free there is no reason to not have it installed. I'd hate to have all my data corrupted by some stupid virus, so now I feel a little safer!

The First Post!

2011-10-28T15:12:00.000-07:00

I've finally gotten to the point where I am prepared to start up Shameless Plug Media's production blog! So who am I? Well, my name is Grant Moore and I am a freelance animator and interactive multimedia designer. I started my company (Shameless Plug Media) two years ago with the intent to eventually get to a point where I can work towards creating my own entertainment media. Today, I am happy to say that I have reached that point, where I have a project in development and enough client work to keep the bills paid along the way... so enough about me, on to the flagship project!

Pole Force One

Elevator Pitch - In this side scrolling "Beat 'Em Up" game, three sexy strippers and their trusty DJ join forces to use their super powers - and "special abilities" - to fight for human rights and enforce social justices!

The game is being developed in Unity 3D using 3D graphics but will pay homage to the old-school 8 / 16 bit era where Beat Em Ups were all the rage. The game will be sexually explicit in a humorous sense but is intended to mirror serious, real-world issues such as sex-slavery, gender / sexual equality and sexual freedoms. However, it won't be TOO serious and should be a light-hearted exaggeration of the real world as you go through the levels pummeling bad guys/gals and unlock new abilities, weapons and characters.

Current Development?
Right now, Pole Force One, is largely in a design and prototype phase. The game is just an idea being written on paper, ideas are being thrown around, concept art is being sketched and questions are being asked of Beat Em Up fans. In fact! If you have any ideas or want to contribute your thoughts on the genre and what you'd like to see, have a look at the following link and either reply on Reddit or with a comment on here. I'd certainly appreciate any input you might have! http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/lsawy/sidescroll_beat_em_up_what_do_you_like_want/

Concept Art!
I figured I might as well share the first pass of the concept art so far! The game will feature three main characters: Roxie, Kiko and Monique. Roxie is the leader of the group and will be a well-balanced hand-to-hand combat fighter. Kiko is the cute Japanese girl who is the weapons expert. She is nimble, quick and can attack from a distance, but is relatively weak when taking a hit. Monique is the dominatrix, she loves pain... both receiving and giving. She uses a combination of brutal close range and ranged demonic attacks, can take a hit, but lacks mobility. I'll be sharing more about each of the characters as they progress, but for now... here are some of the first round sketches!

First pass of concept art by the following artist - http://pitch-dove.deviantart.com/

Prototyping!
Prototyping the game will begin over the next few weeks but the first step to getting something put together was to have a character to use as a stand-in until the art has been properly developed. After having finished 3DBuzz's 3rd Person Camera Controller Tutorial I decided to create a dummy character that can be used as both a playable character and an NPC, which lead me to create "Foxy Boxxxy"

Foxy Boxxxy
I decided that I wanted to use The Setup Machine in Maya for all my character animating, but the one difficult aspect was that it uses a very complex - from my perspective - structure which would not translate well to Unity3D (though I hear it's rumored their upcoming version would be game-ready). However, for now, all I had to do was duplicate the existing bone structure and do some fancy parenting to get it to work... so far I haven't had a problem getting her animated and into the engine...

Documentation!
Finally, last thing I'm going to update on (it's a long post because I'm summarizing about a month of work) is the fact that I started a game design document. At first I was going to see if I could make the game without one, but I soon realized that there's no way I would be able to keep track of everything without one. So it's going to be sort of a constantly evolving bible for my game. I might share it every now and then if other aspiring game makers want to see how I've set it up, suffice to say... it's just a simple word document. Nothing fancy really!

Anyhow, that should be about all I want to update this week. There's a lot of work to be done and I'm hoping to have a solid prototype completed for the new year, so please keep following this blog and feel free to get in touch or offer advice / ideas!

The Weekly Plug - Teaser

2011-09-20T11:11:00.001-07:00

"The Weekly Plug" is an upcoming weekly development blog for Shameless Plug Media. The focus will largely be showcasing independent productions such as video games, animated shorts and other internal developments. As well there will be plenty of tips, tricks, links and musing along the way.

Check out the title card below! There won't always be a video to go along with the posts, but whenever there is one, you'll be sure to see this at the start of them!

If you intend to keep up to date with the posts, you will be able to follow them through any of the following:

Click the "Follow" link to the right if you are a Blogger / Google user
Follow Shamless Plug Media on Facebook
Follow Shameless Plug Media on Twitter

Looking forward to sharing the development process of a few upcoming projects!