I Hate Fluid Simulation!!!!!

For the last four days I have been working on a fluid simulation in pixel bender.  While originally I thought this would only take a day, which it did, I realized that the example I was using (www.derschmale.com) did not take into account the velocity of the mouse when calculating the change in the pixels, it just took the mouse position and made the upwards velocity increase and then react to the boundaries of the image.  This is not what I wanted so I started from scratch turning my old flash fluid sim into pixel bender.  It has taken me a long time but it is almost done.  Almost!

Menus

Today I have made the start menu and the pause menu.  They both need custom buttons and backgrounds but they work as they should.  I  will probably do some work on the predator breeding sometime today as well.  Tomorrow I will make the game start as we want it to with two herbivores at the start and then introduce the predators after 'x' amount of herbivores have been met.  Also tomorrow I want to meet up with the group and talk about what the goal of the game is specifically because at the moment I feel as if it is a bit too vague for the user to pick up on immediately and an obvious goal, I believe, will help us get the message across better.

Opacity and Hunger

Today I made the herbivore have hunger and  this hunger now effects the way that the herbivores act.  I am currently working on making the herbivores opacity change as a way of indicating the hunger levels of the the creatures, there might be a better way of indicating this but for now this will do.

Pixel Bender is the Bomb

Today I showed Ben(the tutor) the code that we had so far and he said that it was much to slow mostly due to the fluid solver.  He suggested looking up pixel bender fluid sims and using a shader to do the calculations.  The first example we found was a lot more complex than the fluid solver I had written in flash but ran substantially faster than my code.  So now I am moving the code to pixel bender.  Also Ben suggested I change the collision code so that the collision function only goes through all the sprites in the same cell rather than the entire board.  Doing both of these things should increase the speed of the game phenomenally, making the game nicer to look at.

Plants and spores

Today I created the plants for eating and the spores which the plants give off for reproduction.  At the moment the plants create a lot of spores that don't do anything but go with the flow of fluid simulator.  When I get collisions done they can be eaten along with plants by the herbivorous species.  Also I have almost finished spores turning into a plant after a time but I need the collisions working to make sure that the plants don't end up growing on top of each other.  Now I am hungry so I am going home.

presentation picture

CCDN231 presentation project 3

The experience I propose is an expansion on my experiment with making tea that required the throwing of the ingredients into the pot and boiling it on the stove.  I plan to expand this by making a large funnel which people can throw water balloons filled with hot water and make their tea.  The reason the water balloons are full of hot water is reduce the 'down' time when the tea is brewing so that the experience of making tea is rebellious in mood for the greater part of the process.

The important thing to do when doing this experience is that the water balloons are thrown as hard as possible with little regard for where it lands.  This is why the funnel was built in order to make sure the tea is actually made.

Another option that I am trying to conceptualize further is that in the peer review one review asked what missing the pot did for the experience.  Perhaps upon further experimentation I will find this could be used to further my experience, but I am not entirely  sure how to add this to the experience yet.

Combining Code

Today I have managed to combine the code I have written with the code Ben wrote.  It works well enough with the flow affecting the species making them change direction, unfortunately it does not work as I feel it should.  I feel that to get the feeling that the user is affecting the game world the flow has to be able to accelerate the species over the max velocity of the species when they are just swimming.  I feel it will make the player more engrossed as they can affect the world more.

Success!!!

I have done it!!! The flow physics were not working properly for some reason, the x change was printing out as it should have but the y change stayed at zero for most of the time or had a really large number compared to the x change.  After long hours of looking through the code and writing traces and test methods I finally found what was wrong.  One of the variables was down as 'u' instead of 'v' as soon as I changed this the solver worked almost perfectly, the only things to fix up are size of the vectors, which at the moment are way to large.  At any rate when this worked I danced like a fool for abit.  It felt good.

The Character that Died

Once upon a time there was a character that we had planed for the project.  It was a spirit of sorts that followed the mouse around and caused objects in its wake to follow.  I spent two days working on making this character follow the mouse in a fashion that looked cool.  On the third day I met with my team mates and we decided together that the character was no longer needed so my hard work was for naught and the character was dead.

Now I have implemented a fluid solver in its place.  The scene is split into a currently 24 by 24 grid.  When the mouse moves the solver figures out how the mouse effects the square it is in contact with and how the squares around it are effected by it.  Each square stores their velocity which then can be picked up by a sprite in contact with that square and use that to find its acceleration.

Unfortunately the only way to get the program to run at a sufficient speed is to reduce the framerate to 30.  I will  find out a way to reduce the number of times the solver runs with out reducing the framerate but for now this allows me to have something that actually works.

Well it did work until Ben suggested I change all the arrays into vectors.  Now the program only applies acceleration to sprites in the y-axis and only if the mouse passes over the sprite directly.  This means the diffusion of the mouse effect is not working and the calculation for the x velocity of the square is not being calculated.  I will fix this tomorrow when I try to combine the code for the fluid solver and Ben M. code for flocking, which I am extremely happy with how it look.

CCDN 231

The first experiment I conducted was to cover every thing that needed to be accessed in paper so that in order to get to it the paper needed to be broken.  This was supposed to alter the mood of making tea to a more rebellious mood, as the breaking of the paper would require a violent movement and the breaking of the paper would make a noise that I hoped would induce a feeling of rebelliousness.  My belief was that rebellion is the breaking down of social constructs in order to create a new one.  While the action when I myself broke the paper seal was rebellious in feeling the noise produced was not as impressive as I thought it would be making a soft rip noise instead of a loud popping sound.  The aesthetic of the broken seal looked interesting but I would not say it invoked a mood of rebellion.

The second experiment was to pack up all the ingredients in individual packets and throw them into the pot from a distance.  This was to invoke a feeling of rebellion, through the action of throwing something.   Many of the images I associate with rebellion are of people throwing rocks or other things and I wanted to recreate that feeling.  

The final experiment was to chill all objects that are touched during the process of making tea.  The mood I was trying to convey from this was of austerity.  Cold, I believed was associated with austerity as the cold saps energy and is associated with winter, the season which is the most austere due to the fact it is when most plants loose their greenery and some mammals hibernate, it is a time of little food and bare landscapes.
The coldness did give make the process of making tea a less comforting experience and, due to the fact I had to make the tea with cold water to stop the cup from breaking, made a tea that was extremely weak and the sugar did not dissolve in.  While the end product cold be considered austere I would not say the process made me feel austerity to any great measure, it really just made it a less comfortable one.

Game sheets

Here are the images of the game board and it tiles ready to cut out and 'play' with.  I say 'play' because the rules really aren't defined enough for a board game as real time is hard to use as a mechanic in board game.  I suggest using rounds with pieces being able to move three squares along a road per round, or preform an action such as loading logs, cutting them down or planting them.  Trees take three rounds to mature, probably want to make this longer, increase difficulty, but three rounds is easier to remember when playing.

Asthetics

The aesthetics of the game I feel should be very bright and have interesting,but simple animation of the labor force at work.  This means the more teams on the grid the busier it looks.  I feel this will give the player the feeling that they are actually commanding a working force rather than emotionless units.

The Idea

The idea of the game I have proposed is a real time strategy game which requires the player to run a logging and wood processing company to complete orders from Big Co., a fictional company which orders the players product and gives them a time limit to complete the order in.  If the order is not completed in time the player will not get payed.  Run out of money and the players company goes bankrupt.

To begin the game the player starts with an office/depo and a sawmill.

From the office the logging team leaves each day to cut down trees.  They travel quickly along the road to their destination and begin their job.  For every day a team works they have to be payed,  to increase productivity more team would have to be hired so more tress could be cut down.

After a period of time the loggers will finish a block and move on to the next.  Loggers can only move 2 squares away from a road tile as if they move any further they cannot get help in an emergency.  While I have not planned to add a case where there is an emergency the rule is there to limit and challenge the player.

After the player has gone through learning how to use the loggers the player will receive an order from Big Co.  The order will give the number of wood units wanted, price for completion and the time the order has to be done by in order to earn money.

 In order to complete the order the player must move the cut logs from the logging site to the wood mill to be processed and sent which requires logging trucks.  Logging truck are sent out from the office and can only travel on roads.  They are able to carry a certain number of logs per trip(in my example I made it three) before they have to drop off their load.  They can only pick up logs from squares adjacent to the road, diagonal included.  After the truck has dropped of it load it can return to the office or go out and collect more logs.

In order to collect wood from further locations roads must be built so the logging trucks can collect cut logs. The cost is that road take up space which could be used to grow more trees, but allow access to more trees to log.

In order to make the company sustainable tress must be replanted in order to have a future harvest after all the original trees have been cut down.  I am not sure whether to have a separate team that replants trees or use the loggers, but either way you will have to pay them in order to replant, which would cost about the same as paying a logging team to log.  The choice is then whether to spend money on logging more trees and earning money or planting them so you will be able to continue making money.

I believe that by trying to run this company that the player will learn how important it is to manage our natural 

resources so that they don't run out and possible how big companies can be pressured into making bad decisions in order to make money faster.

The mechanics of the game will be:

-Time based goals: the player will have to complete orders to make money and stay in the game.

-Play till you're dead: the player can continue to play the game until the point at which they run out of money and 'die'.

-Increasing difficulty: the game will get increasingly harder as orders become larger and require less time per unit to complete.  This of course means the player has to spend more money on logging teams an trucks in order to complete orders in time and make a profit.

-Day/Night cycle: during the day the workers work but at night they go home and rest.  The game will give a overview of the day when night arrives and then skip to dawn.  The player must realize that the further away a starting site is the longer it take the loggers before they start work, also the further away a end site the sooner they must end work in order to return home in time for dinner.

Things I have considered adding are upgrades for logging teams, trucks and roads which make the process of outputting units of wood quicker, such as upgrading from gravel road to asphalt to allow trucks to travel faster, although I am not sure how this would affect the game play I have in mind and won't make it a certainty until I do.

Conepts

Most of my concepts did not make it to paper as I did not really like them, mostly because they were basically re textured arcade game that really did not any point across.  The two that did were a logging simulator to express the message that what you take must be returned, and a vegetable growing simulator to show the player how to grow veges while educating them on the benefits of doing so.  Of the two I felt that the logging simulator was able to show it message through the game play more effectively rather than having to add vast amounts of writing.

I was biased towards this idea at the start which is why did more about it, but I really believe it was better than any other idea I came up with.

MDDN243 Assignment 1 Final post

I have been told I don't have to put up the flash version of the game so I haven't but instead here is a gif of the run sequence.  

Continuing from my last post the road spirit looks up to the river spirit in reverence and awe of its power and respect, not so secretly wanting to be able to gain if not surpass the river spirit in power and respect of man. The only way this can be done is up to us, by keeping our roads clean and respecting them as we do rivers for the way they help us in our every day lives, but also the danger that they pose, is it possible for the road spirit to gain power.  

P.S.  The road spirit is supposed to be the size of a car, it is designed as a small taniwha, which is still large.

MDDN 243 Assignment1 hand-in

Here is the three perspective views of my character that I designed.

He is a spirit of the road.  The idea is that it is kind of like a man made taniwha.  After looking up the different types of taniwha I found that the river taniwha, described as a whale sized tuatara or gecko was the most appropriate, as like a river the road is long and winding and provides transport.  At first I thought of making it tuatara looking, but when Ben gave me the idea of contrasting a spirit of the road with one of the river,  I decided to make it look like a gecko as the river spirit would be a tuatara.  I believed this showed how much more powerful the river spirit is compared to the road spirit as the tuatara is a much more dominating image than the gecko.  In the end I think this was a turn for the best as the gecko looks a lot leaner and faster than a tuatara would have, which I believe shows the in which the road is used for transport compared to the river.  Speaking of here is the sketch for the river spirit and some planing on drawing its face from earlier last week.
 
 

The river spirit looks more like a natural tuatara than the road spirit as the river is a natural thing, the road spirit on the other hand has reflectors and road stripes on it to show its man made nature.  

The point of this is to show that man has more respect for the river than the road in terms of environmental awareness.  While the road may not be a very environmentally friendly thing it self it is still part of the environment we live in and deserves the respect that rivers do, ie. not using the roadside to dump rubbish or throwing rubbish out of windows.  While this stuff does happen on rivers it is more likely to happen on the road.  Man has this belief that because is is man made it is more resilient than say the river, but our modern roads are still young, which is why the road spirit is so small while the river spirit is so large.   I will explain further when I post the rest of the hand in later.

Road Spirit

The road spirit is done just need to add in the environment and finish my final sketch on the river spirit.  I still working out how to use illustrator but I think the road spirit turned out fine.

CCDN231 Assignment hand-in1

A grating squeak, like rusted gears struggling to move, sounds as I turn the tap handle.  The low, squealing, bubbling of the water as it escapes the pipes mixes with the gurgling of it flowing into the kettle.  The kettle clacks into place in its holder and  I flick the switch on with a snap.  The kettle quickly erupts into loud churning noises that persists for a few minutes, til calming to a soft gurgle.  A click sounds notifying me that the water has boiled.  The water flows into the cup with a rising ripple.  The spoon scrape and clicks around the cup and with a final ding the tea is done.

 

The slippery soap film is lathered onto my face.  The frigid water washes over my face making the soap foamy, contrasting sharply with the cactus like bristles.  The rubber grip of the razor feels like dough molded around a metal rod.  As I draw the razor across my cheek it tugs at the hairs like little men pulling out weeds.  A slip of the hand makes a minute cut that stings more than it should, reminding me of a paper cut.  I finish and the arctic water crashes against my face, as I rub the remaining soap off my face.  No longer does it feel like a cactus, but now  frictionless and raw, exposed to the elements once more.

 

Finger tips brush across the surface of the table.  The surface which seemed smooth to the eye, is bumpy.  The void space between the thumb and fingers tells me that the pen is not within my grasp.  As they close the touch of a luke warm cylinder informs my brain that I have the plastic tool at hand.  The shaft feels greasy from the times it has been used before.  The distribution of weight towards one end tells me which way it needs to be orientated.  Adjusting my grip, quickly my thumb and forefinger work their way down the towards the ribbed and tapered end, poised for work. 

MDDN243

The rat idea was not well received which, mirrors the feeling that I have had for awhile.  It does not seem to be a spiritual enough to represent the ideas that I want to put across.   With the help of Ben, we came to the idea of giving the contrast between the man made world (the road spirit), and the natural world (river spirits).  I want to show that the man made world is part of nature and deserves the same respect and care that rivers get, such as not littering.  This means taking my lizard idea further.  It also means having to design another character to represent the river.  Right now I feel as if the river spirit would be more gecko like and be a lot larger than the road spirit as it is older and more respected among people.

Edit: I decided that the river spirit should be more tuatara like and the road spirit should be more gecko like as the gecko is the younger species just as the road spirit is.

First digital sketch

This is one of my first attempts at drawing in flash so it does not look as good as I think it should.  I will probably redraw it later today.  I don't really like the colour of the fur/grass, I think I will make it spikier and a lighter, browner green.

Character Concepts

I really don't like the litter that used to be all over the roadsides around my old house.  Apart from being bad for the environment it is also unsightly.  So the character I am attempting to design is a sort of spirit for the road side.  The idea came from the movie Spirited Away where the river spirit comes in and is a big blob of mud.  He then gets trashed removed from his body then his true form appears.

With my idea for the roadside I had a look at spirits of Maori culture, namely taniwha which can look like tuatara, and tried to that in my design.  So the first concept was a lizard looking one with grass fur and roadside reflectors as spines.  This could look cool but I felt like lizards don't fit with the roadside feel, so I investigated another animal as a spirit animal, the rat.  

Here are some quick sketches of rat heads I did trying to make it look as friendly as possible and a first drawing.

Next step is to make a design of the rat spirit in the messy state.  I want this to be ugly, disgusting and sickly, this is to show how throwing litter to the road side is not a good thing.

Inspiration

Just some inspiration for my character design for MDDN243.  I really liked the aesthetics of the Gogolithic Mass from Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP.  I also liked how in Spirited Away the river spirit come to the bath house and is a giant mass of mud after the trash is removed from his body it is revealed that he is the river spirit.  The last image is a still from a music video called Bronte, I just really like the aesthetic of the bison.

Jen Zee - Bastion

Jen Zee is the artist at Supergiant games, the independent studio which made the game Bastion for xbox live and later ported to the PC through mostly digital distribution.  Zee hand-painted all of the landscapes in the game which defined the look of the game.

Bastion is game set in the aftermath of the Calamity, an event which fractured the city of Caelondia as well as near by areas of the world into multiple floating pieces and turned the most of the population to ash.  The narrative follows the story of the Kid as he makes his way to the Bastion, a safe place where the people of Cealondia can retreat to in an emergency, and his attempts to repair the Bastion with cores that once powered the city, and discover what actually caused the Calamity.

The entire game is narrated by an old man which the Kid meets once he reaches the Bastion named Rucks, who is apparently the designer of the Bastion and seems to be the only other native of the city who survived, on his journey the Kid finds two more survivors both of Ursa descent who join them at the Bastion.

The gameplay focus on completing levels to upgrade the Bastion and unlock more weapons and perks to make it possible to approach levels in multiple different ways depending on your load-out.  Bastion focuses on combat with both melee and range weapons, and each weapon has history which tells the player about the faction that used the weapon.  

The aesthetic look of the game contains hand painted landscapes and characters which, while not hand painted, look right at home in the lush landscape.

Links

http://supergiantgames.com/

http://jenzeejunk.blogspot.co.nz/

All Photo courtesy of supergiantgames.com