Aditya's graphics and game related adventures

My lightning round world "Aquario" made it to the BVW 2012 show!

This was the first BVW class that got a chance to make use of the eyetracker to create a game. We (team 9) created "Aquario" in a weekthat got selected into the show. This was one of 2 worlds in the show that madeuse of a "Guest" from the audience.

We initially picked up a guest but the eye tracker system did notdetect her eyes since she was wearing contact lens. But her friend came to the saviorby volunteering himself. He picked up the game quickly without any de-briefingand managed to complete it. Here are some pictures from the show:

The whole show can be seen at http://new.livestream.com/cmuTVlive/events/1719072 , "Aquario" starts at the 34th minute!

For a video of the actual game please check below

The final BVW round. We could make use of any platform but we needed a game to put on a show.

The voxel scripts are now open-source at https://github.com/adityav89/voxel_unity

Brainstorming:

1. The first thing we decided was the art style. It needed to make use of voxels. We could make any game that looked good in voxels.

2. Initially we came up with the concept of doing a game with Construction, destruction and transformation.

Meanwhile, I was prototyping with voxels in Unity to see how well/how many cubes can be handled in unity.

3. With no solid idea for a few days, we eventually decided to make an adam & eve story that took place inside a computer program. BUT soon realized that the gameplay we sketched for that game would be weak. After few more meetings we FINALLY decided to make a ... ... ... 2 player FIGHTING game!

Platform prototyping:

1. We initially prototyped with direct body mapping. 

> We tried mapping the kinect directly with each body part(this was a little glitchy since body parts sometimes got disfugured)

> We triend mapping the PSMove with the hands(this meant no legs)

2. After a few tries with both platforms we decided to go with the Kinect and detect gestures to trigger animations with a minimal lag.

3. We had a lot of gestures such as uppercut, side jab, punch, kick, block for both hands.

Voxel prototyping:

1. I developed a unity script that converted a mesh into a cubes on every vertex point with some given parameters such as cube size, neglect vertex distance, etc...

2. Soon realized that a high-poly model would decrease performance. To overcome this problem I created another script that converted the mesh in voxels but THIS TIME all the cubes were in a single mesh.

What this meant:

> 1 draw call for 1000 cubes instead of 1000 draw calls

> BUT processing each cube would be time consuming since changing the property of 1 cube meant that I need to re-copy all the vertex data into the Big mesh.

3. This problem was overcome by making a hybrid that used more memory. What happens in the game:

> When there is very less processing activate the single mesh voxel object

> Whenever I need to explode or shake or change other properties deactivate(fast one) and activate(dynamic slow one), show the change and then switch back

4. This increased performance and made sure the game ran at an average of 80FPS(update loop)

Video:

Team:

Sound - Brain Kang

2D - Sangyun

3D - Sahana

Programming - Aditya Vijayakumar(me)

Story round time!

We needed to make a game with a complelling story, with any platform.

We decided to make use of the PSMove + HMD(The only team this BVW to make use of the head mounted display).

Since this was story round we decided that looking at the world from the eyes of the hero would make the player feel more immersed in the story. This being said the PSMove controllers were used as hands in the game and the player walked in the direction he is looking by pushing a button.

The story can be seen in the Video. So That is not discussed here.

Techniques used to achieve an immersive experience:

1. HMD to look around and move in the direction you are looking

2. Use of the PSMove as hands to interact with objects in the virtual world

3. Made use of over 50 distinct sounds and surround sound in the RPIS

Video:

Team:

Nate Levin - Sound

Kelin Zhao - 2D

Nicole Feng - 3D

Aditya Vijayakumar(me) - programming

Objective: Make a fun game in 7 days.

Answer: Okay

We needed to make a fun game within a week using a platform from the given choices. We chose the eye tracker.

We chose to make a fish game where you overwhelm the enemy by engulfing it with a big colony of fish(OR not fish).

Jesse Schell's OMG count in a minute: 6

The game was submitted to IGF Student Showcase 2013

Working:

> Game progressed by growing your colony to a specific size after which your species evlove

> At each level there was an additional feature that your colony could do

Input method: The eye controls the movement of the school of fish

To play the game Go here http://aquarioeyegame.webs.com/

Video

GAMEPLAY DISECTION:

Process in which we designed the the gameplay mechanic(since the eye tracker was a fairly new platform):

1. You are given no instructions

2. You see a blurry/unattractive background and you see a small group of fish in the middle

3. Guest looks elsewhere in the screen and discovers that the school of fish move

+ DISCOVERS A GAME MECHANIC

4. Guest also discovers that the fish are always in the center of the screen. So they just move in the direction he looks

+ DISCOVERS A GAME MECHANIC

5. Guest sees something attractive on screen. (He obviously can't take his eyes off it for a while)

6. He/she then notices that the attractive object automatically centers itself on the screen and is engulfed by the school of fish

+ DISCOVERS A GAME MECHANIC

7. He keeps doing this for a while(might get bored, but we found that people didn't since the visuals were quite intersteing for a while)

8. Stage changes and you see different visuals. You notice that you are not a circle anymore and have grown a tail

+ INTEREST POINT(You have evolved visually)

9. You explore this world and eventually think "Okay this is the same stuff again with differrent visuals"

10. After a point you goto the next stage, you see different visuals(swarm evolves again)

11. As you progress through this level, you find out that as the game progresses enemies turn RED

12. Enemies are harmful when they are RED, " So now I need to be careful". You notice that enemies can now decrease your population and you see dead fish

+ INTEREST POINT(You have evolved visually)

+ DISCOVERS A GAME MECHANIC

Team:

Sasa - Art

Liyue - Art

Key - Sound

Aditya Vijayakumar(Me) - programming

The objective for round 2 was to make a game that could be picked up by a naive guest(someone who probably hasn't played a video game). Making use of a Kinect.

We decided to make a puzzle game for a naive guest (quite challenging to make a puzzle game for a naive guest if you think about it). Anyway we decided to make the interaction similar to classic adventure games like Escape from monkey Island.

Interaction method:

1. Player uses his 2 hands as cursors to highlight interactable items

2. Player does a unique gesture depending upon the highlighted object of interest

Team:

Philip Chung - 3D Art

Danielle Corporon - 2D Art/texturing

Kang Brian - Sounds

Aditya Vijayakumar(me) - Programming

Our naive guest did Finish it! That was an accomplishment, so YAY!

I get my first BVW(Building Virtual Worlds) assignement and being assigned the programmer role, I needed to create a game. In 6 days!

Built using Unity with some assets(royalty free) from the Internet & ETC.

The ideas are from the classic Tron cycles video game combined with the time reversal shadow clone from BRAID. The theme however comes from my dark mind where 2 monks keep pooping all over the place, however the monks have the ability to control time so they can reverese time and release a shadow clone that mimcs the trail that they would have otherwise gone.

It is a 2 player game where one player tries to trap the other player with both players having the ability to bend time(backtrack).

The game was featured in EGP(Experimental Gameplay Project). Yay!

Link to the game here

Gameplay video