Cyber Heist Sprint Updates

After the EA build, I was mainly working on the guard AI. But later I moved on to other roles as needed by the team.

Chris wanted a level end menu where both hacker and thief mutually agree what to do next - Go to next level, Replay level or Go to main menu.

Latest Cyber Heist Gameplay Video

Here is the latest Gameplay video.  This has Jake and Chris playing the Hacker and Thief.  You can hear them talking and get a better feel for the game.  There are a couple issues with the sound, but just ignore that.  Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/1CslGzVKU3k

Co-Signers to Cyber Heist

For a while, team Hack'N'Hide has tossed around coming up with a new name for the Co-Signers. While the Co-Signers was sufficient for a larger-budget game with a hefty marketing team, we don't have the budget for extensive marketing to get people hooked with our story. Furthermore, the Co-Signers didn't show up on search engines very well, and getting people to find our game was going to be relatively difficult.

We mind-mapped out several words that relate to our game to see what kind of words emerged. Here's a picture of our progress:

Finally the name that we all agreed upon was Cyber - Heist!

EA playtest

This past month has seem some amazing development with the Co-Signers. There have been some long hours put into the game over the summer, and because of that we are on schedule to finish this game on time and in budget.  The team was able to pull together the efforts of the game for a game demo to EA Salt Lake, which went over fantastically.  The whole design and production team were there and a few of the executives. They really liked the game and gave us amazing feedback. Cafe Rio was catered in and the whole team got face to face time with industry professionals. From their feedback we are tweaking the at style to be more modular and iconic, the hackers more of laying down connections will be faster and there will be a lot of tuning done. They also told us we should sell the game with the map editor. With all of that we have a lot of work and have a month to do it.

Here Brittany is playing the game with Chris commenting.

EA Build - My work with behavior trees

I was tasked to work on the behavior tree implementation for the guards. The team was invited over to EA for a playtest on August 22nd. It was a huge opportunity for us to showcase the game in front of professionals and get quality feedback.

As time was of the essence, I opted to use the "Behave" plugin of Unity which helps us map out and debug behavior tress efficiently. My implementation is shown in the screenshot.

It was quite a good learning experience for me.

We crunched hard and made a working build for the EA playtest.

Summer Break - Cosigners Update - My work on guard perception

Co-Signers underwent a lot of changes during the summer. Once of the first issues we had to address was the gameplay issues.

One of the biggest issues with the thief gameplay was the absence of a 'Seen' state. We played a bunch of stealth based games to finally come up with the system as given below.

It also seemed the hacker gameplay was lacking fun. We overhauled the hacker mechanic with the hex grid system which will also have some puzzle elements to it.

I mainly worked on the guard perception. We needed the guard to have peripheral vision as well as normal vision. Nikhil pointed out a method by which we can do that. I was tasked to implement it. My implementation details are shown in the video.

Summer Break - Cricket Action!

The summer of 2013 was a very eventful time for me.

I worked on my thesis game, 'Co-Signers' and also was involved in activities of the Indian Student Association. I was the sports secretary and was also involved in arranging for hosting and pickup for new Indian students who joined the University of Utah for Fall 2013. I was the organizer of the prestigious ISA cricket cup too. It was covered in the news by the Salt Lake Tribune. My comments are also featured in the article!!

http://m.sltrib.com/sltrib/mobile3/56648815-219/cricket-lake-salt-utah.html.csp


The article that came on the newspaper is shown.

Cool Graphics Scene

So, this is the final outcome of the game graphics class I took in Spring 2013. Its a pool table scene.

Features Used :

• Asset Builder for different assets like Mesh, Scene, Entities, etc.
• Convert Mesh files to binary format for faster loads.
• Implementation of Vertex and Fragment Shaders.
• Independent Light, Camera and Entity movement controls.
• Adding texture to entities.
• Use of Diffuse, Ambient and Specular lighting.
• Draw opaque objects first and then draw transluscent objects in sorted front to back order.
• Use of alpha. Partial, Additive and Binary alphas.
• Add PIX events.
• Create own Maya Exporter plugin.
• Normal maps - Wall
• Environment Mapping - Floor :: Sky and mountains can be seen reflecting on the floor. Fresnel Effect also used.
• Render targets - Beer Mugs :: The beer mugs are tranparent and distorts the its background.
• Depth Pass and Shadows : Directional Light used for shadows implementation.
• Post-processing - UI (The Play Button) and Vignetting effect (The dark corners) created

Return to action and EAE Day

              After we came back from GDC, it was back to the Co-Signers. The first thing we did was discuss about the future of the game and which engine we should use. I had asked a lot of industry professionals about our choice of a game engine and how much it would matter to them when picking people for jobs. The big AAA companies did not appear to care about which game engines we were working on. They wanted to see solid C++ skills and awesome demos of techniques. Also, we had got a lot of feedback about our game at GDC. Finally we all settled with Unity as the Game Engine and finalized the game mechanics.
              The engineers on the team including myself had a really tough time juggling between graphics, engineering and co-signers assignments. It was the beginning of long nights which will end only on the May 2nd.
              We all decided on tasks for each sprint and discussed among ourselves the best techniques to do the said tasks. It was an awesome experience where the whole team was working as a well oiled and cohesive unit. Everyone was upbeat about the game and their respective tasks.
              My tasks for the first sprint was to implement a view detection system between guards and point man. We discussed many techniques for doing this. Nikhil suggested we use the perception sensing algorithm for the same and I thought it was an awesome idea. But ultimately it was decided that we would go forward with a simple detection system for the sprint and then work on top of it after EAE day. I implemented the detection system and it works great for the prototype.
              For the next sprint, I worked on hacker ping system. I had to manage the ping inventory and create the ping system. If the hacker pings the point man, the position information is transmitted to the point man over the network and it shows up on the point man side. AB did the ping mechanism for the point man side. I worked with Max to set up the network calls.
              For the final sprint, I worked on IR nodes and its implementation. I created an IR system which checks for guard positions with respect to activated IR nodes and relays the position to the hacker's screen.
Finally in the last few days before the EAE day, we all got together and combined our code. It was a long and hard process where a lot of bugs and code merging happened, but came out on top in the end.
              We showcased our game at EAE day and it ran fine. We got awesome feedback again from many people.

              The main feedback were about the initial learning curve and point man's sense of responsibility and the hacker's sense of urgency. The team will be concentrating on solving it during the summer.
              Finally the team got together and discussed about how we are going to the development of the game during the summer. It seems most people are in town during the duration and are willing to work on the game. Looking forward to the new challenges.

GDC

                GDC this year was from March 25 from 29. And what a week it was for me! I got to attend awesome and informative sessions, meet some of my idols and professionals in the industry, and got to know the opportunities and competition that lie ahead.

               The first 2 days were conferences and the rest 3 days were expos. I attended the math conference on Monday and the Physics conference on Tuesday. Both were very informative.

               It was from Wednesday that things got exciting. I had met Noah Hughes, the Creative Director of Crystal Dynamics and he had invited me to a lunch meet on Wednesday. Got to meet the team at Crystal Dyanmics and their Lead Rendering and AI programmers. Also met a lot of other grad students. Had a lot of interesting conversations, but alas, they didnt have any internship opportunities.

                   I started going around the career booths on Wednesday. Most companies said they dont do interns. But, I noticed that if I talked a bit about my work to them , they ask me to contact them via mail for internships.

                 Also, I noticed that the people I wanted to talk to, didnt come to the expo floor. Most were at the conference areas. So, I hung around there and caught up with people from EA, Activision, Blizzard, Microsoft, Irrational and a lot more.

                 On Thurday, I was looking out for people from Netherrealm studios, my dream company (As I am a huge fighting game fan, esp of Mortal Kombat). I literally got to speak with everyone who came to GDC from Netherrealm and it was AWESOME! Got some contacts and hope to follow it up.

The last day, I literally did a swag run and came back to SLC with 2 bags of swag.

                 I realised that GDC is the only place we can get to network with people from the industry and a good place to gauge the competition and get to know the direction the industry is taking currently. Hope to get an internship out of this and hopefully a job by next year.

Projects 2 - Week 9 to 12

March 5 - 28
I missed out on blogging during this period, but not much action happenend. One of the weeks was spring break and another week I was at GDC at San Fransisco. The only thing that happened was an intense discussion on whether to use UDK as the engine for the game or to continue with Unity. We discussed the pros n cons of using both engines and finally decided that we will finalize this after coming back from GDC.

Projects 2 - Week 8

Feb 26,28
We had the industry panel presentation on Monday. Long hours went into the preparation of that. It went fine, but most people had concerns about our game's scope.
On Thursday, our game and Vinyl got selected to be made as thesis projects!
Woohoo!

Projects 2 - Week 7

Feb 19,21 - 2013

I updated the projectile system so that it works much better now and added a crosshair for the thief.
We all had a stand up meeting where a lot was discussed. Chris also showed us his concept design for touch based hacker interface.
Today every team had to do a dry run to our professors. It went well and we got a lot of useful feedback.

Projects 2 - Week 6

Feb 12,14 - 2012

The Big Push

We pushed this weekend to finish our main features for the game and then merge code on monday. Our engineers are wizards and ninjas and have amazing talent in creating games. They did what it took to get the game made and merged. Monday was a success of merging the game and with only a few hiccups. Then on Tuesday we playtested it with huge success. We also found out that since next monday is Presidents Day, the Industry Panel will be the following monday Feb 25th. This is good news, because we found many bugs and errors in the game that need to be tweaked for the final pitch. Here is a list of a few things we found:
- Thief needs to be able to peak around corner
- Thief needs to be able to crouch behind desks to hide
- Thief needs to be able to capture central nodes to help out the hacker
- Hacker needs to be able to affect guards
- The security system needs to be more robust
- Small UI things need to be changed/added/developed
- More furnishings need to be in the 3D world

Anyway, here are some pictures of us working. The first is Vaibhav working on the Guards path movements. The second picture is Max and Nik working on the flow of the Hacker and Security System. I got the tracking bug and cameras to work.

The last picture is something the Andrew talked to Joe Bourrie from EA about on how to develop our game and make sure that it passes Gate 1. Joe said that if we focus on getting this concept to work and if we can prove to the Industry Panel that it does work, then we will be able to pass through Gate 1 and move to beta. What the chart is saying is that the Hacker has to be able to affect the Security System, affect the Guards, and be able to help the Hacker. The Thief in the same way has to be able to affect the Guards, affect the Security System and be able to help the Guards. We wrote this on our board to be able to keep this in mind and help us focus on this in polishing our game.

Projects 2 - Week 5

Feb 5,7 - 2012

Our Thief Team has made a lot of progress this week even with one big setback.  I built the level in 3D that +Chris had drawn up for us.  They also got the cameras working in the level and were able to run around in it.  One setback was when +Vaibhav had technical difficulties (his windows 7 crashed and he lost all of his progress) and had recreate the camera  movements and the thief actions to open and close doors.  He will have this all reworked quickly though.  Setbacks happen, good think our engineers are awesome and can recover quickly. 

Now we are going to work on a feature that lets the thief throw tracking bugs onto guards, pick up poorly thrown tracking bugs, crouch, peek around walls, and plant security cameras. 

Our Hacker Team has created an incredible feature list for the hacker.  This is probably going to be cool to play.  Here they are looking at a map of the first level with the floor plan of the building, security nodes, and tracking system all on the screen.  +Chris has created an awesome UI for this too.

 Here +Nik is leading a discussion about how to program the nodes and get them to behave the way we have all agreed on.  There is a lot of details to flesh out on how the security system will behave in game. 

+Max Has created a first version of how the nodes in the security system will behave.  Here you can see 4 nodes (one white, three blue).  When you click a node it will bring up a mini menu with the options of Capture and Release.  You will be able to capture and release nodes.  Other nodes like security cameras will give you additional options of being able to see the camera feed, or turn on lights, or even turn on/off alarms.

Here are the Hacker Actions the the Hacker Team came up with.  This is a very detailed list to ensure that we capture all of the most important aspects of what the Hacker can do.  This will also help us program the game with a clearer focus.  

Projects 2 - Week 4

Jan 29, 31 - 2012

Max got the game setup so you can open the game, create a new game, and let a certain number of players join.  Then on another computer you could log into the game that was created and you two can choose what role you want to play (Hacker or Thief) and then you can play.  Also, when you play the Hacker can see the Thief moving around the screen.  So the verdict is: IT WORKS!!! 

We have master programmers on this game and it is awesome.  We also have ninja designers too.  This is a great team!
Chris also came up with a good design for a demo level. I took up the job to create it on the world.

Projects 2 - Week 3 - Let the games begin

Jan 22, 2013
Its the big day when the prototype teams for Gate 1 would be finalised. There were finally 4 teams with Zeph and Alice recruiting a team at the last moment. I joined 'Cellblocks'.
It was a fun day. We decided to start with physically prototyping our game. We wanted to simulate our game by making 2 people play it. One as the hacker and another as the prisoner.
I volunteered to be the hacker and Vaibhav became the prisoner. We waited in the lab while our other team mates went around looking for an ideal place to set up a game level. Finally, I was taken to a room and Vaibhav was taken to the play area.
We did 3 takes on our game.
1) Hacker gets to view 2 cameras which are auto-spanning (2 iPads on facetime). Hacker communicates with prisoner using walkie talkies and has to guide the prisoner from one point to another without the security guard who is roaming around seeing him.
This did not go very well. The walkie talkies provided only 1-way communication which proved very inconvinient. Also, we found issues with camera placement.
2) In the 2nd trial, we used phones instead of walkie talkies. This went pretty well. I was able to guide vaibhav to the escape point without the guard seeing him.
3) The 3rd trial was to try this with jusst 1 camera acces to the hacker. But the hacker could control the camera movement. This also proved interesting with the hacker needing to decide whether to view the guard or the prisoner.
All in all, it was a good day. We were able to get a good idea of how the game might play out and what issues we need to cover. Like, the hacker needs more urgency and consequences to this actions, camera positioning, etc.

Jan 24, 2013
We all sat down and talked about how to go about making the prototype and what roles everyone's going to play. I took up the networking part of the game as it seems like a challenge and it also forms a core part of the game.

Projects 2 - Week 2 - Sucker Punched

Jan 15, 2013
This was the big day! I had made a prezi presentation for my game. I jumped in and presented my game 2nd. To get an idea of my game, check out the prezi link - http://prezi.com/7eiemnehe6i1/the-fourth-wall/

Also, I recorded my presentation. It did'nt go as bad as I expected. But I could have done much better..

Got a lot of interest in my game from my peers and positive feedback from my professors.
My peers too performed well. I thought our cohort was really creative and we definitely had a shot of winning the IGF.
Went home on a high looking forward to next Thursday when the Profs would announce which games would be getting made.

Jan 17, 2013
The professors all got together and gave us feedback on each and every game pitch. I was happy I got good feedback. The use of augmented reality was praised as an interesting idea and beneficial.
But then came the Sucker Punch. The professors declared that the cohort could choose among themselves which games they wanted to make. And for a game to be made, the team should consist of a minimum of 5 people...  It became clear then and there that my game didnt have a rat's chance at getting made.

Quickly the whole cohort devolved into a fish market and a popularity contest. It was sad to see truly innovative and highly praised game ideas like AB's Footsteps, Nikhil's Esher game and Vaibhav's Shadows game get steamrolled just like mine. Games like Fuss-Fuss which were clearly questioned by the Prof panel would get made because two of the best people in our cohort were backing it.

I felt angry and... helpless at this sudden decision by the Profs. In a flash of  a second, my game was crushed and I realised that I dont have the pull or the charm to entice people to make my game. So, maybe the game just plain sucked. Who Knows.. But I came to realise that the games which get made aren't necessarily the ones that have IGF potential. Its those games which are backed by the most influential people. This must be true in the industry too.

But over the next few days, I made my peace with the happenings. I decided to join the Cellblock team. It seems a game which might go places. The gameplay seems very exciting and ripe with possibilities,

Projects 2 - Week 1 - Possibilities Infinite

Jan 8, 2013

It was the start of my second semester and boy, I was so excited for this sem! We get to start with our thesis game. This is THE MAIN EVENT!
Classes start at 9am on Tuesdays and Thursdays this time around. Bummer.. This was just not 'Gamer Timing'..
The session went about basic overview with what we are going to do this semester. We were all told to pitch games by next Tuesday. We could do this as a team or on our own. The final thesis games would be picked from among these.
So, this is my big chance to get on center stage and I probably wont get a chance again for a looong time to make the game that I want to make. In this case, its 'The Fouth Wall' which is an augmented reality, location based Exergame.