#studentdev

[emma-boo-wearing]

Heading Towards that Alpha Milestone

Backyard Snowdown is well underway, our programmers have not stopped to get as much in the game as possible before we hit Beta. Which is great! We now have a fully playable and (dare I say) fun game to work on. 

Main Mechanics:

The most important aspect to Backyard Snowdown is the snowballs. They can be thrown directly at the other players to inflict damage, or (and don’t ask for the logic) they can ricochet off anything except other players to hit their mark.

Backyard Snowdown is an imagination-fueled Snowball fight. One of the main mechanics is a Dash Manoeuvre. Primarily intended as an evasive alternative to standard movement, if you’re unarmed you can dash over the snowballs to pick them up.

[phyllongame-blog]

Oi everyone ! It's been a long time since the last update on this webpage ! We were away from the social medias, as we needed to take a step back, due to other current personnal projects. Therefore, for this #ScreenshotSaturday, here's a video of the water shader for our demo, which is based on the waterway of a river ! Please enjoy !

[ascendantpath-blog]

Had to redesign my map generator from scratch. This new one does not yet create the pleasing shapes of the old. However the rooms now have coordinates that can be tracked and do not overlap. Just need to work on algorithms to refine it further.

[lichpuns]

Assets from a school project. Modeled in Maya '18, painted over the UV's in Photoshop.

[ubaidazad]

What are you inspired to create? #StephenHawking #innovation #technology #computerscience #problemsolvers #creators #inspiration #studentdev #Microsoft #MSFT #MSFTImagine

[phyllongame-blog]

New #screenshotsaturday of a WIP ! We are working hard on creating geysers for our game ! Depending on the music played, geysers will either spring in rythm with the music at different heights, or freeze allowing J³ to stand on them ! The full animation will be released shortly ! By then, please stay connected with us, and see you next week !

[ascendantpath-blog]

Ascendant Code 5

When last we met we had set up a 2 dimensional array and filled it with 1s and 0s. Now we’re going to look at getting a visual representation for our noise. For this we will use the in-built method OnDrawGizmos (). To begin with let’s use our old friend the nested for loops to iterate through our array.

for (int x = 0; x < width; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < height; y++) {

We need to check each coordinate. If it contains a 1 we will draw a black square and if it contains a 0 we will draw a white square.

Gizmos.color = (map[x,y] == 1)?Color.black : Color.white; Vector3 pos = new Vector3(-width/2 + x + 0.5f, 0, -height/2 + y + 0.5f); Gizmos.DrawCube(pos, Vector3.one);

Now if you press play and switch from game view to scene view you will have your noise map. Try it with different strings to make sure that it is properly using them as a seed.

The final thing we need to do is bring order from chaos, create a map from the noise. To do this we are going to create a method called SmoothMap (). Okay so this method is really important since it will define how our map looks. So we want to go through all our squares so... nested for loops? Nested for loops.

void SmoothMap () {

for (int x = 0; x < width; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < height; y++) {

So the method we are going to use is to check how many squares around each coordinate are filled. To do so we’ll create a method that takes two values, our current x and y positions, as arguments and checks everything around it.

int neighbourWallTiles = GetSurroundingWallCount(x,y);

So because we want this method to be called from every square it needs an internal counter which will always start at 0.

int GetSurroundingWallCount(int gridX, int gridY) { int wallCount = 0;

We’ll use the x and y values as a starting point and check what’s around them, incrementing wallCount when we find something. Remember we want to keep this within the bounds of our grid and not get an error from trying to access coordinates outside the boundary.

for (int neighbourX = gridX - 1; neighbourX <= gridX + 1; neighbourX ++) { for (int neighbourY = gridY - 1; neighbourY <= gridY + 1; neighbourY ++) { if (neighbourX >= 0 && neighbourX < width && neighbourY >= 0 && neighbourY < height) { if (neighbourX != gridX || neighbourY != gridY) { wallCount += map[neighbourX,neighbourY]; } } else { wallCount ++; } } } return wallCount; }

Going back into SmoothMap we can use the returned integer. The idea we’re going for is that the more isolated squares become white while the more dense areas are filled in.

if (neighbourWallTiles < 3){ map[x,y] = 0; } else if (neighbourWallTiles > 5){ map[x,y] = 1; } else if (neighbourWallTiles == 2){ map[x,y] = 1; }

This should generate clear areas of white and black, kind of like continents in an ocean. Then believe it or not that is that. The shapes we get are the outline for how our map is going to look. Later we will look at how to turn each of the squares into a navigable room.

Speaking of rooms next week we’ll be looking at how to generate rooms with random layouts. In the mean time I hope this has been informative and if you have any questions feel free to reach out.

[ascendantpath-blog]

So here’s my plan for creating individual rooms. Basically A room will be divides into sections. Each of these sections will choose a layout at random from a pre-made group, represented by colours here. The pieces will be made so that there is always a path between entrances to the room.

[ascendantpath-blog]

Reflecting on my Path Here

So I wanted to take a minute to talk about how I ended up here. (This definitely has nothing to do with the fact I have made no significant process in the last few days. I have learned a lot about procedural generation though). Mark Rosewater said that in finding your dream job you should try to achieve the “golden trifecta”. He said that you should do something that a) you love b) you’re good at and c) something someone will pay you to do. Right now I am hoping that this will apply to me making video games. When I left High School though, I had not figured this out yet.

I finished High School and left with good grades but no solid idea of the future. I had been accepted to study Mathematics at Glasgow University but I was not sure why. You see I was good at maths and I was pretty sure someone would one day pay me to do something relevant with it but I did not love it. I just ran with it because it seemed like the right thing to do. Sadly it ended in failure, after four years I did not earn any kind of degree. What I did learn was that I needed something more. I needed to actually do something I cared about.

Not that I knew what that was. Sure I loved playing video games at the time but I had not connected this with a potential career. I had once given the idea some thought many years ago but it had been discouraged as it was not seen as “a real job or degree” at the time. So I drifted for a bit until I ended up with a job taking inbound calls for Scottish Power. This job had two notable features. 

It was absolutely miserable

It was perhaps the most important job I have ever done

You see after a month and a half dealing with 12 hour shifts and occasionally being screamed at over the phone I figured something out. I did not want to be doing that for the rest of my life. While it seems obvious I had been utterly aimless up until that point. At that moment though, I knew I had to go back to University. I still did not know what to study.

My chief hobby was of course still video games. This also went for two of my flatmates. At some point they were watching some episodes of Extra Credits, a YouTube series about Game Design. At first they caught my interest and before I knew it I was watching an awful lot of them. It was they who planted the idea that I could make a career of the thing I love.

As well as two good friends I was also living with my partner. The help and support I have received from her over the years goes beyond this brief summary. Suffice to say I would not be where I am, or who I am today without her. For that and so much more I will be forever grateful.

Thus about a year ago I began the process to apply to study Game Design. I also started to do some studying in my own time, working through Unity tutorials and starting projects (the projects failed utterly but I learned a lot). I am now in the second semester of my first year and things are looking good. There is a ton more to learn but I am actually properly excited about it and I am excited to keep working on Ascendant Path and watch it grow.

[phyllongame-blog]

Today is Saturday, which means that we're releasing a new #screenshotsaturday ! Introducing a new interactable element of Nature : the mushroom !

The mushroom acts like a bumper with the tempo of the music, letting you reach unexplored heights !

Make sure to follow, like and subscribe to our social medias to be aware of any news related to Phyllon ! Stay tuned for next week's @screenshotsaturday !

Twitter : https://twitter.com/Phyllongame Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/Phyllongame/ Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBYcZ5mKlcHgwbAgDmcpb-g

[phyllongame-blog]

J³ sees water for the first time…

We are actively working on the water shader for the world of Phyllon. Water will have a huge impact in one of our level design, both in gameplay and visual art.

Stay tuned with us for next week #screenshotsaturday ! :)