Week 7 of Big Game Project

A late post for last weeks work, but better late than never 🙂

So we are rounding up for GGC, getting our last assets done and some small fix and changes.

I have primaraly been working on particle effects this week to help indicate the gain of speed. I have also done some menu stuff like buttons and background for different menu states.

the particle effects i created this week was a ”wind blowing past at high speed” effect, an exhaust effects for when the player gains big bursts of speed, a dust effect for the ground that shows more the faster you go and a ”break the soundbarrier” effect for big bursts of speed for example when the players uses a checkpoint boost.

i will go more indepth on how i did the exhaust and dust, two pretty simple effects but very effectfull.

Exhaust Pipe Effect

The exhaust effect was made very simple. i made three cylinders in 3DS max and removed all but the outer faces. I made the middle and last cylinders diameter smaller but the lenght longer that will later make a nice flame effect.

 

 

Because of the Particle/Addative shader im using i dont have to worry about the inside of the cylinders, the diffuse will still show through.

I then did a simple flame for the diffuse that tiles, i only use one color and im letting the shader do the rest to create color variations. The Particle/Addative shader removes all the black in the image and make it transparant, so by making the color a bit dark i can create a transparent flame that is still very vibrant.

Now by adding a script that rotates the diffuse very fast it creates the illusion of flames. The programmers then make it fade in and scale when they player picks up a boost or runs into a checkpoint.

The Dust Effect

For the dust effect i use a standard particle system.

I started out with a diffuse texture that first was meant to only be a test but it turned out so well it ended up being the final.

By then manipulating the emitter i can create a cone shape that emitts on the ground. The shader i used for this is Particle/addative (Soft), by using the soft version the particles will keep their color throughout the duration of its lifetime the same, different from the exhaust where i used Particle/Addative that lightens up the object/particle behind it.

And becuse of the the Particle/Addative shader i can easly fade in and out the particles, the programmers can then later fade them depending on the speed you are going, so if you go slow they will be less visable.

The particles also have a random rotation value of 0-360 and also grow in their lifetime from 0.2-1.2 and fades out in the end of their lifetime

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The Menus

We wanted the buttons to feel that they belonged in the world and since we use such stylized textures we also made the buttons stylized. 

By using the lasso tool to make a simple shape and then the lasso tool again to add the the fallen off paint with a very suttle dropshadow to give it more depth. 

The left button is when it is selected and the right is when it’s unselected. I took out the color, made it slightly transparent and removed the highlight to make it very clear which of the buttons are selected.

I chose the same colors as in the logo so you can easy make a connection to the game via the logo, the cutout red is also in the same style as the logo.

 

The backdrops are made in the same way with a slight transparency to not make it so harsh on the eyes. the asymetri in the shapes helps convey the childish and stylized tone we set for the game. 

 

Next Week

Next week i will start with the trailer and do some more oddjobs that needs to be done before we go into beta and GGC

 

 

 

 

Fifth Week of Big Game Project

This week has been very hectic, we worked  hard  to get a somewhat solid level for the alpha test for people to play.

I have been working primarily on the effects and particles this week for feedback purposes and readability.

I have never worked in depth with the Unity Particle Systems so i had to experiment allot and look what others had done to get the desired effects. I bought some particle effects i thought was cool and dissected them to see how they where made and used that knowledge to make my own.

These are effects i created this week.

Far left is the small boost that when picked up will give you a small amount of speed.

To the right of the small boost is the Checkpoint Boost, here you will get a significantly amount of speed, and you will also be able to spawn from this location at any point in the game.

To the right of the Checkpoint Boost is the Spark, there are still some work to be done on the spark. The Spark will be used to reward explorers with allot of score points.

The two circle effects are for the pumping. When you pump correctly and are gaining speed the blue circles will appear around the wheel of the avatar and when you pump incorrectly and lose speed the red one will appear.

The last one to the far right is for when you pick up a Small Boost. The particles will for a small amount of time stick to the avatar and then stick to the game world and fall off you.

I will go more in depth on how i created the small boost effect.

I started out with a standard Unity Sphere and applied the standard unity shader Particle/Additive(soft), as a diffuse i used blue color with about 50% blackness. The shader will then remove the black and keep the original color and make it transparent depending on the amount of blackness in the color. I can now put a particle system inside the sphere and they will still show through.

The Particle System is a bit more complex.

It is using the main particle emitter and two sub-emitters.

The first emitter creates the lightning bolts, the material for the bolts are the same as the sphere to give it a suddle transparancy to make it more smooth and not so harsh. The gradiant at the start of the lightning bolt is also to make it so it looks like it fades in then just pop in from the emitter. It also has a suddle glow that is barley visable.

There is too many different options to go through them all but the picture above shows what i used to create this Particle System.

The two sub-emitters on the other hand is pretty simple, the particles are created on the birth of the lightning bolts. The first is just a standard unity particle effect the it creates this ball in the center of the sphere that is the core of the boost, the other particle effect is a more hectic effect but barely visible to help convey the lightning.

 

Next week i will be working on some more effects and to make some new tileable ramp assets.