BEAT-EM-UP! | gsokol + boomz

gsokol

Hey everybody.

Just putting a post up to make it all official-like. Will be updating soon.

Our environment is going to be located in a carnival. More specific details will follow later, but the theme revolves around the idea that when the gates close at night, the carnival has only just begun, and the clowns/carnival workers (the bad guys if this were an actual beat'em up)are up to no good...or something.

We'll be doing this in Unity.

- Challenges

• Taking a stylized approach, and both of us keeping consistant with that style.
• Populating the environment with several elements that sell it as a living, breathing environment.
• Planning and preparing a workflow that maximizes our efficiency, to get the most out of the limits we were given.
• To Get this thing done on time...we are busy people

Anyways, this will be updated soon. Adios!


============================================
Here is my full submission:

Webplayer

http://roryjones.net/project/pc-beatemup/PC_Beatemup_Final/WebPlayer.html

Video

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su5g-y7qV3c&hd=1[/ame]

Images:








Texturesheet:
http://roryjones.net/project/pc-beatemup/PC_Beatemup_Final/TextureUsage.jpg

boomz

I've seen some cool progress so far in other threads and I'm terribly excited for this challenge and hope to throw up some form of wip action soon.

gsokol speaks for us both in terms of challenges. My biggest challenge will be to accomplish our goals in the allotted time, but we're all busy people, right? The most interesting and fun challenge personally, will be to sell a living, breathing environment within the budget. With a location like a carnival, we're going to have a lot of room to explore making things feel lively, that is certain.

gsokol

Made a quick little thumbnail layout.




You would start in the empty parking lot, heading back to the now closed carnival with the ladyfriend...who things she left her purse here..... then a clown car would roll up and several clowns would pop out...which is where the action would start. You would be fighting them while the a clown takes your gf and puts her in the car and takes off with her. So then you head towards the carnival, and find it odd that all the lights are still on as if the place never closed..and you see fireworks shooting from behind a big tent way off in the distance...so you head on in to save the day.

The second image is the carnival itself. I really wanted to come up with ways to make the environment part of the action, so I came up with this with that in mind.

Super Slide: would have baddies sliding down the slide, either as their entrance to fight, or as an obstacle as they cross the screen.

Strong Man Hammer thing: Within the context of the game, perhaps throwing an enemy near the direction of where the hammer would hit would cause the ball to go up.

Carousel: At the end of this section, I would have this be the final area...or possibly a boss area. First, enemies would come around on the horses and jumping off and fighting you, then you would stand on the carousel after words and fight a boss while it is spinning.

There are some other ideas we have, but don't know if it will be out of our scope for this project. The layout is setup in a way where we can make additions to the scene if we want.

Also, if we have the time, we have an idea for a third area..but again..we want to see what we can do within the amount of time. I tend to try to make environments too large, so creating a more detailed, lively environment is a challenge for me.

ArchangelZero

Looks like great fun! Liking the clarity of the concept, I'm learning much just by looking at it. Anxious to see what you guys will do with this! Looks like this design is full of opportunities for cool lighting and particle effects.

Best of luck!

Funky Bunnies

when are you poopsacks going to post some updates!
this idea should be loads of fun

boomz

http://roryjones.net/project/pc-beatemup/bupBlock.html
Here is a link to a rough blockout unity build. WASD [space], check it out!

Mostly stand-ins of course, but I've been messing around on the ticket booth as our first asset to set a style. I'll call it a WIP. Its got Unity's toon shader on for now, I need to code one that takes diffuse/normal/spec/lightmap with an adjustable factor of self-illumination to get some bright, stylized qualities.

I've created a script/shader/material set for animating the lights, fairly flexible and simple to use. A light pattern sheet (currently with 8 pattern variants (v)) is used to control the light brightness with an adjustable speed. A column-offset variable sets the position of the light within the light series (u) so you can string them along in order. Currently with the 8x8 grid approach, odd numbers lead to issues. If we really need odd values for # of lights in a string (likely), I'm going to use an early-out variable to snip off some of the modulus. The lights can have whatever separate diffuse texture you want.

TheBat

For those unable to check the unity file i made a quick screenshot (hope the authors don't mind) just for the impresssion. Looks like a pretty good start so far, keep it up!

boomz

TheBat wrote: »

For those unable to check the unity file i made a quick screenshot (hope the authors don't mind) just for the impresssion. Looks like a pretty good start so far, keep it up!

Thanks TheBat. I don't mind at all, its something I should have already done during the initial post. Any subsequent builds will be accompanied by screencaps

zreinhardt

gsokol

Zach get back in your cage!

Ben Apuna

Looking good.

I like the premise and the moody concept art. I also like how you two have placed foreground and background objects in the scene, the sense of depth and immersion is pretty good.

Keep it up

MalloryW

gsokol

Not too much of an update but:

Heres the super slide

gsokol

Food Stand thingy:

cholden

Man, I worked a lot of fairs in my wrestling days. You're capturing some of those elements in very accurate fashion.

gsokol

cholden: Glad to hear thanks!

Quick WIP update on the carousel:

gsokol

Low Poly for the carousel. I'm thinking I'll have a tent top...will most likely recycle texture for it from other assets. I'm pretty happy with this...this is the type of stuff that I wanted practice making.

Now I just need some horsees!

paranoidMonkey

Ohh really cool man! keep'em coming.

gsokol

Thanks man!

Now with MORE HORSEEES!!!

Charlie

Looks great! Only thing I would say is that the horses on merry go rounds are usually super ornate and over the top colourful with their designs.

Example:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hZnWAaRKSns/SUnUJKTCzqI/AAAAAAAAA7o/sbDx5abaOBs/s400/merry+go+round.jpg

I understand that you don't have the timeframe to make them that crazy, but maybe just some variation in colours with a little design would make them fit better?

Just my two cents which even if you don't follow they still look great anyways.

Adam L. Gray

Not sure how far you've gotten, or if you've planned on adding it in later etc. But where's all of the colourful light bulbs yo?

Cheers

gsokol

Charlie: I agree with changing the colors on the horses a bit. I may get to this if time permits.

Tiros: Don't worry, I'll get some lightbulbs on there soon.

Thanks for the comments guys! Only a few days left...gotta lotta work to do to finish this haha.

gsokol

Got quite a bit done over the past few days...

http://roryjones.net/project/pc-beatemup/wip1/WebPlayer.html

Here is the latest web build.

Also, for those of you who cannot view the web build...or are too lazy...heres some screenshots of our progress:


Ok so this image isn't taken in the proper angle for a side scrolling beat'em up..but it looks cool and shows most of the path.

MalloryW

Maybe it's me but I think the ears on your horses are a little too short



[edit after using the unity player] Oh I see, they don't actually have geo they're just normal mapped...

gsokol

Mental Radiation: Yea..its baked in to the mesh..but maybe tomorrow I'll try adding some geo and see how it looks.

'Nother update.

Web Build:
http://roryjones.net/project/pc-beatemup/gsokol_wip//WebPlayer.html

Images:






Getting close to getting this finished..going to spend tomorrow night after work finishing things up. If anybody has trouble playing the web build...if its slow or anything, let me know. This scene isn't very optimized so it may run slow.

Anyways...I'm at 190.4k tris. I don't anticipate having any trouble chopping this down to meet the limit. For textures, I'm currently using about 70% of the total allotted space. I have every intention of trying to use the remaining 30% left to add some more prettiness.

Let us know what you guys think!

kysterama

Looking fantastic! The lighting and mood really enhance this scene. Loving the textures, colours and models. Can't wait to see the final

Grimm_Wrecking

Those screenshots don't capture all of the mood really. Though yeah, once I got to the carousel my comp just said no.
Interested to see what you produce with the remaining 30% budget left though

gsokol

Ok so I lied about being our our triangle limit...Didn't seem right. So it looks like objects were being drawn more than once still because I stupidly left per pixel shaders in the scene so most things were getting drawn at once...now I have almost 50 percent of the tri budget to just throw stuff everywhere...weeeee!!!!

gsokol

Man..worked on it 'till the end..but glad to have gotten something up. I would have liked to have more time to fix some things and to finish it/polish it up...

kysterama - Thanks a lot. I'm really happy with the lighting, and I'm glad you dig the colors. Part of the challenge for me was to work in colors like this, and I think I learned a lot. I typically stick to photosourced, dirty/grimey stuff so this was a fun learning experience...so I'm glad you like it. Your entry is kickass by the way

Grimm_Wrecking - I agree...web build shows things off the best...I had trouble getting screenshots that showed this off like I would have liked. Yea the build is insanely heavy. I didn't have time to optimize the scene, but I might do that sometime next week (I plan on staying away from my PC for the weekend...Ive seen too much of it the past week). Then I'll post up a better web build.

Here's the final web build we put up though...

http://roryjones.net/project/pc-beatemup/PC_Beatemup_Final/WebPlayer.html

cupsster

Can I ask in what program you created lighting and how long it took to compute..

boomz

Unity 3d, It is a pretty full-featured and extendable game engine / world editor. We're utilizing their new deferred rendering feature that came along with their 3.0 release, so what you see is 100% calculated on the fly

It can bake lightmaps too using Beast Lightmapper. Bakes average 15-30 minutes on a decent machine with a fair amount of lights and objects in the scene. Results are great with baked lighting as well, though you are locked to the forward renderer.

cholden

Nice guys. Like your final and seeing rides animated. Playing for real always shows game art best.

cupsster

boomz wrote: »

Unity 3d, It is a pretty full-featured and extendable game engine / world editor. We're utilizing their new deferred rendering feature that came along with their 3.0 release, so what you see is 100% calculated on the fly

It can bake lightmaps too using Beast Lightmapper. Bakes average 15-30 minutes on a decent machine with a fair amount of lights and objects in the scene. Results are great with baked lighting as well, though you are locked to the forward renderer.

Thank You for answer. Yep, I'm already using it just curious..

gsokol

Just submitted my final entry again. Not too stoked that the youtube link didn't get on there...dont know what happened...so I guess I'll just post it here..

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su5g-y7qV3c[/ame]

gsokol

Here is my full submission:

Webplayer

http://roryjones.net/project/pc-beatemup/PC_Beatemup_Final/WebPlayer.html

Video

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su5g-y7qV3c&hd=1[/ame]

Images:








Texturesheet:
http://http://roryjones.net/project/pc-beatemup/PC_Beatemup_Final/TextureUsage.jpg

Nate Broach

This really came together man. Really nice mood. Great job. I love that you animated all the rides.

Ben Apuna

Congrats on finishing. I also love the animation in this level.

This environment is so eerie...

With the webplayer version I got past the carousel and the shadows the ferris wheel casts on the ground are beautiful, you should've shown that in the video.

I'm also glad to see more people using Unity lately, great job.

gsokol

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Skeptical Nate: Thanks a lot. I really liked your entry as well. Definitely stepped out of my element quite a bit and learned a lot from this.

Ben Apuna: Eerie is definitely what we were going for. And your not supposed to get past the carousel :P Maybe I'll play with the lights a little and see how it looks if it were to cast on or before the carousel.

I was actually surprised by how many people starting out were planning on using Unity. There were quite a few entrants planning on it. I think Unity is picking up steam and is a really nifty engine. Boomz and I have passed around the idea of making an iPhone build for this as well.