mddn343 - Advanced Game Design

In summary, on the project I was responsible for:

• Environment design, including the landscape of the game world, health meters, clouds and fences and lighting. Clouds, fences and health meters have animations.
• Menu design: the main menu, instructions and credits screens. Assets such as the farmer created by other group members or myself for other parts of the game were re-used but with extra detail added to the meshes. Menu items have pulsing animations.
• Item design: all the collectibles, that is the food items, powerups and powerup symbols. The food items have rotting animations, the powerup collectible show, bob and hide animations, and the powerup symbols have bobbing animations.
• Music direction
• Some sound effects, both for the UI and the game itself.

All the 3D assets created by me were also textured and animated by me.

The final environment.

The final food items, animated.

The final powerups and powerup symbols, animated.

The final UI screens. There are some odd discrepancies between the game engine renderer and the Blender default renderer used here (texture mapping for one is slightly incorrect in the default renderer). These were rendered with the default renderer because otherwise the results are higher quality.

For the menu backgrounds, I used in-game assets which I subdivided and smoothed to produce a nice result when seen at this size. Also worth noting is the fact that I altered the magnitude of the bump mapping across the assets I designed in the UI and game depending on the on-screen size. Most notably this was done with the corn: in the UI the bump mapping intensity is set to around 1, while in the corn in the game has it’s bump mapping set to a much higher value, so that the detail would always register on screen.

To make the menus intuitive, I created pulsing animations for each menu item for when they are highlighted. As far as sounds go, I decided to use an pig sound oink that I sourced earlier as a sound effect for when you switch between menu items. A pig squeal is emitted when you select an item. I thought this choice of sounds would provide good interface feedback and set the tone and premise of the game.

My last attempt at creating a mud splash effect. This time I went simple, by making a wave-like effect suggesting displacement of the mud. We ran out of time to integrate this into the game, which is why it is also untextured.

A further attempt at creating a mud splash effect, this time by hand. It is very difficult to create a convincing effect by shape keys!

Another attempt at creating an effect of mud being kicked up by the pigs. Unfortunately, as it turns out, there doesn’t appear to be any way to use particle systems in the game engine - there isn’t even a way to bake particle system animations so they can be used as static animations.

The development of what was the glue symbol (representing the powerup that decreases manuveurability) and became the anchor symbol (representing the same). I was dissatisfied with my original glue symbol for several aesthetic reasons, but rather than simply recreate it with more detail, I decided an anchor symbol would be better. This was for two reasons: firstly, the anchor symbol is far more iconic and far less literal than the glue symbol; if the glue symbol didn’t have text on it saying what it is noone would get it. An anchor fits in better with the iconic magnet and steering wheel symbols. Secondly, (arguably) the glue symbol doesn’t really indicate the function of the powerup properly. Does it mean your pig has glue to use or that it is glued? An anchor is less ambiguous in this regard: it restricts the movement of whoever is carrying it.

Development of the steering wheel (representing increased manuveurability) and magnet powerup symbols.