Production Blog 5

MARRED » Devlog

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Hi there! I am Sam, the producer for the student-led video game MARRED. We have just wrapped up the fifth sprint of development and I have a lot to share. First some background; MARRED is a retro-style, movement-based first-person-shooter about killing demons, shooting guns, and getting upgrades. Sprint 5’s primary focus was not on implementing new features, but rather on refining and polishing the features that are already present. However, our artists did great in providing lots of new assets for the team. Overall, I think this was a productive sprint and has set us up well going into the home stretch of the project.

Animation:

I am going to switch it up and talk about animation work first this time. As I mentioned in previous updates, we used motion capture to create our walk cycles and melee attack animations. However, we cannot just take the raw data and throw it onto a rig. There is a middle step of motion capture cleanup that needs to be done before adding our rig and model. Luckily for us, both I and our animator Abi have taken our program’s motion capture course so we are familiar with each step of the process.

There was on large production issue with the cleanup process however; OptiTrack Motive, the software used for cleanup, cannot be downloaded and used on students’ personal computers. During our time in the motion capture class, this was not an issue as we were able to use a VPN to access the lab computers remotely. Unfortunately, that was still when classes were in a hybrid virtual/in-person state and access to that VPN has since expired. This meant Abi’s only time to work on cleaning up data was during our allotted class time. Abi was able to get all of our cleanup done during class and made progress with rigging up Jen’s character models of the miner and ranger enemies. At the time of writing this, she has made some progress on the enemy walk cycles and I am excited to see the finished product for all of our enemies’ animations.

Level Design:

Our level designers, Trevor and Jacob, did a fantastic job this sprint. The modular walls for level 2 were completed as well as the assets needed for level 4. This allowed both of our level designers to add assets to level 2a and level 4. I do not have a whole lot to say about putting the walls and other necessary assets into the scenes other than it is a tedious process and I am proud of the level designers for persevering and getting those tasks done.

The other major thing our level designers did during the sprint was adding lighting into the finished levels 1a, 1b, and 2a. Both of them used a series of point lights throughout the level in order to make the levels a bit darker to complement the environment of an abandoned mineshaft and factory. I was impressed with how these turned out and makes the levels feel less like a prototype and a lot closer to a finished product. Another feature that was added was a fog effect in the mineshaft levels. This did take a little while to figure out as the fog would interfere with the lighting and the UI at some points.

2D Art:

Other than the marketing materials, we have finished up with 2D art assets. Jame’s focus this sprint was finishing up menus that we did not have yet, and end-of-level and game screens. The original end-of-level screen that was created did not match Jen’s vision, so a revision was made to it. It now has the same LCD lines as the other UI elements and features a second panel that will show the player’s performance during the level. Additionally, there are several versions of the screen each highlighting a specific level to show where players are coming from and where they go next. Another feature I like about the new screen is that it now shows the names that Jen has assigned to the levels. The one UI feature that James created was a checkpoint flag with raised and lowered versions. James has shown interest in helping out with sound design so going forward his work will primarily be concerned with audio unless more 2D art is needed in the future.

3D Modeling:

Tyler once again impressed with her modular models of the level 3 walls. I really like the indents for possible emissions from the walls. Her factory walls for level 2 turned out great and I think the level 3 walls she created will look amazing with the textures Payton will add to them in the near future. One important piece she created was the ramp piece. In previous levels, we used physical stair pieces, but this caused movement issues for the player as they had to jump several times to go up small elevations. Since we would still like some elevation changes in our levels without impeding the player experience, we will be using ramps going forward and fixing the player controller so they can walk up them smoothly.

Jen created one very important environment piece this sprint and that is the elevator that will be our transitional piece between levels. Not only does this model look great, but Jen made sure to keep the doors separate so they can open for our players allowing them to enter and move to the next level. Jen also provided the model for the boost jets upgrade. Since this small jetpack was already attached to the player model, it made sense just to separate the two to both save time and easily convey to the player that this upgrade is physically being attached to the player in order to give them the power to double or triple jump.

Jacob provided the rest of the upgrade models, this included: caffeine reservoirs, unnecessary dialysis, frictionless pads, divine right, and vegas blacklist. Jen and I especially liked how Vegas Blacklist, the game’s drop chance upgrade, looks despite having such simple models. Additionally, these were all UVed before the end of the sprint and will be textured starting next sprint.

Uneccessary Dialysis Caffeine Reservoirs Vegas Blacklist Frictionless Pads Divine Right

Texturing:

A lot of texturing work was done during the sprint. Payton created one material for our level 2 modular pieces. However, there was an issue before texturing as our modular pieces were not on one UV sheet yet. Because of this, I assigned Payton a new task to resize all of the level 2 modular pieces to one 4K sheet before texturing. While this caused a small delay he was still able to have all of the textures done before the end of the sprint. Although some small revisions were needed for the textures, I love the grimy feel to them and I think they look pretty good in-game too.

Jen also did a lot of texturing work this sprint. First, she textured the cabins and mineshaft entrance for level 4 with the simple style present with the rest of the environments so far. She also textured the leg model that players see when sliding and our shopkeeper robot which she has also named Cherry. However, these pale in comparison to the work she did for the railgun pedestal. Jen wanted to convey that the railgun players receive in the later levels is a powerful, but still an experimental and dangerous weapon. I think this texture does a fantastic job illustrating that as I feel like it is going to explode looking at it.

Railgun Pedestal Cherry

Programming:

There was some significant programming work done during this sprint in order to refine the Shootin’, Lootin’, and Scootin’ system or SLS. While these systems are functional, changes needed to be made in order to make these core mechanics more fun for players. Our two programmers did not disappoint.

Jake, who has been working with our weapons and combat for the majority of the project, made several key additions to how our weapons function. First was adding bullet tracers to our weapons. While most of the game’s weapons are hitscan, meaning they calculate hit detection instantly, having visible lines to indicate where player’s shots went was a must for player feedback. Two more key additions were headshots and a blood effect. Jake created an additional hitbox to track if the player shot an enemy’s head for extra damage and the appropriate indicator so they could know when they do. A blood splatter effect also instantiates by the model if the enemy is hit. Originally, we wanted this to be at the exact position of the hit, but that is impossible unless we use a mesh collider on the enemy which would cause issues with how the game runs. The blood effect still looks good though and helps with improving player feedback. Another layer to the weapons was also implemented with each gun having recoil to give them some weight and for players to know which weapons are stronger or weaker. The last improvement Jake made to the game’s weapon system was adding weapon swapping animations to quickly play when a player cycles through their guns.

Josh made various improvements to both the game’s loot and user interface. One issue noticed during testing is that many players did not know what gun was what so the names of each weapon now appear above the weapon icon. Other than some bugs, the biggest issue with MARRED’s loot system is that the items did not feel appealing to collect. To address this we added two visual improvements. Loot items now have a slow bob and spin animation as well as a colored particle beam. We think these will help entice players to always be looking for and collecting look. The particle beam also has 4 different variants for each rarity: common, rare, epic, and legendary. Some changes were also made to scrap piles, the game’s currency. First, a particle system with floating dust particles was added to show that these are piles of junk items. Second and more importantly, some slight randomization was added. Now anytime scrap piles spawn they can be in small, medium, or large quantities each with their own appropriate currency value.

While Jake’s primary focus was improving how the game’s weapons felt, he did add one new boss fight. This fight will take place in level 3 and feature two large robots that circle the center of the room. Josh also added a new feature by programming the functionality of the explosive barrels for area of effect damage.