Global Game Jam 2015

Global Game Jam 2015

This past weekend I took part the annual Global Game Jam event.

1. "A game jam is a gathering of game developers for the purpose of planning, designing, and creating one or more games within a short span of time, usually ranging between 24 and 72 hours. Gamedevelopers are generally made up of programmers, game designers, artists, and others in game development-related fields."

This years theme was: "What do we do now".

Diversifiers (Optional conditions):

1. Noise Generator: The mechanic of the game is based on players having to stay in constant communication with each other.
2. Folk: The game uses a folk or indigenous art style of your region.
3. NES: Make the game playable on an old school console, either directly or through an emulator.
4. Wrist Watcher: The game is playable on a smart-watch, or uses wearable technology in some way.
5. Clueless Parents: The game helps kids teach something to their parents or other family members.
6. Batch Job: The game is a batch file from any operating system, using command line tools found in an out of the box installation.
7. Chimera: The game is played partly as a digital and partly as a non-digital (board, card, etc.) game. (we did this Diversifier) 
8. Hyper-Local: The game is set in your town/city and contains elements locals can identify, while still being entertaining for a global audience.
9. Can I Try?: Any spectator of the game automatically becomes a player as well.
10. This is How it Feels: The game raises awareness of how hate speech or unfair accusations feel, and what kind of effect they have on their targets.
11. Stephen Hawking Can Play This: In the game everything (including any menus) can be navigated with one button, without any need for quick / precisely timed presses.
12. Eagle Ear: The game is primarily visual, but is also playable by visually impaired  players, either through audio design, or through a screenreader (VoiceOver, Talkback, JAWS etc).
13. Relatively Speaking: A game based on the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which explained that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, such as light bending around black holes.
14. Public Domain Class of 2015: Make a game based on the works entered to Public Domain on 1st January 2015 - for instance works of Wassily Kandinsky, Edvard Munch, Edith Sitwell, Piet Mondrian, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Felix Nussbaum, Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti, Glenn Miller, Flannery O’Connor, and Ian Fleming (cough, James Bond, cough), depending on your country.
15. Code for Good (Sponsored by Intel): Make a game with the goal of improving literacy, or inspiring interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

So when this jam started I was like, "I'm not going too code a single line of code. This year I'll be purely art-ing"....I ended up being the only coder in a team of 5.

Anyhow, it was tons of fun, this is what we made.

Augmented reality card game where players play cards to give their beasts weapons and actions. To start the game, each player chooses their character and takes the associated deck. Shuffle the deck and draw three cards each. Each card has an image, description of impact and the energy cost for the card. You cannot play a card if you do not have enough energy to play it. Decide which player will play first and place both creature cards onto the play mat. Player 1 selects one card from his or her hand and plays the card face up on the player mat card slot. The computer will calculate damage and reduce energy. It will then be Player 2's turn to play a card. The game continues until one beast has been reduced to zero health. Note: If a card indicates that you gain or lose defense percentage - this applies for the attack in the very next play of the opposing player. to use AR, ensure you have a decent webcam connect too the system that can see the cards.

GGJ link

The team

Jacques Botha (back middel) - Augmented Reality & Game coder, Project Manager, 3D modelling + rigging + animation, DJ

Ben Geldenhuys (back left) - 2D Art, Creative Metal Direction

Richard Ramsbottom (back right) - 3D modelling & rigging

Megan Hughes (front right) - Card game design

Adam Linder (front middel) - Music

Game screen shots 

Tech demo vid

Augmented tech: Vuforia

All in all it was fun, stressful, hard work and most importantly very very educational (even if we didn't stick to the theme). We as a team are contemplating on maybe continuing developing this game for a few months and see what the results turn out too be.

Exams done...now what?

So, my exams are finally done. So i now have a 3 month vacation (SCHWEET XD ).

So this is what I've been doing in my off time till thus far.

- Finished the Tavor repaint

Notes: Had too simplify the design as the paint kept running (even if i masked it off correctly). But happy with the overall result. Next up the fire control system. Here is the painting process: link

- Worked on some weapons for an up and coming project:

Anyhow, any new projects and events I'll keep you posted.

Kinect Mayhem (Kinect and Blender Marriage)

So I recently acquired an Kinect for the sole porpoise of messing around with it (Mainly 3D scanning and live tracking + recording of human movement for animations).

For those of you who don't know what a Kinect is...wow. For the past 3+ years in the console world it has been Xbox's response to the Wii motion Controller (like PS3's glow sticks/Move).
Image Ref:

Any how getting this thing to talk to my PC was a tad harder to do than I would've expected. But in short

But, after some trail and error I was able to at least get the Kinect and Human tracking up and running (3D scanning is still proving to be an formidable foe).

Essentailly what I tried to achive was a crude Mocap 

Here is a good example of mocap is in the recent game Beyond: Tow Souls

Essentially I had to install 

1. OpenNi SDK
2. Delicode NiMate
3. Blender Plugin
4. Blender

Once I got the basic up and running I made a quick mock up and ended up with this (I'll walk you through)

1) Download and install OpenNi SDK (preferably the 32bit, this is to prevent eorrors for a future 3D scan project[TBA]) and Delicode

2) Launch Delicode. (of course make sure kinect is connected and powered).

3) Go to Full Skeleton Tab (enable it). Change format from basic to basic + orientation. leave rest as is (the blender plugin handels the rest)

4) Go to OSC Controller Tab (enable it). Remember the port number (It shouldn't have to be changed...but just incase).

Example of it tracking a person

This concludes the Delicode segment, leave it running as we move on to blender.

5) Open Blender.

6) Next we will be installing the plugin. First go File->User Preferences

   Then go to Addon tab and select Install from File

   Go to where you saved the plugin, select and hit install

Note: When ever you the need to use this addon, go to User Preferences->Addons->Animation. Select and hit Enable

6) Now the fun starts. Clear the scene. Remember that port I told you to remember? Well in the left tab (at Ni mate reciver) the port numbers must correlate. Also tick the Add R check box and select empty from the button list. With this we are good to move on.

...but first hit start and stand in front of Kinect. Kablam!!!^^ You are now tracking body movement

7) Though a tad glitchy you can record basic movement and just tweak the tracking jump out. With this you can then add a skeleton to the scene that track to these points in space giving you a, well, skeleton to work of.

A brilliant tutorial on skeleton rigging in blender: Link

8)From here on it's up to you what you want to do with this. I'm planning on using this for basic human motion for games and short animations, but even just messing around with it is still quite fun.

Still todo:

1. Fix ALL the driver clashes (there are still a few)
2. get 3D scanning up and running

Thanks for your time.

Stay tuned for future projects and mishaps.
C&C's are always welcome.

Any requests on future projects or details of just drop the question, I'll do my best to respond/consider them ^^.