Drifting Endlessly...

Just because you know where you are and where you're heading, does not instantly a success make.

So we're well into getting a prototype, demostrable AI, and a single/video completed so that we can head through the 'To Investment' door. But part of that is trying to raise interest in the project (via this very blog amongst other things) before we head through that door.

Its a weird place and at the last directors' meeting we agreed we've begun to drift.

I'm not sure whether knowing that this is the exact place where most projects of this nature fail is comforting or not :-). Commitment of all types: time, money, ownership/IP, is tested here.

This is the time to dig in and dig down for those reserves. Deadlines drift, interest wains, money is in short supply, and only the strongest survive.

So can we pull our socks up, take a deep breath in and commit to the next level (and there is always a next level) - watch this space!

"No ones going to take me alive, the time has come to make things right, you and I must fight for our rights, you and I must fight to survive" Muse - Knights of Cydonia

Story: Of Thunderstorms

Here's our second story installment.

This time developing the etherics again and also the introduction to the as yet unamed 'organisation' and its equipment/behaviour.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you drove through a really vicious thunderstorm?

Of Thunderstorms

Dave

Story: Of Nadeja

So heres our very first story:

Of Nadeja

Enjoy and comment!

Developing Story

Hi

Over the next few months we'll be publishing a few Off World short stories/novellas for your consumption.

The stories kill three birds with one stone for us.

1) We can use these formats to test out gaming ideas, mechanics, behaviours, and character developments, before comitting aritst and developer resource to work on them.

Its a good way to test the 'good idea at the time' principle as its a heuristic approach; if the story 'feels' right to everyone, and everything is sitting/behaving as expected, then we can go into the next round development, with some confidence.

2) it generates further usable/trans media IP

3) provides background for artists and developers

Dave

Of Off World AI

So I have finally got around to creating some screen shots that show the AI working in a test arena. The 100 black spheres (etherics) are swarming and targeting the player in green. The blue NPC is just currently wandering with no particular purpose, but that will change very shortly.

All the behaviours are controlled by behaviour trees and will now get the behaviours filled in. All the structures and decision making for the BTs have already been created for the AI controlled entities, but most are empty.

The shown textures are not representative of the final game,

but are there to provide some simple context.

The black spherical objects represent the 100 etherics (look of them is not what they will look like eventually) swarming and targeting the player (in green). Shot 1 shows a broken swarm, Shot 2 shows the rejoining of the swarm and then the last 2 show the etherics moving towards the target (player in green). Once we get something more representative, I will upload some video.

Collison avoidance is used by ray tracing to discover collisions that then get added to a AI entity queue so they get processed as and when time allows. Currently this is every tick but can be setup to do otherwise to preserve precious CPU cycles.

The plan now, as I said above, is to fill in all the behaviours for the AI.

Current thinking for the AI direction is:

• Investigate evolutionary BT creation for NPCs
• Update 2D AStar path planning and create a 3D version for the etherics
• See how neuro evolution can be included, if practical
• Hunting behaviour
• Fighting AI by threat analysis
• Others TBC!

Any questions, just ask, more than happy to share my thoughts, experiences etc.

Cheers

Matt

Artwork images

So here are some of the illustrations for the Etheric Swarm (the Bad Guys, or some of many actually!)... in their unmanifest form they are tendrilly, un-solid.  Our artist Stephen Crowe described them perfectly... "A roiling mass that sort of 'unfolds' into existence, and is constantly changing, but always has a shape of 'intent' - a kind of direction or purpose". 

As they manifest they solidify into their more human appearance.

Sketch of an Etheric in the manifesting process

The finished version

An Etheric in manifest form, about to do something nasty:) Imagine a large 'swarm' of these guys descending on you...

Stephen really captured the kind of 'nasty' we wanted, and we're excited about seeing more characters come to life.

48 Hour Film Competition: Necromance Soundtrack

This is one of the band's songs we used for the recent 48 film competition here in NZ.

It's a result of Margs and I sitting down and agreeing on Dflat minor as a key for some incidental sketches we were working on in late 2010, and the song Tantra came to life soon after (Drop DFlat tuning on gat and bass - oh yeah!). Enjoy!

We'll try and get the finished edit we used for the film up at some stage soon, as Margs put some awesome occasional riffs over the metal part!

Art Work

My turn to hold the talking stick or blogging stick or whatever!

We’re really excited about some visuals we’ve had created for the game. We engaged the services of illustrator and concept artist Stephen Crowe in Wellington NZ to produce them for us, and we couldn’t be happier with the result.

I’ll post some images in the next day or so. So exciting to see what we’ve been working on starting to come to life!

Of physics and AI

Have been working on getting the AI integrated with the Bullet Physics Engine. Finally I have managed to get it working as I want it to so I have a swarm of nasties moving around the stage without disappearing of the edges. Next step is to add buildings and make it look more like a proper stage rather than an open field :). So the swarming is all controlled through the AI, and physics engine is doing collision detection for the various obstacles. The step to add buildings will be very straight forward as they are created in exactly the same way as the stage boundaries. Essentially, the AI uses bullet to query for collisions and adds any collisions for a character to its collision queue. On the next tick, the character takes into account the queued collisions. This should allow the various parts to be separately threaded to make best use of available CPU resource - well that's the plan anyway, we'll see how it goes.

The bullet physics engine is reasonably easy to use with most of the concepts illustrated through demonstration projects. The rest of the documentation is reasonably brief but it does point you to the appropriate demo project. Once the concepts are understood, integration is pretty straightforward. I should add that I have no background in physics engines or previous experience so I have learnt this from the ground up.

Will add some shots, maybe video in the next few days.

What started it for me...

Back in December of 2009 I took some time off to record some songs and release a video on the Internet. I didn't realise at the time that I was starting a process that would lead me into a dream contract and eventually being part of a company making games and producing music.

The results of that time can be found at http://www.davewallacelive.com/ and isn't for the darkhearted. I'm a little musically schizophrenic, one part of me writing tragically terminal and melancholic love songs, the other producing industrial-Gothic-metal. Such is life.

But that release lead me on to an embryonic side project at Stickmen Studios, writing for a Gothic-horror game. From there I met up with Margaret and Matt and we formed Daywalkers.

Don't want to get mushy and teary-eyed on you all, but good things can happen when you follow your passion. Or for the realists out there, sometimes you get lucky when you have money to burn, no real idea what you're doing, and some really good friends and business partners.

Off World: Blog

Hi, this is the blog of Daywalker Productions' gaming and music project: Off World (working title obviously at this point in time).

Worth to note at this stage that we're working away on a prototype psychological thriller 3rd person game and associated incidental and rock music, for a STEAM release late this year or early next (2012). Long way to go, so lets see what happens from now until then.

At the moment there are three of us in Daywalkers, and although we all have a go at everything, primairly we cover:

Margaret: visual, story and music creative, guitarist and celloist extrodinare
Matt: artificial intelligence, tech guy, and part-time guitarist
Myself: story/game spec and music creative, project/business manager, and pianist/guitarist/vocalist

We also have some fantastic partners who cover game development, artwork, finances, legal representation, and production; which we're also fortunate enough to call friends. More on these guys over the next few months.

The idea is simple. Build a highly crafted indie game with related music and sell it; all the time blogging the progress.

To note finally; we all have day jobs!

Dave

First post

Woohoo, the first post of the Off World project.

Dave and Margaret are busy with the 48hr film event writing some cool music and I am busy writing more of the AI for the game trying to integrate with the Bullet physics engine - nearly there.