Animation Progress #1

I've made some good progress on my final project. I've got one round of rock, paper, scissors set up, so the rest should be easy from there. The only problem is sometimes I forget to set a key before rotating a hand or fingers, which causes them to be rotated in previous frames. There's so much minute movement going on that it's really easy to get lost in. After I finish up the rough animation for Monday, I'm going to add in a static background image for some flavor. Maybe a park or playground scene. I added a texture to one man to help differentiate them. This is what it looks like so far:

Dev Blog Entry #6 - Networking Questions

Wrapping my head around the whole idea of networks, servers, and clients has been pretty tough for me. I understand peer-to-peer connections, where the users just send the data back and forth. I also understand the concept of a server on a theoretical level, where both users are 'clients' and send data to a server that then pushes only the required data back to the clients. I also get that it's smart to only send absolutely required data back and forth, since the more data you have to parse the more likely it is there will be unclean data.

I just don't really understand it on a practical level. I'm having trouble forming my thoughts into actual questions, but putting the whole thing together seems to be eluding. I think I just need to read up a lot more on servers and how everything works and really seem some code in action that can break everything down.

For my game, it wouldn't be hard to scale it for more players. I would just have to change the variable that restricts the maximum number of players to a higher number. That many players would have trouble fitting on the screen, but they would be there. The game itself would be unplayable, but the server can already theoretically handle that many players.

Dev Blog Entry #5 - Making Changes

I plan on making three major changes to my local multiplayer game. They are:

1. Add support for 3 or 4 players
2. Add support for turning your ship to allow 360-degree shooting
3. Force bullets to curve toward the middle of the black hole to discourage "trapping"

Adding support for more players is incredibly simple. I need to simply make two more player objects, and add in the built-in logic for collisions that the other players already contain. I'll also need to make two more "rooms" - Gamemaker's levels, one for three players and one for four. Then on the main startup room I'll need to add some logic for allowing players to choose if they want a 2, 3, or 4-player game. It's as simple as the user pressing the corresponding number key. Controller support for the two additional players is easy as well. When each player is created, it is assigned a 'pad_num' variable. Player 1 is 0, player 2 is 1, and so on. Players 3 and 4 will just need to be assigned that variable.

The logic for turning the ship is slightly more complicated. I already have the logic written for turning with the right analog stick, but the sticks are too loose for it to work correctly. I'll have to look into using the bumper buttons, and having each press turn the ship 90 degrees instead of having true free movement. I'll have to look into this more.

The third change is making bullets have a weight and angle to them. This will be achieve by using the built-in gravity and gravity_direction functions in GameMaker. I'll add the gravity to the bullets to make them gravitate towards the middle of the screen.

Game #3 Final Update

The last thing I added into my game was a score tracker to make it more of a game. There's still no real ending, but players can now keep track of score and make their own rule. They can also spawn multiple balls with the S key (but I don't recommend that because too many on screen at once will slow the game down). The score tracking works pretty well, but the game occasionally lags for one player which causes the scores to sometimes not match up. Here's what the game looks like with two players and the score:

I also added in a few sounds. The general background cheer noise comes from SoundBible: http://soundbible.com/1881-Sports-Crowd.html and the "GOOOOOL" noise comes from this Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSnWOWEXyVg

Final Project Plans

I plan on polishing my second game, the local multiplayer one, for the final project. I want to add in support for 3 and 4 players. I also want to add in the ability to turn your ship to allow attacking in 360 degrees. The added number of players will make the game more hectic and fun. I'm also going to add some new functionality to the "black hole" I used in the two player game. I'm going to try and make the bullets curve around the black hole to add some strategy and make it less easy for the players to "trap" one another. I'm going to add some more polish and tighten up the delay on being able to shoot so that players can't fire bullets so quickly.

Game #3 Update 4

I've continued working on my game, changing the art a bit and I managed to get the ball synced up on both clients, so I've got a fully playable game. The art is primitive, but I think it's cute and kind of endearing. All I need to do now is add in some sound effects and some logic for when a player scores. Maybe some sort of variable to keep track of goals. I don't really have a plan for ending the game, instead letting players end when they choose. Here's what the game looks like right now with one player in the game.

Game #3 Update 3

I've changed my game into a sort of soccer game, where the players must bounce a ball into the opposing player's goal. I have the networking stuff set up, and the player instances are synced. All I need to do now is set up the logic for synchronizing the ball instance, the logic for when a player wins, and I need to clean up the art a bit.

Game #3 Update 2

I've finally figured out all the networking issues with Gamemaker, and have an internet server running. I'm using a tool called GameMaker Server, which is really just a server a guy provides free to use, along with some built-in networking functions, like accounts, high scores, and achievements.

I don't really have much of a 'game' at this point, everybody can connect and their sprite is a random color, so players don't get confused. I'm still thinking of exactly what kind of game I'd like to make. I was planning on just making a 2 player capture the flag, and I think I'm still going to do that.

More updates to come as I continue working.

Animation Final Storyboard

This is the storyboard for my Animation final project:

It's absolutely terrible, so I'll write out the steps in text form.

1. At the start, the two men will face each other and assume the starting Rock, Paper, Scissors position.
2. In the first match, the left man will play paper while the right plays scissors. 
3. In the second match, left will play scissors while right plays paper
4. In the final match, left will play paper while right plays rock, leading to a win for the left man
5. After winning, the left man will make a fist pump wile the right man will jump up and down angrily.

I've already started building my animation, but I'm going to wait until I have a bit more done to post an update.

Animation Final Project Concept

For my final project Im going to use the Lowman rig and have two of them play a game of rock, paper, scissors. They will play, and the camera will focus in on the hands to really show the animation, and then after the game the camera will zoom out. The winner will do a fist pump type motion, and the loser will hop up and down angrily.

Storyboard and more updates soon.

Game #3 Update and Networking

After initially struggling to wrap my head around networking in Gamemaker, I eventually found a tool that helps do most of the networking for you. It's called GMNet Engine and it works by having the master game server running on a platform like Digital Ocean. The documentation for the tool was pretty extensive and I worked through the tutorial pretty quickly to get it up and running. The only thing I need is the Digital Ocean server, or to see if I can run a Java server on my A Small Orange hosting.

A little clarification of my game concept too. It's capture the flag type game where players have to retrieve an item from the middle of the screen and return it to their base. There will be obstacles and hazards to make retrieving the item a bit less trivial, and players will have a special attack that forces the opposing player to drop the ball.

More updates to come.

Game #3 Concept

For my third game I’m thinking of using Gamemaker again. I’m thinking of making a 2-player game where both players start at opposite sides of the screen and have to retrieve a ball that sits in the middle of the screen, and then take it back to their home ‘base’. The first player to win 3 games will win the match, and each of the levels will have different features that the players will have to navigate around. Going along with the theme of ‘animal energy’, I’m thinking of making the players be animals, and then each player will get a certain number of special attacks that will make the opposing player drop the ball. For example, the lion will roar, causing the ball to drop and the other player to be pushed backwards. I think having a system like this will make the game more fun and add some strategy.

Since I’m using Gamemaker, all of my network stuff will have to be through Gamemaker as well. I’ve never done anything with networking and Gamemaker before, so I’m not sure exactly how it should. They have lots of documentation and tutorials, so I’m definitely going to look into things like these blog posts (https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/6), (http://help.yoyogames.com/hc/en-us/articles/216754698-Networking-Overview), the documentation -(https://docs.yoyogames.com/source/dadiospice/002_reference/networking/index.html) , tutorial videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbUsHVak_yA), and things like the GMnet Engine (https://gmnet-engine.org/engine/). 

Lowman Animation

Our assignment for this week is to make an animation with Lowman or another rig. I decided to use Lowman, and I made him jump. I just used keyframes and the various controls on his hands and feet to manipulate them how I wanted. The video of the animation is below:

Animation Examples

This weeks assignment was to make a couple of animations using a few different methods. The first animation I made used motion paths. Instead of making the curve and then assigning the shape to it, I move the shape around myself and used the Set Motion Path Key tool to set the specific keys I wanted. This is the result:

The second animation I made used regular keyframes. I made the simple animation then used the "Flat Tangents" tool in the graph editor to smooth it out a bit. This is the result: