Was this the one?

I remembered what Jon told me about a Namco game that was actually a first person fighting, so I started to research it and this is what came up. I found a game named Breackdown, for xbox, which is a first person fighting\make people puke game like he said.

I can actually see now, what J was concerned about, and I agree with him when he said that was a good idea try not to make my player puke all over the screen. I had already thought about that, and that's why my lock on system will always have the enemy face as center, trying to minimize the "I'm on a boat" effect. 

The next episode

What I'm gonna check now? What's the next step? What s gonna be in the next episode?
In order to have a working example for my pitch, in which (at least my plan is to) I will have few punch and I will be able to brake a fractural mesh these are the steps I have to follow.
Find out the script for the Lock-on function, which I have pretty much already figure out (I hope), thanks to  get location script into a state, and set the 3 different variables (XYZ axes) and set them in the in-cam. Next step are sockets, with which Ill be able to actually have the animation of the punch, and I should be able to add to the the damage. I ll see how it goes, but now I'm kinda busy with the dissertation proposal and the debate, after the 1 of November, Ill be all over this script.

Size matter...

Like last time I'm gonna talk about my Post-Process for the black outline. Last time I've posted about the one I'm not longer using, because of its low versatility. Today I'm gonna post The shader I ve done (tutorial that I cannot remember) and that works a lot better (in my opinion). This is the shader

Thanks to this I'm able to achieve two different thickness, one is for the closer edges, the other one is for the farer. This is the result I can achieve with this particular shared, and the different iteration I can have just changing 2 constant.

Here there are 4 different version of the game with the post process on with different settings. It is very fast to change and to actually see  the difference directly on the game world. The one I'm more oriented to is the 3rd example because it actually make the player realize there is this black outline, but is not too thick and it does not look too overwhelming. 

Shaders

At start I was thinking on implementing in my game a shaders able to create a graphic novel style. After a while, even if I have achieved, I realized that it wasn't what I really wanted my game to look like. But, on the top of that, I really liked the black outline which I was able to create on all the hard edges. Of course it took me long time to make it working properly. It is of course a post-process.

The first attempt took me long to achieve, it did create the effect I wanted to, but not in the way I was looking for. (http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitGemsSobelEdgeDetection.html)

It was tricky and a lot heavier than the one I have achieved now, which is with a smaller number of node, and actually give me the ability to select the thickness of the closest and the farer edges. (I don't have a picture yet)

Also, the first method, the "Sobel Edge Detection"  give me few error, like counting some planes, as a series of edges, making them totally black. This new one, is working good, and it has not given me any problem yet.

HUD is for losers!!

Naa, is not for losers but is not for me. What I want to make clear to the people that are reading this blog is one thing, what I'm trying to achieve is not a super-realistic graphic, but a clean graphic with no HUD at all, using other way to indicate to the player what s happening to his character.
How I'm gonna achieve this? Post-Process is the answer.
My plan is to make active different post process depending on the level of life and stamina of the pawn.

Post-Process activated by the healt\stamina of the pawn left
	Healt Based
		Pawn.Healt < 60%				Darker Corner
		Pawn.Healt < 30%				Desaturation
		Pawn.Healt < 20%				Blood on the screen
	Stamina Based
		Pawn.Stamina < 60%				Vertical oscilltation
		Pawn.Stamina < 20%				Blur, Vertical oscillation, Deep Breathing

This is the basic idea, of course I dunno the complete script for the moment, but I'm getting to it. Only one thing make me wonder if it will work. Will, all those post process effect, slow down my game, to heavy to be run smoothly?
I also seen that UDK implemented, in their last releases, they have implemented an oscillation of the screen, like if the player was actually breathing (which is really cool).

Location location location.... It's all about location

First thing first, when I started to look for what kinda game I should have done for my 3rd year the first thing I looked into where the mechanics. Once I got those, I start to search for a plausible place where all those fight could actually happen. First I tough to use a school as environment, which would have been really cool for different reason, but there was a major problem. the problem was the fact that people, leave the school at one point of the day, and this would have meant that I should have modeled an outside world, an just for few scene, it wasn't worth it. Then, a massive epiphany occur to me. Jail. A really cool environment, which would actually explain why so much violence was going on. I started so to research into the subject, and I discovered there are 3 different generation of prisons.

1st generation its basically hell on hearth, it's the oldest kind of prison, I would never recommend it to no-one (I would not recommend jail time at all to be honest).

2nd generation are the ones we are use to see in movies, the one where there is the massive room with different cell for generally 2 people or more. This is the kinda prison I m gonna use.

There is finally the 3rd generation, which is basically a huge dorm room, which I m not interested in. Even if apparently it actually help the prisoners a lot more than the others 2 generations. I have few sketch and ideas, but I don't have a scanner, so nothing for the moment.

Speed is nothing without control

In order to make my game playable in the way I want, I ll be needing to use an Xbox360 controller. I need that in order to achieve the fast response from the player to what actually happen in the game world.
I was already able to connect to the xbox controller a "sprint" button, unfortunately I had to delete that particular script because the sprint function I had created didn't work with the new stamina system I had made. I also already mapped the command (I based it on a configuration available on fight night), in such a way to make it really fast during the combats.

Normal Status
A	Jump
B	Crouch
RS	Run
LT	Lock-on
X	Action
Fight Mode
X	Jab
Y	Straight
B	Right Hook
A	Left Hook
RT	Guard
LB	Grab
RB	Spit\Distraction
X+A	Left Uppercut
Y+B	Left Uppercut
LT	Modifier
A	Dodge
B	Right Kick
X	Left Kick
Y	Headbutt

This is just a work in progress, once the script will work I ll try and see if any of the command need a change.


 

Examples of what I'm actually trying to do

This is an example of what I'm trying to achieve, but, at the end of the day, what I'm trying to do is to unify the strong point of both of these gameplays, creating a fast combat with a particular lock on system, that would actually represent (thats the main idea) how it looks during a real fight.

In this first video, there is the first person fighting system, which was available only on the PS3 version of Fight Night Round 3. What I would like to achieve is the particular lock on of this system and I would also want to achieve the speed of this game, which would keep the player constantly "on his feet". 

The second video its a fist-fight from Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Even tought, this game does not have the particular "lock on system", it actually has a really good fighting system, slower than the one I'm thinking on creating. 

Another of my main goals, is to create an invisible HUD. What I mean by this is, the way the player see, will change basing on how much life, stamina, the player has. This is achieavable thanks to script and post processes.

First of a loooooong series.....of posts

This is the blog dedicated to my final year project. For this project my intent is to create a first person fighting game, based on a stamina system, the main character will be able to level up and increase stamina, health, defense and strength. It will also give ability point to let the player learn new techniques (or at least this is my intent). During the summer I increased my knowledge on script, and even is not my strong point yet, I have improved lots. On the graphic department, I want the game to be rapresentative of the reality, but not realistic. During the summer I was also able to create a shader (post-process effect) to create black outline around the edges of the objects. My objective was at first, to achieve a "Graphic Novel" style, but I realize that it wouldn't fell right. I decided so to keep the black outline, but to reduce it's effect to the minimum. In order to justify the fights (and their brawler style) I had to think to a particular location that could actually sound legit. My second objective was to create an environment easy to control, not an open space, which could result really hard to create and to control, also really time consuming. At the end then, I opted to go on the dark side of the humanity, so I decided to go for a prison as environment. Easy to control, close ambient, where actually the continuos fighting would make sense. It would also be possible to create a series of mission, in order to avoid to be repetitive in the game play. This decision, it actually open an entire world of different possibilities when it comes to story, game play, and sick graphics!  So here start my journey to get my degree trough my last year of uni. Hopefully it wont sucks big time!

Clarification needed to be done

Almost all the scripts I'm gonna use are just a modified version of tutorial, or other scripts I ve found on the internet, they generally are the development of different bunch of script found on the internet, putted together for my purpose, and modified in order to achieve my mechanics!