Street Scene: Photoshop crashing

So recently I've run into a slight problem. By slight I mean huge. I updated my drivers, as you do when there's a new update, and thought nothing else about it. When I next went to use Photoshop however, I experienced some unusual crashes. It started off when I tried to offset an image so that it would tile nicely, when just clicking offset crashed the program. So I restarted Photoshop, opened my image again, pressed offset, and it crashed. This happened once more before actually working.

Now that I had finally offset the image I wanted to edit it. Clicking the clone stamp tool crashed the program. It was very clear now that something was wrong so I headed in to university to ask my module leader what the issue could be. After explaining the situation he suggested it could be my GPU settings in Photoshop which when I got home and checked, I found out the latest updates had caused an error and would no longer allow my graphics card to interact with Photoshop.

I've tried to update the drivers and reset everything but so far there isn't any new developments. This means my only current solution is to do all of my texturing and artwork in the labs at my university, which isn't too bad an option considering the circumstances. The only other thing I can think of is completely uninstall then reinstall the program, which I'll try at some point soon.

Street Scene: Start of texturing

With all of the modelling pretty much sorted, it was about time to start texturing the scene. Like with the modelling, I wanted to start with the saloon as it's the focus point of my scene due to the ability to enter inside it. Being a western themed saloon I knew I was going to need a lot of wooden textures but they'd need to be different in shade,colour and appearance so everything didn't look the same and blend into one. Since I'm not a good artist in any sense of the word, to texture things I found images online, brought them into Photoshop and edited them enough so that they were like a different image that I could use.

Textured saloon

I used contrasting textures for different areas of the saloon to make sure nothing clashed. I found a nice light board texture for the walls and used a darker wood texture for the furniture. To balance them even further I used a 'medium' texture (brightness between the two others) for the floor which is easy on the eyes. For the bar, stairs and landing I tried to use a texture that falls between the darker furniture and light walls, just to differentiate between the 3 sections.

Street Scene: Audio & Story

For my game to be an actual game, I need the player to be told part of the story each time they trigger a point. This meant I needed to use Audacity for some voice and sound recording, which I was really looking forward too after how much I enjoyed doing the sound work in sessions. Before I could do any voice acting, I needed to come up with a story concept. My story is about a man who has lost everything and each story point is a memory. The character had a wife and 2 children, but lost all of them to accidents/illness. Following this, his farm is destroyed in a storm and he slips into depression. The ending is the player leaving town on a train from the train station.

 I broke the story and points down into 6 sections:
1) Characters wedding day
2) Loss of characters wife
3) Loss of characters daughter
4) Loss of characters son
5) Farm is destroyed
6) Depression takes over the man

Once I had the story concept I could write a small script for each story point and detail what background affects/noises I wanted to accompany the voice acting.

AA shooter: Turrets and particles

With Richard absent this week, I worked on my AA project with the time given. I had a great idea in mind for my two player objects. Player one would have control of a machine gun turret that would fire lots of bullets very quickly, that would be controlled by aiming with the mouse and pressing LMB to fire. Player 2 would have a slower firing but harder hitting rocket launcher that used the Xbox 360 controller, with the right stick aiming and RT firing.

This contrast in weapons means that players will need to co-ordinate themselves and work together in order to win the game and not let the generator be destroyed. The faster firing player 1 needs to worry less about accuracy as they're firing a huge amount of bullets, but also deal less damage, whilst the rocket launcher is slower so needs to be more accurate and packs a much bigger punch as result. 

Picture of turrets next to each other

Street Scene: Day/Night & prototyping

Using what I was taught this week, I added a day/night cycle into my street scene. My game involves the player triggering a series of story points, so I came up with the idea to change the time of day each time they made progress by getting one of the points. I created a script and added it to the light which, when a point is triggered, rotates the entire object slightly on a single axis for a few seconds.

Unfortunately it's a little difficult to tell that the sun is moving unless you focus on the shadows on the ground, so if it's possible, adding some form of colour affect to the light at different stages would make it a more effective mechanic.

Code activated each time a point is triggered

AA Shooting game: AI path-finding

For my game I'd like to have enemies that move up towards the player from cover to cover, before finally approaching the generator object and attacking it. In order to do this I need to use a navigation mesh and set points for the enemies to move between. I've created an array of points for the enemies to choose from, where they're limited to choosing from groups of four at a time. With the checkpoints set in rows of four, the enemies move from row to row advancing towards the players and generator.

rows of checkpoints

Unfortunately when all areas around the generator are occupied by enemies, even though I tell the next wave to wait until they're free, they try to occupy the spaces and cause a huge stack overload. Hence for now I've been forced to step back from the AI path-finding and had to stick with simply spawning them at set points around the players. I would like to play with this again when I have more time but for now, I have to give up on it.

Street Scene: Modelling the street & Mood Boards

With the buildings of my street scene in place, it was time to add some more detail to them. I was considering working on some of the smaller buildings first in order to fill the scene out quickly, but in the end thought that constructing the interior of my saloon would be a better idea. Each of the buildings in the street is designed to be looked at and admired by the saloon is a key focal point as it's the only building players can enter. So I made this my starting point and started planning out what would be in a Western saloon.

I wanted to have two floors so players would have even more to explore, so put in some stairs and a landing to start with. What to fill the actual floor space with took a little more planning, so after a short bit of research online and in games, I decided on having 3 main things: seating, a bar and a piano. I started by allocating the space for the bar and putting that in first, seeing as it would take up the most room. I followed on from the bar with tables and chairs in the main space of the room, leaving a wall free by the stairs for the piano.

When I was done with the ground floor, I planned out what could be done upstairs, with my conclusion being a single room that would tie in with the game aspect of the project.

Finished saloon interior modelling in 3DS Max

Finished saloon interior modelling in Unity