Interesting NEWS! My Portfolio is done, and more!

Portfolio: anselmo.gd

Blog: blog.anselmo.gd

After a long, long time without any updates in here – with exception for my twitter right there on the right side -, I have some great news to tell you!

I’ve grown professionally, got into the game industry and…

I finally built MY online PORTFOLIO! hell YEAH!

And, with that, I’m moving this blog to that domain, hoping to have more frequent updates.

Check them out!

I’ll tell more in my new blog.

I can’t wait to receive your feedback right there!

I’ll be deactivating this blog. So, no more updates at this place. Never.

Meet me there, thanks!

One Chance: Simple game, complex choices

This game made me think.

The present article is a review I wrote while playing the game One Chance. I talk about my experience and how it affects the gameplay.

(beware, spoiler Alert!)

I have found the cure. Cancer is now cured. I discovered a cure that kills cancer cells, and this is great. The only thing that bothers me is that a message tells me that in six days, all living cells will be dead. Strange.

This is a game about choices. A simple game, but meaningful. You control the scientist John Pilgrim. You have a wife, a kid and a job (that’s where you found the cure). Your goal is to move right (->) with the arrows, listening to people – or sometimes just walking through them while they behold you – going through new screens/ environments, interacting with elements. The game consists of six days. At the start of each day, you start in your bedroom, moving to the right to reach the hallway, where you can go to your daughter’s bedroom and the bathroom, reaching then the exit. Outside, you often see the daily newspaper with the latest news. Some good, some bad. You car is right besides. Get in to go to work. It’s interesting how the player cannot go back (going left) sometimes. This maybe has to do with some decisions we take in our lives.

One intelligent thing this game does is: you canNOT replay it. This is why the game is called One Chance, right? This really simple game design decision forces players to stop and give time for themselves to think deeply in each decision they will take, making them all even more meaningful. Smart!

The wife

Each new day is presented slightly in a different way: you find your wife and daughter on a different place, doing different things from the previous day. The NPCs may or may not be where they were before, and their actions when seeing you would change. As day passes, the mood is nicely translated through the colors, which gets colder and lifeless tones, as also by the number of apples on the apple trees, decreasing in number day by day. An interesting point here is with the main character’s outfit. You control someone who appears to be really respected, with a great reputation (you discovered the cure to cancer, right?): you were featured on the newspaper, and you are always wearing your white coat.

On the second day, I try to get in my lab but it’s locked – maybe it’s because of the last discovery? The thing we thought was saving us from cancer will now kill every form of life? I then walk to the roof, and find a fellow doctor who can’t take the pressure and jumps. Suicide.

After the fourth day, Pilgrim – the main character – is not wearing any more his doctor outfit, like if he had lost his compromises, and you see his wife lying on the bed asking him if it’s really necessary to go to work today.

The work

I think: What should I do? Should I leave my wife? Maybe she’s right…?

Then, I leave the room. What do I see? My kid. My little sweet daughter that on the previous day, was inside her bedroom asking whether she had to go to school. And now, where is she? She is in front of me, on hallway – on my way to go to work – sitting besides her friendly teddy bear. This is sweet.

I think, with my heart: What now? I have my wife. I have my daughter. Oh… what do I do? I know that in four days, all living cells on Earth will be destroyed. What do I do then? Should I spend the last few days of my life really close to my family – what matters a lot for me -, enjoying the last minutes we have to stay together alive, or should I force, push myself to work to – at least – try to find the cure?

I know at this point that there is a chance for the cure to be found from me, as I am that almighty doctor who had found the cancer cure: a gas cure which would kill the cancer cells. Unfortunately, on the next day we read the newspaper to learn that cure was more destructive than I and the other doctors had thought, even after running a thousand tests. What a mess. What now? Everything is now so… deep.

I go outside. I go outside because, even with all the love a man can feel for his family, and the deep wish to stay close to them feeling their really meaningful human warmth, I will die in four days. This is sad, indeed. So, I think:

I will die in four days anyway. Of course, there is my family. And it is for this exact reason that I will go to work today, because this may be the last and only chance for the human race – and all living cells -, especially my family, to survive. If I unfortunately fail, at least this would be the best thing I could have done to them. I may be the hope.

Should I go back to home, or work for the cure?

To tell the truth, this has something to do with my real personality (I’m talking about myself [Anselmo] right now). I hate when something may go wrong/ is going wrong and there is a chance for someone to try something to fix that, and simply no one seems to care. Nobody tries, at least giving a try to succeed. How can one succeed without trying properly? I try.

That’s why I told doc. Pilgrim to go to work.

You see? I’m now spending more time writing about One Chance than actually playing it (the game is actually running in another window), and look how much this already made me think. This is something I love about this great experiences games can offer to us. I make the decisions here. This is decision-making. It’s me who chooses to go to work, stay home and etc. I really feel the experience of this game. This way, the designers had succeeded to transfer such an interesting emotion through this really simple game.

Back to work – really.

The bedroom. I don't use my white coat anymore.

I was even offered a seductive offer: to enjoy the last day on Earth with a women of my work. I reject in one shot. I really have to work.

Should I get crazy and skip work with this woman?

I get home at night. Oh. My. There is… blood! Coming from my bathroom! I am worried. No. That can’t be possible…!

Where is my wife?! Oh man, oh god, oh man...!

The music even stops. The game is mute now. I agree when someone says the sound design is part of the game design’s interface. It really is an effective way to connect the game to the player’s heart. Silence.

With such a game, I find strange how my daughter can’t suspect anything after seeing the bath-tub full of blood. C’ mon…! That’s shocking!

Daughter, close your eyes!

Later, on my last but one day alive, I have to choose: should I take my daughter to the park, or take her to my work, where I can experiment with a new cure?

What should I choose for the best of my daughter and me?

I feel regret. Molly sees corpses. Now, after working without success, this day is the last one I’m alive.

I’m convinced that Pilgrim is moving a bit slower. Is it a psychological effect I’m having because of the experience, or this is really happening? Anyway, it seems right for the context.

After working for the last time, Pilgrim sits in his office and closes his eyes.

I can’t to anything else but stand looking at this scene:

The last day at work and everything...?

Am I dead? Is it over? Where is the cure? I could swear I was going to find the cure! I hope this is a bug. The experience was fun.

One Chance: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/555181

Whiteboxing in Unity

After the Level Design is done, how would its whiteboxing be made?

Whiteboxing: it is the block-out of the level, constructing its basic geometric structure. It allows to quickly test in-game what the player sees, his path, the level flow and verify its dimensions, scale and overall proportions…

Throughout this video (which is the first part of a series of four videos), I give some tips and talk about how you can whitebox your level, after the Level Design has been done. To build this entire level I just used 2 types of 3D models: a floor, and a wall (both being planes).

I recorded the videos aiming to show to my team, so it is spoken in our native language.

Fear not! Although the videos are narrated in portuguese-BR, you can still learn the process from watching it!

Fell free to comment here ;]

 

 

 

3D Max to Unity, Unit Calibration tutorial

This semester, I’m involved in a new project from my graduation, using Unity 3D.

After designing some levels – taking proper advantage of the game design assets – it was time to test how I would approach the assets placement, placing modular assets right next to each another through the helpful “snap to grid” (translating objects that’d “jump” to the 3D grid, being a safe way to place stuff).

Unity 3 came with lots of improvements, but we are still using the 2.6.1 version, which is great yet. One of those features was the vertex snapping, which greatly helps to build entire environments and levels in a smart and quick way.

I decided to record this video to help those that are wondering how they can build environments in a professional way, avoiding errors and leaks resulting from bad placements. Also, it’s one way to contribute with the great community that’ve already helped me a lot.

This video shows how to easily calibrate your unit settings in 3D Max to safely work with your assets in the game engine.
This way, if you build a 1 meter high wall in 3D max, that wall will be 1 meter high in Unity.

Enjoy!

Gameplay extract, or How to look at the world in a different way

Look around you. What do you see?
There’s a big chance to be potential game elements.

This article came as an inspiration after reading a section of the book “Game Design Workshop”, by Tracy Fullerton, where she said she tells her students to look at their desk and create a game with only what is present.

In this post, I’ll try to explain a bit about my personal process of abstraction and extraction of properties from trivial objects and elements. By this, I can have a brief vision in my mind of their capabilities and possible usages in a game design. Combining and testing these elements in interesting ways, I can come up with fun.

I’ll try to show this process using something we ALL see everyday (or at least you should!), and to tell the truth, is being useful to me. </hint>

Clouds

Inspiring cloudscape

Just by looking at clouds, it’s simple to catch some of their properties:

Size

Does it have a fixed size? Is it a tree that starts really small as a seed and becomes enormous, like in Amazon and Africa? Or is it a door, that has a standard measure?

Clouds are ever-changing natural elements with different and dynamic sizes and “shapes”.

In addition to the “external world relation”, the size is influenced by how it is “structured”.

[different and dynamic sizes]

Structure

What is it made of? Is it made of water, like a wave; or is it made of goo? This section is quite useful for physics usages.

Clouds can be read as a (proportionally) massive environment filled with billions of water and frozen crystals (droplet). As those crystals start to accumulate in the sky over and over, they become so dense that we can see the result, a cloud, with a naked eye.

You can’t grab and hold a cloud with your hand. It’s not concrete, it’s a gas.

[made of billions of droplets, are like a gas]

External World Relation

Does this element affect in some how anything else in the Universe? Is it affected by external sources? Can it affect itself?

The wind has a key function here. As the wind blows and translate the clouds, the massive amount of droplets that they are made of are affected, affecting the cloud as one.

Other clouds, in the gigantic jungle that the sky is, are another external world relative (I need a better name for this!). When clouds collide, if we look deeper, what really is colliding are those lovely droplets. That’s how the rain and other kinds of precipitation starts, and that’s why in a rainy sky, it seems to be just a single massive and dark cloud above our heads.

It affects the climate (so clever!).

[affected by wind and other clouds, besides affecting the climate]

Shape

Is it organic like a dune? Is it inorganic like a game console? Is it amorphous?

Shape it shape it shape it!

As with the size, the shape is dynamic and differs from cloud to cloud.

If you are a meteorologist, you may know a lot more; but doing some research in the web, I learned that the top and base of the clouds are important.

The depth of the cloud (determining its top) is determined by the local convection. The lower the cloud base is, the higher is the rate of thermal radiation emitted in the exchange between the cloud and the land (or sea), affecting the environment.

As we see, we could play with the ambient convection and possibly thermal radiation to bring up interesting mechanics. The player doesn’t need to know that “oh my god, this game has local convection and thermal stuff…!”, but for sure they can remain silent below the user interface and affect the game itselft.

[organic natural elements with environmental relevant tops and bases]

Width and Length

These particular properties impact the area of effect of the precipitation, but surely the wind affects a lot.

[the width and length affect the area of effect of the precipitation created]

Weight

How much does it weight? Is it light like a helium balloon, or heavy as a tank? Are we talking about something that has no weight at all?

Clouds doesn’t weigh. What weigh inside them are the droplets, that after getting heavy, fall in the form of precipitation.

[create precipitation after their droplets become heavy]

Height

Is it tall like a skyscraper? Is is low but stay in a certain height above the ground?

Clouds can be formed in different altitudes.

A really low cloud, for example, is known as fog.

[are formed in different altitudes]

Material

Does it bounce like a tennis ball? Or slide like ice? Can it refract? Reflect? Is it elastic?

Clouds are great light reflectors, absorbers and thermal radiation exchangers.

[affect the light in many ways]

Light scattering

Resistence

‘This element is as resistant as steel, right? No, it’s like a paper bread bag!’

In this example, this section doesn’t seem to help much. But hey, as clouds are full of droplets, a big “vacuum cleaner-thing” would mess things up.

Color

…color?

Cloud colors are generally white, but sometimes are affected by the environment. If you are looking to a sunset, you generally see orange, red and pink clouds.

The cloud base is sometimes grey because of its light scattering feature.

When light scattering, if there are a lot of ice droplets within a cloud, it will receive a green tint. If it is scattering by rain-sized droplets, the color will be blue.

[the cloud color tells what's happening inside it]

Colored clouds

Special Quality

What’s its special feature?

Clouds are used to hide UFOs…!

Clouds are really special for their ability to impact the climate system (another great possible use in the game design).

[impact the climate system]

Putting all those brief sentences together, we have: “(Clouds have) different and dynamic sizes; (are) made of billions of droplets, are like a gas; (and are) affected by wind and other clouds, besides affecting the climate. (Clouds are) organic natural elements with environmental relevant tops and bases; (they) create precipitation after their droplets become heavy; (and) are formed in different altitudes. (Clouds also) affect the light in many ways; the width and length affect the area of effect of the precipitation created. The cloud color tells what’s happening inside it; (and clouds) impact the climate system”.

This was just an example of how you can extract important features from common objects, and of course you can (and should) add more properties to analyse your desired gameplay element.

Fell free to relax watching this time lapse video: