Economic Hit Men Paper Prototype

Progress has reached a higher level for our second Small Team project: Economic Hit Men.  Here are some snapshots (in action, thanks to Evan Bremer):

Action #1: Players testing out version 1 with some forceful team work

Action #2: Close up view of game pieces (player pieces)

Action #3: God view of version 1 with players in gameplay mode

Economic Hit Men Docuementation

After some hard thinking and planning, we've come to a straight point concept of our second Small Team project: Economic Hit Men.

Here it is: Economic Hit Men Game Concept Docuementation (updates will be added, if needed)

Here's the extensive Design Docuementation version: Economic Hit Men Design Docuement

EHM Goals/Task List

For our second Small Team project: Economic Hit Men, I've worked on an experimental digital version this evening and reached a HUGE step in progress:

- Fixed scoring system
- Implemented money loot objects; set price for each to 100
- Player collides with each money object, adds 100 each time


Additional tasks to work on:

- Kill other players; red squares triggered; giving option to kill other surrounding players
- Implementing a random number counter for each player movement (1 to 6 spaces)
- Implementing a vault loot object; two for version one

Project: Economic Hit Men

Based from the movie Dark Knight, Project: Economic Hit Men portrays the same bank heist scene.

Snaphot #1: In game progress how Project: EHM would look like

Snapshot #2: Level layout in the Unity 3D editor for Project: EHM.

Additonal information will be added ASAP.



Dark Knight Update

Here's a simple sketch how the paper prototype will look:  green squares represent money loot, brown squares represent bank vaults with extra loot, red squares give the option to kill other players, black squares represent regular grid movement.  One 6-sided die will be used for movement and for determining who gets killed (if it's set for six players).

Small Team Project #2: Dark Knight

Since Pickin' Pieces became a laughing stock and a complete failure on description, we're going with a back up plan: making an actual game from the first six minutes of the film "Dark Knight."  Our goal in this one, hopefully, is recreating the bank robbery scene more like a game.  Engine of choice is undecided right now, however we're leaning between Unity 3D and/or Flash.

Here's the lowdown:  Dark Knight, a 2.5D board-like game; consiting 3 to 6 players.  Each player has their own objectives being part of the bank heist, including collecting additional money loots in their paths.  The killing off another player option will be thought of, but not highly recommended at this point.  One really huge level is the concept, locations of money loot placed in throughout the level, camera placed in a bird's eye view.  Additional information will be added later.

Small Team Project # 2: Pickin' Pieces

It came down to a vote and look's like our second Small Team project will be "Pickin' Pieces."  That was the final project from the Small Team Game Doc course in Spring 2011 with Matt Board.  Here's the simple lowdown:

Pickin' Pieces, a Tetris style drag-n-drop style game involving colored cubes dragged into a game space; designed in Unity3D.

Our goal in Small Team for this semester is modifying Pickin' Pieces from single player to multiple player gameplay action.  The version Evan and myself made in Spring 2011 is fully functional.  Snapshots will be posted on this blog ASAP.

Courtroom Cahoots Completed!

Tuesday, 10/18/2011: Small Team project #1 Courtroom Cahoots is finally COMPLETE!!!!!  After a month of failed attempts, including several time constraints per week, our team made a huge success in this course.

Overall status progression: I did most of the hardwork (hard coding, object placement, sound placement, sequencial ordering, etc.).  Evan took care of design simple digital sketches, modding the paper prototype beforehand, assistant researcher helping me finding correct information with hard programming coding.  Tim became our official docuementation guy, will all of the paperwork.

Thanks to the Sound team, Flickr (for start image, photographer J. Stephen Conn) and additional help from the other Small Teams and members from Large Team.

Courtroom Cahoots Final Version

Updated Start Menu Screen

Updated Robbery Round Screen

Updated Robbery Round Results Screen

Updated Theft Round Screen

Updated Theft Round Result Screen

Updated Murder Round Screen

Updated Murder Round Result Screen

Updated Final Result Screen (Murder)

Updated Final Result Screen (Robbery)

Updated Final Result Screen (Theft)

*Additional updates: Implementing sound progression increased.  Implementing logic code is becoming a major time constraint and hassle.  Other than that, the game itself IS fully functional.

Courtroom Cahoots progression

Courtroom Cahoots digital version #1: God view of game setup in Unity3D

Courtroom Cahoots digital version #1: Close view of results and game start screens

Courtroom Cahoots digital version #1: Close view of round and lore screens

Paper prototype of Courtroom Cahoots: Cards as shown: Rat, Don't Rat, Guilty, Innocent

Paper prototype of Courtroom Cahoots: Gameplay in action/Ready for battle!

Courtroom Cahoots digital ver. II: Updated start screen in game (free royalty placement image)

Courtroom Cahoots digital ver. II: Updated round lore screen in game; implemented choice of Innocent/Guilty, Rat/Don't Rat

Courtroom Cahoots digital ver. II: Updated round result screen in game

Courtroom Cahoots digital ver. II: Round nine Innocent results screen

Courtroom Cahoots digital ver. II: Round three Guilty results screen

Courtroom Cahoots code for digital version in Unity3D

Courtroom Cahoots ver. II is officially functional!

Monday night, 10/10/2011:  With time spared and hard hours put in, version II is now officially fully functional.  Haven't added the scoring system, sounds and additional backgrounds (those will be worked on for packaged version, due next week).  Other than that, we've reached a high stepping stone.  Build is up and running!

Cahoots Version II Update (continued...)

Monday, 10/10/2011: Successfully have placed each screen as their own separate scenes in this particular linear order:

CCStart > ROneLore > ROneResult > RTwoLore > RTwoResult...continues through Ten rounds > FinalResult = game ends

Programming portion will take some time, but I have some kind of plan for that (including extra help, if needed).

Cahoots Version II Update/Progress

Friday, October 7:  Major progress has been resolved from the FLOW chart I developed yesterday.  The linear sequence based upon the Application.LevelLoad() method has improved better gameplay feel from a few experimental setups.  Here's the sequence so far:

Start Game (When both players became linked) > Round One screen (Continue Button clicked) > Round One Lor screen (Press Innocent or Guilty) > Round One Result screen (Displays Innocent/Guilty titles for both players; includes scores for both players)...process repeats itself up to 10 rounds > Final Result screen (Displays points earned from all rounds for both players, determines who wins/loses)


Will continue more experimental procedures tomorrow morning at 9am sharp.  Hoping things will improve alot quicker before Tuesday's presentation.

Courtroom Cahoots Version 1 ready for action!

Monday, 10/3/2011, 8:30am:  After a frustrating weekend of experiemental procedures understanding how switching cameras work in Unity 3D, finally found the issue and fixed it real quick.  Thanks to Douglas Barcelos providing the extra help and support from Unity Wiki; he created a useful script that worked out the best called "Multiple Cameras" script.  The procedure turned out to be the quickest with great results.  After applying that script into the main intro cam hovering over the start frame, I quickly dragged each camera object into its own object slot one by one.  After a few quick test runs, we have our team's version 1 project ready for action tomorrow afternoon for Small Team!  After tomorrow's demonstration of version 1, we'll work much harder for refurnishing version 2.  In no time, we'll have everything finalized by the 18th for sure!

Cahoots Camera Experiment Successful!

I experimented a simplier example related to our team project "Courtroom Cahoots" with switching/swapping multiple cameras.  Here's the script I used:

function Update () {
 if(Input.GetMouseButton(0)){
  Debug.Log("Using Camera One");
  camSwap(1);
 }
 if(Input.GetMouseButton(1)){
  Debug.Log("Using Camera Two");
  camSwap(2);
 }
 if(Input.GetMouseButton(2)){
  Debug.Log("Using Camera Three");
  camSwap(3);
 }
}

function camSwap(currentCam : int){
 var cameras = GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag("cam");

 for (var cams : GameObject in cameras){
  cams.GetComponent(Camera).enabled = false;
 }  

 var oneToUse : String = "Camera"+currentCam;
 gameObject.Find(oneToUse).GetComponent(Camera).enabled = true;
}

Only problem with this script, it can switch up to a max of three cameras assigned to separate keys or mouse buttons.  Can't go beyond three at a time.  In our project, we're using more than 20 cameras and having major issues accessing all of them to make our game "work."  Wish there was a simplier way to do.  I know I'm on the right track, but this is where everything's on a complete hault as of right now.