Finish!

Well we're all finished up! Archive was a breeze and the finalized game and documents are all wrapped up. It has been an incredible journey and a wild ride! I've had a ton of fun with these guys and the rest of the Angry Code Monkeys Studios and I bid them all bright futures!

Our studio has put up a website at http://angrycodemonkeys.com with our team specific site at http://youdiefirst.angrycodemonkeys.com. Some of the pages are still getting fixed up but some screen shots, info, and the download are all currently up. Be sure to check back there for more fun stuff coming soon!

Graduation tomorrow and then I'm hitting the road back to Michigan!

Yee-haw! What a ride!

Sean Hamstra
Project Lead

You Die First Gold!

Well here you are everyone. You can download our game: You Die First! from the link below.

It has been a wonderful 5 months and I could not have asked for a better team and game. So to everyone who gave their support, and to my other teammates I say thank you for everything.

Now just to find a Job :)

Download You Die First Here!

Anthony Lundquist
-Technology Lead

Goal!!

Well that is it! Moscow Lightning has just finished its last programming session and we now have a build ready to go Gold! We will have an installer up tomorrow, along with some new screen shots for everyone to enjoy :)


-Anthony Lundquist
Technology Lead

Beta Downloads

Here is a link to the Beta Builds, any feedback welcome!
Download Here!

Beta Complete

Hello Everyone,
Sean Laurence here, Asset Lead for the awesome powerhouse that is Moscow Lightning.

I am extremely happy to announce that our Beta version of You Die First is quite complete. In fact, you can even download, install, and play the beta version of the game today! Sean Hamstra has been kind enough to put the installer on his website for all to enjoy. Remember it is a beta version so there are a number of fixes that still need to be implemented. Just click on the title of this blog posting to find the installer. If you're a nice person you'll tell us all about the bugs and glitches you find.

It been a long journey so far. From having nothing but a fresh new team with only a vague idea of what kind of game they want, to a full blown impressive 3D game which displays all of our skills and capabilities. It's like a new pair of socks; You don't know what to do with them at first. They are so fresh and so clean, never worn and shiny. Then, suddenly they're run down and dirty but with all the experience needed to enjoy them for a long time to come.

Yet, this is not the end. We still have a ways to go. The Gold version is approaching, and there are still a ton of things to be completed by our June 18th Final Presentations. There are many animations to be had, and tons of sound issues to resolve. The scene (my pride and joy) has mostly been completed, however there are still some things that were left behind such as haystacks and doors (poor little objects). I also want to put many lights in as well. There are also plenty of memory issues for everyone to tackle for days and days. Ragdoll deaths are still something we hope for, but we're cutting it real close now.

All in all we've done a great job so far, and I can't wait to play the final game. Maybe in that version we can actually have credits that show our names so we know we worked on it. Because who wouldn't want to have their name on this game? It's fun, fast-paced, driven, and exciting. As fun is a hard thing to implement into a game, I believe we've done our job correctly since this is a fun game. Until then, hold tight and grab on because we're going to be taking Final Presentations by storm.

Sean Laurence Coughlin
Asset Lead

See you next time, space cowboy...

Alpha build complete

The alpha build of our game has been complete. We have received new place holder assets that will be equivalent to our future assets. Not much more tech has been added since our last milestone seeing as now we're all about polishing our game. We hope to get our assets for beta so that we may have our near, to fully, complete product. Stay tuned for more information on our awesome game.

Sebastian Lewicki
FX Lead

Feature Frag 2

Feature Frag 2 has now come and gone and our game keeps on improving. Most of the tech is almost done. The only major tech work we have left is a few shaders and cutscenes. Once that is done we can finally work on polishing and gameplay balancing. The game itself is coming along nicely and it'll only be a matter of time before we have a fully fleshed out game with everything we would have wanted and maybe even more. Stay tuned in the next two months to see how the game truly looks.



Sebastian Lewicki
FX Lead

Getting there

Two weeks into Feature Fragment 2 and everything is going great! We have finally started to get our assets for the game. We now have a temporary scene as well as some crates, barrels, and bottles. In addition to that our HUD now has Cards to represent your health instead of a green bar, and we also now have a cool main menu that uses bottles that you shoot to choose your options!

The Feature Fragment 2 milestone is next Tuesday. We will have pictures to show you everything at that time.


Until Then,

-Anthony Lundquist
Tech Lead

Feature Frag 1

Today we had another milestone: Feature Fragment 1. This was pretty much a mini milestone to make sure that the game is progressing. While a lot of the changes were under the hood, you can see a few changes on the hud and the screen. First of all, as you can see, there is an ammo indicator in the bottom right corner as well as a health bar on the top left. There is also the Duel Meter next to the ammo indicator. When the meter is red you can activate duel mode. In the game world you can see four colored spheres to the right. Each of those represent a different pickup (Shotgun/Rifle/Pistol ammo and Health). In the second picture you can see an enemy bandit running around (he can also shoot you if you get too close), but the main thing happening in the second is the Duel Mode. Whenever you click on the screen in duel mode a big reticule will zoom in on where you clicked (as you can see) and when you exit your character will shoot each place you clicked on.

Again we are very excited with our progress and our game should actually be looking like a western by the next milestone (instead of temperary kids in pajamas :P ). So stay awesome until our next update :)

-Anthony Lundquist
Tech Lead

Proof of Concept

Well Proof of Concept (PoC) has come and gone and all is well. For PoC we had to have the entire "core" of our game done which includes: Rendering, Animations, Camera, Character Movement, a working "gun", a Win/Loss condition, and a Scene. Sadly we did not finish animations, however everything else was completed. If you take a look at our picture you can see we have a character and a scene loading into the game (both temporary). Also those red barrels that you see in the picture are able to be shot and they react "realistically" to the gunfire, and when you shoot them enough a image will appear at the top of the screen saying you won! As you can tell this is still a rough outline of the game, but the core gameplay is there, even if it is a high tech version of kick the can at the moment :). The team is very excited to have all of this working at PoC though, and by the time we get to feature frag. 1 we should have even more of the gameplay fleshed out.

-Anthony Lundquist
Tech Lead

And Let the Game Begin!!

This is it folks we have finally started to program! All of our docs are (pretty much) done, so from here on out our focus will be on throwing our computers around in anger about some stupid bug, when all that you have to do is clean/rebuild the project. We should get some pictures of our proof of concept up within the week!

-Anthony Lundquist
Tech Lead

Docs Docs Docs

This month has been document after document it seems. Today we had our feasibility sit down with our EP, AD, and other GPP staff members. We went over our game feature breakdown, asset list, and most importantly our Gantt Chart. Our Gantt Chart lists every single task we can think of for each team member. We had to plan out our entire schedule for the next three and a half months. It's been a lot of work but the end is near, and then it's on to coding!

Our team and design have been flourishing and it's been an adventure so far. A week from Saturday we have our Proof of Concept presentation due, which we must display 100% of our core features up and running. Most teams will be required to have 50% finished, but Carlos our EP both believes in our skills and also wants us to always be a step ahead on our game. We have a lot of work to do in the next week but I know we can pull it off. Thats all for now. Be sure to check back soon with our PoC updates!

Sean Hamstra
Project Lead

Concept Art #1

Character Concept Art, courtesy of Derek Marunowki, the Art Director for "You Die First." Derek has said this is just his drawing style, but the final 3D assets will be realistic-looking. We probably won't have a bandit with that color blue, however, since it is too distracting from the other colors in our game.

Other than that, the development of our game is coming along. This month we'll be seeing some rapid action. We've got our team roles defined and have delegated certain tasks. Soon the tech documents will pop out of thin air and our schedule shall be defined.

We should be seeing more concept art from Derek soon enough!

Sean Laurence Coughlin
Asset Lead

The Lone Ranger

Well we have come to our first major change in You Die First. After hearing the advice and suggestions of our Executive Producer, Carlos, and Art Director, Derek, Moscow Lightning sat down and discussed the partner system in our game. After some deliberation, we've decided to cut the partner system in You Die First in an effort to appeal to the "Lone Badass Gunfighter" concept. We feel that this will result in a better story and game play overall. No longer will the player be held back, so to speak, by his partner sidekick, but rather will take his vengeance on The Chavez Outlaws all by himself. This will give the player a greater sense of power and responsibility and also play to the classic Western theme in an exciting way.

I'm really excited about where the game is heading and I can confidently say that it is going to rock!

Sean Hamstra
Project Lead
Moscow Lightning

I never want to live in Hollywood....

You know whats hard? Writing a screenplay, I do not envy the people who do it for a living. It almost makes me think about forgiving the people who wrote Matrix 2 and 3... nah...

We should be having some concept art and level layout up on the blog soon. Depending on when we get the concept art and when I feel like updating :)

-Anthony Lundquist

'Till Death do us Part

Not much has happened this weekend pertaining to our game, but we did (mostly) hammer out what happens when you or your partner dies. We had a long discussion on whether we should have a revive system where if one of the two characters die, the other can revive them some how or if we should have the player go back to a checkpoint if one of his two characters died. In the end we decided to go with the "If you die, you are dead" approach, but to balance it we are going to reduce damage dealt to the character you aren't currently controlling.

In addition we are reevaluating if we should have rag-doll deaths for our game. Our Executive Producer (EP) says that they would take too much work, therefore we are going to look heavily into the PhysX API and seeing if it is reasonable to implement it within 3 months.

The Polls Are In!

Well, I'm pleased to announce that Moscow Lightning will be creating "You Die First"! (still a working title) The producers decided this would be a better choice as there is simply a lot more we can do with it. I really think it is a great overall idea and we are all very excited to dive in! We've begun working on our alpha publishing document with things like the Dust Jacket, Level Description, Art Style and other various topics. It's time to hit the ground running, yippee ki yay!

-Sean H.

Pitches

Well we have our pitches in about an hour, wish us luck! Heres hoping we don't get Barbies awesome adventure.

-Anthony Lundquist

Pitches Continued

Hey guys, Sean Hamstra here.

Our second game idea is a 3rd Person Western Shooter. I'm a huge fan of Westerns and our team has come up with some great elements to the game that we're all pretty excited about. So here's the rundown...

"You Die First" (working title)

Story:
The main character is a sheriff in a classic Western town. His best friend was killed and wife was kidnapped by a large group of bandits that raided his town. The sheriff and his trusted deputy find out that the gang is held up in a nearby town. They have overtaken the entire town and destroyed any sort of law and order. The sheriff and deputy decide to take the town by storm in an effort to free the hostages and find the sheriff's wife.

Duel Mode:
The Duel Mode in this game is one of the key features that will help you along the way in defeating numerous enemies. We have a Duel indicator bar that slowly charges up over time and is boosted through killing enemies. Once the duel meter is full, it can be activated to enter the Duel Mode. While in this mode, everything in the world freezes and the camera zooms in a bit on the player producing a cinematic-type view. The player then has a few seconds to quickly click and target up to 6 locations on the screen. As soon as the time runs out, the game unfreezes and the character does a quick draw and almost instantaneously shoots each of the marked locations providing a truly awesome Western scene.

Enemies:
The enemies in the game will all essentially share the same AI system. This AI system will utilize "duck and cover" self preserving logic. We plan on having many objects that can be used for cover that both the player and the enemies can duck behind and pop up and shoot from.

Partner System:
We also plan to implement a partnering system in the game. Since the story is based on the Sheriff and his Deputy, it would be sweet to control both, right? Well we thought the same thing! We also wanted to give each character a unique weapon. So both the Sheriff and Deputy have their own six shooters, but also the Sheriff wields a rifle and the Deputy carries a shotgun. The rifle would be great for ranged and precise shooting while the shotgun will really pack a punch for close range combat. At any given time the player can control either character by simply toggling between them. When one character is active, the other will follow a similar AI to the enemies except he will keep in close proximity to the active player in an effort to help him out.

Health System:
Our health system is similar to a potion system as the player can hold a certain amount of health containers and use them at any time to restore some health. These "health containers" are actually, what else but whiskey bottles! I mean it is a Western, right?! To add a little extra to this system, if the player decides to use a few too many bottles of whiskey, a drunken state will occur which will result in some funny controls and/or camera.

That's a pretty good taste of what we have going for "You Die First." Be sure to check back soon as we'll be pitching both games tomorrow morning and will know by the end of the day which game our Producers wish to support.

-Sean Hamstra

Feb 8th and 9th

The team worked on finishing up our slides for the Dress Rehearsal on Tuesday and our Pitches on Wednesday.

We also hammered out a few features for both games:

Khepri's Tomb (FPS)
Fatigue system: instead of bullets we will be using a fatigue system for our ammo. As your character fires it's weapon, the fatigue bar will fill. Once the bar is full you can still shoot your gun, but it will drain your health.

Enemy Types:
We will have four different "basic" enemies. First is a little bug like enemy that will come from spawn generators throughout the level. the little buggers will keep coming from the generators in a attempt to attack you with their claws. Also when these guys die they will explode. Second we have the basic "pistol" enemy that will shoot at you from a medium distance. This enemy will also attempt to hide and run when it's health gets low. Next we have our shotgun enemy that will attempt to get close to you to deal max damage. If this guy is too far away from you he will attempt to charge you to get a close shot. Last we have our assault rifle enemy that has a long range weapon so he can stay farther back while shooting at you. Also if you attempt to get close to this enemy he will run away so that he can get some distance between you two.

Boss:
Lastly we have the big boss of the level. Our boss is Khepri, the Scarab god of the sun in the form of a... well, a giant scarab. This boss will be able to walk on the walls and the ceilings in addition to the ground. While on the ground the bug will attempt to charge you. If it hits it will deal massive damage, but if you manage to dodge it the bug will open its wings revealing it's fleshy innards allowing you to deal extra damage. While on the ceiling the bug god will release a bunch of the mini alien guys that will attempt to attack you, diverting your attention from the giant scarab.

Sean H. will be telling you about the western later

-Anthony Lundquist

First Week

To get everyone up to date on what we have done so far, here is what we have done so far this week:

First we had our groups chosen for us based upon the type of game we wanted to make. I got put in a team of six with a bunch of people I knew I could get along with.

Once all the groups were situated we all started to brainstorm two games that we would pitch the next week to our "studio bosses". They will then choose which of those two games we make.

The first of two games (so far) is a first person shooter set in Egypt. You are a tomb raider that gets trapped in a pyramid and knocked out by a mysterious figure. You wake up later on in a chamber with a weird biological weapon that uses your strength as its power source. This weapon feeds off of you and the enemies it kills to change and evolve. You must use this weapon to escape the pyramid while fighting off the mysterious creatures that put this thing on you in the first place.

The other of the two games (so far) is a third person shooter set in the wild west. You play as two gunmen that must rescue a town from a bunch of rowdy bandits. You can switch between the two gunmen which each have their strengths and weaknesses. A major feature of the game will be a "Quick Draw Mode" where once activated the game temporarily freezes and you are allowed to place targets on up to six different targets, once time is up your gunman will shoot wherever you targeted.

That is the basis of our two games currently, more will be posted about them as we hammer out the details

-Anthony Lundquist

This is a Blog

I plan to use this blog to keep everyone (who wants to know) up to date with how the game development is going for my final project. I plan to update at least once a week, hopefully more often than that.

-Anthony Lundquist