Concept Art and Futuristic Pyramid [WIP]

Pyramid is for level design, second one is for level design in futuristic egypt

Rock Painting Tutorial

I found this fairly simple rock tutorial that I took a little further in order to create a full on rock scene. It's amazing how a couple of simple tips can improve your digital painting. Of course I also, incorporated some of my own knowledge. I started this piece following the tutorial (different reference image) and to the end I painted underneath the overlayed image. Then I flattened the image and went over it in one layer. Finally, I timed myself to 30 minutes.

and here is the tutorial I used:
Link

Egyptian Statue Progress [WIP] pt.3

Another day on my final stages of the statue. Seems like an endless wave of things that I want to fix, like the left arm's bicept right now, seems kind of big. Today I combined some objects to occupy the same UV space/ optimized UV space. Fixed the normal map and gave it some more detail. Also, gave the mantle the same texture as the skirt. Got the eyes glowing a bit and went in and finalized the sculpt texture and gave the statue some occlusion mapping.

Work has now begun on the pyramid (concepting for now)

Egyptian Statue Progress [WIP] pt.2

I finally had time to pick this baby back up to finish up after putting this to the side to work on my modular kit. Here's some progress on it. Fixed some more proportion issues, including the big right arm and leg length and lowered his "skirt" a bit.
When importing the statue to UDK I played around with the material editor and found that I also liked a tan version of my statue, so there's a possibility i might make multiple versions of this according to my team.
So far I have to model this, a pyramid, and a futuristic Egyptian vehicle, which should be interesting.

Space Egypt- Modular Kit

My modular kit for our space Egypt level. Pretty much 99% done with a few adjustments needed to be made.

Testing Uno Game Mod

Wednesday- I went to game design club to test out my game mod.

I first played my game un-moded, and as usual the game started out very boring, at least to me because I find Uno to be a very boring and simple game. So then I brought in the mods!

First up I brought in my off-the-wall mods to immediately spice things up. I implemented one of my color mechanics, yellow first. So at first it proved to be very successful, because it got people to yell, have fun, and argue about who said the keyword first, which was my original intention. Something I didn’t think about however is that in Uno, the color stay the same for a while and I didn’t set a limit on how many times the mechanic worked, so after a while the mechanic started to get tiring, and everyone stopped participating. As soon as I found out about this, on the fly I changed it so that the mechanic is limited to only valid when the first set of yellow cards is played after a color change.

            I then implemented another color mechanic on top of my other color mechanic, because in my original thinking, my idea was to have a keyword mechanic for each color. This worked fine for a couple of rounds, better yet, people were anxious to see a yellow on yellow or a red on red. These mechanics I found suffer from being fun at first to getting trying at the end.

            In retrospect I should have set a limit on the color mechanics somewhere in the middle because I went from having it work every time there is a same color on same color card, to only the first time the color is changed. This changed the occurance rate of the mechanic from 60% to almost 30%. I should have tried to get a 45% occurance rate by setting the limit in the middle to get it to balance out and see if the mechanic stays fun longer.

            Finally, I brought in my counter mechanic, which was the only “card” mechanic I managed to implement in the game due to time. Countering, I found, proved to be very successful almost always. It seemed to be very balanced right off the bat. You can counter any card at any moment and have the opponent put it right back to their hand. This prevented people form winning the game or setting down a powerful draw 4 wild card. However, since it brings the card back to their hand, it only delays the play (in most cases anyways).

            My end goal was to have everyone laugh, have fun, argue, dispute, and make enemies and friends. I believe I succeeded in this at least. I am in the right path. My next step is to balance these mechanics alone. After their balanced, I think it’d be in my best interest to simplify some of the core mechanics further, in order to implement the following more complex mechanics into the game.

Game Design - Uno modification brainstorm

Thoughts about my game

-       What is successful about it? – How simple it is to get into the game, because it has no learning curve. The game can be explained in a very short time.

-       What would I like to keep? – I’d like to keep the main goal easy to understand.

-       What would I like to change? – I’d like to change the game’s learning curve. The game is already incredibly easy to learn so making the learning curve higher (making the game more complex) shouldn’t be too much a problem for my game. I’d also like to add dice, color and effect mechanics (effects written in cards). More detailed changes on the modify section.

-       What could be better about your game? – More in-depth game-play, less linear. More complex mechanics. Diverging paths to victory but with the same end goal (the way you win the game is still the game, but maybe there might be ways to get there faster or through another method).

-       Art on the cards

-       What crazy, outrageous, thing would you like to try? Implement a board along with the cards. I feel like I probably am not going to try this because I want to focus just on the cards and make that solid, but it’d definitely like to see what comes out of it.

Modify-

1.     Reverse: Place this card on your own separate place. This card is a permanent. At the beginning of your turn you may replace a card in your hand with any card in the draw pile instead of drawing. The deck is then shuffled. This ability may only be used three times (use counters).

Thoughts: gives a person more chance to match cards using another mechanic (an interesting one).

2.    Raise number of starting cards to 14.

Thoughts: gives the game chances for more card combinations and variety of play.

3.     You may play up to two cards of the same number at the same time

Thoughts: combo mechanic, just sounds like it’d make the game much more fun.

4.     Wild card: Place this card on your own separate place. This card is a permanent. At the begging of your turn before you draw, you may have one player draw one card. This ability may only be used three times (use counters).

Thoughts: A cool mechanic for more virety.

5.     Cancel: Play this card when an opponent is playing a card. That player puts that card back into his hand and skips his turn.

Thoughts: chance to interact with other player actions during their turn.

6.     Wild draw 4: Place this card on your own separate place. This card is a permanent. You may play cards on top of this card instead of the discard pile during your turn. If you have a straight series (1,2,3…) of 7 cards, you win the game.

Thoughts: A different (special!) path to victory.

7.     One: This card acts as a regular card. As the card is being played you may choose one card with counters. Raise or remove the number of counters on that card by one.

Thoughts: Still retains the same mechanics as a regular uno card but with added effects.

8.     Two: This card acts as a regular card. As the card is being played you may choose one card with counters. Raise or remove the number of counters on that card by two.

Thoughts: Still retains the same mechanics as a regular uno card but with added effects.

9.     Three: This card acts as a regular card. As the card is being played you may choose one card with counters. You may use that card’s effect again as this card is being played.

Thoughts: Still retains the same mechanics as a regular uno card but with added effects, more powerful than the last.

10. Draw two: Place this card on your own separate place. This card is a permanent. You may counter any card being played at any moment anywhere as long as this card has one counter or more. If you do, draw a card. This ability may only be used two times (use counters).

Thoughts: Again, gives a player chance to interact with enemies during their turn.

11. Dice: each player rolls a 9-sided dice at the begging of their turn after drawing a card.  If a card in your hand matches the dice roll, then you may play that card in addition to your regular discard.

Thoughts: Dice mechanics should spice the game up

12. Dice: if you roll a 1, draw a card.

Thoughts: smaller part of a larger dice mechanic. A different way of being penalized (luck)

13. Dice: if you roll a 9, discard a card.

Thoughts: smaller part of a larger dice mechanic. A different way of being rewarded (luck)

14. Dice: if you roll a 6, target player draws a card.

Thoughts: smaller part of a larger dice mechanic. A different of penalizing another player (luck)

15. Dice: if you roll a 3, roll again, if roll another 3, target player draws three cards.

Thoughts: smaller part of a larger dice mechanic. A different of penalizing another player, harder chance to get. (luck)

16. Dice: if you roll a 8, discard a card then draw a card.

Thoughts: smaller part of a larger dice mechanic. A different way of changing up the cards in your hand for better chance at matching.

17. Dice: if your roll rolls off the table, draw two cards.

Thoughts: keeping players on their feet about rolling right!

18. SAY UNO WHEN YOU HAVE ONE CARD. Penalty is draw 7!!!

Thoughts: Harsher punishment for not saying “Uno” so that players will say more often and louder?

19.  Nine: Destroy a permanent. Draw two cards. A wild draw 4 card may NOT be destroyed this way, but cards making up the series may.

Thoughts: A way to deal with permanents at the cost of drawing two cards for balance.

20.  Blue>Red: When a blue card is placed on top of a red card in the discard pile then the player who played that last red card draws a card

Thoughts: color mechanics sounded fun

21. Red>Green: When a red card is placed on top of a green card in the discard pile then the player who played that last green card draws a card

Thoughts: provides some more complex mechanics

22. Green>Blue: When a green card is placed on top of a green card in the discard pile then the player who played that last blue card draws a card.

Thoughts: provides more complex mechanics. Color mechanics are fun.

23. Yellow>All: When a yellow card is placed on top of any other color card in the discard pile then the player who played that [any color card] card draws a card.

Thoughts: I wanted a dominating color, so people are like “aww yeah, I have a bunch of yellow cards!! Hahaha!”

24. Blue=Blue: When a blue card is placed on top of another blue card, first person (other than the person playing the card) to say “wawa” may abolish a card (abolish= place a card from their hand, out of play). If not clear by everyone else, the person playing the card is the judge on who said it first.

Thoughts: Trying to make the game more fun. Also applying the “human judge” way of soccer, where there are disputes over who really said it first and such

25. Red=Red: When a red card is placed on top of another red card, first person to say “bull” (other than the person playing the card) may have another person draw a card. ). If not clear by everyone else, the person playing the card is the judge on who said it first.

Thoughts: same as last. Providing different things to say so it’s harder to remember which on is which.

26. Green=Green: When a green card is placed on top of another green card, first person to say “haha” (other than the person playing the card) may recycle a card from the discard pile and place it at the top of the discard pile. ). If not clear by everyone else, the person playing the card is the judge on who said it first.

Thoughts: same as last. Providing different things to say so it’s harder to remember which on is which.

27. Yellow=Yellow: : When a yellow card is placed on top of another yellow card, first person to say “aw yeah!” (other than the person playing the card) may steal a card (without looking) from anyone’s hand and place it on someone else’s hand. If not clear by everyone else, the person playing the card is the judge on who said it first.

Thoughts: same as last. Providing different things to say so it’s harder to remember which on is which.

28. Special on special (wild card, draw two, wild draw 4, cancel etc): When a special card is placed on top of another special card, first person to say “delicious!” may take a card from their hand and throw it at their opponent.

Thoughts: Taking it even further and going as far as saying “throw” at their opponent. I want to cause fun chaos in the room.

Which of these ideas hold the most promise?

I think the saying out loud mechanics (color mechanic) sound like they could make my game really fun as a group, which is how uno is played a lot of the time.

The first mechanic I’d want to try to implement is raising the number of cards to 14 in order to accommodate so much additional drawing and discarding mechanics.

Then I’d like to go right in and add the color mechanics to (I think) make the game really really fun right off the bat.

Once the game is established as being really fun, I’d like to go in and add more complex mechanics, such as the dice mechanics or the effect mechanics.

My primary goal is make this game REALLY fun. (with color mechanics) My secondary goal is to make this game more complex with card effects and dice mechanics.