Monthly Archives: April 2012

Gameplay Updates: Power-Ups, Juggernaut, Joker Cards, and … WHIRLWIND

It’s been some time since I last posted, so this post will detail all of the new gameplay features I put in during the last couple of weeks. We are coming close to our polish phase and we listed out … Continue reading

Posted in AI, Coding, Design, DirectX 11, Engine, Gameplay, Graphics | Leave a comment

Character Pipeline 5: UV Mapping for Artists

In a previous post I’ve detailed what makes a UV map good. Now I’m going to actually show you how to make a good UV map through proper use of symmetry, uniformity, and logical seam placement. Here is my workflow … Continue reading

Posted in 3D Modeling, Art, Character Art, Maya | Leave a comment

Tool Time – Interactive Wave Editor and Lessons Learned

Interactive Wave Editor As the project nears completion, this will be the last Tool Time post, but I’m ending with a bang. A large part of Card Kingdom is its waves and their design. They are our main mechanic to … Continue reading

Posted in Coding, Design, UI | Leave a comment

The Combat Corner – Hero 2.0, Iterating on Player Abilities, Part 2

In this part of our discussion of Hero 2.0, I’ll be going over, in great detail, the changes we made to the player abilities and why. Designing anything is a process. This is a common theme in a lot of … Continue reading

Posted in Design | 1 Comment

Designer Den: Player Personalities

Last time we talked about creating a simple and natural control scheme and the usability of those controls. This time we will talk about our target demographic and types of players in it. Target demographic means to us is a … Continue reading

Posted in Design | Leave a comment

Character Pipeline 4: Advanced Animation Workflow Part 2

This week I continue where I left off with more important best-practices for 3D character animation. Class is in session, so prepare to be schooled: Rule # 5. Work in small files Don’t make all of your animations in the … Continue reading

Posted in Art | Leave a comment

More Lightning and Shadows

More Lightning In a somewhat recent post, I showed off the initial stages of the lightning effect that I’ve been working on. One of the major hurtles that was tripping me up, and the reason why in the old video … Continue reading

Posted in Coding, DirectX 11, Engine, Graphics | Leave a comment

Designer Den: Control Scheme for a younger audience Part.2

Last time we spook about our goal creating a simple and natural control scheme for young teens and our research to help achieve this goal. We took a look at ergonomics and popular controls across the genre. For more information … Continue reading

Posted in Design | Leave a comment

Character Pipeline 3: Advanced Animation Workflow Part 1

I’ve compiled a set of seven crucial workflow guidelines and best-practices for animating 3D characters based on my experience working on Card Kingdom over the last eight months. If you are serious about character animation and you want to be … Continue reading

Posted in Art | Leave a comment

Transparency in Deferred Rendering: Narrowing Down the Research

The research topic I am working on as part of the graduate program is adding transparency into a deferred rendering pipeline. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been posting a lot about deferred rendering. The main reason I wanted to redo our … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment