Rapid Prototype Production 1 (Pen Fight)
For
round 1 of Rapid Prototype Production (RPP 1), my team and I created a
game in Tabletop Simulator called "Pen Fight." It's based on a game a
few of our teammates would play in school when they were kids (this is
what inspired our arts and crafts aesthetic for the art direction). The
goal is to knock of your opponents pen by flicking your pen at theirs.
However, if both of your pens fall off then it's a draw. My major
contributions include designing and modeling the arena, designing the
obstacles, and placing the obstacles. Below were the initial ideas I came up with for arena and obstacle designs.
We all agreed that the octagon arena would be best. The reason we chose this unique arena
is because we did not not want the game to end too quickly, so we opted to
have walls in some spots to achieve this. The reason the walls have a slight angle to them in the octagon design is so pens do not get
stuck against them, so any pen that hits a wall rolls towards the center
a little bit. After we decided on the rough shape of the arena, one of our artists created a sketch showing what our final arena may look like. We decided that the ground of the arena will look like a desk and the walls will look like they're made out of cardboard to fit the school theme.
The only problem I
encountered at all during RPP 1 was when I was importing the custom arena into
Tabletop Simulator. I found this out the hard way, but Tabletop
Simulator cannot generate accurate collision for models with concave
shapes. Since the walls were attached to the base of the arena, Tabletop
Simulator made a box collision with the "floor" of the collision being
the height of the arena walls, meaning that no matter where the pen was
on the arena, it would always sit at the height of the walls, not the height of the
base. The way I got around this was by separating the
walls into different models but keeping them flush with the arena and exporting everything as one file. That
way Tabletop Simulator wasn't dealing with any concave models and the
walls could remain attached to the arena easily.
After fixing the arena collision issues, I started to properly design and layout the obstacles. My thinking is that instead of being able to mindlessly flick your pen whatever direction
the opponent is in, a cube in center and triangular prisms scattered around the arena would require playing with more strategy. Additionally, the triangular prisms' allow one
player to launch the other player with them, making game play more
exciting. Below is an image of me play testing in Tabletop Simulator with one of the potential obstacle layouts.
Overall,
RPP 1 went very smoothly, and everyone on our team pulled there weight
and then some. The artists especially went above and beyond with the textures of the pens and arena. I hope I get the chance to work with some or all of my RPP 1 teammates on Capstone.
Final images:
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