CREATING A 3D VIDEO GAMESTUDENTS FACULTY

David Altieri Evan Bredendick Theodore Cincoski Alex Deakman Craig Evans Brian Muller Diane Christie

Brian Osendorf Trace Roshell Charles Schmidt Thomas Tardiff Er Xiong Tou Yia Xiong Ellery Connell

Game Concept, Story & Environment

Concept Art to a World with Animated 3D Models

Trapped! Your spelunking expedition has turned into a fight for survival. Find your way out while you evade perilous creatures, lava flows, and other mysteries that lurk in the dark.

A video game begins with an idea that falls into a specific genre or uses a certain type of game play. The story creates the environment, sets up the player motivation, and ties the elements of the game together.

Spelunk was created using Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a freely available version of the Unreal 3 commercial game engine and integrated development environment. The game world was created using the terrain builder in UDK.

Modo was used to turn our concept creatures into 3D models. A high polygon count model might cause the game engine to slow down, so fewer than 10,000 polygons were used to create each model while not sacrificing the quality of the model. The UV map, which is essentially the skin for the model, was unwrapped to prepare it for texturing. Photoshop was then used to paint the UV map until the desired look was achieved. The UV map was reimported into the 3D application and wrapped back around the model. The model was then brought into Maya to be rigged for animation. Finally, the animated models were imported into UDK for the programmers to implement into the game.

Artificial Intelligence, Physics & GameplayAll gameplay, artificial intelligence, and any modifications to the basic game engine must be programmed using Unreal Script. Event triggers must be programmed into the map. Programmers must also connect the animated models to the game engine using code. Programming code is created and compiled with the game engine using Visual Studio 2008.

The player's robotic arm comes equipped with a grappling gun on the wrist, which is effective to grasp softer rock formations. It can be fired towards high ledges or hanging rock formations to grapple and swing across chasms or hazardous lava. The grapple feature can also be used to safely rappel down from high places.

The breakable walls were created using the PhysX engine in UDK. When the earth creature charges at the wall, a trigger turns on a force actor. This applies a force to the wall, causing the wall to break. Breakable walls were also designed to break when the player punches them.

The artificial intelligence (AI) was created using a state system. When the AI is in a state such as idle, various checks are initiated which can cause a switch to a different AI state. For example, the AI may check if the player is in range during the idle state. When the player comes in range, the AI switches to the attacking state and attacks the player. Each creature type in Spelunk follows different AI to add variety to the gameplay.

User InterfaceAll user interface work used Scaleform to bring the motion graphics from Adobe Flash into UDK. This allowed the programmer to use specific methods to communicate between Unreal Script and Flash assets. The in-game HUD used dynamic text and bars which are accessed by the code to reflect current health levels, battery power for the flashlight, and number of crystals picked up. These checks occur every tick (or frame), so the player receives a seamless, up-to-date representation of their statistics.

Special Effects, Sound, Dialog, & Cinematics

Sounds were created by students as well as obtained from royalty free sites and edited using Audacity® 1.3 Beta to have the desired effects. The sounds were then imported into the UDK environments, associated with specific locations and connected by the programmed code. The original game theme used in Spelunk was composed and performed by Aaron Duch, a student who volunteered his talents.

A screenplay for an opening cinematic and an ending cinematic was written by Russell Hall, a student who volunteered his talents. The cinematics and voice over dialog used in the game were created by another group of students in a 3D modeling and animation course.

University of Wisconsin-Stout