Cart CGD

hey everyone, we’ve actually been very busy with school and work life, but the club has had a crazy sequence of activities!

there’s too much to talk about so i’m just going to do a picture dump

wooo finals!

more and more people are starting to show up, let’s hope it keeps.

more game discussion were had.
Fataliste got an update:
web: http://cartcgd.org/fataliste/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html
win: http://cartcgd.org/fataliste/fataliste_5_win.zip
osx: http://cartcgd.org/fataliste/fataliste_5_osx.zip
I think next week we’re going to start doing things however.

So Jam sessions have moved to Thursdays! There was candy, drinks, and some codding!

oh and, what was worked on: OSx development was being worked on by Ian, Cg Shader learning and shader discussions by Henk and myself were had as well as graphic creations for other TAG games by Moh.

yay

Hey everyone!

Valerie Walker from the advanced programming class is showing a screening of the original Tron movie this friday the 21st and this wednesday the 26th at 6:30 pm in EV 6.720

there will be popcorn and you can bring your own snacks and stuff to the movie,

here’s what Valerie had to say:

thanks to Cart 365 instructor Valerie d. Walker

I will personally be going on wednesday since i have a math class on friday

Charlotte wrote this very awesome post for TAG that we are cross posting here as well:

Saturday, January 15th, 2010: It’s frigid outside, but a few dedicated programmers and artists managed to get together at TAG for the CART Collective for Game Development (CCGD)’s first Gamart Jam of the year. There’s something about collective creative energy… Things seem more fun, problems are solved
quickly, and stuff gets done. So what is Gamart Jam anyway?

There are many different specialties in the club; there are people who work with sound, game level design, hardcore programming, 3D art, and animation. Because Game Jams are so popular, we decided to create our own, one in which artists feel welcome, too. Hence, the name Gamart Jam was created. The CCGD strongly believes that coming together will facilitate closing the gaps often formed when a game is created. For example, it’s all coded, but pretty ugly. Or, you have this great character modeled, but can’t seem to get it to move in a way that looks natural. This is where either mentoring or forming a team becomes your golden ticket to awesomeness.

Ramy, the president of the CCGD, explains what he was up to:

In the past few weeks, GEOHOT released a jailbrake for the Playstation3. This means, by loading his file, you can play “homebrew” games (games you make yourself without the authorization of Sony). I got the jailbreaking file from GEOHOT’s website and I downloaded the PS3 compiler tool chain. The tool chain allows me to write programs and compile them so they will run on the ps3. I built the tool chain (you have to compile the tool chain to compile games for your ps3, computers are fun like that) and I built a demo application.

Ramy is now looking into finding a PS3 he can jailbrake so we can test out some home-brewed games!

Mohannad, a very talented 3D artist, sketched up an awesome gas-masked, skeletal character head. He and Charlotte (myself), a 2D and 3D artist, will be working together on creating the art of a game they are working on with Ramy. There is already a demo online (made by Ramy)—now it’s time to use the jams to experiment, discuss, and progress.

The number of people at the Gamart Jam was below our expectation on the first day, probably due to a mixture of confusion after the holidays (back to reality), the cold weather, and perhaps a few hangovers. Whatever the reason, those of us who made it got something small and quick coded, a monstrous character sketched out in 3D, even hacked into a PS3—well, paved the road to it anyway. The CCGD had offered pizza to those who would come to the very first Gamart Jam, but we decided that, since there weren’t many at this Jam, we would save the pizza for next week. Because we are so caring : )

The CCGD hopes to get the word about the Jams out there—not just to CART students, but to all students who love games and want to make some great stuff. The It’s Not a Doll project team will be using this time to gather research, improve their site, and create artwork. The Mine game group will be building characters and sets, and improving level design. More games will come, big and small. If students want tutorials, help, just to play around and make quick games, work on their portfolio, or

simply thrive on that creative energy, the Gamart Jam is definitely the place! Where: TAG, EV 11.475 When: Every Saturday, 1:30pm – closing Free pizza at the next Jam (January 22nd), so be there or be a hungry, equal-sided rect ();

hey just wanted to inform everyone that after a very successful first crunch session last Saturday, we have decided to keep doing this activity for the students.

crunch sessions are 4 hour blocks where people can focus on their homework in a productive environment by having quiet space, other people there to work with, and other people to ask help from in various topics. (it’s also an environment that provides timbits and awesome discussions)

These sessions happen every Saturday from 12:30pm to 4pm on the 11th floor.

here are some pictures from last Saturday’s session after which Sagar showed some demos, played prototypes and talked game development.

MODELLING THE BUILDINGS
Cassandra -> working on the school now and the arcade on the ground level (series of arches). That scene would involve a park
Nancy -> new fountain design coming up to accommodate multilevel planning of the city.

INTERACTIONS
Nick -> will have solid interactions written for next general meeting. This includes initial scenes and events. Must work closely with Cassandra to make sure everything is fly. Some proposed character interactions like tripping, hanging, climbing as dynamics as well as effects to be used (and therefore developed) like fire, water, rolling waves and particle effects.

Visual Style
Sean and Nancy -> should Ok some initial designs and let others feed off those designs when modeling and animating. give immortal a look, see if that lines up with some ideas.
Samir -> animations, still need that camera? ramy can hook you up.

CITY notes:
Bottom of the city would be “surreal”. the Top would be straight, realistic, white washed? Lower city would be very scary, playing on the basement fear for kara and playing with the shapes like the city of gaudi that were discussed in the forums and stuff that Mo designs does in terms of organics. The “Central Piece” of the map, indexed at #31, is in 2 parts, one on the bottom, one on the top. the bottom part is the fountain as a heart in a park, the top part is hung in the sky and will have a monorail hub as the center. The city itself would have a “web” on construction of what would be a monorail system, connecting some buildings together. Think the city of Venice but in the air instead of in the water. The bottom level is also the DEAD level, whereas up above there are parks and nature but all encased in glass.

SOUND
Focus will be on thematic music rather than sound effects as sound effects need to have a solid and final animation base before happening.

WORK WORK
we now encourage everyone to participate in the various positions, so if you have ideas for modelling, but are not doing modelling, model something anyway and see how it flies, this also goes for other stuff like drawings, sounds, interactions, even programming.

CLUB STATUS
Lot’s of questions asked with respect to club status with the now re-starting FASA. Emails have been sent, questions have been asked. getting club has it’s pro and cons, all of which was discussed at meetings, but namely, pro: space and money, con: responsibilities and money.

WEB SITE
Using Cassandra’s template, we intend to build a updatable blog/web space where we can show our work in progress and offer info on the collective in general for media/portfolio purposes. The space will need an official designer as well as graphical input for important elements such as the logo. We have yet to finalize the acronym for our group CCGD.

GENERAL PONDERING
most of us are in Santo’s class now, but we aren’t sure how he is going to manage it. Obviously, since it is the day we are all present, it maybe should be a day when we have our meeting. I also am not in favour of having outside meetings when we will be together already for 4 hours in a day, every week. anyway, Charlotte proposed we consider the following scenario and thinking about it for a week: that santo will actually conduct a class, that is to say: 2 hours presentation, 2 hours work. It’s a grim scenario, but i’m going with charlotte on this, let’s just mull that over and talk about it later.

hey, thought i would share a bump map screenshot.

Sorry for the late post, I’ve been neglecting my duties.

Meeting notes for Sunday August 8th general meeting.

-Changes to the game are being applied: The story is being fleshed and along comes things to be worked on: Crowd interaction, monorail systems, ideas of grey and white sky, dead nature, sense of abandonment (personal note: ala GreenPunk maybe?)

-Sahar and Charlotte have started to model the characters and will also do a generic crowd person

-Cassandra made an excellent reference point, we should check out immortel by enki bilal, here are  youtube links: link1 link2

-Samir will be working on water effects using realflow

-Character controls will be finalized, Bump mapping will continue to be worked on.

r.d.

Meeting minutes, 14th Jul 2009
1.
Since Jason is still on sabbatical, he is unable to attend and supervise an independent study, especially not of this magnitude. So, to prevent us from working all summer for nothing, we get a class in the fall. This is good for 2 things: first, it gives us a more realistic deadline of December to complete the project, and second, now other students can get credit for their work, like Jos, Sean, Cass, Peter who are also participating in this in a significant way. Keep eyes open for CART 498 class Tuesdays 6:30-10:30.*Side note. Fun class DART 451 on After Effects and compositing available in Fall semester.

2.
Everybody add everybody on msn or whatever chat program please. This will make it easier to ask quick questions since I, for example, have no life and am always online . This information should be added and retrieved from the google doc: “CART CGD CONTACT LIST”. Make sure everyone has access. Here’s the list cuz i’m so nice:

Scott Philip
email/ google talk: montrealmusic/gmail.com
MSN: scottyp_404/hotmail.com

Nancy Elizabeth Townsend:
email: townsend.e.nancy/gmail.com
MSN: nancy_e_townsend/hotmail.com

Xavier Lapointe:
email: lapointe.xavier/gmail.com

Alexis Morin
email/google Talk : carignan.boy/gmail.com
msn : carignan_boy/hotmail.com

Charlotte Fisher
email: charlotte.a.fisher/gmail.com

Jos
email: zeal.bearer/gmail.com

Mohannad Al-Khatib [Mo]
email: Psycho.Designs/gmail.com

Cassandra Lacombe
email: eternal01/gmail.com
msn: eternal_01/hotmail.com

[redacted]
[redacted]
[redacted]

Sahar Homami
email: s.h1364/gmail.com

Ramy Daghstani
email/gtalk: ramy.daghstani/gmail.com
msn: reality_is_shit/hotmail.com

Sean Braithwaite:
email: brapse/gmail.com

Samir Mesbah
email: sm.shado21/gmail.com

3.
SVN notes, here are the links we talked about:
download tortoiseSVN for win32:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/tortoisesvn/TortoiseSVN-1.6.3.16613-win32-svn-1.6.3.msi?download
download tortoiseSVN for win64:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/tortoisesvn/TortoiseSVN-1.6.3.16613-x64-svn-1.6.3.msi?download
download Scplugin for osX (it’s the mac equivalent of tortoiseSVN) :
http://scplugin.tigris.org/files/documents/1368/45964/SCPlugin-0.7.3q-SVN.1.4.6.dmg
instructions on how to install Scplugin:
http://scplugin.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectProcess?pageID=rgnEkt
video on how to use tortoiseSVN (the same applies to SCplugin, they are fairly the same) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sUYnEylvU0

Pro tips:

• do not merge binaries (executables)

• do not merge maya scene files (even .ma files)

• do not merge .mesh files

• update before committing

• don’t work on someone else’s stuff unless you are both clear that you are working on it

• commit small, incremental, changes to the server (in case something goes wrong, we don’t have to undo ALL the work previously done)

• comment your commits

the user name and password for the SVN server is: user: cartstudents pass: mongoose
the URL of the SVN server is: http://cartcgd.org/svn2009
we will begin making individual accounts for SVN access, that way you can lock a file (prevent others from working on it)
questions? Ramy.daghstani/gmail.com

4.
Artists should be able to start working on the young girl character with small changes to come (the collar). Everyone has work to do, there’s a prop list to get to and a clock tower to make, attachments to enable on the forum, and new technologies to build:
bumpmapping express: Moh+Ramy,
maya super exporter: Charlotte+Xavier,
water: the populace+Ramy.

5.
Jos is up to date vis a vis to the forums. There is a discrepancy of information on what Adam’s world is. So far nothing has been written down with respect to Adam’s perspective on things. This has to change. There has to be a discussion with some laid down concepts with respect to that. Concept art will then be churned and then the models can be changed. Any action before a common source is written down should not be taken. If you want to get started on what Adam’s world looks like (in more specific terms than “endlessly tall buildings”, it needs to start either in the forum or in an artists meeting.

6.
Since water will be a big deal in the game, we have discussed what can help us build good water effects for the game. Glowing rain is possible, so is snow with very low impact on the game. Uncharted’s water effect wasn’t all that good, that’s why you died when you fell in the water (apparently, I never played it, but JOS DID!). In any case, the effect described sounds like this:
texture bend: cheap and totally realizable with a very simple texture bend for “ripples”. Has no transparency, so when an object moves in the water, the fake reflection will get rippled, but you won’t see the object through the water, because it is not transparent.
Texture transparency: your typical low poly water effect. Flat texture with semi transparent blue “wavy texture applied to it. It’s the typical stuff you see in games like WoW.

The water fountain has different approaches which depend on the level of interaction we intend to have with it, solutions include:
maya fluids / particle solution: may or may not be able to export to Ogre even though there is a particle exporter for OGRE.
baked mesh solution: includes baking a water render and exporting to Ogre and simply keying the vertex animation for it, we can also use RealFlow to create really good water effects, but these have setbacks as they can generate very high poly counts.
Video texture: just a simple texture that has a clip of water sprouting out. Very meh, but very easy on the processor.
A height map solution: this is good for water falls. (note: height maps are also good for mountainous terrain)

7.

Nancy needs help with some Zbrush stuff, maybe  Moh can help, Sahar still needs a working OgreExporter for mac and maya2008, Charlotte needs to get acquainted with a new breed of operating felines, and I need to murder SteveJobs.

All is well. Weee