Steve's Blog

May 24th, 2018 Engineering Statics Game Concept - 00 Vimeo - Concept for Engineering Statics Game This was a quick proof of concept to show the idea from the last post at work. This concept takes inspiration from the hands on engineering kit that used masses on strings tugging on a central ring object to teach topics such as center of mass and vector math. The forces from the nodes on the ring are calculated to emulate that of a mass attached to a string. Each node has a mass value associated with it (which would be the mass hanging off of it in the real world kit), and this influences how much force that node is applying to the main circular object. Moving the nodes or changing their mass value will influence the position of the ring, as it effectively represents the center of mass of the entire system through the forces applied by the nodes. Using a simple example, I was quickly able to run a test to double check if the values provided by this toy were matching that of th

May 23rd, 2018 Forces in Unity AddForce - Unity Official Tutorials Youtube - AddForce - Unity Official Tutorials The bare basics of scripting forces in Unity with rigidBody's. The AddForce can take two inputs: a vector for direction and magnitude, and what type of force it is. ForceModes Acceleration - Continuous change; not affected by mass Force - (Default) Continuous change; affected by mass Impulse - Instant change; affected by mass VelocityChange - Instant change; not affected by mass AddTorque - Unity Official Tutorials Youtube - AddTorque - Unity Official Tutorials The bare basics of scripting torques in Unity with rigidBody's. The AddTorque can take two inputs: a vector axis to apply torque around, and what type of torque it is. This is very similar to AddForce. Important to remember, Unity uses "LEFT HAND RULE" for rotation. ForceModes Acceleration - Continuous change; not affected by mass Force - (Default) Continuous change; affected by ma

May 23rd, 2018 Talks Every Game Designer Should Watch These are two talks suggested to be seen by anyone in game design by Squirrel Eiserloh in his talk "GDC 2015 - Math for Game Programmers: Fast and Funky 1D Nonlinear Transformations". They cover general game design topics on making your game feel good no matter the concept. Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho Youtube - Juice It or Lose It Jan Willem Nijman - Vlambeer - "The art of screenshake" Youtube - The Art of Screenshake

May 22nd, 2018 Research Papers on Procedural Content Generation for Games Darwin’s Avatars: A Novel Combination of Gameplay and Procedural Content Generation by: Dan Lessin, Sebastian Risi Citation : [Lessin & Risi, 2015] D. Lessin and S. Risi, “Darwin’s Avatars: A Novel Combination of Gameplay and Procedural Content Generation,” 2015, pp. 329–336. Key Terms: Evolved Virtual Creatures Artificial Life Muscles Drives Physics-based Character Animation Procedural Content Generation Summary Use evolved virtual creature (EVC) system from Lessin et al. reference to procedurally generate creatures that provided interesting control and locomotion problems. Originally these were piloted by an AI trying to learn how to move, but this “brain” was removed for this paper so that players could run them. Movement was determined by the activation of muscles/actuators between the procedurally generated segments of the creatures. These muscles could range in value from [0, 1], whe

May 20th, 2018 Sources to Learn Procedural Generation Techniques for Games Procedural Generation in Unity Unity Tutorial: A Procedurally-Generated Galaxy - Part 1 by: quill18creates Youtube Link to Part 1 of Tutorial A tutorial to look into for basic procedural generation of a galaxy in Unity. Also has some information on different variable types in C#. Unity - Cellular Automata Tutorial Unity Link to Cellular Automata Tutorial Tutorial directly from unity on the basics of using the procedural generation technique of cellular automata.

May 20th, 2018 Procedural Content Generation in Games Galactic Arms Race (GAR) Youtube Link - Evolving Particle Weapons in Galactic Arms Race | AI and Games by: AI and Games AI and Games briefly describes how GAR uses evolutionary algorithms to design weapons that the player likes using. The player takes the place of the fitness function to determine what is "good". Techniques such as CPPN and cgNEAT are lightly touched upon and offer topics to be further explored.

May 19th, 2018 Math for Game Programmers - Talks from GDC - Notes GDC 2015 - Math for Game Programmers: Fast and Funky 1D Nonlinear Transformations Presenter: Squirrel Eiserloh Youtube link to presentation Notes: Other names used for these concepts in other fields: Easing functions Filter functions Lerping functions Tweening functions Implicit vs. Parametric Equations Implicit: Ex. x^2 + y^2 = R^2 Parametric: Ex. Px = R * cos(2*pi*t); Py = R * sin(2*pi*t) Parametric Equations use a single variable (usually a float) as input Opportunities to Use Parametric Transformations Anywhere you have a single float to change Anywhere that could be expressed as a single float Anytime you use time The two most important number ranges in mathematics and computer science are: 0 to 1: Good for fractions and percentages -1 to 1: Good for deviations from some original value These functions are normalized Input of 0 has output of 0, and input of 1 has output of 1 Th

May 13th, 2018 Procedural Generation Unite 2016 - The Power of Procedural Meshes Unity Talk by Alexander Birke Youtube Link to Talk Suggested Reading: “Essential Mathematics for Games – A Programmers Guide” by James M. Van Verth & Lars M. Bishop Links to examples to learn about procedural generation of meshes Mesh Presentation Unity Environments Trinagle.net Port to Unity Notes from talk: Why use procedural meshes? Player Made Content (Ex. Spore) Unique Mechanics (Ex. Gish) Procedural Generation (Ex. Sir You're Being Hunted) Unity Procedural Meshes Mesh starts by creating vertices, and then making triangles from those vertices Components Needed: MeshFilter - stores the mesh MeshRenderer - shows the mesh Script - to generate the mesh Normal vectors used to determine surface orientation Colors Used to be determined by assigning values to vertices Can be used to provide more information to vertices still Can be done as bytes or floats Bytes general

May 7th, 2018 AI Wish List from GDC AI Wish List: What Do Designers Want out of AI? - GDC Vault GDC Talk with Raph Koster, Dave Mark, Richard Lemarchand, Laralyn McWilliams, Noah Falstein, and Robin Hunicke. They go over what directions they would like AI to move in in the future to further good game development. Some Topics Discussed: Content Creation: Don't focus on procedurally generating a tree, or a forest of trees. Generate interestingly varied trees that have other interactive elements within/about them to create a much more detail-rich environment that could not be created by human hands in any practical way. Create a world, with a forest, with a pond, with tadpoles that you can interact with. Feelings to Invoke: Feeling Proud for something. Have the player feel proud that they were able to guide something else to perform an action on its own. Create systems of interactivity that decentralize the player. Make the player understand that their actions are upsetting a

May 6th, 2018 Terms and Definitions for Investigating Real-Time Rigid Body Deformations in a Game Environment Engineering Terms Stress Strain Deformation - Deformation - Wiki Page Elastic Deformation True Stress/Strain Plastic Deformation Deflection - Deflection - Wiki Page This is just a list of useful terminology for understanding rigid body deformations in the real world in an effort to translate them into a virtual setting, preferably for games. I am currently looking into research that uses finite element analysis and modeling techniques in order to create physically accurate deformations in real-time in a video game setting.

May 5th, 2018 Finite Element Analysis in Games - Deformable Objects Unity Tools DefKit - Deformable Bodies Toolkit for Unity [v0.2] - FEM and SBD Plugin for Unity that uses FEM to deform solid bodies. Fractuccino - Real time fracturing for Unity Tool that attempts to allow for real time fracturing of solid objects in Unity. This tool is based on methods that were researched by Matthias Muller, Nuttapong Chentanez, and Tae-Yong Kim in the PhysX team. Paper Fractuccino is Based on can be found here.

May 3rd, 2018 Unity - ProGrids Brackeys Tutorial on ProGrids - Youtube Progrids is a tool that can be obtained for free on the Unity asset store. It allows you to have a grid-system in Unity for constructing your scenes. This can be useful for basic level design and simply keeping items in line with each other. This can be extremely helpful for prototyping and grayboxing level designs, or even full game creation, especially in a 2D sprite/tile setting.

May 2nd, 2018 Game Jams in Ludem Dare Ludem Dare Site "Ludum Dare is one of the world's largest and longest running Game Jam events. Every 4 months, we challenge creators to make a game from scratch in a weekend." This site lets users participate in a game jam every 4 months where they create a game based on a theme over one weekend. The users can see others submissions, and it is a competition where submissions are based on multiple categories.