BattleBalls

Our game will be a multiplayer party game. Each player is represented by an alien-vehicle in form of a tremendous ball. The game world is restricted to a rectangular area which will not be too big. At the edges of this rectangular game world are holes. The goal of the game is to push the other players from the game platform into the abyss.

Comments!

Everyone of the game-lab class who wants to leave a comment or make some suggestions, please feel free to add here whatever you want!

Gioacchino Noris: this is amazing! /me wants to see more :]

Deliverables

This section covers the deliverables for the game class.

Part 1: Project Proposal

Game Setting and Background Story

Some strange aliens which are addicted to playing games are coming to earth. They play a game called “Battle Balls" which is similar to a battle royal in wrestling. These Aliens really love mass destruction so they cut out a part of a big city and lift it up to the sky to use it as their play field. Directly around this field is “nothing” than the sky so that the gladiators in their fighting machines can fall out of it. In a certain distance to the field there is a stand around it filled up with the audience which are fans of one of the particular players. They will also cheer up and show their affection for players which are performing well (i.e. players which raze all what’s in their way).

Full Project Proposal

The project proposal is a pdf file. Feel free to download it below at the end of the page.

Mutual Game Critiques

Critique - Ben Berger

Critique - Daniel Egger

Critique - Matthias Bühlmann

Does someone know how I can make this HTML-file render with a link?

Part 2: Design Specification

Status Update: Sunday, 15. April 07

We have read all the critiques of the other students and are considering putting them into our final game.
Especially the proposals to make the buildings which hide the player ball semi-transparent and to enhance the buildings in the edge with stronger power-ups we will certainly incorporate in our game.
Apart from this the design which is already in the proposal will stay the same for now. There are a few things we want to try out in the prototype first before we will decide how to make them work, for example the interplay between power and mass.
In the meantime we have been working on the class-design and everyone of us is toying with some concepts which we want to have in our game. Also to get to know XNA better.

Daniel is working on a building destruction demo. The goal is to make the destruction look good, not to make it behave realistically.
Here is a screenshot. It looks better when it's moving... (Always the same old excuses )

BuildingDemo.zip: First Building Demo
Move with the cursor keys, reset the scene with the space key.

Matthias is working on the particle simulator. Here some screenshots:

• BattleBall WIP:
  

• BattleBall 2+3 WIP:
  

• BattleBall mini-tutorial:
  

For the light effect, I extruded the glowing parts and textured the extruded polygons with a light-ray map painted in photoshop. For the metal plates i created an anisotropic shader using the paper "Efficient Rendering of Anisotropic Surfaces Using Computer Graphics Hardware".

• damage shader for the buildings and destruction:
  

• Gettin' Dirty =):
  

Ben is working on a rope demo.

Part 3: Interim Report

To follow.

Part 4: Alpha Release

To follow.

Part 5: Playtesting and Final Paper

To follow.

Project Status

Still in prosal phase.

Timeline

Still in prosal phase.

Status

Still in proposal phase.

Demos and Screenshots

Just click inside the game once to play:

yellow sphere: arrow keys purple sphere: h j k u blue sphere: a s d w

Attachments

• concept art:
  

• battleballsproposal.pdf: Final version of the formal game proposal

• interim-report.html: Interim Report

• FinalReport_BattleBalls_Gamelab2.pdf: Last Assignment: Final Report