Kung Fu

A port of the arcade game “Kung Fu Master”, “Kung Fu” was the NES’s only action game in its 30 game launch lineup of “black box” titles.  Within the game’s interface, a third of the screen is taken up by a black band containing status information displaying such details as the player’s life bar -colored red possibly to indicate blood-, the boss’ life bar (why it reads “enemy” may be because the contemporary moniker “boss” wasn’t in the gaming lexicon at the time), the current floor you’re on, the amount of lives remaining, and the difficulty level which increases every time you “beat” the game (as the game’s arcade roots entail, you loop back to level one with an increase in difficulty after completing level five).  There’s also the current score of both players one and two, the highest score, a timer, and the selected game mode (game A or game B).  Although it’s not much to look at when it comes to aesthetics, that was never a focus for games of this era in the first place.  All that needed to be focused on was that all important information is labeled the way it should with minimal flair.  The life bars are clearly labeled while other info had to take a metaphor route due to space constraints (the head icon for lives and the dragon icon for difficulty level for example). There aren’t many flaws to find with this kind of interface other than it taking up too much on the screen real estate which could have been used to show more gameplay instead, but other NES action games down the road would iterate from this template and contain the info in a more concise manner.
Castlevania

Taking up just a forth of the screen is the status bar from the NES classic “Castlevania”.  Most of “Kung Fu”‘s info is shared with this game with room to add info unique to it such as your current sub-weapon and its ammunition.  One other thing to add is how the bars are sectioned in this game (named “hit points” in this case) as opposed to “Kung Fu”‘s which provides better feedback for the player to determine which enemy or their attacks poses the most threat.  This holds true to the boss’ hit points to let the player know which of their attack methods is best to fell the boss at the end of the level.  As far as flaws are concerned, I think the bar itself could’ve got shrunken down just a tad more at the top by removing one row of black, and there are some alignment issues not found in “Kung Fu”‘s but other than that it’s a great example of information design within the limitations of the medium.  Let’s end this with one more action game that’s infamous for its difficulty.
Ninja Gaiden

“Ninja Gaiden”‘s status bar seems more organized than the other two games by packing all of its information as close as possible but still sectioned just enough to know what’s labeling what, and justifying all the information with a centered flush which removes the tension from the edges of the screen.  Every label is followed by a dash connecting it to what it belongs to; something that wasn’t constant in “Castlevania”‘s, and there’s even a bit of logic to the arrangement of some of the information i.e. the left half of the status bar holds the info whose numerical values are constantly changing while the right half is the opposite of that.  With that said, the status bar in “Ninja Gaiden” is the better of the three with very little that could be improved upon.

That’s all for the good but next time, we’re gonna focus on what makes bad information design in NES games.  Stay tuned!

var topSpeed = 20.0;
var minSpeed = 1.5;
var currentSpeed : float;
var acceleration : float = 5.0;

function Start () {
currentSpeed = minSpeed;
}

function FixedUpdate (){
currentSpeed = Mathf.Clamp(Time.time, minSpeed, topSpeed);
}

function Update () {
currentSpeed += Time.deltaTime * acceleration;
transform.Translate(-currentSpeed * Time.deltaTime, 0, 0);
}

Onward to completing the rest of the game’s features now that this great hurdle is over with, and what I’ve learned from it is to never be too proud to ask for a little help.  It could go a long way!  As always, keep gaming.

“But Dantrell, that’s easy!  Select your UVed mesh and shift-select the original, go to Mesh>Transfer Attributes option box from the polygon menu, and transfer only the UV sets.  After that’s done, delete the mesh that you imported.”

In another situation, random armchair Maya buff, you’d be right on the money.  You’d just have to remember to delete the history of the original mesh before deleting the other.  But here’s the thing: my original mesh contains animations on it.

“So what’s the dealie?”

Here’s the dealie!  Deleting the history also deletes the animation on the mesh.  The rig is still remains with the animations intact, though.  Wait, before you ask…

“Just reskin the mesh with the rig!”

Dammit!  Remember what happens once you skin your rig?

“It…can…animate?”

Correct!  Now remember what happens once you play the animation?

“Ewwwwww!  It’s all blobbity-blobbity!”

And why’s that, Mr. Armchair Maya Buff?

“Oh right.  The problem is that you’d have to go through the trouble of repainting the weights again, even though they were already painted correctly before the UV transferal?”

Bingo!  Here’s how you can get around that and save you lots of time.
This tip assumes that you have a scene where upon opening, all you’d need to do is transfer the UVs and your original mesh contains animations.  After applying all of the steps mentioned above, save your scene and rename it something easily identifiable, then import the original scene.  Now, and this is gonna blow your mind, select the imported mesh and then shift select the original.  Then at the Animations menu, go to Skin>Edit Smooth Skin>Copy Skin Weights.  Now just clean your scene up by deleting all of the components that you imported from your outliner and don’t forget to save.  This should solve everything!

Fellow ITGM majors, as always, feel free to share this info to anyone that needs it.

Keep gaming!

So, an issue that I was having earlier this week was trying to export the horse I’ve created for my Cadence Crusaders game properly from Maya and importing it to Unity, the game’s engine, with all of its animations that I’ve painstakingly created for it in the previous week.  Turns out that the way I managed to organize the animations, that being saving the walking, trotting, and galloping animations into their own separate scenes, isn’t the correct method.  As far as I’ve been told, unless you’re a masochist trying to make more work for yourself down the road, it’s best to have all the different animations you’ve made in just one scene and all on the same timeline so when importing to Unity, it’d be much easier to tell it where the frames for the animations are when the time to use them comes up.  When it came to applying this new information however, I’ve constantly hit roadblocks.  Protip for those of you that’ll come upon the same dilemma: DON’T go to scene “y” where animation “y” is, select all the controls from the outliner to then head over to the graph editor to copy the graphs displayed, and finally paste them in the graph editor in scene “x” containing the end of animation “x”!  Your model will turn into a janky Frankenstein of a monster!

Instead of pulling your hair out, do what did: the right thing!  In the scene containing your first animation, open up the Trax Editor found in Window>Animation Editors>Trax Editor.  After selecting all your controls from the Outliner, select Create>Animation Clip from the Trax Editor.  Once successful in creating a clip, it’s time to export it by selecting File>Export Animation Clip.  Name it something fitting and save it ’cause you’ll be coming back to it later.  Repeat the above until all of your clips are exported then open your scene that the first clip was created from then return to the Trax Editor to import your clips via File>Import Animation Clip to Characters.  An error message along the lines of “You must select a character first” may appear; by character they mean the first clip you created earlier.  You might not see it in the Trax Editor at the moment but it’s there; just highlight the object “multiCh” in your Outliner then press the Load Clip button in the Trax Editor to make the clip appear.  Highlight the clip and finally Import Animation Clip to place them wherever you need it on the timeline.  Make adjustments to the clips to whatever suits you best as its going to be exported for Unity purposes later.  Speaking of, do just that right now: File>Export All/Export Selection (if you have a lot of junk you don’t want exported, use the latter option), and save it as an FBX file.  Import it from Unity and presto, your model is ready to come to life!

Please don’t keep this knowledge to yourself my fellow ITGM majors.  Feel free to pass this info along to that one student on the cusp of punching his (or her) monitor and stomping on the keyboard from frustration.  As always, keep gaming!