Today at mighty Rabbit was such a good day! We yet again got to sit with a few of the employees, but this time we focused a bit more on the side of the game that everyone sees. Today we sat with two guys, one named Rob, and the other named Shotty. Rob was a character artist, and he was focused on creating the 3D mesh and skeleton for one of the characters that would eventually be implemented into the game. Shotty on the other hand was more focused in the animation of the characters, and setting up how the character moves like you see in the game. It was really interesting to see how these guys used their own software in order to create the final project that looks so smooth when you see it in game.
The time at Might Rabbit was so much fun and all in all just very inspiring. I enjoyed it alot and I would recommend students next year that would like to investigate this feel to check that company out.
One of the coders with his split screen capability
A preview of our game spiel
Today was such a cool day, Shane and I got to work together to create a game of our own. Except this time it wasnt only the coding that we had to do but rather we had to go start to finish of the development process. Starting with a premise of an idea and then building into what the game is going to do, how its going to be played, whats going to attract players, whats going to get players to want to come back, etc. It was really interesting because we weren’t given any help throughout the creation process then we had to in the end propose our idea to a couple of the guys so that they could critique us and tell us what we should do differently next time and so on.
After that we met with Ben and he talked to us about the whole production side of the business and the requirements to get a game to the market and the shocking truths about how much of the revenue you end up giving away to others after the production of the game is finished.
It was alot of fun to have the hand on experience to see just how a company like that runs and even see the other side of the business that many people might not think about when they think about game development.
Upon arriving to the office Ben was slammed with meetings and we got to sit in with the first one of his. It was cool to see game development companies have to think about more than just the video game when it comes out, but also the products and figures and such that is correlated with the game that people can buy to collect. The meeting was focused on a special edition of the game that was to come out soon, and the items that would come with the special edition package.
After the meeting we got to shadow a guy by the name of Adrian, it was cool because he was more into the dirty coding and programming rather than testing. He in his breaks helped us with the projects we were working on and it was so helpful to get that extra eye from someone who really knows what they are doing. He was working on aspect of the game that were way over our heads, but it was cool to see how after a few lines of code and a few shouts of anger he was able to build the level and we could visibly see the changes he had made.
Once we were done with Adrian, we met back up with Ben for some closing remarks to close out the day and also plan out what we are to do tomorrow.
Today was a pretty relaxed day, after arriving at Mighty Rabbit, Shane and I were told to shadow a guy named Kurt who is focused on the console development of a game that is yet to be released. He was fail testing a few previous builds of the game in attempt to locate the source of an error in the code. It was really interesting to see how even the professionals make the simple mistakes and those simple mistakes can go a long way to screwing up the game entirely from the most simple roots.
After lunch we met back up with Ben and he talked us through the shipping and processing of the game to give us more of a look into what he focuses on in the company, and then he set us on a task to work on our own projects of code.
Pictures are hard to come by considering their restrictions and Non Disclosure Agreement, but I will try to post at least one a day. This is their most famous title!
Upon arriving at Mighty Rabbit Studios today Shane and I were greeted by an empty conference room. At first we were very confused but very soon after the owner of Mighty Rabbit Studios entered the room and told us that Ben, the guy we would be working with, was running a bit late since he has been working so much overtime with a current project. Considering that the company has rights and licenses with outside companies I am not allowed to discuss what sort of software he was working on throughout the rest of this blog, but the project is soon to drop and everyone is working super hard to push for meeting the deadline.
One of the first things we found out upon arriving at Mighty Rabbit Studios is that, the company isn’t like many other companies in that it is also split with Limited Run games, and owned and worked by the same staff. At first this seems confusing and hard to keep up with. But in reality it is a technique that seems to work very well. Considering the company works out of the same building they dont have to pay two different rents. And one of the most important and helpful things that comes from the company being split is that when one side of the company isnt bringing in a good bit of revenue efforts can be focused in the other side, and the first side will just be put in sleep mode for a portion of time.
Limited Run games is cool because it takes hit games from last generation and revamps them to run on the new consoles and PC’s. In doing so they redo the graphics as well as redo how the game runs, but they keep the same story line and characters that everyone used to love. I think that it is a very cool idea because it brings back really fun games and reinterests the older generation into video games.
Outside the Building looking down the Tobacco Road
The Staircase down to Lucid VR
The actually facility of Lucid VR
Today Shane and I got to travel down to Downtown Durham where we were found ourselves working in the American Underground District. The American Underground is a place where small start up companies can rent out small sized facilities for a low monthly cost so they can focus on starting to get revenue and not so much on paying the bills. Upon arrival we found ourselves literally walking down a staircase to the basement of the building. Truly in the Underground area.
After meeting up with Josh Setzer, we were given a short tour of the area and introduced to all the members on the team. Just like any other software company they had members ranging in different fields, from overall product sales to straight up coders.
The software that Lucid Dream VR is working on is primarily dependent on their clients’ desires. The company designs software that meets the demands of their clients so that the clients can spend that time on more necessary tasks.
Throughout the day we were able to test two VR headsets: the Oculus Rift, and the HTC Vive. It was really cool to see the progression of VR technology time, and hear from the guys there where each of them sees the industry going in the future.
All in all I really enjoyed my time at Lucid Dream VR, and I am interested to watch what happens to Virtual Reality in the near future.
The incredibly cool campus, as well as the testing facility where we had the play test.
ve down to Crossroads Boulevard so that we could visit Epic Games. Upon arrival we were greeted by a man named Steve Polge. He walked us through the super cool campus that featured a two story high character from one of Epic Games most recent games, a climbing wall in the main relaxation room, a slide to get from the second floor to the first, and multiple testing rooms for outsiders to come in and test the newest builds for the games.
After the initial tour we got to go back to Mr. Polge’s quarters where he along with his 20 man team are working on the upcoming Unreal Tournament which is currently in Pre-Alpha stages, it was really interesting to see how even such a huge company has such small teams creating games that aren’t all that popular just yet. Mr. Polge was the lead of the team in creating the game, and he was in charge of overseeing what happens. The team, however, also has many different sectors. They have QA’s, an animator, graphic designers, coders, and artists. Each of which work together to create the final version of the game. Throughout the day we learned that each member is only efficient of all of the other members work together. There were times throughout the day that members of each of the fields had to work on tasks that were meant to be done by one of the other fields. This turns out to be very common, understandable, considering how small the team is and how much is to be done in order to eventually produce the game.
After a bit of testing and gameplay, Shane and I were taken to lunch by Mr. Polge, he asked us a few questions about our backgrounds in the field, as well as anything new that we learned or any suggestions that we have for the game. It was cool to learn about how he started out in the field and what interested him originally to stick with Epic Games, and specifically unreal tournament.
After returning back to the facilities from lunch we went back to testing the game, looking for bugs, and also finding new possible changes. It was cool because this time we got to tryout a different game mode and actually play with each other.
Lastly after all questions were asked, we were brought into a test run. 8 of the members from the team as well as shane and I hit if off in a 5 v 5 game where we got to play the game with some real competition for once, rather than the bots that we had been playing with throughout the day. After playing a couple games we had a meeting to converse about any noticible mistakes or places in which the game should be fixed or changed in the future.
All in all the day was so much fun and it was awesome to get to meet Mr. Polge and his team as well as get introduced into that sort of field.
Today was a bit of a light day in that Shane and I both had no job lined up but rather had a day solely to prep for the upcoming internships. We woke up after a couple extra hours of sleep, and decided to meet at Starbucks so that we could talk about the upcoming days and plan accordingly to be best prepared for what is to come. First off we checked out the Unreal Engine which is Epic Games’ personal game design software. Shane had it downloaded on his computer so we decided to mess around on it and tried to create one a driving game, and two a birds eye view shooter. Both of the games were very rough, but they gave us a bit of an intro to how the software worked that we will most likely be working with in the upcoming days. After that we checked out Epic Games newest game Paragon, and looked into how it was made and what made it different from other MOBA’s (Massive Online Battle Arenas). The game is still in beta stages but through playing it neither of us found any glitches at all, which was very reassuring. The rest of the day was spent at home placing previously made games on a flash drive to take into mighty rabbit studios on Friday, as well as checking out Lucid VR’s website to get a grasp on their start up company in which we will be visiting on Thursday. All in all the day was pretty relaxed, but I am super excited for tomorrow at Epic Games, and I am as ready as I will ever be.
