DGPX – Starting the Medium

Destruction Grand Prix is a UDK racing game that I’ve been working on for nearly nine months now. It’s part of a class called Team Game Production, in which we work as a team on a student-pitched, student-created game. The game itself has a production cycle of about one year, so new students are always rotating in, and in most cases those who start a project graduate before seeing it completed.

I’ve been long done with Team Game Production, but have volunteered as a consultant for my last quarter (meaning I’m “in” on the project without being enrolled, and doing work outside of school). I haven’t posted about this project yet because I’ve been the sole custom vehicle scripter for six months, and code doesn’t make for the prettiest of posts. I am however producing a massive tutorial (or potentially a book) covering all that I’ve done, as I was able to really dig into UnrealScript for vehicles. Something is going to come of that, so keep an eye out!

Currently I am the lead of the Vehicle Team, and guide teammates in the creation of vehicles for the game. Beyond scripting work, I am also charged with modeling and texturing the one fully functional vehicle that will be playable in-game. It’s a futuristic beast known as the Medium, originally conceptualized by classmate Max Davenport, and recently redesigned by Keith Rice. Up until last week we were using a mock-up of the model I made at the beginning of the project, and getting the scripts working was more important than making it pretty. Now that we have official concepts done by our Concept Team, I’m finally working on the actual art side of things. The only downside is that I have a very short span of time to complete a high poly version for an in-game model viewer (Forza-style), a low poly for the game, textures, scripting cleanup, and damage morph targets. I’m hoping to do all of this in about a week, as I want to have my portion of the project complete before I leave school (partially so I don’t dump it on my teammates, and partially because it’s my baby). I also need it modeled and working for my demo reel, which is due to be complete in about three weeks, and there are render times to consider.

So! Here’s a few quick renders of the model after one day of work.

To see more about the DGPX project, visit our class blog (TGP – DGPX). It’s updated by each team at least once a week, and production is really ramping up. To see the work that I’ve already done on the Medium, including vehicle scripting and the beginnings of that tutorial I mentioned, check out the Character/Vehicle Team in particular, as well as the Engine Team (which I’m not technically on, but work closely with).