Game design and development using GF engine

• Main Author: Thi, Chanh Hien
• Other Authors: Seah Hock Soon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Software::Software engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/59014
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Game Factory (GF) Engine is a next-generation rapid game development platform, offering a customizable, reusable, interoperable and modular framework for both researchers and game designers. On top of that framework is a skeletal animation tool, called WaKu. Through 3D visualization and scene management, this animation tool is used to implement key-framed cut-out and flat articulated shadow puppet animation system. The whole purpose of this project is to enhance the existing functions of WaKu Animation tool so that designers can make a better use out of this tool. The first improvement is Action Design tool, whose purpose is to allow designers to animate some actions for a selected puppet. Those actions will be stored in a file and reused for game development or further modification purpose. Although some of the core functionalities have already been implemented, the development is temporarily halted due to its low priority and many problems have not been tackled yet. Thus, this tool is not suitable for packaging yet. The second improvement is Entity Status dialog, whose purpose is to expose a selected puppet’s information to the designers and allow them to make some amendments to the puppet. This dialog is created to cater for the need and of a WaKu user, client of this project. Hence, it has high priority. All of core functionalities of this dialog have been implemented, tested and successfully packaged for actual usage. The third improvement is on the existing functions of WaKu Animation tool. The first enhancement involves the existing Onion Skin function, used to display multiple frames of a puppet’s animation to designers. The second function is loading some recently opened animation files on their workstation. These two functions had been developed, tested and successfully shipped to the client. Aside from the first improvement, two other improvements have been successfully packaged. Moreover, more work can be done for these three improvements to further enhance the functionality of WaKu Animation tool, or GF Engine, such as adding scaling information, list of images for the Entity Status dialog, or assigning multiple keyboard controls to one action for Action Design tool, etc.