24/7 Rehearsing!

It's exactly one month before we fly off to Seattle, for the Imagine Cup Worldwide finals, and we are super excited and anxious about the whole thing. We want to give our best out there, and impress the judges, who will be announced in early July. 

We are working on the presentation, the game itself and our booth setup in parallel, and everyone is yet once more giving his best shot, in order to achieve our maximum potential at Seattle. 

There are too many things yet left to be done and they are all need to be done at once, unfortunately, this Summer won't be yet another Summer, but it will be THE Summer, at least for Team Genesis.

At the moment, we have also been working on Xbox 360 controller support for Dementia, in order to make the hands-on judging even easier for the judges themselves. While doing so we happened to be walking on the street, going to meet up and get some parts of the presentation ready, and we stumbled upon ourselves... at the newspaper of course! Ethnos newspaper has us featured in the back cover (Still good for now) and showing off our achievement to Greece.

Ahhh, the feels in this image are going over 9000. Anyway, back to the point. We feel like we're having our own little publicity here in Greece, and the more people see us and the more people like our page, then the more obligated we feel to those greek people and our followers to do exactly what they all want deep inside their hearts. A really good position for Greece in Imagine Cup, this year.

Did you know that Greece has never ever sent any game to the Imagine Cup competition, in the games category? Well, this is a first, at least, and we feel honored to be the ones to do it. Nevertheless, this doesn't really say anything else to us, rather than a plain and simple Imagine Cup trivia :P

Well, that's all for now,

happy gaming to all of you :)

New merits for Team Genesis, Leaking Screenshots!

Hello again, people! This time we got EXTREMELY exciting news for you!

First of all, we would like to announce that Team Genesis won its' second reward in Imagine Cup - Honorable Mention in UX Challenge, climbing to the top 10 of the Games Category in the world once again...!

User Experience (UX) Challenge was about creating 2 documents filled with diagrams covering basic gameplay flow of our game, the target screens and their functionalities, 2 LowFi Wireframes about our gameplay and menu screens as well as one HighFi Wireframe concerning the gameplay.

You can see Imagine Cup's Official UX-Winner Announcement here: http://bit.ly/1kHjeTH

Kudos, team!

Secondly, and that's somewhat even more awesome for sharing with you, we will now leak the first ever "ACTUAL" screenshot of the game, which is actualy the high fidelity wireframe that we submitted over to the UX Challenge.

In the following screenshot we are revealing quite a few things:

1. The characters in 3D !
2. Some of the Rooms of the House!
3. The Whole User Interface!

So... without further ado, behold, our UX Challenge Screenshot:

Note: This Screenshot was taken in January. Trust us, there is MUCH more to show you :)

Things are about to get nasty, as one week remains until our game is submitted for the Greek Finals so now, team Genesis is going on full power! Let's do this!

It's all about A.I. - And showing off rooms!

Finally! The game now properly locks to one character, and we control him only now! The rest of the explorers now have a very very very BASIC form of AI.

They can think for themselves! They can open rooms, steal from others and even attack them at will based on predetermined design guidelines. They know what's good for them, as such when you complete your turn with your character, you can FINALLY see all the others doing stuff at will. Mostly navigating into other rooms.

But what else you'd expect when the curse has not broken and the scenario has yet to be revealed? Their only goal after all IS ACTUALLY to open up all the rooms discover as much of the house as possible!

The AI to handle the post-curse effects is yet to be written, since we focus on polishing the pre-curse thinking patterns of the characters.

The rooms have also been optimized. Some messy models were thrown away, some others just got dessimated, just enough to keep the poly count low. We have also given the players the ability to tinker with the Video Quality Settings : Low (Without any shadows emitting light) , High (Which really takes the game to another level, if you can handle the FPS cost).

Currently we are focusing on making the game playable by one player. We believe we will reach our goal easily by the week, so we can start wrapping up and adding spice to the game itself the time remaining until the Imagine Cup Greek National Finals.

We are very excited and we hope that every sacrifice we've made so far won't be in vain. We will take this to the very end..!

We don't like not showing you what we are preparing, so here is a quick view of the Ritual Chamber, where the Rat King will perform his Wicked Rat Ritual..!

The Ritual Chamber - Perfect for Spellcasting, Rituals and other Demonic Sacrifices...!

Presentation, Progress and Awesomeness

Today's Thursday and we are around a month and a half until the Greek Imagine Cup finals.

The whole team is giving its' best self to overcome the difficulties we are facing every day with our code. Traversal is finally fully functional, you can see the characters ascending and descending staircases, falling into deathtraps and sliding gracefully into the dark corners of the manor.

All the work is focused around the Scenario at the very moment. Such tasks include:

• Spawning the Rats around the Manor.
• Perfectly Positioning them in their respective nodes.
• Correctly fitting the Rats into the Turn Flow.
• Getting the Rat King into the Ritual Chamber.
• Punching in the Winning Conditions of each side.
• Watching how wicked the Rat Ritual is!

Coming right up after this, we will focus on creating the Single Player aspects of the game, meaning that the User Interface will only draw our selected Character on Screen, and all other characters (Not Controlled by the Player) will be controlled by the CPU. This is our last stand, our final obstacle between us, and a game ready for the judges : The AI.

Meanwhile, we are working hard on the presentation for the Greek Imagine Cup Finals. Here is a quick view of the first slide : 

Team Genesis - Imagine Cup 2014 Greek Finals

The presentation itself will require ultimate overview of who we are, what we are doing, why we are doing it and trying to take a deep dive through all the aspects of our game, such as Concept, Gameplay, Goals etc.

Further into the idea, we must discuss about ourselves, how we met, why did we decide to do this for Imagine Cup, how did we work at this project and what's the whole business idea behind it.

We are relaxed taking on Business again, as we believe we can punch in a couple of slides that perfectly explain our competition, our customers, our financial management as well as how is the game going to be distributed and monetized through various platforms, as we have already received an honourable mention at the project Blueprint Challenge and the feedback from the judges has been far more than just valuable.

So, here we are, trying to glue everything together.
Oh boy, what a month April is gonna be...

Till next time, Rat King says "Hello!"

The Curse of the Rat King

Hello people and have a great week!

It's Monday and it's about time we gave you an exclusive update for Dementia : The First Scenario to be implemented in the Game for our Imagine Cup version of the game..!

Story :

" It's been 10 years since anyone has set foot in the Bloodthirsty Manor. Spectral Remains of tortured people roam about. All the explorers shake hands at the entrance and they hope they do find what they seek in this God forsaken place.

Cracks on the floor, Chains can be heard from far away and nearby, a sound that no human ear can easily discern, strange light from unknown sources is filling our hearts with hope, as we venture deeper and deeper into the house.

We can hear the rusty gears of the machinery room every now and then, yet there is no power in the house. Only candles to show us the way, it feels as if the kind spirits of those who seek revenge from the evil ones, guide us to find their dirty little secret. You can feel there is darkness lurking in every corner of the house, under every sheet, or blanket, all you think you'll find is blood.

Everywhere. 

The whole house itself may be acting against us, but we know our true purpose here. And we hope our minds can bear with what tricks it will play us. Our sanity is the only veil that covers our terrified soul from the aparitions of this damned place. Dark Clouds gather and cover our footsteps. 

We feel like there is no way out. Most of our comrades seem to have lost their minds, they all have grevious wounds made by either cursed objects, animated furniture, or even themselves. Everyone is on the verge of insanity. Especially this shady man, with which we entered the house. But who is that man really?

You can hear his screaming. You can hear his pain. You cannot feel anything less than empathy for that poor soul. He seems completely ruined and drained. Yet here comes the skittering sound. Noises of low-pitched squeaks now roam in the house. You can feel that the house is infested.

Suddenly, the noise gets louder and louder. Every time. Things only get worse, as we have met up with our friends at the Entrance Hall. Except this one man. We know something has got to be happening. His screaming has now reached a climax. We can feel his tears on his face. He is not screaming because he saw something. He is crying out loud. He knows he has met his demise, or will probably do so soon.

Loud Skittering sounds are getting louder every second. We hold hands with our friends. We curse the moment we decided to enter that pesky manor. Why bother? Why leave that hot cup of tea and our favorite books lying in our rooms, yet to be finished, just to come here for "our greater purpose"? 

When we took the courage to walk forward, we saw him. He was not the same as before. He had a skull on his head, his body was hairy and pale gray. He had a long tail and his hands held a staff. Our friend became a were-rat. He were frozen in fear when we saw him. He completely ignored us, rushing towards the basement. We knew that such abominations should not live in our world. He was not our friend anymore. He was a demon.

"The Rat King Himself - One shall be deemed worthy enough
to command the army of Rats. That night, he is the chosen."

As we ventured towards the basement ourselves we were attacked by his vermin followers. Rats! Rats everywhere! It was a bloodbath. So we took matters in our hands and keep moving towards the basement. He heard wicked words out of the WereRat's mouth. He was their king. And even more Rats appeared out of thin air. 

We knew our final, true purpose. We HAD to destroy them all..."

The Curse of the Rat King - Scenario #1

We took the liberty of giving you out our first Scenario this way.
But what will you be at the end? The shady man who turns out to be a wererat? Or the fellow companions who must battle their way through the maze of Rats?

Most of all... Who do you think emerged victorious?

Unity3D Event @ Found.Ation

Last week at Found.Ation, we co-organized a Game Development event along with Microsoft Hellas. All sorts of concepts of the game development industry were introduced to the attendees and we would like to thank you all guys for coming over, it was a pleasure meeting and talking to you all.

We hope we can host more events in the future so you can see more of whatever field of the game industry you like!

Some photos from the event :

Dimitris-Ilias Gkanatsios from Microsoft Hellas on
Multiplatform Game Development

Kostas Dokos, our Lead Designer Presenting the Art of Game Design

Kostas, Along with Theodoros Doukoulos, our Product Manager,
presenting Unity Fundamentals

It's Marketing Time! Panel with special guest George Karavias from Anlock

Event Attendance - Presenting Unity Basics

Finally, here is the link for the Game Design presentation as well as the Unity demo:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/49ulbxx0dg36oqe - Art of Game Design
http://www.mediafire.com/download/l8uggfvtspizdoi/SpheresVSCubes.rar - Unity Demo

Thank you all for attending, catch you guys later..!