August 2012

Chaos Reigns RTS Game

Dane Aleksander—computer animation student at Carleton University.

Chaos Reigns is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game released for Windows. RTS gameplay features include unit creation and manipulation, fighting enemies, and strategizing through spending resources and using unique unit abilities in combat. Chaos Reigns also contains some advanced features influenced heavily by a unique back-story. Beneath layers of intuitive menu interfaces – in game and out – Chaos Reigns is an immersive 3D world challenging gamers to strategize in order to overcome evil!

Senior project fair day release: Chaos Reigns (2011) [Windows, 200 MB]

…about exporting an FBX for XNA from Autodesk Maya 2011.

Import the troublesome FBX into a blank Maya scene. Errors in animation should show as you scrub the timeline. If there are no playback issues, re-exporting your FBX will clear extraneous DAG nodes associated with the original scene. This can reduce file size and animation should now transfer into your XNA framework as expected. Also, note that Maya 2011 FBXs fail to load in Visual Studio 2008. When using Maya 2011, select the Maya 2010 FBX export setting instead.

My little bit of animation experience was a welcomed addition to our team of five. Screenshots from Chaos Reigns gameplay, for which I produced 3D character models and optimized the character animation export for clean FBX files for our development environment – XNA game engine. Each of the fifteen character units had low polygon counts (600 polygons or 1,200 triangles) and with animation keyframed on custom inverse-kinematic (IK) control rigs for individualized character walk cycles, idle stances and attack loops.

I also produced a game trailer.