Weekly summary

This week we had a lecture on meaning and mechanics within a video game. An example of a title that we looked closely at was the AAA title 'Spec Ops'. Spec Ops takes the usual shooter in a different direction, Spec Ops allows the player to make a choice instead of the direct approach of shooting a person without a reaction giving this game a strong narrative aspect as well as working well with it's game play.

The Z brush workshop this week was different than last weeks, we did not do any character design study this week. The aim for this session was environmental only. We had to create rocks, also create a plane that was imported from Maya to Z brush and from the plane we had to make an brick object that could be place on the plane to create a brick wall structure.

Wednesday we had a lecture on Board games, this session was interesting. We were shown a few different games from the slide and how board games are becoming a very popular aspect within some game society's. This week also included a guest lecturer 'Charles Reeve' which in the past he has worked for the 'Call of duty' franchise working a UX designer, he has worked many roles in his career.

Also during the week we had a anatomy lecture which focused on the hip joints and the muscles in and around that area of the body, these lectures have been good to learn from for my drawing skills. Also during the week we had group tutorials about the essay and what the essay could be about this was very helpful. Later in the week we had a session on UE4 which we were taught how to add UI, health bars etc...to our games, these mechanics through blueprints will be really helpful to create a more fulfilling game.

Below are some blueprints that I had done during the lecture.

(This one I did not complete, This was to show text within the game play)

Game progress

In the last week or two I have been continuing with my game. I have changed my mind with the location of were my game will be set, at first it was going to be in a warehouse scene but I found that this will be quite limiting as it would of been just one big space and seem a little dull, so I have decided to go with a house scene instead which will be the suspects home. I believe I can do a lot more with a house location. I was hoping that I could download a house scene online as that would of saved me sometime but after downloading some sets I realised this would take much longer than making my own in UE4, as the sets that I downloaded online come in pieces that you have to put together, so making my own house (Rooms) will save time and that means I can put my own touches to the scenes. This week with my game I have decided to work more on the mechanical side of my game instead of making my game look visual as this week I have spend too much wasted time trying to find a decent house scene online so it is best to my own.

This is one of the mechanics that I have added in my game this week. This is a inventory system, it is fairly basic but it does what it is intended. The player can bring the inventory up at anytime in game play by pressing the "V" key on the keyboard. I aim to add assets that the player must find in the home which then gets added to the inventory. 8 pieces to find altogether.

 Above are screenshots of the inventory blueprint system.

Also this week for my game I added base cone  object that can be pick up but not collected, instead you can pick up the object and inspect it by pressing the "F" key on the keyboard and using the mouse to rotate the object then you can place it back down pressing "F" again. I added this to give the game a little bit more of a challenge as not all the objects in the house will be collectable as evidence. For now I only have the master item of this, now this means I can now make other objects from this one but copying it.