Week Summary

This is the first week back from the Easter break. On Monday morning we had a meeting with two of the tutors for how our progression has come along with our game since we have been off for the Easter break. Most of us attended except one of our team members. We spoke to our tutors about this and the lack of communication with this member, they told us to give this person a task that is small so they do not feel completely out of the team, so we did, we messaged this member and said for them to 3D model a simple boat for the game, we gave them a image to go by and said to them can we they get this done for the middle of this week, we are yet to see this model. They also looked over our Trello they had no problems with it, it was up to date. I check it often and check off the things that I have completed once in awhile and some members of the team do this as well but Olivia is the one who takes charge of this more than any of us she keeps it in place.

On the Tuesday I met up with the team with Olivia we only went in for a short while, we went to see how Ben L and Curtis were getting on (He was not available for this week). We also saw one of our tutors just to show our progress so far, we are on track with our game so far, still we need to add a few more things yet, for the art side of this project me and Olivia are yet to add a piece of art work for the title screen, win and lose screen. While we were talking to our tutor we mentioned about the tribe characters after having a discussion on Monday with our two tutors we were told that the tribe character in it's design could come across as racist (We did not realise and think the design through enough as a group in the past), as it is based of real life people. As this game will be displayed to the public we have decided to change the design of the tribe character to something less tribal. We spoke to our tutor about this on the Tuesday and told them it has been changed, they agreed with the changed result.

 Original concept tribe character design.

The new enemy character design, it still has elements of tribal but I have changed the shape and colour. I have also made the character quite creepy looking zombie like, as our game has quite a dark, creepy atmosphere to it.

On Wednesday we had a Contextual studies lecture that was titled 'Making connections; Being an active research (and an inactive player). In this lecture we were given good ways of finding research and how to go about it and finding ideas, you could use a spider diagram to give you direction, and exploiting bibliographies by looking at the inside of books and where the reader got their resources. I will take these tips to mind when I next do some research on my research report. 

On Thursday I could not make the group crit as I had a doctors appointment, Because of this I went to see my tutor on Friday as I was struggling with an idea for my research report. After the the meeting on Friday morning I felt more confident and had a stronger idea on what I could theme my report topic on. At the moment I am working with what information and ideas my tutor gave me by next week I believe I will be able to gather more of a final solid idea.

(These are just some books I got from the library earlier this week to give me more of a perspective for my report, I may not need these anymore as my topic is changing).

In the Easter break I did produce a personal  Z brush sculpt piece. I bought Z brush core around 2 months ago and haven't really used it. After doing some work related to the games project I felt like modeling a alien character piece, I had been playing Mass Effect Andromeda a few weeks before, this inspired me to do this piece.

 This image shows the front and side view of my alien head model.

This image shows the back and top view of my alien head model.

I have wanted to get back into Z brush for a while now and have stated this before that I have wanted to improve my skills with Z Brush but didn't really have the motivation to do it, as soon as I did I decided to do this. I did not use any reference imagery and managed to create this in around 4 hours. I played around with different brushes to build and develop the design. I am very happy with the piece and believe it is my strongest Z brush piece yet. I still have a lot to learn especially with the technical side of Z brush but I think the more I produce pieces like this one I will only become more confident and learn more from it.

Also during the Easter break for the game project I did produce some pieces of art work, not as many as I had hope but from me doing this we now have a final idea on what the title screen should look like.

This is six rough thumbnails that I had done over the Easter break for possible title screen designs. I showed this to some of the team when we met up during the week we all decided on number four, with the plane crash, we chose this as it shows the player a part of the narrative, the start of the story.
In the Easter break I also completed two of the treasure pieces, I designed a gem/gems that could be used as pieces of treasure to collect in the game.  I also finished a concept piece for the treasure, it is of a wooden statue that can be collected in the game, maybe if you collect this piece you gain more points?, rare to find only one in the level?, I did briefly discuss this will the team but we are not sure if to add this to the game as of yet as well as Olivia's finished pieces of treasure, it depends on how much time we have left.

 
 These are the gems all in different colours to give the player some variety.

This is the the gem in Maya with it's UV's near ready to be added into Substance designer and into the game.

This is a screen shot from our game with the treasure gems now added this is what Ben L managed to get done this week. I like how he has kept to the original concept designs in shape and colour. He also modeled and textured the spear pit trap and is now in game.

 This is another image of the gems within the game.

 This is the production of the spear pit that Ben L has been working on earlier this week.

This is the spear pit ready to be placed into the game.

Spear pit trap with dead dummy model inside.

 This is the statue treasure piece that we may create a 3D model for and place in the game.

Olivia did finish up her treasure designs in the Easter break/ early this week. Below are images of her finished concept pieces.

At the end of the week I did sketch out a few rough button ideas for our title screen. Me, Olivia and Ben L all decided on going with the stone effect buttons which is number eight, we wanted to go with something simple that wouldn't over power the title screen to much. Also Olivia started with the environment for the title screen we plan to get this done next week, I will add the character to this piece when she has finished with the environment part.

These are just some images of the game progression so far.

Week Summary

On Monday we had a guest speaker come into the university called' Chloe Price' She works at a company called 'Rewind'. The company works with adverts, hollow lens, 360 film all sorts of different pieces of media technology. She spoke about what they are currently working on which is a  BBC VR game , the game is set in Space, it lets the player interact with the area around them giving them the perspective that they are in space. The game itself looks really cool, and beautifully designed it definitely court my eye.

On the Wednesday we had another guest lecturer come into the university during a Contextual studies lecture. Her name was 'Robin' she has been a previous games art student a few years back. I have met Robin a few times before even before I became a student at NUA, as I went monthly to the NIGD (Norfolk indie game developers) meet ups. Her presentation was about how to graduate like a boss. She gave us very useful tips on how to write emails to developers, how to network and other topics such as applying for game jams if we can and how they are useful for building networks and building confidence and knowledge.

The rest of the week me and the team were focusing on our game.

This week we have met up more during the week, me and Olivia have got all of the traps concept designs now completed so the others can start to 3D model them and then be ready to place in the game. We now have a Drop box account were we put our concept pieces (files), or 3D asset files, this makes it easier for the team to download files if need be and keeps it well organized in folders. We were told on Monday with our meeting with our tutors to see how our game has progressed to not put to many screen shots of our concept pieces and such on there, so this is why Ben L decided it would be best to make a Drop box account that has worked really well for us all.

This is the Spear pit that Olivia has drawn and completed this week, this is one of the traps that we as a team would really like to use in our game.

This is a rough design for the snake pit that I had done. This was an unsure trap to use as we already will have a spear pit in game. I decided to do a quick sketch just for reference if we change our minds.

 Snake types and designs if needed for the snake pit trap.

This is a quick sketch that I had done during the week for a simple spear that could be used as a weapon for the tribe characters to hold and throw at the player. This was a quick piece that I just wanted to add.

Quick concept by me of a mud puddle which will work the same as the quick sand that Olivia had design last week. If we use this or Olivia's design it is still unsure at this time, we may not add either.

This is the spears in the wall trap drawn by me, Last week Ben L was 3D modelling a wall like this for our game in Z brush so I wanted to make it as similar to the design as possible. I drew the spears to match Olivia's that are similar from the spear pit trap design piece.

 This is the wall piece that Ben L is working on at the moment this will be the wall that hold the spears (A wall trap), He has added another wall for the game also more for detail within the game.

 This is the other wall he has modeled and placed into the game.

 This image shows the wall Ben L has modeled as well as the trees that he also modeled.

This is the blow dart design sheet that Olivia had finished this week, it shows a few design designs that the blow dart could be and what materials the object could be also.

During the week a few more files were added to Drop box by other members of the team. Ben R 3D modeled at blow dart/Spear. Ben L has been texturing the tree was (was finished earlier in the week) and modelling some 3D rocks for the level. The style of these objects are low poly in look and a cartoon hint to the textures which have been created in substance designer. Both work well for our game so far. Ben L has also been playing around with the level design as at the end of the week one of our members has not been communicating as well as we had hoped which is a shame, so some of the tasks may now take longer to complete. Curtis has been working on more blueprint and has now added a basic timer and high score scoreboard, he also played around with the AI for the game (Tribe characters). This week the game was in a new level and laid out with over models asset so far.

 Three rock styles have been used within our game these were modeled by Ben L.

 This is what one of the rocks look like modeled and in substance designer (Not colored).

 This is the blueprints Curtis had done for the basic AI movement, more will be added to the AI later on.

 This is just what Curtis used as a prototype for the AI character.

 This image shows the basic HUD with score points in top left and the timer in the middle.

 These images above are just some of the blueprints Curtis used for creating a working HUD.

 This image shows the working timer shown in game play.

At the end of this week me and Olivia did not meet the team on Friday as we went on the London indie game event 'EGX Rezzed'. The event was bigger than I thought it would be, I got to play a load of different games by developers some big and small, it was definitely an enjoyable trip and well worth going. It would be good to go on trips like this more often as a university. While I was at the event I also got to meet my brother as he works as a social media executive at the publisher 'Bandai Namco' in London. At the event I did not go to many of the talks,  I wish I had managed my time better while I was there. I spoke to a few people in the industry that worked in a range of roles which was good to do, I came back with a few business cards. This trip ended the term nicely. Now I will be off for the Easter break.