Week Summary

This week is hand in week. On the Monday me and the team had a team meeting with the tutors to go over our game. We had some good and negative feedback. The good was that the game runs wells and the games appearance is looking good with textures and such. (Z tiles were not added till Tuesday). The negative is that the game is not fun enough something that our tutor probably wouldn't go back too, we were told if we had more time and everyone was dedicated to the game it could of had a different turn out, but overall the game is doing well even though we were a little disappointed.

In the afternoon on Monday we all were in and working on the game, I managed to get most of the finalised artwork into the game such as score art pieces and a gem in the left hand corner or the game so the player knows how many pieces of treasure have been collected, also a foliage piece has been added around the timer to give the game more of a jungle like theme and aesthetics. Olivia was still working on the Z tiles in Substance designer creating a muddy floor texture. Ben R was modeling a plane piece for the environment, a piece of wreckage (Plane wing) that the player can come across in game. This gives the game more narrative adding these details. Curtis was making a 3D model of the boat the player will catch at the end of the game, it is going well so far we plan to add the boat in by mid week if all goes to plan. Ben L has been sorting out the level and adding in details such as the torch lighting effects making it more realistic, he also added in fog and a final night scene setting, this was to make the game creepier. On Monday I did finish the lose screen with the hand. Olivia drew and added in a gem, I then went in and finished the piece off by adding a background and details. I also finished the title logo for the title screen it was also added into the game on Monday.

 This is the game with the added fog effects.

This is the Gem that is placed in the top left hand corner of the game, collected treasure points are calculated on top of this gem.

This is the foliage piece that circles the timer in the game.

This is the final lose screen with added treasure piece and background. I made the piece dark to give it that effect of sadness.

This is my final design for the game logo, I added three of the enemy characters and with blood markings to the text. I did this to give the logo a threatening design. The font that I used for this piece is from this website: http://www.1001fonts.com/sad-kropotkin-laugh-font.html.

The two images above are of the in game title screen with added pieces such as the title logo and controls menu. I like how the design with the stone buttons works well with the stone menu keys.

This was also added to the game this week, this is a part of the ferns that Olivia draw and she sent it to Ben L to place into the game as a plant piece for game, now when the player plays the game you will see ferns plants scattered around the level. This made such a difference to the game.

Tuesday was another busy day. Another one of the tutors went over the game and was very happy with how it has turned out. We were all happy about this as a team. The plane wreckage piece that Ben R was creating was put into the game on the Tuesday and is looking good it fits well. Ben L placed a few crate boxes into the game near the plane wing model to give it more detail. Curtis also modeled a walkies talkie into the game and added text above it. It gives the player a piece of narrative. The text reads along the lines that a boat will be on the other side of the island to rescue you as you have crashed landed on the island but you will need to get to the dock area in the time limit as it will leave without you. Curtis is was still modeling the boat asset. Olivia finished the Z tiles (Muddy) for the game and have added them to the game, this has made the game so much more detailed, it really made a difference. She is working on another Z tile with a grass texture. The scoreboard needed a piece of art work for the background. As a team we decided to use a piece of art work that Olivia has created a few weeks before. (Background for the pitch document). I took that piece and added a pile of treasure gems. The piece that we used for the scoreboard was not to scale, the image was stretched. I made a new page in Photoshop took the image and added my own piece to it so it matched the screen size in game play. Ben R was modelling some vines for the game, these should be added during the week. Ben L also changed the timer to a longer amount so instead of 1 minute roughly it is now gone up to 3 minutes. Sound has just been added into the game this week too, it runs while in game play. The music was done by my partner as he has a background in music and recording he was happy enough to add some music to our game. He could not spend as much time as he had liked on it but he did what he could in the time he had.

 
 This is the final scoreboard piece in which I had to add details to, such as gems and tree etc...

On Wednesday we had out last contextual studies lecture till September in year 3. In this lecture we looked at 'Being: Queer and disability studies'. We looked more in depth at how games portray same sex relationships and disability within there games. Dragon age was discussed as this game has implemented gay relationships within their games. This topic is never really portrayed in many games, some games tend to focus more on race and gender instead of sexuality.

For the game on Wednesday Ben R did model and texture some vines for the game but they did not match the style, Ben L decided not to add them to the game. Olivia has worked and completed the second Z tile design which was the grass/moss. This was added to the game and works very well as we used a tool within UE4 called vertex painting, the outcome was pleasing everyone in the team agreed. Curtis is still working on the boat but is nearly there with it, he has had some problems with the UV's flipping but he is working on this issue.

This is the final outcome for the ground texture with a mixture of mud/grass and moss like textures. In this image the scene is lit up, The texture looks more effective when in the darker mode and light is hitting it. One problem with this is that the textures look a little to big, Olivia we see if she can get this fixed on Thursday.

I have finished my part for the game now. I did do a promo art piece for the game, at first we were not going to do one but because I felt I didn't have much of a role in the game at this time I thought it would be best to do a promo piece for the game. I worked on this in one sitting.

This is the promo art piece for the game. I did play around with some different effects to gain the light effect from the torch and I also added in fog. The trees were done using a downloaded brush from a ImagineFX magazine I bought a awhile back, it had a very textured brush, it gave me the effect I was looking for with the trees. I'm quite happy with this piece in the short amount of time I put into. I would of worked longer on it but I didn't want to take all my time doing one task in hand in week, if I knew last week to add a promo piece I would of spend longer doing it, overall it gives the effect I wanted with a dark atmosphere and puts a narrative to the game.

On Wednesday night we had a problem with the game it was stuck on the D drive on one of the computers at university, we had trouble with putting the file onto our hard drives and it caused problems. So on the Thursday we all met up to go into the university to see if we could get this problem sorted by asking a tutor. It did get fixed. Curtis was still  doing the boat UV's for half the day as he had a problem with the building of the cage, Ben L helped and the last thing Curtis had to do was texture it in substance painter. The boat was then placed into the game as soon as he was finished.

This is the boat within the game our final asset to be placed.This is were the character will end the game after successfully going through the island level.

Olivia also managed to change the size of the ground texture within the game and it looks a lot more effective in the game, we where all happy with the outcome. She did well doing these textures as she has never used Substance designer before. I will give this ago during my time off university.

This is the new ground texture.

After we added the last final touches and got help from our tutor with the problem we had, we built the game which worked fine and then we got a video capture of the game play. The game is finished and ready for hand in for Friday.

Below are some screen shots of our final game.

 Bear trap in game, one of the many traps.