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.

 

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.

Week Summary

This week on the Monday in the morning we had a meeting with two of the lecturers to go over our game so far and how well we are collaborating as a team. Some of the team members could not attend so me and Olivia went in and had to show what was produced so far. We could only show our concept work, the pitch document and our Trello. When they looked over our Trello they could see that it was not very busy, and that the communication within the team wasn't as good as it should be. Me and Olivia were quite surprised by this as we thought we communicated fairly well as we use Facebook and thought we met up fairly regally, but since going to the morning session to discuss our game we could see clearly that we do need to improve our Trello and communication. We improved the Trello and made it a lot busier and easier to work with.

Improved Trello, this will only improve each week when we add more and check off what we have finished for our game.

After this I had to go to the lecture theater and meet my Fine art group to present our film. It was interesting to see how the other groups presented their films and what they produced. I liked how the films were all so different. Me and the group presented our film, after it was shown we spoke about its meaning and how we developed the idea and how at first it was going to be about another selected topic that we discussed before. It seem that it hit people and that they liked how it was made, especially how the audio gave it that chill factor. I was happy with the results.

Also, this week on Wednesday we had a contextual studies lecture 'Finding a question'. The lecture was going through how to find a question for an essay and how to go about it, through brainstorming to what we might be interested in now such as video games we are playing or even what we are currently designing.

On Thursday I had a group crit in which we were talking about our research reports again, this week I have made a rough list on what topics I could talk about in my report some being: 
1.Relationship within video games such as Mass effect and Dragon age 
2. Why is sex and crime common themes in video games.
3. Violence in video games, do they cause violence players?
4. Gender roles in video games, does it play a big role?
5. Character development in video games.
These are just a few ideas, but I worry as I feel like these are topics have been spoken about a lot before. I will keep my mind open and keep thinking of possible topics to research. 

With the game project this week I have met up with my team once or twice to go over what we have all been working on, communication we are still trying to improve on but I believe that by the end of this week it has improved.

Ben R who is our level designer had drawn out some rough sketches of possible level layouts.

As a team we discussed that we all preferred the 2nd level design as it gives the player more than one option to travel when starting the game. 

This was a quick level design Ben R put together this week. The trees in this were modeled by Ben L, the trees still need to be textured and added with leafs. 

 This is the tree that Ben L modeled this shows the tree in substance designer.

Also for the game I and Olivia have started to create some concepts drawings for the traps that will be featured in the game, we have decided as a team so far to go with, Mud puddles (Sadie), quick sand (Olivia) this will slow the player down if walked on. Spider (Sadie) that will kill you if hit by it. Snake pit (Sadie) and Spear pit (Olivia) Spear wall (Sadie), bear trap (Olivia), Blow dart (Olivia). Maybe not all of these will be present in the game but it depends on what we can get done in the time we have.

The images above show what we have completed this week with our trap designs.

 These blueprints show how one of the traps work in game play, done by Curtis.

 This is just what we had to use first for our trap.

Curtis also put in a basic title menu this week.

 Blueprints Curtis had done for the basic menu.

Curtis put together a rough menu for now with added working buttons. Later me and Olivia will work together on a title screen concept piece.