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DEPLORABLE!

Self reflection dairy

[samwalker-cvg-finalyear]

Final self reflection.

In the first weeks we were very eager to begin further development on our game “Deplorable!”. Feedback on our game from last year pushed us hard to transform what we had into a multiplayer game. If we were to continue down this route I knew that one of my main focuses this semester would be on environment and map creation to be used in our game.

Our bank from last semester is great but lacking in a lot of areas and in my opinion not suitable for a multiplayer battle game so I began to moodboard different environment ideas that I believe would work for various comic themed maps. Once I had settled on conceptual ideas, I began to mock-up some map overviews in illustrator which included the main map outlines and objective locations. I ended up finalising 3 concepts, a Heli-carrier, a city block and a secret hideout.

My next task was to take my initial concept mock-ups and white box them out in 3DS MAX, using extremely basic geometry. I knew from the beginning that multiplayer maps were a big task so I decided to focus my efforts onto one design for the time being, that being the heli-carrier level. Once I had the correct scale and design laid out I began to build up more levels of detail to the map, adding in more complex geometry. For an overall aesthetic experience I decided to add detail to the outer bounds of the map such as the engine pieces.  With the final geometry in place it was time to create promo / glamour shots to both show my team and to be used for war room promo. This was done using Cinema 4D as I believe I can achieve a better result in this program in comparison to 3DS MAX.

The finalised geometry also needed to be tested in an engine in order to test its computability and the overall scale and playability of the level. I decided to use Unreal engine for this as it was easy to explore using a 3rd person character preset. I decided to take a small break from the helicarrier level after testing and mockup some game mode related concepts, focusing on conquest / capture points. These were made in an attempt to encourage others to take initiative and create more concepts  and expand on the ones I was making. I then returned to the helicarrier level for the coming weeks and exported asset packages out to be unwrapped.

The next few weeks were filled with UVW unwrapping and texturing my asset packages so that they were ready to be exported to unity. Unwrapping was a much more difficult experience this semester since we were attempting to include advanced texture techniques including ambient occlusion and normal maps. My first attempt was unfortunately a failure as I did not account for the way ambient occlusion was rendered to the maps and it ended up creating an undesired result.

Once I had pinpointed where I went wrong I retried UVW mapping correctly and managed to get it to work. Once unwrapped correctly I was able to export the file as an FBX and import into Unity. These assets also needed to be textured. The bulk of the texturing, the diffuse map, was created in Photoshop using an unwrap template, painting on and adding texture to each object. Ambient occlusion was created for each asset by rendering out shadow maps, lighting maps and occlusion maps using the mental ray renderer. The three results were then merged using photoshop to create a desired result.

Whilst I initially attempted to add normal through 3D rendering techniques, I found it easier to paint / draw normal on using “Crazy bump”. This method allowed for quick and easy normal generation using grey scale topography recognition, the lighter the colour the higher the peak and the darker the colour the more recessed it looked. This method also allowed me to generate further ambient occlusion which was added to the existing maps. For some assets I included emission maps to give a glowing sci-fi effect. The assets were then all textured using unity shaders, dragging in the textures into their corresponding slots.

Now that we had a full geometry based level in place, I decided to focus my skills in other areas rather than create another environment due to time constraints. I began to work on adding in a skybox for our environment, using cinema 4D to render a cityscape I had created. This was further manipulated in Photoshop to achieve the desired effect, using multiple passes to really create something that looked good.

One suggestion we had was to add in more, smaller scale elements into the level, I had the idea of adding physics based assets such as boxes and barrels along with static over pieces to populate the level. I began looking at various references, and then progressing using similar techniques to the main environment. I also managed to fully develop my capture point concept from earlier, creating them as game ready assets and setting them up in unity.

In an almost final push I began to work on some promo materials and updating textures in the run up to the final weeks. I created a logo to be used across our promo work along with use within out game textures. This was implemented in game with other texture updates. In terms of promo I rendered out a minimap overview using one of unity’s alternate rendering modes. I manipulated the image I received in photoshop to create a promo / potential in game piece. I also created kill acknowledgement UI graphics for implementation in order to make out game feel more like a game.

For some more promo work I worked on aesthetic final renders of the environment assets and characters in Cinema 4D, importing game assets directly and rendering them in better lighting. This involved some rigging and fixing of the character models in order to get the best results. I also soon noticed that our game was lacking projectile models so I decided to take the initiative and create a dynamite model for one of our characters to use.  I also helped out implement characters and character related assets, creating textures and assisting with rigging.

With final presentations drawing near the majority of my attention was focused on promo work (more pre rendered images, posters etc) for this and the war room along with creating the PowerPoint assets and “slides”, which were then added and animated in prezi. I also took some more initiative in updating UI elements and creating scoreboard sprites to be used for our planned scoreboard. I also created a video sequence in Photoshop which was rendered out and used as an animated background for our in game menu and website splash page which I had started work on.

In the final weeks I noticed this project was also lacking code elements in a worrying amount of places. I went into unity and began to code in the video sequence for the main menu, added a spinning script to the level turbines and a menu logo element. In a final push iw as able to add sound into the game, creating some of my own using Sony Vegas and using other collated by my team I was able to implement sound in various areas that I was able to understand, code wise.

Overall this project could have been done a lot better. In hindsight we needed much stronger management and a much stronger programmer for the level that we wished to achieve. Whilst I tried to uphold my promise from last semester, focusing on more programming, it proved difficult to work on so many areas at once, causing some to fall out of my control. Whilst I am not without blame in terms of my time management and completing tasks quicker, I believe that the project could have been a lot stronger overall if we stepped up more as a team rather than individuals. Last semester I aimed to implement more complex geometry and textures for this semester and I have certainly achieved this goal, using complex geometry and many more texturing techniques.   Aesthetically and as an overall concept I believe our game has merit and promise, however it is unfortunately let down in the programming department, mainly due to the complexities of a multiplayer game. Something we were lead to believe was rather simple.

If I were to continue this game I’d definitely try to revamp the multiplayer system and create a much cleaner, concise and easier to implement version of this project. I’d also aim to implement many more levels to play along with fully functioning game modes and character customization.

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Working on our promotional website for the game.We’re using the free website creator ‘wix’ to create our website. 

Was able to re-tool and re-use many promo materials and assets for the website. I was very excited to see that i could use the same animated background idea from our game, which adds a great bit of continuity across platforms.

This website documents the progress of the project and showcases who we are and the work we have put into “Deplorable!” the website will also give people the ability to download our game and receive updates.

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More sound implementation, coding  and creation. 

Still a few sounds that weren’t created so i had to create some more and implement them along with the existing sound library we had from last semester and this semester.

Implementing sound using the audio source game object and the audio.play() function within unity. When a key press of function is able to run, the cosponsoring sound will play. 

The main sounds i ended up implementing were, throwing, explosions, lasers, damage and jumping sounds. 

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Working on updating some sections of the LWD, focusing on my areas such as environment design and explaining out some elements of programming.

Also working on the visual style element of the documentation, creating new and retooling old images / assets to fit the new theme. 

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Added in main menu animations. In an attempt to make the game look more dynamic i added basic animations to the menu background from last semester. I created a glow effect using photoshops video editing tools and rendered that out.

I then imported the video into unity and coded in video playback and loops for rawimage objects. The video was then added as a texture to the raw image object. 

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Added in dynamic sound to the turbines on the helicarrier level. These sounda are placed in 3D space with spherical falloff so that the sound gets louder as you get closer. I had to adjust the volume and curves of the sound to get it feeling right. 

Also attached audio listeners to the character prefabs in order to pickup the 3D sound.

Also added in a temporary soundtrack to the main menu screen(s). At the moment this uses a copyright free incredibles theme which would need to be replaced in future development. I added this in now as i believe it adds alot o the game in its current state and makes it feel much more polished. 

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Sound! Starting to add sound  into our game and i started with one of our immersion focused sections, the turbine blades. For this I used sony vegas to splice together two stock audio sound effects in order to create the sound i wanted. I’m no sound engineer but to me it sounds pretty good. I had to crop and loop the sound effects so they would work correctly, then adjust the levels of each clip to make the bassy undertones more prominent. 

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Scoreboard UI design. Again following similar design style to the UI established last semester. 

Also tried a more comic styled design to fit with the newer UI elements and give it a more comic book feel which i believe some elements in game are unfortunately lacking. 

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Presentation Done!

View it here!

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Animating the presentation using prezi. 

Prezi is a great tool for creating unique presentations which works well as i wanted to create a comic book / page effect design and this works better for that than alternatives like powerpoint. 

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Promo / poster variations. Tried to make this look like a comic book but i feel like the more simplistic aesthetic of version 2 looks amazing. Also tried a version which incorporated game assets such as the level and our characters, however i don’t personally like this / think it works partially due to the quality of the models. 

Version 1 seems to be the ultimate compromise as it still utilizes comic book elements whilst keeping the simplistic style of v2. If i had more time, i believable i could make use of the game assets more but it’d need alot of work. 

the overall aesthetic is a re-tooling of the main menu UI designs from last semester, i had to redo the text / logo to fit a larger canvas but it’s hard to tell the difference. 

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Posing characters in a fight pose for the promo poster. Unfortunately there was a little bit of unwanted deformation which i was able to fix for the final image 

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Presentation slides mostly done. Now to animate them in prezi.

The overall goal aesthetic for these pieces was to make them look like a comic book and i believe i have achieved that effect.

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Presentation asset reference sheet / PSD. Collated the commonly used text assets and styles so they they’re easily accessible when creating presentation slides. 

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Worked on some alternate skin concepts/mock ups in cinema 4d and Photoshop. The ideas behind character customization and character building links well with the identity theories of James Paul gee who suggests that the player is able to identify more with a character on a personal level if they are able to personalize and customize the character to make it their own

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Added in a kill collider for if/when the player falls off the map. 

We like the idea of the player being able to fall / be pushed off the sides of the map, however this causes the player to fall infinity which we found out during testing. To fix this i’ve added a collider to kill the player if they touch it and i’ve placed it a distance under the map.