#ctech608

[benbct]

Food for thoughtful animation

My job in the group is lead animator. I’m not very well versed in animation as I only found my passion for it in year one of BCT but I have quickly grown obsessed over it. My goal in every animation is to paint a picture. If I’m animating characters then I take into account what sort of character they are, how they hold themselves, how they walk, how they interact with the world. It’s been a stressful journey of throwing myself in the deep end of 3d animation without knowing the basics but from 2d animation I had at least the fundamentals and knowledge of how it should turn out.

While our team was deliberating on what sort of project we should turn our idea into, we started to lean towards making an escape room. I contacted my boss at The Great Escape to see if we could have a meeting with him and discuss how it may work. We told him about the details of what we were planning to do and what it was for and he was able to give us a sound answer...it won’t work. Since the open studio is such a small time space, we wanted to give each participant around 5 minutes in the room. Tibor, my boss, told us that 5 minutes is far too short of a time to have people solving puzzles and trying to work their way through a room. In my personal experience of being a escape game controller, teams will typically take around 10 minutes of looking around the room and pondering before they start to solve any of the puzzles. Having this meeting was unbelievably helpful since it allowed us to move away from that idea and broaden our horizon. We then went back to the drawing board started to work on a new project that would fit our restrictions and still convey the message of our idea.

For a while I was not on the same page with the new idea as I didn’t know what was happening. I feel like there wasn’t enough communication within our group to make sure that everyone had the same goal in mind. At this time my laptop had broken and I was without a computer for 2 weeks, so I got to work on concepts. But without a clear picture of what I was doing, I didn’t even know where to begin. Fortunately Max came to the rescue. He got the team together and we all discussed what we were going to create. We came up with a sort of sandbox room where the participant(s) is able to do whatever they want within the time frame. Whatever task they decide to do will give them a little bit of information that will amount with how many tasks they do. The idea is to allow the participants to create their own story of what’s happening in the simulation. We will do this by giving different information depending on the task they achieve.

My first task was to create animations for the interactions of the participant in the game world (sitting down and standing up from a chair). This seemed like a piece of cake since I’ve done camera animations before but only in Unity3d. I taught myself how to use Maya and Unreal Engine’s sequence animator to be able to work with the team. I first created the animations in Unreal Engine but I found that I had created them to world orientation instead of a relative position to the player character. This lead to the animations snapping to a random space and playing the animations instead of next to the chair. So after about a week of sifting through UE4s tutorials and forums, I was unable to find a way to create them relative to the player. I then used Maya and found that to animate a camera in Maya is very choppy and I didn’t think I would be able to produce any quality animations. So I then went to Unity and created animations in there and exported them with a cube mesh as an FBX format which I then attached to the player character and hoped that it would work...which it didn’t (probably something I’m overlooking). After another week or so of struggle, and with the help of Max, we found that there is a button in Unreal Engine that makes animations relative to the player so I then created the animations for the fourth time and have put a lot of effort into making them feel organic. The only thing I could do was laugh at myself for putting myself through weeks of stress to find such a simple answer, but I am now back on track and through redoing the animations over and over I feel like I have improved a lot. I keep showing the team my progress to make sure I’m on the right track and to get criticism on what I should try to fix.

[oscar-randle-bct]

Wrapping it up (reflection)

Cons

Regarding the game and its overall conceptual strength. I think we fell a little short in a number of areas. Our greatest failure was the lack of playtesting we. Yes, we scheduled three-4 big playtests where we received very valuable information to inform the rest of our development - But we made this game to explore the viability of self-expression in linear video games. In my opinion - the amount of actual ground we made on that topic is questionable due to the lack of substantiation from player feedback.

My estimations

Is it viable? personally judging by my experience in this semester - yeah, what we were going for has the potential to turn into something. Did we hit the nail on the head? No, not quite. There are a variety of further developments I would make if I had time, particularly regarding the audio mechanic. E.g making dynamic ambiance that changes depending on what the player plays, looking further into having more instrument and how they impact the game. But overall I think we did decently in the time we had.

Pros

on a personal note, while there was definitely room for improvement in both process and outcome - I am very proud of what my team has accomplished this semester. We set out with an unorthodox concept and worked our way into creating what I believe to be a solid game prototype in 12 weeks.

Up to a certain point, I think our game definitely provides the intended experience for the player. It’s a little hard to remain objective on this point, however, because I helped develop the game from the start. I feel as though the effect the game has on a new player would be vastly different from my own. So, it's difficult for me to say the exact extent of our success.

Our game is also very pretty. The boys in the art department outdid themselves on our game world - it looks clean, beautiful and exactly what we wanted. I think I did an okay job of the audio as well. It wasn’t my focus so I didn’t spend as much time on it as I could have if it was my main occupation. I think it serves it’s purpose though.

Going back to my personal goals that I wished to meet this semester, I am satisfied.

[bctmary]

Brainstorming

Brainstorming possible ideas for Studio ctech608 and digital fabrication ctech603. I am hoping to join the two projects together it will be interesting to learn more about 3D modelling and being able to produce something from modelling and having a product that can be used. I am leaning towards construction and mental health but will talk to people in class, at home, friends and family to bounce ideas off.

Aim: Week 1 - 2: Brainstorming/Looking at concepts

[nate-gibson]

Week 12 - 13

19-26/10/2020 Wednesday - Monday

Camera pins

The first thing I did today was to make it so that the pins now load The pop up (contains the title and short story). I did this by using the script that Matt had made within the camera scene which allows for items to be loaded when clicking on the 3D pin. I edited his script to make a pop-up appear when pressing a pin. I spent a while editing the script to make it so that each individual pin loads a different pop up. From there I made it so that after clicking on the pop-up the “long story” (contains the title and long story) would load. I made each pin have its respective pop up and long story, Ashton had already written out these stories so all I had to do was copy them over to the unity project. the last few things I did was adding a genre tags for the pop ups, and adding two buttons to the popups one will load the long story and one will close the pop-up, this was done to make it easier for the user to navigate the section. 

Player made pin

I then moved onto incorporating the user made story into the camera section. I used the code that records the title, genre tags, short story, and long story and made it so that the 4th pin will display these details. This was easy to add as I had already tested different ways for displaying the users inputted details. Since I had already created the final look for the pop-up and long story all I had to do was make base versions of them to be controlled by the user input script.

Now that I have created the ability to interact with all the pins an issue has occurred. The issue is if you interact with the pin nothing will be displayed on the pop-up and long story as no details have been entered into the creation section. To work around this I made it so that the user made pin would not be active until the creation script was complete (an inactive object will not appear in the scene).

Adding required inputs

As of right now the app is basically functioning so all I need to do is add some small elements such as making selection of objects and typing into input fields required before transitioning to the next section. I started with the avatar icon selection, I made it so that if you try to progress without selecting an icon you will be unable to progress and the text that says to select an icon will change to red. I change the text to red as most applications do this when certain inputs are invalid. I then proceeded to do the same for the sign in section, register section, and the creation section making it so that text is required to be inputted before proceeding, as well as changing the text that says what to do to red.

Updated visuals

I updated the project with the final visuals created by Ashton and Hannah in Adobe XD, this was great to see as the project looks much more professional now. I also updated all the text in the sections changing font color and enlarging it in places to better suit the look of the project.

Last edits

The last few things I had to do for the project was to add a word count to the inputs, the ability to like and disliked, creating a pop up when trying to sign out asking if you want to sign out, some small changes to the stories in the feed, and updating the user profile so that when you create a story it appears in there, and the number of stories that you have will increase from zero to one. I won't bore you with the details of adding these final edits as most of the code required I had already created for the project.

Final Project

My part of this project is now finished all that is required is for Matt to build the project to his Android and record a video of him using the application. You can see how the project looks within Unity below.

Video of final project shown through the Unity application:

If the video is not visible follow this link

[dreamtimedesign]

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Phone usage

The main reason for adding in a phone is to add some form of interaction with the outside world, and to show how the character interacts with friends. I found from a few sources that in some cases narcoleptics can become kind of anti social because they are embarrassed or their friends have treated them differently. 

So at the beginning I’ve added in a phone next to the bed, added a light source to its blueprint and sound. I’ve then added a trigger box to trigger off the phone vibrating sound to gain the players attention before leaving. I’m considering have the door locked until the player first reads the phone. 

After looking through a couple of tutorials on object interaction, i blended the knowledge from a few where one would cover one area and the other would cover another, so in the end I got interaction using a line trace by channel to check if there is anything to interact with. Once it hits the phone it opens up the phone menu.

The image of the phone I got from the internet and then edited it with symbols and background but when i chroma key the background, it still leaves some rough white patches around the edges and even after trying to clean it up in gimp, it still leaves rough edges no matter how much i erase. So i need to sort that out.

Next I need to add in buttons to navigate the phone or maybe just open it to read the message. I still haven't added in a close function to the phone so that too needs doing.

[oscar-randle-bct]

Personal Semester Goal

My personal goal this semester revolves primarily around learning and development. After spending all of last semester practicing something I was already familiar with, It’s really important that I spend these 15 weeks learning new skills. While having a lot of interdisciplinary knowledge is a powerful outcome of the BCT, I think its eminently undesirable (from an employment perspective) to graduate as a half-baked jack of all trades. I think it’s important to specify to a certain extent in a field of expertise.

My basic plan is to cover areas that iv’e had limited or no experience with this sem, make a decision as to what I want to specialize in during the break and then focus on my specialization during my third year.

A few examples of what I will be working around this semester are Leadership/team management, Conceptual Design, Programming, Game Desing/development, creative problem solving and inevitably more audio.

[benbct]

Timeline

My team member and I have created a timeline that we think we are able to stick to:

WEEK 3 – 4

Get in touch with psychologists

Get a group together

Get basics of game drawn out

 WEEK 5 – 6

Character movement

Character creation

Talk to psychologist

Design scenarios to gamify test questions

ART - UI design

ART - Character animation

 WEEK 7 – 8

Inventory system

Use and combine objects

ART - Character model/animation finalization

ART – Backdrops

 WEEK 9 – 10

ART – items

Input the different blocks into scenario

ART – Environment animations

 WEEK 11 – 12

Input the different blocks into scenario

Finalize scenario

Finalize art

 WEEK 13 – 14

Bug testing

Build executable

Final aspects

[benbct]

Splining a pathway for mechanical feeling humanity

The past couple of days I have been prototyping a system that will allow people and vehicles to go through an intersection on a timeline so that they narrowly avoid each other while still maintaining the same speed. The animation should imitate this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFrrdhbC6pg . This should hopefully give an uneasy feeling to the simulation as it all seems inhuman and more of an algorithm than people just crossing an intersection. Basically I have created a modular system that spline tracks can be set along a modeled intersection that will act as pathways that the vehicles and characters will move along. Their speed will be of the same factors or multiples of those numbers so that when the action loops, they won’t loop in a different order, possibly causing objects to move through each other. The track will lead from behind a building to behind another building so that the player cannot see when the cars reset along the track. Their starting position along the spline will be set so as soon as the character comes into contact with the scene, they will already be in motion.

[benbct]

Animation chaos

Over the past few weeks that I have had my laptop back, I have been creating animations for the first person character in our experience. Due to many different technical issues I have had to redo these animations around 4 times now :( but I think I have finally found a way to animate the character so fingers crossed that this works :\ Luckily I have been able to sort of reconstruct the animation that I made at the start but apparently Maya loves to change their axis around so Unreal engine and Unity3d’s axis are mapped differently. Took a bit of figuring out but got there in the end. WOOP WOOP. Just in time for break as well...Now just gotta graph the animations so it looks more fluent and organic

PS If you’re gonna make first person animations. I recommend not using unreal engines level sequencer or maya. Unless you’re creating one off animation interactions, then go hard with UE4 but still stay away from maya..........

[benbct]

Against the clock

Western Heights Primary school has agreed to user testing at their school. I have written up the letter and sent it through to Alannah Lupe-Houben, the teacher of the class that will be participating. I now have to polish up the game and get it to a playable state for the kids to enjoy the experience. Hopefully I see some good results. I’m also really hoping that I can nail the team work part of the rubric by working closely with a school and Dianne Lummis. I guess we’ll see? Not much can change now, too deep to back out haha

[benbct]

Update

I have completed the coding for the game and am now working on the artwork so it can be ready for a months time. Western Heights primary school has agreed to allow me to user test the game at their school. I am writing up a letter that can be sent to the parents/caregivers so they can hopefully sign it and allow their child to play the game. Everything seems to be on track and am looking forward to seeing the results. Unfortunately I always get the feeling that there isn’t enough in the game to make it fun but I have had to descope a lot and remove feature creep just so I can get it done on time. If this all works out then I plan to keep going with the game next year and make it bigger and better than it was before :)

[benbct]

The road ahead

Unfortunately Kelsey, the artist, has found a job that will take over all his time so he’s not able to help with the artwork anymore so I’m back to being a 1 man band. I plan to meet this part of the rubric by working closely with Dianne Lummis, the counselor, and a school for user testing.

I am currently 3/4 of the way through finishing the coding for the game so it should be playable soon just not pretty. Everything is just different coloured boxes right now. I’m gonna have to rush through the programming and get onto the artwork and animation asap to bring it to a playable state so I can have kids play it and give me feedback.

I have a school lined up that may be interested so all that’s left to do there is finalize it and get the parents to sign off on their kids playing the game. I also need to bring the game back to the counselor to make sure she’s okayed it prior to the game testing. Just so I don’t have any ethics issues :)

I’m excited with how this is turning out. I’ve gone through many iterations. Unfortunately most iterations have been done to descope so I can finish at least a prototype but it seems to be turning out well and according to Dianne, in theory, the analysis can work. If so then this might just be the project I’m gonna work on until it’s completed and at a marketable state. If this can help even one kid then I’m happy :) I’m actually finally doing something with my time at uni and it feels great. Somehow, even with a lot more work, I’m a lot less stressed out and really just having fun on the journey.

Peace

[benbct]

New beginnings

I got to talk to a psychologist, Dianne Lummis, about my idea and how I can go about identifying a mental disorder in children. She was extremely helpful, giving me endless reference material and even going so far as to helping me research as well. We decided to stray away from labeling kids with possible mental disorders and instead show results of indicators that may lead to a mental disorder or illness. She’s shown me the DSM5 criteria which is the criteria of diagnosing someone with autism. My goal, with the help from Dianne, is to gamify the different criteria and make a scenario out of each. Then the information sent to the parent/caregiver or school will be, for example, that they have trouble handling emotions or prefer to be alone. This change, while narrowing down my scope, also allows for more flexibility in the information given so the parent can take their child to their local GP and see if that information leads to a diagnosis.

Through talking with her, I’ve decided on characters being animals and other ‘unhuman’ creatures. Kids have a tendancy to enjoy that more than actual people. Through iteration and talking to kids, I will find out whether they would rather play as a human or creature.

One thing Dianne brought up that would be good to explore if I had the time would be to involve physical actions that the kids have to perform in the game through MOCAP. The reason for this was kids love to be active and are more engaged in something if they are active. This is seen on many different kids shows such as HI-5.

[benbct]

The difficulties of talking to someone with a busy job

It’s taken 5 weeks of pestering a lot of psychologists to be able to talk to someone. Fortunately an amazing AUT lecturer, Dianne, has agreed to chat and will hopefully be able to bring some insight on what to include in the game. 

I didn’t think it would be this difficult to be able to talk to someone who has knowledge of psychology but they are all very busy people and helping out with a uni project is very low down on the priority list. So I’m just gonna have to make the most out of the meeting :)

[benbct]

A very late first blog post

This semester I’ve set myself a large scope. I want to push myself to achieve this idea I’ve had. I got unfortunate with how I couldn’t find anyone in course to work with but I’ve managed to get a friend to work with me to create the artwork while I am able to focus on coding.

My idea is to create a game that can at least ballpark diagnose a mental disorder or illness for children. Counselling is expensive and parents can’t always take their child to it on a whim. With this game, they will have a clearer understanding whether their child will need to go to a counselor or not. Games are a massive thing for youth these days; with addiction to games becoming a reality for many kids. If you can’t stop all kids from being addicted to games then I want to somewhat use that addiction for a good cause. 

I’ve been researching different tests for diagnosing many illnesses and disorders and haven’t been able to find anything gamify-able so I’ve been contacting different organisations and psychology departments to see if anyone is willing to give me advice. I hopefully should be having a meeting with someone soon which will help a lot with the scenarios and actual gameplay.

To de-scope my project, I’ve chosen to go with 2d graphics and only tackle one disorder. If I get that working, then I will continue on to more disorders and hopefully be able to use this game to help children around the globe. I’ve also gone with only point and click movement and gameplay. Both of these ideas not only benefit me for having less to do but also benefit the game as they are a lot easier to understand the gameplay and can run on older computers.

[benbct]

Final touches of animation

For the past week, I’ve been finishing off the last touches to the people of the simulation. People stopping to look at the view, chatting in the streets, on their phone. Trying to give a little bit of variety to make the city come to life.

I also had to change one of the characters in the boardroom since her animation didn’t loop. She would randomly teleport back to her starting position. So I changed it to someone talking on her phone without the pacing. 

Unfortunately I also came down with a cold and have been bedridden for a week now. I was luckily able to finish my work before getting the cold but I’m not able to give a helping hand to anyone that needs it. How is it that I always manage to get sick at the worst times?