Sunday 25 January 2015















So the deadline has passed and we somehow managed to pull our level together.  Even if the final product wasn’t exactly what everyone had envisioned, I have to commend my group, we were all in lab everyday all day and worked really fantastically as a team. There has been a constant, positive flow of information and unlike the majority of groups- we embraced asset swapping and working to each other’s strengths. Jobs were shared and passed around, because everyone was putting in the hours, no one felt insecure or irritated, so there was no resistance to picking up other peoples’ jobs. However, there was some downsides to our communal work methods, for example there were times when working from an unwrap made by someone else that totally squared me. It didn’t make sense and wasn’t done in a way that I felt comfortable texturing it, so it had to be done again anyway.  But to reiterate, I would happily work with this team again, we all share the same methods, mind-set and maturity.

While I’m on the topic of unwrapping, I have to mention we did not have nearly enough planning for this. Assets made early soaked up a huge amount of texture space because we’d vastly overestimated how much 10 1024 texture sheets where. Anything made or unwrapped in the last few weeks which was largely small assets were completely debilitated by the lack of organisation and foresight we had planning. Assets were forget and had to be squeezed into horrifyingly small area on the texture space which left anything other than solid colour blocking completely out of the picture. My computers for example were the guiltiest offender, they were totally mismanaged after the modelling stages and by the time it came to packing them there was literally not a spare inch of space left. But this extended to mostly everyone assets and because of this lots of the texturing is very low resolution. It’s a huge shame actually because our composition and modelling were so strong and the left was lit so well that it worked really well in the engine before textures were even applied, that it was hard not to be disappointed when our textures weren’t up to the same quality. I think what we have to bear in mind is that we had a huge amount of assets and very little time or texture space. I want to say we could have managed our time better so that more attention could have been dictated to texturing, but I honestly thing we worked very time efficiently, the larger problem wasn’t working harder or faster, but instead simply choosing to make less assets or a smaller level.

Onto more positive things though, I think our level layout and design was really strong and we had great lighting queues to direct the player in the correct direction, because once again, our level was the minority in that it was nonlinear. The cylindrical nature meant there was always at least 2 directions to choose and because you had to find a key, all the rooms that you could choose to enter, including the empty ones, had a sense of purpose.

I had examples last week of the doors all having strong visual queues  using colour, but we also had subtle things we put in that the player may not even consciously notice, like the light shining on the key in an otherwise dark room, or the spot lights on the door. This meant that despite the ambiguity of the path and the explorative nature of it, the player was still aware of their next ‘goal’: Find the key, turn on the power, return to the door, etc.

I’m also particularly proud of mine and Jake’s work on lighting, the atmosphere was very prominent in our level and it was largely down to that, we had a very keen awareness of lights and light sources from the early planning stages of the project and that paid off in a big way. We also managed to get the alternate light scheme working when you turned on the power for a totally different effect- albeit not as different as we wanted because of the need to reduce the lights because of lag.
Speaking of atmosphere, our finished outdoors vista shot Annie did was also super cool- it went from claustrophobic cark to this wash of bright, open vastness that really contrasted with the interior of the level and making it feel even darker by comparison. It also sells the context of the place as when people were play testing our level, upon entering the outside, most would exclaim- ‘I get it now!’

While I am embarrassed by my texturing this project, it doesn’t devalue everything else we managed to achieve in this project and I’m proud of our work and progress, especially when you consider that we put this whole thing together in 4 weeks. I also learned a huge amount more engine skills (getting better at engine each project, awesome!) including matinees which I foresee being a huge deal, since they are so useful and easy to use, but look really effective and professional. Also learnt the value of modular parts and how efficient they are, if this is what we made in 4 weeks, I’m hyped to see what we make in our next project, that has a generous 12 weeks.  
It’s this week I realize how awesome modular components are. Our level is huge but we've managed to model and have it function as a game within three weeks because so many things were repeated. It’s also meant we can just model general assets that belong in the universe and then have them make up most of the busyness of the level- for example, computers, trash, bins, chairs, papers. We've actually modeled and abnormally large amount of small ‘population’ assets, to the point where we've literally just tossed them together to make a blockade on one of the corridors. It’s also meant we can easily change paths and routes (like how we made the broken and dangling drop off point last week.) It’s a very adaptable way of working.

Unfortunately it was a rocky modelling week on my end, but it turned out pretty cool I think. Basically I had manually to build a reception room for the level, and the plan was at the time was to make the reception unique and non-corridor based so I made the walls in a different way to everything else. In our presentation shortly after a point was made on some rooms not being ‘containery’ enough for the brief. As a reaction to this I revamped the room and removed all the custom walls and instead dismantled the containers and used parts of them to make the walls instead. So it was literally built out of the containers.

I also put thought into how it would connect with the hallway, so I left in fairings and metal beams so it looked like the wall had been roughly torn out but some of the foundations were still left in, holding the area together. I also thought about how I would light it while the power was down, and made a ‘grate’ which  bridges the lower containers to the stacked containers where the sun will filter through and hopefully speckle nice shadows over the center of the room.


For engine stuff, this week was massively progressive. I learned how to make matinees, which I used to animate all our doors so they automatically opened upon proximity to the player. Unlike blueprints, they were massively simple and intuitive, and with some basic research, you can accomplish some really cool animations. I also had it so lights came on when the doors opened, briefly lighting the next room. Following this, for locked doors, I lit them red and when opened had them change to green. But as much as I praise matinees, they break on a dime and cannot be moved.  This was the kickers as for some reason the engine file had to be changed or moved slightly, so the 20 odd doors I’d individually animated (there is no copy paste) were instantly useless and had to be redone.
The effect was really cool though and made the scene more interactive and immersive for the player. We also go our lights working! I mentioned a few weeks ago that the goal of the level was to make it down to the engine room and turn on the power, which opens the final door and turns on the lights. After getting the blueprints sorted for that (we had some trouble linking it to the door as well as the lights) the issue was that it absolutely tanked our engine. The frames dropped to sub 10 and it was virtually unplayable. This was because having 3 light bulbs in one of the rows to make an even spread of light in each of the columns was too intensive for the engine. Also, and perhaps more importantly was the attenuation raises were huge, and while this gave a great bleached effect, it was too intensive to keep, we also cut one of the lights and settled for 2 per row. This mean the corridors aren't quite as contrasting but it will suffice.

Regardless, it’s worth noting that our level is finally playable from start to finish, with all the mechanics successfully implemented which is a huge relief as we managed some really ambitious technical stuff and it's paid off, including action queues like 'press E to pick up' etc when close enough to an action.






Sunday 18 January 2015

This week we spent developing our visual understanding of the level through concepts, room and lighting plans. A lot of our planning was actually 3d concepted, I think it’s because for the majority of our group, including myself, our primary strengths aren’t 2d and with a 4 week timeline, we were under a lot of pressure to work fast. It was because of this that most a lot of the very basic room modelling was done over because 3d paintovers were such a crutch for us and have been prevalent as the ‘most efficient way’ of planning a level. It was actually a method I criticized at first, before quickly jumping ship and embracing it.

The different vaults we had planned were loosely assigned for concepting purposes, but it was generally accepted if you had a different idea or an adaptation to go ahead and remodel or paint something, having everyone involved in all the rooms kept the visuals in line so there was no sporadic difference in everyone misinterpreting the idea.  My ‘main’ room was the reception room which I painted various concepts for, bearing in mind that this was the first room the player would see upon playing the level, and also had to have a lighting setup t



hat would frame the large final vault door that was located at the back of the reception. I wasn’t overly happy with the quality of the paintings, but I think the ideas were strong enough.

The far right column was my adaptation of Jake Roddis’ container hallway design, using a mix of already created assets and a new selection of my own, I modelled a hybrid of our ideas which is what we went for. I think I was particularly diligent (to the point overbearing) on hassling everyone about being conscious of light sources and how they could be built into the walls and what not. I like the low lit atmosphere that Jake had created and used them in my first two concepts, but was also keen to try and a largely contrasting bright hallway. We liked both which is perhaps what spawned our primary mechanic. Based on these we decided that instead of collecting a key from the bottom floor, you could go into a tech room and turn on the power, lighting the entirety of the building. This was an idea we were all really excited for, as it would be like walking back through an entirely different level and completely change the spooky tense atmosphere. It was a way to offer a different player experience within the same level which we were all totally on board for.
This week also had big ramifications on the layout plan, we decided the hallway connecting the two layers didn't really work, we also had some pretty detailed concepts and whitebox models of the exterior of the container, but the player never got to see it. We decided to implement a way to interact with the outside so we had it as one of the corridors falling down, dropping you onto the roof of the containers below where you re enter from a hatch. We were fully aware that we were adding a lot more work to our pile when we decided to do this, but it was such a good way to show off our structure from a different perspective- as well as break up some of the monotony of going around a dimly lit corridor in circles- that we decided it was worth it.


It was soon after this change that our main concept artist Annie Wyatt painted our structure from the outside and in context.  This was hugely influential in selling our idea and because the touchstone and reference point for all environments.  It gave our building a bigger feeling of scale, to help ease the burden of modelling and outside environment, the plan is to just use heavy fog with lights underneath to insinuate a city or town below it, with large producing (but simple) towers breaking through the mist. 

Sunday 11 January 2015

Mash Potato Murder Mystery


Our new brief is up! It’s a group project which I’m always excited for, we more or less reassembled the dream team (Mash Potato Murder Mystery) which was our older Film Room (CTRL ALT DEFEAT) group with the addition of one lucky extra. It’s a nice ensemble where everyone is a similar skill and dedication level so I’d be surprised if we had any issues arise from the group itself.

 ‘The brief focuses on creating a game level where a player will begin at a fixed starting point then journey through the level to a fixed destination.

The player must experience some interaction with the level to allow them to progress to the goal. This interaction could be as simple as opening a door but it must be included.

The main focus of this brief is to:

1.       Make this journey interesting and rewarding for the player

2.       Create a visually interesting environment working within rigid size constraints of shipping containers.’

So this is a whole level project, we are allowed to choose between sci fi containers and dystopian. My initials thoughts on this weren’t particularly strong for either side, dystopian meant we could probably have something totally messed up looking with an abundance of plant life and clutter, sci fi in my mind was a more techy, clean and shiny dynamic. I flicked between which one I preferred for the entirety of the first day like yo-yo in constant flux.

As a group we came up with loads of different theme ideas, these were some of our strongest:

 A journey through a scifi bank

 Creepy science (Dystopian transition into hard scifi)

 A dystopian washed up, stranded beach city,

 Insect infestation, with eggs and what not, that could be applicable to dystopian or scifi.

A dystopian container palace, trashy made nice sort of thing.


We decided the best way for us to quickly explore the potential of all of our ideas was to divvy them up and have everyone responsible for making a mind map geared towards one specific idea. So we shortly reconvened and still didn’t come to any definable answer. As a team we started to quickly sketch our journey and map ideas instead, with very little regard for our themes just to see what shape of level we leant towards and what would adapt well into the design shape. We very quickly grew attached to a cylindrical path. This was naturally more acquitted for a scifi genre map, so we then revisited out original themes and see which one fitted best. The bank was the natural choice, although we did experiment with combining some, like putting the bug infestation or creep science inside the bank, but decided against it.  

This is an early iteration of the map I made based on the sketches, the idea is that it would be a structure with 3 accessible layers, the third layer being the goal, which is blocked by a locked door, and the player must find a way to the lower floor which hides the key. This was our interactive gameplay point, picking up an object to unlock another and proceed to ‘complete’ the level. We also made sure to have blocked corridors to steer you in the right direction and make the player need to backtrack through so that the level feels bigger just by making the most out of what we modelled.

This was a white box made based on the map and sketches. All of the rooms are on the inside because it didn’t make structural sense to have them on the outside, however the corridor on the outside looks jaunty and out of place, luckily since you don’t go outside, it isn’t really to much of an issue what it looks like, as long as it feels right from the inside.

This lead us to our next discussion though, what justification was there for a sci fi container made bank? Our ideas matched the art direction examples we were given, but we couldn’t think of a reason this structure would exist in a world. We came up with a world that was set in a future that had descended into dystopia, so while the tech and design is there, the idea is that it’s massively degraded and is being inhabited band used like a slums, put together with salvaged containers from whatever scifi transportation thing it was before. We were reasonable happy with that explanation but it still left us a little uncertain of our context in the world, the story also has a tendency of changing depending who you ask. It will all become clearer when we have some concepts.