Week 21: Assets!

This week of the Off The Map project has had me mostly modelling, which is fantastic because I've been able to put off working on the UI blueprints. At the start of the week I did manage to get parts of the UI to work so I havn't been avoiding it completely.

As I mentioned last week the UI blueprints link a lot more into other blueprints than I would have initially thought, so a I am finding it difficult to test out some parts of the UI. I did get the pause, resume and quit functions to work which is a good start. The design is terrible, I know, but at least a part of it is working.

I did work on the main menu too but getting that to load into a new level is beyond my blueprint comprehension at the moment. Once the level is in more of a final state, with the various checkpoints, working on the pause menu should be easier... I hope. During my time with the UI blueprints I did a quick concept for the leaf piles, as I needed a break half way in. 

I thought it would be interesting if the leaf piles slowly resembled the Cheshire cat as Alice went further into the rabbit hole. I didn't spend too much time on the blueprints after this and quickly turned my attention to modelling. I began with the simpler objects that I knew were going to be needed.

As the week progressed I continued modelling assets for the first area. I focused on the assets that I knew we would need or that could be used without much need of changing if a problem popped up. I found that I really quite enjoy modelling the mundane objects, like the cupboards or stack of books, I am just not sure what I enjoy about it yet.

The small town we're having in the center of the level is going to be a mining town, so I created a few props to link in with that, like a mining lantern and a cannery cage, other people in my group have made other props to help show that the town is a mining town. Eventually I moved on to the bigger objects, more specifically the various houses that would populate the town.

A lecturer recommended our group to look at the architect style of Strawberry Hill Gothic as a source of inspiration. When I saw the Strawberry Hill House I knew I had to try and incorporate some of the architectural features of it into our own buildings, so the window and door frames are based off the Strawberry Hill Gothic style and on the above house I added a small drum tower like the Strawberry Hill House.

Next week I have to unwrap all of the above, which is a terrible thing. I should have unwrapped as I modeled, but I made a huge mistake with that thought process. I should probably also mess around with the blueprints a bit more but I am dreading that as much as the unwrapathon, by the end of the week I might be able to finish on something fun by doing some more modelling.

Week 20: Idea Generation

The second week of the Off the Map has been filled with me mostly concepting. I also had a quick look into the UI part of the game and it is far more complicated than I expected but that is all to do with the blueprints behind it. I'll first go into more detail on the concepting section of the week.

A good part of the week has been filled with discussions and idea generation, as the group are still unsure about the direction of the games visual style. We all have ideas and luckily are all in the same range of thinking but without a solid art director things feel like they are still in limbo at the moment; I think someone making a few final decisions would go a long way. What would also really help is if we just began creating a small portion of our level, we could all then see art style and change it as we need.

The idea for the final level, the first area was drawn by me

Our original level plans were far too grand, so reluctantly we've had to scale down our level and we've also dropped the style transition for now but we have made progress in the level layout and the majority of my week has been doing final idea generation for the various areas. At first I made a quick block-out of the first house to speed up the perspective side of the drawing and then I went to town on it inside Photoshop. This image was a sort of proof that the visual style could work in a 3D environment.

Another team member created a rough block-out of the entire level, which I then used to concept the other areas, but just not in as much detail as the above image. As I got more into the creation of the below images I began to enjoy it more and more, to the point where I might have spent a little too long on the last few.

At the very start of the week I also dipped my toe into the world of UIs. The actual creation of the UI seems fairly straight forward with UE4's new UI widget but to actually get it to work seems like an entirely different matter and the blueprints appear to link into further blueprints like a series of unwanted chains. So for now the design of the UI can only be thought about really because there's always a chance that I will never get it to work as my blueprint understanding is really slim; hopefully my group will be able to lend a hand with it.

The next week will be me smashing my head into the UI blueprints, with the occasional quick concept for when I get really bored. Unless of course we start modelling, then I'd obviously prefer to do that instead of blueprints. 

Week 19: Off The Map

Our main project for year 2 is the Off The Map competition, which has finally been briefed to us. If you're wondering what Off The Map is, it's a competition hosted by GameCity along with the British Library to create a level with that years theme. DMU won the first year of the competition and almost won the second year, so we have some high standards to follow.

This year, celebrating Alice in Wonderland, we need to create a level based off a section of the book. If you'd like to read up on this years competition more, follow this link! The start of the project had us randomly placed into groups, which some people were not happy with; I've been with different people for every group project so this one was no different for me.

The last week has mostly been discussing our ideas and trying to get them down on paper, whether this is just writing or drawing. We decided quickly that we wanted to make a side-scroller and have some sort style change as the level progresses, the group also decided to start with the "Underground" theme as we felt this had a lot more potential for exploration. I did what I enjoyed and began drawing down my ideas for the level.

The images above are my initial ideas for the level. I imagined the game starting with Alice in the fields and like the book, she would follow the white rabbit, she'd then quickly be falling down the rabbit hole where an art style change would happen; at this point I wasn't quite sure what style change though. The group also made the usual Pinterest board to gather reference.

After a few more talks I redid the level layout, this time trying to incorporate ideas that people had put forth so far. The file is quite large so I am sorry if the text on it can not be read.

This layout is not final as people are still putting their ideas forward and concepting, but it's a good start for when we need to begin a level block out. At this point I decided to tackle the style change that I had imagined and after seeing the game Ink Quest by Lionhead I knew that would be perfect for trying to get across the idea that Alice was inside the book. So with some inspiration I did some concepting!

The style transition concept was well-received so I did another, showing the style in full effect. The idea still needs work in my opinion and I think more variation on the paper could be used but there is definitely something intriguing about the art style so far.  

At the moment I feel very enthusiastic about the project and I think we'll be starting week 2 strongly, with a meeting already set up for the early afternoon so we can plan our week ahead. If I can keep up this amount of motivation for this assignment I think I could potentially produce my best work yet.

Notes & References

GameCity & Off The Map

Lionhead's Ink Quest

Week 18: Container City Post-Mortem

After 4 weeks the Container City project is officially done, with today being the final presentation of our level. Hours before our presentation we couldn't gain access to the server where our level was but thankfully there was an easy fix and the presentation went okay and had a positive outcome. In this blog post I will try and cover my involvement with the Container City assignment.

Concepting

Like all other briefs, this project started with my group concepting. The only 2 restraints for the level was that is must feature containers and be either futuristic or dystopian (or both!), apart from that though we could design what ever level we wanted. After a few hours we all eventually settled for the idea that these containers were taken over by an ancient tribe. A ship had crashed ashore and the local tribe used the left over wreckage as their home, you'd play as one of their prisoners, trying to escape.

I began trying to put down these ideas onto paper. We wanted a rough level layout as quickly as possible so when a layout was well-liked I made a very rough block-out in 3DS Max. Looking back at it and especially after seeing some of the other levels being made I think we could have pushed the size of our level slightly. This could have given us more room to try and explain our story even if it meant more asset work.

Once we were all happy with the basic layout we all started concepting the rooms. I took the cells and also decided to have a go at the altar area too, anything to get me to draw some more. I am actually surprised by the results of my concepts but they only give an initial idea and do not really give a good sense of mood or atmosphere due to the lack of values and colour. I'd really like to try photobashing, as I am quite good at Photoshop and photo manipulation, but I think I am scared of bad results at the moment so I have put if off.

Cells Exit

Cells

Altar Entrance

Altar, looking back at the entrance

While doing this concepting we were also constantly gathering reference from the internet, here's a link to my pinterest board related to this brief.

Early Development

To make sure we could keep track of the assets we were creating I made a quick asset list, borrowing heavily from the one I used during the Film Room Project; this asset list grew a bit over the development like the previous one did. I couldn't figure out a decent way to show the texture sheets used though, as many objects shared texture space with other assets which made things confusing.

We each picked certain things to tackle, like particle effects or foliage with the modelling being divided up as there was so much to do. Below is a screenshot of some of the earlier models I made; a container had been provided so I just had to retrofit them to the other sizes and damage a version of one of them.

As a group we chose to create the building blocks of the level first, with all the filler props coming later. This way we'd have a much clearer idea of what the final level would look like and be able to adjust anything if we needed to. I used 2 1024s for all of the textures for my models, but I without a doubt think I could have optimized it much better, possibly allowing more space for more assets. 

Development

After doing the major components we all then focused on populating the level. I also had the task of creating the water material we wanted to include. At first I thought this was going to be daunting task but I found a really helpful YouTube tutorial video[1] which was simple to follow and gave great result, even if the reflections don't work correctly.

As I wasn't the person working in engine I unfortunately don't have any development shots of the level, as most of my time was spent modeling and texturing, therefore it might be hard at the moment to get an idea of what the level actually looks like. Instead here are the texture sheets I had used for the assets. The metalness and roughness had been combined in an RGB space on the right sheet, the left sheet had no metal, so instead I just used a constant in the material editor.

Towards the final days of the project I moved onto decal duty, wanting to create a variety of decals to add extra life into the world. Before this I had never created a decal but there wasn't much difference between creating a texture. All of my decals were 256px in size, yet surprisingly looked fine even when large, which really shocked me.

End Result

For half of the assignment I was unsure if we'd be able to pull this off, as our level wasn't necessarily that "modular" yet I think the final results look really good. There are obviously a few things I'd love to change or tweak but that'll have to be done another time. I'll stop typing for a bit and let the final screenshots talk for themselves.

During our presentation it was mentioned that we could have pushed the idea further and I agree, with more palettes with objects on, just left alone. The larger level size I wanted could have accommodated some of these extra story telling props. Looking at some of the interior screenshots now I do think we could have used some extra colour, as they are very orange and brown.

The next assignment is now upon us and it's become clear that this Container City project has been more of an introduction to level design, which will filter into the next brief. I won't go over the new assignment in this post but I am already quite excited for it.

References & Notes
[1] UE4 - Interior Water #1 by Pub Games