Week 32: Off the Map Post-Mortem

The Off the Map project is finally finished and with it is the second year of the course. This blog post is going to cover the entirety of the project with some critical evaluation on the various aspects of the project, such as what worked out well and what didn't. I'll also try to discuss what I would do differently on some of the areas that didn't turn out too well. Below is a run-through of the final level for anybody that is curious about the end result.

The Off the Map project is a competition set up between gamecity.org and the British Library, each year has a different theme and this year it was to celebrate Alice in Wonderland. We had to create a playable level based off the original book, with 3 locations to chose from: Oxford, Underground or Gardens. You could combine areas if you wanted. The British Library provided plenty of reference material to use, most of which can be found here, along with the rest of the details about the competition. The DMU side of the assignment had placed us into groups based off our preferred roles and set a deadline of the 8th of May. We can continue to work on it after this to improve it for the Off the Map deadline.

My group consisted of me, Amber Jamieson, Dan Bullock, Denzil Forde, Freddy Canton and Luke Day.

Once we had received the brief the first thing to do was read the book and gather references from all the other Alice sources. As a group we decided early on to create a side-scroller to keep things slightly simpler and this allowed us to look into other side-scrolling games quite early for reference, as there are plenty out there.

It became clear during the concept stages that our group had a lot of artistic personality as everyone was putting forward their own ideas on what they thought the level should look like. I did this my own way by drawing my ideas out. I was bouncing between the level layout and overall style of the game, with the 2 drawings below showing my first solid ideas

The group really liked the above conceptual piece so I pushed forward with another drawing, showing how the game would look in the hand-crafted style.

Again this was well liked and eventually we all settled for this hand-crafted paper style. Unfortunately my idea of beginning the game in a realistic state was dropped, but looking back this was a good idea as it would have been a struggle to implement it along with the rest of the level. While I did this Freddy was finalizing the level layout, using parts of concepts I did and parts others had done. The image below is the layout.

Up until now everything was going quite well as far as progression and understanding was concerned, but I think it was during the next stage of concepts that communication became lost and the vision for the final level became a bit unclear. I pushed further forward with the concepting, now doing rough concepts of each of the areas to help give the group an idea of what it would look like but I think I didn't take each of them far enough, as a lot was left to viewer which meant everybody interpreted them differently. This was a mistake by me and because of this left the group divided with what direction we should take, and ultimately lead us to stray a bit from the original concept.

In hindsight I should have spent more time on each of these and finally added colour, this way there would have been no conflict of ideas between the group because as it stands now I left these images as they are seen here for other people to work on them. I moved onto creating the UI and various assets.

I kept the asset creation low-poly, with some slight exaggeration on parts of the models to help them be understandable even if they are placed far from the camera. Being a side-scroller meant the camera would never get close to most of the assets, therefore none of them had to be highly detailed. I carried this idea throughout all of the assets I created.

The texturing budget was figured out by Amber and worked well for all the assets, apart from the 3 large houses I made. These objects were quite large and also very prominent in the middle scene, therefore having them on only a 512 made them look quite ugly, especially the few that get close to the camera. Despite seeing this during the many test runs I did of the level I never once mentioned it and I am not entirely sure why, as increasing the size of the textures would have been no hassle what so ever and could have improved the look of that section of the game.

During this project the one thing I have improved a huge amount in is my texturing, more specifically my hand-painted textures. Before this assignment I was really unsure about my ability to hand-paint the textures for anything, mostly relying on photographs and Photoshop but now, after spending the time to practice I am much more confident in my texturing.

In between the modelling and texturing I was also working on the UI elements for the game. At first I was interested in this because of the graphic design potential, I had no idea how much blueprint knowledge was required and I probably wouldn't have gone ahead with it if I knew back then. Luckily though I prevailed and our game has a working main menu, pause menu, end screen and tutorial pop-ups.

 
I am surprised how well the UI worked out, even if I couldn't figure out how to get things to work how I wanted them, I still managed to come up with a suitable work around, for example I wanted the HUD elements to pop up as you progressed through the level. Due to my poor understanding of blueprints I couldn't figure out how to get this to work correctly so I had to change the idea and ended with tutorial pop-ups. It's also great knowing that any future project I am now apart of I can create a basic, working UI.

I do think with some help the UI could have had a lot more functionality, as blueprinting is something I know I'm not great at and I think this was one our groups weakest points. As our group never had a dedicated engine person doing the blueprinting became a chore and was left to me, Amber and Denzil to try our hardest to get things working. Sadly there wasn't much that could have been done differently about the group set up as this was not chosen by us, but we did do our best with what we were given.

The final weeks of the project for me was spent helping others out with texturing and modelling and also adding props within the engine and generally trying to get the level looking it's best. Looking back now I might have chosen a more traditional approach to the level aesthetics, like using all 3D models to define the environment instead of planes, as in areas they are oddly lit for reasons beyond my understanding. The other option would be to not rely on alphas as much, because with the amount our level had it began to effect our frame rate.

This project has been the longest one we've had to date and also the largest group project and just because of these 2 reasons alone it has been a really interesting experience. Having to stay focused on one end goal for so long while also trying to balance everyone's input into the project is a really difficult task. If you don't stay focused it can be very easy to lose interest in the project and that won't help you or your team and if you don't balance the input of the group, people might have too much sway and make others lose interest. From the work side I have had a really fulfilling time, as I've had the chance to try my hand at UI, something I've wanted to do for a while and also generally practice my modelling and texturing. I also got my hands dirty with blueprints and I can safely say I won't be straying too far into them, they just are not for me.

I already have an action plan for the next few months to make sure I don't fall out of touch when the third year starts. I want to redo my character project, this time using more topology reference and my new found texturing skills. I also want to create a small isometric town in the style of Diablo during the Summer too, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while. This should also put my hand-painted textures to the test! While all this is happening I'll be doing the usual drawing, as that is something I've always enjoyed and should be catching up on a few games that I might have missed.

Week 31: Helping Out

Most of my work is now coming to an end, as the main parts of the UI are done and so are all my assets and texturing. The only thing I can think of that I still need to do is to get a loading screen working properly but at the moment I consider that an extra bonus, therefore this week I've been either working in engine populating the level or just helping other members of my group with texturing.

I really should grab some screenshots of the level as I've spent a large portion of this week placing the various assets and messing around getting the lighting correct. I also was tasked with working in blueprints again to get the camera to pan in during a section of the level. I actually got it to work which really shocked me, unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to get the camera to follow the player during another level section which means it's a draw between me and the blueprints... for now.

A welcome break from blueprinting and engine work was also had, by helping others with texturing. The models below are not mine but the texturing is. Texturing someone elses model is quite a challenge as the unwrap can look very alien when you first get into it.

512

The roughness on the toad might look odd but it gives the model a nice damp effect as the light bounces off it when in engine. Along side the toad I textured the dragonfly that would be buzzing around him, again not my model!

256

I sadly don't have anything else to show related to the Off the Map project as I keep forgetting to create screenshots to show the progress. I did however manage to do another digital figure study, really getting into the routine of doing them now and it feels great!

Despite next week being the final deadline I am quite relaxed yet I don't know why. Most of my work is done but the level still needs some polishing which is what next week will be filled with and as long as that doesn't include blueprints I'll be okay with that!

Week 30: Fixing Things

This week we had another deadline for an essay and any re-submissions, because of this peoples attention were more focused on getting other things finished than continuing on with the Off the Map project. While I didn't have to resubmit anything I did have the essay to do, but I still managed to work on the main assignment.

Towards the start of the week we had a presentation on our progress with the Off the Map project, there was plenty of good feedback given, most of which we knew about, like getting Alice into the level and finishing everything else. One critique that was said was about my piles of leaves, or how they looked more like a pile of sludge. Below is a reminder of the base mesh.

Old pile

It was recommended that the piles were redone and the transforming into a cat idea scrapped too, for simplicity sake. I agreed that the piles didn't look great and I knew something wasn't quite right about them. I am going to pin the blame on that I've been staring at them for a while now and I was blind to how wrong they looked until an outsider mentioned them. After the presentation was done I began to redo the leaf piles.

As there was only going to be 1 leaf pile now I increased the overall tri-count for the pile. Before each pile was around 400-600 but now the new one is just over 1000, but I think the increase is well worth it considering how much better the new model looks. I also had to redo the texture but that wasn't too much of a problem either and once we have a few particle effects going on the leaf pile will look fantastic!

New pile

The other thing I had to fix was the UI... again. I tried to get the "Restart Checkpoint" and "Restart Level" buttons to work this week but my blueprint knowledge let me down so I decided to remove both of the buttons. This meant the pause menu had to reworked ever so slightly.

Other than that I spent the rest of this week either doing the essay or just helping populate the level in Unreal. Next week will be back to working on this project full-time again, with everyone trying to get it finished for the deadline, including me. I'll leave this post with a painting I did over the weekend, I'm quite proud of it!

Digital, with reference

Week 25: Texturing

The entire of this week has been dedicated to texturing, with me either preparing assets for texturing or actually texturing them. Playing around with the various capabilities of PBR and practicing hand-painted textures has made the last week enjoyable, even if I am quite slow at texturing. We also had our reviews this week and I have some life drawing to show!

Texturing

The first house took me a while to complete, as the roughness and normal maps required a good amount of tweaking to get correct along with my low skill in hand-painted textures. Once I got the first house out of the way however the speed picked up.

House_1

As each house is only a single 512 it became quite a challenge to keep the same texture quality through-out, especially with the larger second house. Keeping the doors and windows on a separate 512 did help with texture space however. Not every thing was hand-painted, like the book roofs for example were textured with actual books from the library.

House_2

House_3

Below is the texture sheet for house_3 as an example. There is no metalness on this house as we're going for a handcrafted paper world and I combined the roughness of all the 3 houses into a single RGB sheet to save on resources, which is why the roughness looks a little funky.

House_3 texture sheets

Review

Our reviews this week gave us a quick overview of how we're doing  and it's good to know that I am doing okay, but there's still room for improvement. Here is my action list on the things that I need to improve.

In order to improve my overall quality of work I will look at existing material, preferably from industry as reference. I've already taken this into account with the hand-painted textures where I found plenty of reference and tutorials on pinterest. I will try and do this with all future assignments too, especially for topology.

The second thing to improve upon was my naming conventions for my various files. I've found a good starting point to change this with a blogpost from someone[1] within industry detailing the various names for different files. I have already pushed this onto my texturing files.

The final thing that was noted is my attention to detail, more specifically submitting all the necessary files for any given project. I had forgot to submit any of the reference gathering or research I did for the dichotomous duo project which hurt my mark severely. Luckily I posted a lot of it on this blog which clearly showed I had done it so I've been able to resubmit it. 

Life Drawing

At long last I finally have some of my life drawing from the second year on a digital format and here it is! I know there isn't much but I suppose it's better than nothing. The majority of these are 10 minute poses.

That's it for another term. Easter break has started and I'll be texturing, animating and essaying (?) in order to not fall behind with work. I do also plan on catching up with a few games I've missed, like Bayonetta 2.

Notes & References

[1] UE4 naming conventions from www.tomlooman.com

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.