Improving the game

Last Friday we all focussed on UV wrapping a model of our choice to help us understand the process as a whole. Over the weekend I've textured a few items for Wolfs Rest, and started a base level using only our groups work. We have almost all the models made and when they're textured we simply have to put them together in a scene.

Its not much, but when the walls are up we can start adding the props, collectables, and of course the character.

I want the asylum to be a maze of long corridors with small, dark rooms that confuse the player. similar to the original Resident Evil. The corridors allow for chases and panic rather than jump scares. We want a level that actually scares people and makes them peak round every corner in fear.

A horror game we don't want to use as inspiration is slender, and clones of said game. These games rely on cheap jump scares instead of actually creating an atmosphere, Five Nights at Freddy's is the same.

Wolfs Rest Pitch

Yesterday my group and I pitched our Unity game, Wolfs Rest. Along with seeing all the other pitches from groups in both Next-Gen sets. There wasn't a huge difference between the best pitch and the worst, it was obvious that almost everyone took this seriously.

Positives:

We had the only trailer which set a mood for the game before we spoke.
Everyone knew what to say and didn't ramble on about pointless info.
There were no issues with the presentation, and everything went to plan
It was a decent length, not too short or too long.
We didn't use too much text, so people focussed on us.


Negatives:

We didn't have gameplay.
The story wasn't fully explained.
We could have done more with the time we had.

Overall the experience was enjoyable, I enjoyed showing everyone our work and liked almost everybody else's. The feedback we received can only improve our game, and I look forward to further improve Wolfs Rest.

Steven Hey came in to talk about the indie game industry and his career thus far. He is the marketing lead at Chillingo, EA's mobile team, his talk on the mobile market and how to get the most out of a game was interesting. Although our current game is for PC, I will use Stevens advice for future projects.

Wolfs Rest trailer

I've spent my weekend making a teaser trailer for our Unity game 'Wolf's Rest', using Vegas Pro 13, and Unity. I changed my mind so many times in editing, from using photoshopped images, to other similar titles' gameplay, however in the end Lee and I just made multiple levels in Unity and I recorded them.

It felt better to have our own work in the trailer and although it may have looked better with other gameplay and art that isn't ours, I have to say im happy with the outcome.

The trailer helped me with Vegas Pro, getting me used to the plugins available and how to adjust the clips and fit them together. Im going to continue making things on Vegas, can't hurt to learn a new program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl-8GvCANoo

Wolf's Rest

We made a presentation for Wolf's Rest, (previously Macabre) and presented it to the class to ensure they were suitable for a guest next Tuesday. It had it's good and it's bad moments, but overall I'm happy with the outcome for two reasons; it was good practise for next week, and the class told us how we could improve.

I found that since I was talking about my role and the additions iv'e made allowed me to loosen up and just explain them easily. In the past most of the presentations were on topics I had to research which made it difficult to just explain without a script.

Although there are many fixes to be made, and that our presentation was a mess, I think that by next week we will have a good pitch, hopefully with a trailer that matches the games theme.

Macabre concept

I've designed some concept art to get a feel for what the game will look like, mostly the camera position and the lighting effects.

The idea we have at the moment is that the player discovers a lighter as his/her first light source, it works for close range encounters, but doesn't light up many areas besides the small area around the player. Shortly into the game you find a flashlight, this allows the player to fully inspect their surroundings in full detail.

We want the player to feel isolated and cramped, they don't know what lurks in the darkness until their light reaches it, which in many cases will end up being too late. It is elements such as this that really make a game scary.

Job Roles in the Games Industry

2D and 3D artists:

2d art is used in almost every game out there, especially in triple A titles such as Fallout, Assassins Creed, and Call of Duty. Every texture the player can see had to be designed by an artist, the ground, walls, vehicles, and other characters.

3d art leans towards the modelling aspect of games, animation, and VFX, and its usual for most 3d artists to work in teams. 3d artists are also often consulted on the development of the storyboard to get a keen idea on what they are exactly making.

Modelling is necessary in AAA games nowadays to make it look more detailed and sharp.

Creative Director:

The Creative Director is a fairly new role in the games industry and it is ensuring the quality and style of the artwork, music and gameplay within a game. Not all companies have a Creative Director so they share out the responsibilities to the Lead Programmer, Lead Artist and Producer.

A Creative Director is not an entry level route, you will usually need around 5 years experience in a senior game development position to even be considered for the job, or you could acquire a similar job in special effects or animation  to move up to creative director.

Lead Artist:

There are many responsibilities for Lead Artists, they are responsible for the overall look of the game, the art style of the game, directing the production of the visual material throughout the games development, and finally managing the art and animation team.

EA's Lead Artist has a minimum wage of £35k and a maximum of £38k.
Casapian Learning's Lead Artist has a minimum wage of 35k and a maximum of £36k
Splash Damage's Lead Artist has a minimum wage of £53k and a maximum of £58k

Level Editor/Designer:

Level editors defines and creates interactive architecture for a segment of a game, including landscapes buildings and objects, Level Design is necessary for two primary purposes - providing the player with a goal.

Level must stay true to the overall design specification, using the characters and story elements defined by the Game Designer, but the editors often have considerable freedom to vary the specific look and feel of the level which they are responsible.

Concept Artist:

A concept artist designs sketches and images for games or movies that are not in final phase. They create scenery and environment for their game or movie, character design and vehicle design ideas which are usually built on to complete the final build of the characters, vehicles or scenery within the game.

A concept artist would design things like the environment, characters, backgrounds and colour schemes of a video game. Usually these things go from concept to completion when the ideas are presented to the lead artist and the rest of the team and are then built on to make up the final form of the game.

Designer:

The Games Designer is who comes up with what the game will consist of and how the game will play. Mainly defining what the core elements of the game are like. Also it is important for the games designer to communicate regularly with the rest of the development team who are creating different assets and who are writhing the code.

The designer must be able to to work in collaboration with multi disciplinary teams, be able to communicate to artists, programmers, producers, marketing staff, and others involved in the development process.

Producer:

The project manager also known as the producer, is responsible for ensuring the successful delivery of a game, on time and within budget. They control the finances and other resources needed for a project and co-ordinate the work of the production team, making sure that the quality and vision of the game is maintained, whatever problems may arise.

In a publishers environment, Assistant Producers will focus on liaising between sales and marketing departments and the developer, and supporting the work of the publishers external producer.

Producers are expected to be fully aware of what the development team are doing and where they are going as a team.

QA Tester:

QA testers also known as Quality Assurance testers have the job of playing and testing a game before it is released. The goal of a QA tester is to find problems in a game, weather it be a massive game breaking issue, a small annoying bug, or just that the game isn't enjoyable in some aspects.

The job doesn't require any prior experience and in most cases doesn't pay as well as other jobs in the industry. However expect to earn anywhere between £22k and £35k a year.

Despite the job sounding easy, QA testing can be a long and tedious role that gets dull very quick.

Specialist Programmer:

Specialist Programmers require a vast knowledge in multiple different script languages, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, they need to know it all. The more the programmer knows, the better the chances of him/her landing the job.

Programmers can work both full-time and part-time, either being brought onto the team until the project is finished and then being let off, or being hired full time and being given a schedule. Specialist Programmers are often hired full time as companies tend to value the role more.

Programmer

 A regular programmer is expected to understand a great deal about a few script languages, specializing in one or two, however they don't need to understand every script language in full detail.

A programmer will likely earn about £20k starting out, but that sum will rise to closer to £40k with experience.

Technical Artist:

The Technical Artist is a relatively new role in the games industry, but is getting more important as hardware in PC's and consoles get more complex.

Technical artists are good at everything in a sense, knowing how to program and how to design elements for a game. This means that a development team can have someone that can bridge the gap between art and programming, a very necessary task.

It is rare for an individual to become very familiar with both the artistic sides of development and the programming side, and for this reason finding a Technical Artist is uncommon.

Associate Producer

As a Publishing Associate Producer in 343 industries, you will work directly with the Executive Producer and the discipline leads on areas such as the projects vision, scope, schedule and playtests.

Sledgehammer games are looking for a top tier Development Manager to take leading role working on the Call of Duty franchise. Candidates must be passionate, focused and driven to excel. Development Managers do a similar job to Associate producers.

Community Manager

A Community Manager is responsible for managing and growing a community as well as building relationships with the fans and partners including media influences, growing excitement and awareness for the studio and portfolio of games.

The skills you will need to become a community manager will include experience on all social media sites as well as video content such as YouTube and live streaming services. You will also need thorough knowledge in the games industry.

Audio Engineer:

The main role of an audio engineer is to write, record, mix, and remake the soundtrack in a video game; this includes but is not limited to music, sound effects, voices and ambient effects. The audio team can consist of any number of people, depending on the size of the company, but in most cases the less people in the audio team means each person must work longer per day.

Audio Engineers are given a sample o the game to get the feel for the environment, similar to a moodboard that a team would give to the artists. Usually a specific genre is given to the audio team for the right idea.

UI Designer:

User interface design in games differs from other UI design because it involves an additional element - fiction. The fiction involves an avatar on the actual user, or player.The player becomes an invisible, but key element to the story, much like a narrator in a novel or film.

Meta is where the UI fits on a 2d hud plane and are normally there to tell the player a certain thing. Like the blood splatter on the screen in Call of Duty to show when the player is hurt. Another example of this is GTA 4 where the players phone will ring and show up in the corner of the screen.

Animator

An animator has the job to move an element in a game, it can be simple like a low-poly person walking, such as the protagonist in N+, or complex like the face animations on LA Noir. Its a difficult job in most cases, however if a game is small and has few moving parts, the animators job gets easier, it all depends on the scale of the project.

Animators are required to have the ability to animate complex sprites and to work long hours on the job. They can expect to earn around £25k when starting out, but that sum rises to £32k+ depending on how much experience you have.

Progress

Over the past few months ive noticed a great improvement of my ability in 3ds max, photoshop, Unity, and Unreal, I'm finding that as long as I get into a rhythm of doing both work at home and at college then my assignments are much more manageable. 

I'm enjoying everything about the course in general right now, nothings overwhelming, but nothing's too easy, which is good.

I'm trying to make a few models a night, or get something comparable to a model such as a game level, im trying to make things that will be usable for future projects.

Today i've made the empire state building with no textures, (yet), and another level for CannyRunner.

Canny Runner (Unity 2d platformer)

Canny Runner is a project I have been working on for almost 3 days, it's a basic 2d sidescroller that requires the player to get from the starting zone to the finish flag while avoiding enemies.
The game is required to have at least 3 levels, so I decided to make 3 levels that get harder every time you progress.

Canny Runner needed backgrounds, platforms and enemies which Unity didn't have, so I created everything, (excluding the player model) in Photoshop. The game has a cartoon-inspired style, similar to Bloody Trapland but less detailed.

Above you can see one of the levels, with some details on the enemies, the blue one spins, the red one floats, and the flower is just evil. The platforms with blue slime on top make the player bounce, and those that have no slime are just simple platforms.

Overall I'm happy with the game thus far, the background is really simple, but looks good because you focus on the foreground, well not anymore.

I'm going to keep on adding to this game, hopefully getting a system working that automatically transfers the player to the next level when the current one is completed, and also adding countless levels that test the players ability.

Model and new logo concept

Using a spare few hours I decided on trying some random creations, first being another fallout model, then a handgun, (which looked like a new vegetable), and a new logo idea. I like the model in a way, and the logo looks like it would match the genre of games I enjoy, but the handgun is gone, burned in a furnace and the ashes have been scattered in the pacific, no-one needed to see that thing.

In all honesty looking back on this, I think I could have done better, but at least this shows I can do models with two legs.

I don't know why I chose the name, I don't even know if I like the name.

New models: codsworth and securitron

To test my ability on 3d max I decided to create something more complex than the shopping cart I made last week. The 20 hours of fallout 4 has introduced me to many creatures and creations well worth re-creating, the best being Codsworth the robot.

I think using Codsworth as my model was a good idea because it tested my skills in 3d max and took me over 3 hours to fully complete, however it wasn't stressful like other objects would have been.

The model has its differences, its clearly Codsworth, but I found it looks better with the extra detail on the main spherical shell, I'm going to keep making models from games, hopefully at the end of the year il have a little collection.

Decided to make a securitron as well.

Not too keen on this one however.

2D and 3D art.

2d and 3d art and design in games relies on a workforce that need to be capable of creating life from nothing on a canvas, scrapbook, or computer. A role often overlooked and thought to be inferior to the 'Lead Artist' job role, the 2d and 3d artist's job is absolutely necessary for any development team.
2d and 3d artists are required to have a knowledge of anatomy and architecture, must work well in teams and independently, as well as having a creative and imaginative mind.

2D Artists:

2d art is used in almost every game out there, especially in triple A titles such as Fallout, Assassins Creed, and Call of Duty. Every texture the player can see had to be designed by an artist, the ground, walls, vehicles, and other characters.

Although it has its own role, concept art is often done by the 2d artist, often using it to build upon a finished sprite. More advanced concept art can depict the full environment of a game, and if it doesn't it can give the team ideas.

    Uncharted concept art.

3D Artists:

3d art leans towards the modelling aspect of games, animation, and VFX, and its usual for most 3d artists to work in teams. 3d artists are also often consulted on the development of the storyboard to get a keen idea on what they are exactly making.

Artists have a say about the creation on the fly, if they feel something different would look better they can easily make multiple models with different characteristics, leaving the team to pick the most suitable.

Out of the games industry 3d art is used for VFX such as fight scenes in movies for example, but the possibilities are almost endless so long as the artist knows what he/she is doing.

Essential:

It is essential that 2d and 3d artists have an expertise in Maya/3DS max, and vast knowledge in Photoshop, or equivalent software. Willingness to adapt to constructive, artistic criticism.


Outlook:

The outlook of 2d and 3d artists are positive on the whole, with the median salary of a 3d artist being $61,000/£41,000, while 2d artists make around $47,000/£31,000 on average.

On the job you are expected to have a thorough understanding of photoshop or equivalent for 2d art design, and a similar understanding in a main modelling program for 3d art design, while the 2d/3d artist is expected to know a decent amount about both types of programs. You also must have a passion for games in most large companies.

Hours differ from company to company and from time to time, expect altering work periods in and out of the workspace.

Shopping Cart (unfinished)

We were asked to create and texture a model that would fit in with our Unreal project, something that was possible, but that tested our skills. I decided to model a shopping cart, a choice that I regretted deeply about 45 minutes into the task. I used a normal shopping cart as reference and edited the outcome to fit the futuristic setting.  I ran into a problem almost immediately.

As seen above the cart consists of a cage-like mesh, which proved very difficult when I started modeling. Along with the difficulty, making a cart like this just didn't look right at all, it was a mess and didn't fit in with the other models. In the end I scrapped the cage-like design and used flat panels as frames instead, which looks much better and slick.

The UV wrapping still stumped me, I had to watch the tutorials again, and even then it had taken much too long. However it is only the creation of the net that stresses me, once I have the net and get to texture on photoshop I have no problems, i've used pre-made nets to wrap 3d objects before without fail, I'm going to have to work on it at home.

Overall I am happy with the model and my modeling ability, it took an hour or so, but most of that time was spent fixing errors. I'd really appreciate being given one 'difficult' model a week to sharpen my skills, whether that be given by myself, my group, or a lecturer.

Macabre 0.0.1

I've started creating a build for our Unity game, and version 0.0.1 is the slimmest, emptiest version, (as to be expected). In this version I have almost completed the movement mechanics, and have most of the code ready for the top-down camera to follow the player. There is a monumental amount of work to be done before we even reach version 0.1.0 which I personally would like done by the 20th of November 2015.

In version 0.1.0 I'd like basic textures on all walls and models and a level to play in. And as difficult as it may seem, if we all pitch in, (which we all have been so far) then its possible.

Mechanics such as scares, AI, enemies, and collectables all have to be included by version 0.5.0. And I'd like everything to be textured well and models to be fully finished and included by 0.9.0.
1.0.0 is my personal beta target, where the game is fully playable and requires only fixes.

The finished version, will not be the full game. It will be fully functional and will have story, however the 'full game; will take much longer than the month we have. Expect some exiting gameplay that leads on to the full project.

GamerVFXerAnimationer #1

VFX

I spent too much time idolizing over the new Star Wars constantly swiping through different low-end sites explaining every little detail from trailers and information. However relevant info about VFX went a miss, excluding one very interesting point that the directors managed to keep silent. The point being that the Lake District was used for scenes in Alderaan. A full action scene was shot with little to no information being leaked to the thousands of hikers that scale mountains on a daily basis, whether it comes down to very desecrate filming, or a vast marketing team that wiped every bit of leaked news off the face of the Earth, either way good job

 

GAMES

Like Star Wars the games industry has its own powerhouse, of course being Fallout 4. I could spend hours simply watching screenshots of this game and not get bored. However the almighty Todd Howard has practically thrown news at us, whether it be the '400+ hours of gameplay', or the '10,000 lines of dialogue for the main character alone'. Fallout 4 looks set to steamroll this year, crushing every other entry that gets in its way,  and reaping all the gold along the way.

ANIMATION

The only real animations that iv'e watched faithfully are those of Miyazaki, the genius behind films such as The Wind Rises, Ponyo, and Spirited Away. His movies follow the anime style, using 2d elements to convey the often mind-bending story. The Wind Rises was his last film, and shortly after its release Miyazaki announced his retirement, however i'm not sure if he can resist putting pen to paper with more ideas.

Model sizing

Now we have Unity I can import all of my models to see what they look like together, and instantly I ran into a problem; all of my models were massive.

I spent a few minutes re-sizing all of the models, ensuring that they were all relative to one another according to size.

Thankfully all of the models are now properly sized, and I will use this method with everyone's models in the future.