ar-firstpersongame

[ar-firstpersongame]

Evaluation

Overall I received positive feedback for my first person game, and it had stuck to what I had planned in my proposal.

Though I am proud of my project, there are quite a few things I would do differently like for the walls in my levels; I tried a few different styles through out my 3 levels. This would of been fine if they didn't all look so different, making it jarring for the player when they would switch level. Another thing I would change is how the light worked (and when it didn't). The light has been a reoccurring problem in this project as none of the natural light could get in as it was a dungeon, I had to make use of the lights you could add and create. Trying to get the lights to work was very tricky and time consuming as it would continue to fade in and out constantly. In addition, I noticed while having my game play tested, that people where struggling to fight my enemies. It was a surprise to my however as I thought it would've been too easy to just walk past them. So in the future I will try to balance my weapons and enemies.

[ar-firstpersongame]

Evaluation

Overall I have received positive feedback and the game stuck close to what I had imagined at the beginning of this project and what I had mentioned in my proposal.

I am proud with how it came out; although if I were to do it again I would change how I went about making the walls for my levels. In each of my levels I tried different ways of designing my walls, and its quite jarring when going into a new level as the walls would just be completely different. I would also like to change how the lighting worked (or how it just didn't). A reoccurring problem when designing my levels was that the lighting would fading in and out when in certain areas of the level. Trying to fix this issue 3x used up a decent bit of my development time although I somewhat work alright in the end product. Another small problem I noticed when having people play test my game is that it might be a bit on the hard side - so in the future I will make my enemies a bit easier or my weapons a bit stronger.

[ar-firstpersongame]

Research - What is AI in games?

Shooters:

Concept art for Wolfenstein enemies.

The most common type of AI in shooter games are the generic enemies. Pretty simple, they look at the player and shoot.

Titanfall 2 minions.

Some games will have AI allies that will assist the player. These allies will target enemies and enemy players. Fairly simple once again.

Fortnite bots.

Another example of AI in shooter games only becoming more frequent; is the use of bots in multiplayer shooters. These bots will try to mimic the actions of normal players to make them seem more realistic. Games such as Fortnite and Apex Legends will use bots to fill their lobbies without the need of more players.

Action Adventure:

Red Dead Redemption 2 Lawmen.

Similar to the enemies in shooters, enemy AI in action adventure will usually follow the player - either shooting them or striking them with a weapon of some sort.

GTA V civilians.

Most action adventure games will have basic civilian characters, who will either run away or attack the player upon being provoked.

Iudex Gundyr boss fight, Dark Souls III.

Some games will have bosses in certain areas that will usually reward the player upon their defeat. Besides being stronger than other enemies, the bosses' AI will use certain requirements to plan their next move ( This is more prominently seen in games such as Dark Souls. ) like their distance from the player or whether the player is trying to cast a spell.

Sports:

Tennis, Wii Sports.

Most sports games will have the player play against AI opponents similar to the bots in the shooter games. Usually these AI will have different difficulties that can be changed to decrease the amount of mistakes made.

Screenshot from EA sports, FIFA.

Sports themed games may have the player assemble teams of AI based on certain characteristics to defeat the opponent doing just the same.

Cricket, Wii Sports.

Also similar to shooters, sports games may have allies to fill the roles that one player cant fill at once - like in cricket, having most the fielding team made out of AI.

[ar-firstpersongame]

Research - Reference images for mixtape

I went for a very basic design for my mixtape.

[ar-firstpersongame]

Overview

My game does not have a story, because it doesn't really need one and gameplay should be prioritized when making a game. The objective is to climb floors of the dungeon going higher and higher there isn't an item the player needs to collect to 'win the game' their only goal is to go higher and higher (like the name of the game suggests, Crescendo). I believe my game is a dungeon-crawler / shooter game. I wouldn't say other games directly influenced my game, but looking back; the levels are in similar fashion to the dungeons in Skyrim. I don't really have an art style, I used Maya for all my assets as I didn't really like the look of voxels - I kind of just made assets and if they looked good I kept them.

Reviews:

[ar-firstpersongame]

The Process pt3

Lastly I added some final touches, like changing the enemies from the Unreal Engine mannequin to some ghosts I made in Maya.

I also changed the enemies so that they can actually take damage and die (So that the weapons have a use to them).

Although something I realized is that the enemies could damage the player from far away, also the player could pick up items through walls if they were facing away from them. It was because each weapon would appear in the right hand after being equipped I didn't want to destroy and create the assets every time, so I would move all the inactive weapons behind the player.

Although it still had its collisions so it would count as the player character. It was an easy fix though, I just turned off collisions for all the weapons as it wouldn't change much in game.

I also designed some UI elements in Photoshop to help indicate what abilities were available and what's happening.

Reloading.

Speed Boost.

Speed Decreased.

Lyre's ability (I called it 'Get Vocal' in all the blueprints, cause the player would shout before gaining the speed boost).

Trumpet's ability.

I enabled these and disabled them from the Player's UI:

For whatever reason changing whether it was visible or not wouldn't change if it was... visible. So I enabled / disabled it.

[ar-firstpersongame]

The Process pt2

At this point I had designed both my weapons, a short tutorial level and level 1 (I forgot to record the process of these levels). I am now designing my second and last level. As mentioned before, I wanted a level to introduce the trumpet; so I made a level where you had to lauch yourself from platforms to not fall into a floor of lava...

While designing the level, I had a problem... the lighting.

Now because the entirety of my levels were inside, I had a few issues with the lighting. These issues occurred in each of the levels I made, where the lighting wouldn't be consistent or would produce fog.

As you can see above, it was quite a hindrance and I tried different types of lighting to effectively deal with this. Here are some photos of level 1, where I managed to fix the lighting.

After a while I managed to fix this by changing the exposure settings in the project settings. Although I had another problem, compared to the tutorial and level 1; level 2 was much bigger - so whilst I was adding my wall asset to each block on the cube output tool, it was mega laggy while play testing.

This was because of the 3227 different wall assets I was using, meaning it was loading all this while trying to play.

For reference this is how big each of these tiles were.

I changed this to a texture from the Quixel Bridge which I had preferred to the tiles (it also ran a lot better).

[ar-firstpersongame]

The Process pt1

Here's my first try at making a shooting mechanic from scratch, and at the moment it will shoot a yellow ball out of the player's face whenever the left mouse button is pressed. Its not quite what I'm looking for, so I changed where it shot from, (now the right arm) and made some assets for the gun and projectile.

I used most of the front half of the premade gun for my own.

I made another asset for a different gun and I'm sure you can see a pattern by now...

I thought it was a bit lackluster however, so I added a sight to the end of it.

And with this I made it shoot slower and do more damage while reducing the damage and increasing the speed the lyre shot at. So the lyre was more like a SMG whilst the flute was like a sniper.

Finally I added one more weapon, the trumpet.

This was my favorite weapon design so far, although I wanted it to be like a shotgun; however I couldn't find away to make it work. I also tried it make it push back enemies using physics, which messed up their rotation apon being hit and making them start running on their side or be unable to get up. I eventually settled on a rather meagre option of just having it launch the player backwards, in which I would design a level to introduce the mechanic.

Another thing I wanted to do is give each weapon (minus the trumpet...) a unique ability to them. So the lyre I made it so for 10 seconds the player would move twice as fast.

Although it was very powerful in being that the player would get run past the entire level so I made it so the player would take 33 points of damage and would move incredibly slower for 5 seconds after the 10 seconds.

Now it was a case of high risk and high reward. And for the flute I just made it so the player would look down the sights. The player would move slightly slower while shooting faster.

This also shows how the previous ability is activated, which is down then a 15 second cooldown is finished. I made it 15 seconds as I'm not a big fan of cooldowns as I feel they can make a game feel a lot slower to play, but I made this one combat the player skipping the slowness effect and while 15 seconds wasnt very long to wait for double speed, don't forget the player would take 33 points of damage every time they used it. I also added a short cooldown of 5 seconds to the trumpet just to stop players from spamming it across the level.

The controls made it so 1 equipped the lyre, 2 equipped the flute and F would shoot the trumpet before swapping back to the last weapon equipped.

One of the biggest challenges while making my game was finding the sound, as most websites required a subscription, you might see in my previous screenshots that I have used different sounds (a different one for each weapon, one for weapon swapping, another for the ability of the lyre, etc). I got all these sounds from Sample Focus for free. Lastly here are the different blueprints for firing each of my weapons, they were a bit messy so it was difficult to get proper screenshots.

Lyre.

Flute.

[ar-firstpersongame]

3D Animation

What is 3D Animation?

3D animation is the process of placing objects and characters in a 3D space and manipulating them to create the illusion of motion. The objects are made based on 3D models assimilated in a digital environment with 3D modeling tools. Alternatively, real-life objects can be scanned into a computer or an animation tablet and become blueprints for 3D animated objects.

The goal of 3D animators is to move objects and characters in a given scene as realistically as possible. You can create the perfect cartoon character, but if its movements are uneven, robotic, or awkward, all your hard work will go down the drain. That’s why animators spend quite some time studying the basic principles of motion to make their animations believable.

Examples:

Red Dead Redemption 2:

RDR2 uses 3D animation to immerse the player and build up character in the world and with some of it's characters.

GTA V:

GTA's player and character animations are responsive to a lot of the events in the game, adding that immersion to the player.

The Last Of Us (2013):

The Last Of Us uses extra animations to make the characters feel more realistic, for example - the characters may hold out their arms to balance themselves when walking across a beam.

Bayonetta (2009):

In Bayonetta, the enemies will react and or flinch depending on where the player hits them, add a subtle amount of immersion to the world.

Shadow Of The Colossus:

A key part of Shadow of the Colossus is when climbing the giants, they will attempt to shake the player off and the player character must hold on - while this is happening, the player character will ragdoll about and bounce off of them when they fall off.

[ar-firstpersongame]

Accessibility

At the moment, you cannot change the controls (Motor Accessibility) or the difficulty of a level in my game (General Accessibility). Although apart from those two things, my game is currently full accessible to most people.

[ar-firstpersongame]

Ethical Issues in my game

The only thing I believe that could count as an ethical issues within my game is the fact there is very mild violence. But this only grants it a PEGI rating of 7 by itself as it is very unrealistic and non-detailed.

[ar-firstpersongame]

Ethics in games

[ar-firstpersongame]

PEGI Ratings

Here is a list of games similar to my first person project and their PEGI Ratings:

BPM: PEGI 12

Darker And Darker: PEGI 16

DOOM: PEGI 16

Barony: PEGI 12

Clone Drone In The Danger Zone: PEGI 7

[ar-firstpersongame]

The Voice In The Hollow

[ar-firstpersongame]

Game Soundscapes and Player Experience

Having ambience in an open-world game can keep players engaged for longer whilst also adding to their immersion. Imagine you were playing an open-world game and walking around with no ambience... it would be very dull and unengaging for the player. Some games such as Skyrim and Elden Ring will play different ambient tracks depending on which area the player is in. There is a big difference in the ambience played when the player is exploring the world - to when they are in a cave or a dungeon.

[ar-firstpersongame]

Cross-Cultural Sound Design

Apart from games with lyrics having different translations depending on what country they are from, games may have different soundtracks depending on the targeted audience and where they are from. For example, the same game released in the EU / USA may have a different soundtrack to the version released in Japan.

[ar-firstpersongame]

Influence on Player Behavior

In the example above, the player is influenced to seek out the chest to get a better weapon, ammo, etc. In doing so - the player may run into another player or a trap of some sort, causing them to have to fight or run away. All of this because the chest emits a tingly / shining sound to guide the play to it in hopes of a reward.