brief5pushingboundaries

[brief5pushingboundaries]

Brief 5: Pushing Boundaries, Student Competitions in Games Art and Design (Reflection)

Figure 1 (RPG character from my game in a crouch pose, 2024)

This was the most challenging assignment till date. Us students were involved in researching different art competitions and were encouraged to try to follow the guidelines of those events and create those 3D artefacts in the relevant fields. I created a successful locomotion state system for my RPG game which allowed my character to walk and run forward with an idle pose. I also finalized the crouch animation with a custom camera zoom out effect which I really felt proud of incorporating into my game as I have seen those in many popular titles.

Since I still have almost 2 months left and with the reading week and the vacation coming up, I would like to believe that I can end up with a small RPG game with fully functioning dialogue system with NPCs that provide quests and a full fledged combat system. If I can finish it before the deadline, I will enroll for the 'Best Student Game' category in GDWC Winter 2024. I do believe that I spent quite a lot of time just researching which is a bit negative as you have to always be researching and creative when it comes to working within a 3D space. However, since this is my first time creating a game from scratch, I feel very encouraged and hopeful about creating my own game in Unreal Engine.

[brief5pushingboundaries]

Brief 5: Pushing Boundaries, Student Competitions in Games Art and Design (Case Study Analysis)

I analyzed a 3D challenge hosted on the ever growing ArtStation, with a lot of different categories like character design, environment design, prop design, film art and so on. The one that particularly stood out to me was the category of environment design, something that I am very interested in.

The theme for the challenge was 'Untamed: When Animals Ruled the World', pretty self-explanatory. Under different categories, the participants of the challenge would create a 3D artefact based around the theme.

This is a relatively new challenge dating 2021, and the winner for the category of environment design was Vignesh Gopalakrishnan. For his award winning submission, the artist went with a creative idea of adopting a moon ritual which is a ceremony done to initiate and celebrate the hatching of a pupae using the moonlight of a full moon. The artist has based his work with the theme centering around insect.

He created a lot of rough sketches, drafting out different iterations of the interior where the pupae would be situated and the exterior residences. Interestingly, he collected reference images for houses, weaving patterns and bridges later after he drafted out initial concept arts for the moth village. He created a perfect 2D lit sketch and based his 3D work on the 2D reference where he blocked out, modelled, textured and rendered out the final product.

Figure 1 (2D final sketch of Vignesh Gopalakrishnan, 2021)

Figure 2 (3D final render of Vignesh Gopalakrishnan, 2021)

On an official interview with Rebecca from the Artstation Magazine, he recalled the main reason for joining the challenge due to his friends taking a part in it which gave him the confidence and the motivation to tackle it in the first place. He also recalls how during his research, he chanced upon a theory about how moths use the moon and the stars to orient themselves during navigation and he concluded with his theme basing it around moths and the moon ritual.

However, he did say that staying on the target was very difficult as he had limited time where he could freely work on the challenge and he had to sacrifice countless sleepless nights to get on with it. It does expose the hard work and the dedication that goes behind creating a winning masterpiece art. The advice he gives out to any potential future challengers is to not stress out, don't fawn over other's submissions too much and to give it your all when creating your artwork, no matter the result.

As per the latest data from his ArtStation profile, Vignesh Gopalakrishnan is a Lead 2D Artist over at Ubisoft.

[brief5pushingboundaries]

Brief 5: Pushing Boundaries, Student Competitions in Games Art and Design (More about the competition)

The competition was linked to us students by our wonderful lecturer Neil and I was made aware of this event. The competition I am enrolling for is 'The Game Development World Championship' (GDWC 2024 Winter Season - The Game Development World Championship)

As per the latest statistics, there are around 45000 game developers already competing for the 2024 Winter Season. It started back in 12th of August, 2024 and the deadline is 31st of December, 2024 with still 55 days remaining. This will provide me with ample time to try my hand at creating a very small but concise RPG game with working questlines, NPCs and input poses.

As this is the biggest game development championship in the world, it attracts a large number of participants and a large number of interested sponsors and studios looking to get behind some of the best projects made under different categories. Since I am still a learning student over at the University of Hertfordshire, I was thinking of enrolling under the 'Best Student Game' category.

Hopefully by enrolling in this competition, it gives me fire and passion to develop something far greater and ambitious than what I thought was merely impossible.

Figure 1 (Best Indie Game of Summer 2024, NODE)

[brief5pushingboundaries]

Brief 5: Pushing Boundaries, Student Competitions in Games Art and Design (Boolean and Input)

For any game conditions to work, we have to employ Boolean conditions and rules to the code lines. Booleans accept either a positive or a negative input and employs an output respectively.

Before doing that all, I decided to add a Blueprint Update sequence in the event graph. I plug it by dragging out the speed float that we created earlier.

Figure 1 (Blueprint update sequence, 2024)

When I employed a jumping animation, during the character's descent, I assigned the default falling animation pose to the transition state. I added a Boolean operation to the transition output.

Figure 2 (Transition boolean, 2024)

I created a velocity vector node and split it into its 3 axes. Since, we just need to work with the vertical Z axis, I used that and plugged it into a boolean and used a AND logic node for the result. If the velocity of the z-axis is greater than 100 units and is a falling pose, then it transitions into a fall animation pose.

Figure 3 (Vertical Axis, 2024)

Figure 4 (Entire boolean and AND logic node structure, 2024)

I then arranged and compiled the 'isFalling' and 'Get Crouched' animation poses and assigned it to the character and left comments for my own understanding later.

Figure 5 (Comments in event graph, 2024)

I then created an input action for a crouch pose for the RPG character, since the default inputs come for moving forwards, backwards and the jump pose.

I created an Input Action where the other inputs for the locomotion were and added it to the scene.

Figure 6 (Input Action, 2024)

Inside the input collection, I added an input, assigned it to the character and recorded the left control key to control the crouch pose.

Figure 7 (Assigning the new input to character, 2024)

Figure 8 (Recording the crouch key, 2024)

I then compiled everything, saved the project files and then called it a day. I would love to develop this further on and actually enroll in the competition to put my work out there.

[brief5pushingboundaries]

Brief 5: Pushing Boundaries, Student Competitions in Games Art and Design (Blueprints)

I decided to create the game solely in Unreal Engine using blueprints. It is a newer form of programming that involves a heavy use of nodes over the traditional programming codes.

I created a project in Unreal Engine and set a directory for my project. I also downloaded an animation pack for the locomotion of a character provided by a youtuber Gorka Games.

Figure 1 (Project creation, 2024)

I added the preset animation pack to the content browser and added SK_Mannequin as the skeleton when importing it.

Figure 2 (Binding skeleton to animation, 2024)

Since there were different poses for locomotion for the character, I decided to branch it into different poses. I added an animation 'Blend Space 1D' to content browser and merged idle animations in its property editor. I set the maximum axis velocity to 500 units.

Figure 3 (Blend Space 1D, 2024)

Figure 4 (Maximum axis speed, 2024)

Inside the blend graph editor, I added an idle, walk and run animation keyframe and blended it together.

Figure 5 (Keyframes for locomotion, 2024)

I created a blueprint class for my RPG character to add my locomotion states and added the animation packs to all the relevant pose output nodes required.

Figure 6 (Idle animation, 2024)

Figure 7 (Locomotion blend space animation, 2024)

I then set the properties of the transition from Idle to Walk/Run pose. I created a speed float variable and plugged it into a > logic node. If the speed is greater than 0 units, the character transitions from idle to walk/run pose. The output is plugged into the result.

Figure 8 (Transition from idle to walk/run pose, 2024)

Figure 9 (Graph chart for locomotion, 2024)

I then assigned a cache for the locomotion node so that it can easily be referenced for further node setups without creating the entire thing from scratch.

[brief5pushingboundaries]

Brief 5: Pushing Boundaries, Student Competitions in Games Art and Design (Research)

This was the second last brief for the weekly assignments that us students were receiving from the first week since we started our module classes. Truth be told, this did throw a curveball in the mix and I can attest when I speak for every other students present that none could even guess the brief details.

This brief helps us in analyzing 3D competition dynamics and building our social networks. Us students were given options to find and research on different art related competitions. I was opting for 'The Rookies' Meet Mat 4 texturing competition. But that got replaced soon by another competition that caught my eyes.

The competition is 'The Game Development World Championship'. There is a category called 'Best Student Game' for all student game projects. If I do finish the game before the deadline, I will decide to enroll in the competition to see where it takes me.

I decided to collect references about the style of games I get inspired by and want to work towards. I created a PureRef file and added all of the reference images of different styles of RPG games in it which is attached below.

Figure 1 (PureRef file, 2024)

REFERENCES:

BigNox, n.d. BigNox. [Online] Available at: https://www.bignox.com/blog/download-and-play-rpg-toram-online-mmorpg-on-pc-with-noxplayer/ [Accessed 05 November 2024].

Guide4Gamers, n.d. Guide4Gamers. [Online] Available at: https://guides4gamers.com/assassins-creed-odyssey/quest/you-re-such-a-sokratease/ [Accessed 05 November 2024].

Kamath, A., 2014. sportskeeda. [Online] Available at: https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/top-10-role-playing-games-for-pc [Accessed 05 November 2024].

Kilgore, T., 2024. YouTube. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEzJz870sGs [Accessed 05 November 2024].

L, E., 2014. GamerGen. [Online] Available at: https://gamergen.com/actualites/divinity-original-sin-une-mise-jour-et-dlc-gratuit-ores-et-disponible-254250-1 [Accessed 05 November 2024].

Port Forward, 2016. Port Forward. [Online] Available at: https://portforward.com/games/walkthroughs/Overlord/Golden-Hills-After-The-Brewery.htm [Accessed 05 November 2024].

Shiels, R., 2016. iFanzine. [Online] Available at: https://www.ifanzine.com/assassins-creed-identity/ [Accessed 05 November 2024].

sleepy, 2020. YouTube. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lztxFau0cXw [Accessed 05 November 2024].