caidens3dproject

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Influence on player behaviour

Music and sound cues can play a huge role in player behaviour. eg, combat music to show enemys are engaging the player or a subtle hum to show a player is near loot:

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Cognitive processing in games

Sound cues a very useful tool to subtly give players hints, clues, or warnings.

A good example of this is when an enemy spots you in a stealth game such as metal gear:

This technique is often used to tell if an ingame skill has recharged, an item has been picked up, etc.

This gives the player confirmation of what has happened in case they werent paying attention, or focusing on an enemy.

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Cross-Cultural sound design

When games are imported into different countrys, the game often has regional differences, sometimes these changes are small, such as Super Mario 64's changes, where something as small as the placement of stars or slight changes in the pitch of sound effects can be tweaked:

Other times these changes can completely change a games feel, such as Street Combat for the SNES where music and characters were replaced to fit american culture:

Howether these changes are not always due to culture, for example music being replaced for copyright reasons in the Superman game for the NES:

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Emotional impact in games

The soundtrack of a game plays a big role in the emotion felt by the player.

Horror games often have long suspenseful notes to add an feeling of anxiousness to its atmosphere

An example of this is Outlasts main menu theme

In contrast to this, adventure driven games such as Assassins Creed has fast-paced tempo and lots of layers.

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Making a key system in Unreal

To make a key system for my game, i decided to use tags, where the player is given a tag to say they they have a key when it is picked up.

I did this by detecting if the player has colided with the key using tags:

Then using the "add tag" node to give the player the 'Key' tag:

Now the player can pick up the key.

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Games made with maya

Maya is a very important creation tool in the games industry, being able to create models for game assets is essential, so Maya has played a role in many popular gaming franchises.

Some games Created with Maya include:

Call of Duty - Black ops 3

Dead space 3

Ratchet and Clank - Rift Apart

Deus Ex - Mankind Divided

Mirrors Edge - Catalyst

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Voxel art in videogames

Voxel art comes in many different styles each with their own feel, this can be useful to keep in mind while designing a videogame, does the art support the feel of the game?

Fugl has its voxels colour appear to have a subtle gradient creating very little jagged voxels with high contrast, this creates a calmer and much more casual experience for the player:

Crossy road has very bright colours that creates a high contrast, this creates the opposite effect as has a tense arcade feel to it which helps the games theme:

Skies of the past has much softer colours that are easier on the eyes, making for a less stressful environment to help the player relax:

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Making my box design for K9 digital

I made a simple gun case/millitary crate inpired box as a start for my K9 digital project, i think this is too simple and i hope to add more details later,

These were my main inspirations for the project:

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What is 'Quixel Mixer'

Quixel Mixer is a development tool used to paint onto 3d models, rather than having to paint on a 2d uv map, this makes it much easier as you can see the object in real time as you design its uv map, although Mixer is mostly used to create texture assets.

Mixer can be used with the quixel megascans for ultra-realistic assets and texturing, an example of this is:

This article shows the creation of photorealistic textures using mixer with megascan assets. The designer creates a british muddy path using many different tools mixer provides.

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K9 Box Uv maps

I have been creating the Uv maps for my container for k9 digital.

As the box has a unique shape i used mayas automatic uv map generator by pressing Create>Automatic while on the UV editor:

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Making cutscenes in Unreal

To make a cutscene, i used a "Level Sequence" asset, which is used to create animations and cinematic shots in unreal,

When using this tool, a "Sequencer" menu with a timeline will open up.

you can add keyframes to the timeline to make objects move through the animation, i used this to move a camera around to make a cutscene.

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Niagara particle system

The Niagara system is the particle system in Unreal.

to use Niagara, i added a "niagara system" asset in the asset manager,

Niagara uses a list system instead of the usual nodes in unreal programing,

Imagine the items in the list as nodes and 'spawn' is begin play, and 'update' is event tick.

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"In Vaulted Halls Entombed"

"In Vaulted Halls Entombed" is a short film for Netflix's Love, Death + Robots.

To create the short film "In Vaulted Halls Entombed", the animaters used Unreal's Metahumans that allowed them to create photorealistic human models for a more believable animation.

Along with this, the team used motion capturing to help generate their animations, they created a basic enviroment to mimic the world they were creating for the actors to walk through as they were motion captured as this would make the squads movement more realistic, eg, by peeking round corners.

the animators also utilised the Quixel Bridge intergrated with Unreal Engine to add Scanned photorealistic objects to their film, making the environment creation much easier.

I may be able to utilise the Quixel Bridge in my own project's environment as there are many free assets that are avaliable for me.

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Different styles of voxel art

Like all art, how voxel art looks varys depending on the artist.

for example Sir Carma often creates large scale artwork where it can be hard to believe it had been made with individual voxels:

In contrast, Thibault Simar often has smaller creations usually with a central focus, such as this train:

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Level design in BioShock

At the start of the game, the player finds themselves in the middle of the water, surrounded by plane parts, this is enviromental storytelling as the player survives a plane crash, the debris and fire covers all directions other than the intended path to guide the player.

Another way the level guides the player is lights turn on as the player goes in the right direction as encouragement that they are where they are supposed to be.

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What is a UV map?

UV maping is the process of turning a 3D object into a 2D 'net' to allow adding 2D textures onto the object

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Modeling in MagicaVoxel

I made a chair and a medkit in MagicaVoxel: