gamesangliaprojectblog

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Gameplay Trailer Video

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High Resolution Screenshots!

I took a moment to capture some in engine high resolution screenshots of the world!

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Making the Camera Rotate

After George was busy with making the video I decided I was going to have to find a way to make the player rotate towards the ORB. We only need this as the player will not be naturally facing this fairy as a default compared to the rest.

To achieve this I added a camera component to the cutscene fairy, made a custom event in the player character to switch the camera.

TO NOTE I increased the blend time to make the transition smoother !!!!!

and then inside the ORB actor I added a cast to plater character on the Start Dialogue event to initiate the camera switch!

Here is how it looks!

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Monkey Easter Egg

I thought it would a cute lil idea to make a sign that prompts the plater to keep following the path if they choose an alternative pathway!

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Plan for this week (Collective Checklist)

Here is the plan checklist me, George and Finn made to prepare our game for games anglia:

Make the Boat faster ✅

Stop Buoys from floating away ✅

Add more Lamp posts to ensure the player is more likely to follow the path ✅

Add Monkey easter egg if you follow the other path (super essential of course) ✅

Make wood pieces more obvious ✅

Lock player camera to final orb fairy as player is naturally unlikely to look at them ✅

Fix Background Ambience ✅

Build Game

Create video

Try to create player charactern (I had made good progress on this until my blender crashed and I only had a really early save, this is on me for being silly and not saving. SO from this the character is just going to be something I will make in my spare time unless I can find the time for the remainder of today).

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The character

As of current I have just finished decorating the islands but have not had time to make the character. unfortunately this is due to me losing about an hour and a half yesterday as George caused an issue by pushing some broken files which consumed a lot of my time fixing it. If I have time over the weekend I will take a look at making it ready for the Games Anglia event!

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Island Decoration

I am spending the rest of this afternoon populating the islands with trees, fences and lanterns!

Here is the main island complete:

I tried to mainly focus the core bit of folliage mainly towards the path of the player which they will see. I tried to keep it dense to appear more full!

I added lanterns leading the player down to the Boats dock!

Next I added the Buoys in the water which will guide the player along!

The After that I just had to add fences, trees and Lamps to the blue island!

Cube Island:

Searching Area:

Dock Area:

Conclusion: I think overall the design of the islands is pretty decent, Im happier with the Main island rather than the blue one. I wish the blue one was bigger and wasnt so flat but overall I think my asset inclusion is pretty decent and doesnt really look too repetitive.

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Play Testing Notes

My notes:

Started off reading info at the side

followed the path

Got into boat fine

Complimented Visuals

Wasn’t sure where to go

Was confused by the purpose of the other islands

Boat was ‘slow’

Struggled to figure out how to dock

Was confused with what to do for the mirror puzzle

^ had to explain

Walks up to mirror to interact

Had to explain the wood puzzle

Had to explain the monument

Finns Notes:

didn’t follow lights

Found using the boat fine

Puzzle recognised but it wasn’t made obvious

Thought there was only one round

Kept going straight up to the mirrors, it’s not obvious you can interact with them from a distance

Finding wood wasn’t too obvious, a good puzzle

Press E to dock text stuck on screen (will fix)

Tried sailing to another island instead of back to the main one

Had to intervene - say to go to the main island

2nd playtest

Everyone thought the sequence was one level, not 3

Give sqeuence sounds that go up in pitch

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Making the Lampost

I used the wood I had made from the original fence, shifted it around and made another one, added a cube inbetween for a metal joining part and then brought in my lampn to attatch to the end. I then brought all of this into UE5 and here is the result!

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Lamp Posts

So for my second to last model I need to create a lamp post, I thought it would be a good idea for me to gather a load of images in this post to use as reference for making the lamp post!

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Giving George A Hand

After making the fairy thing George needed some help with making figuring out the spawn areas for the fairy and what each of them mean.

Here are the locations I came up with:

For the Blue Island:

first explaINS THE mirror puzzle

Second explains the wood puzzle

last explains the point of the cube

For the Main Island:

once the player put there name in and walks towards the path they’re greeted by the orb which locks their camera in and focuses on it, dialogue at the bottom explaining to follow the lights on the path to the dock. you walk to the dock and it’s there waiting, locks your camera in again and explains to get into the boat and follow the Buoys in the water to the island

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Making a Buoy

I started by making the rounded base:

Next I had to create the top half with support beams and pillars!

Now I think its time to get it into UE5!

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Buoys

OKAY OKAY so this was a last minute disucssion between me and finn. As we are going to have lamp posts to guide the player to the dock I think it was a good idea to have something light based in the water guiding the player to the island. We decided on making Buoys to guide the player there.

I went onto google and grabbed some images of Buoys to reference!

RIGHT so Im thinking of making a red and white Buoy like the one seen above with a nice and round top to it. I think red will contrast well with the rest of the environements more watery pastel colours!

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Making the ORB character

I started by adding a subdivision modifier to a cube to get a sphere shape. I repeated this for two smaller cubes for the eyes!:

Next I beveled a cube made it long and thing as this was going to be the wings, I pushed and pulled them around until I got the rough shape:

I then added some more curvature by pushing and pulling around the vertices and then just copied and pasted them until I got a cool little shape!

Render:

Next was adding importing it into engine and seting up the glowing materials! My plan is to have the wings and eyes glowing white and the sphere body to be glowing Yellow/Orange.

I then setup the emmisive materials from the existing one and here is what I got!

Conclusion: I am really happy with the appearance of the character, I was starting to get worried in blender that the character was looking a bit too flat but once I got the emmisive materials on it I think it Looks great! The only thing I changed that I wasnt happy with was the eye colour as I think white kind of blended in with everything too much, so I spoke to finn and we thought it was best to opt for blue as it would stand out from the yellow behind it!

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Goals For Today

Morning:

Make Orb Character

Make Lamp Post

Water Buoy with Light

Start work on character

Afernoon:

Continue work on character

Environment Decorate

ZIP all files up and send off!

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Orb Character Research

Okay so as discussed in our meeting minutes previously, we intend for an orb character that glows to be guiding the character around showing then where to go. When I was discussing this with ollie he brought up a couple of good examples as I was struggling to think of anything.

The first example is Navi from the legend of Zelda: ocarina of time:

From what I have gathered Navi is a fairy companion who helps guide the player. I found that she provides hints, will explain objectives and highlights points of interest. This kind of acts as a tutorial and navigation source which is very similar to what we are looking for from our game!

Overall I really like the small and sweet design, I think the wings are quite a big part of the design as it avoids the character just being a 'floating sphere' while allowing it to conform to the 'fairy' design. For me personally I really like the gold version seen above and I think something similar would work well in our own game!

The second character that was brought up was the Will O' the Wisps from the Disney movie BRAVE:

While this characters idea is similar I think to the one from Zelda I do like how it shares more detail in its appearance. I like how it has a 'firey' appearance which trails around and behind it. I think potentially giving my own design these 'eyes' will add more character to it.

My idea now is to have a floating ORB whith some sort of wings (idea from zelda) that features some form of eyes.

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Pitch Slides

I realised I never posted it on here but here are the slides our group made for the pitch:

Here are the Slides I worked on: