nathannewlandbct-blog

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Sneak Kumara Beauty Shots

Here is a collection of some of the best screenshots of the scenes I made for my Art and Design minor paper at its current state. This project is still far from finished as there are still a few stand in and temporary meshes and textures and I plan to polish it up in my own time in the next few months. This was obviously a student project, and when all my other student projects are handed in like this one has been I can go back over it to bring it to a higher standard suitable for Artstation.

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Sneak Kumara WIP screenshots

In an alternate Auckland where gardening is illegal. You are tasked to sneak a kumura to your friend’s secret garden. However, it will not be easy as you will have to avoid contact with the police as they are on a lookout everywhere for smugglers like you.

This is what I did for my Art and Design semester project. I'm going to go through my whole process from start to finish as briefly and concisely as I can but this will still end up being quite a large post.

Above: Blocking out the space according to memory and basic reference material.

Further blockout according to concept art by William Tan and reference photos

Experimenting with the first stages of lighting and adding basic custom and temporary meshes

Experimenting with the first pass of models from William. Lighting, materials and general technical details were addressed. A lot of what you see here made it into the final version of the space as is.

Making the carpark materials, lights and filling with temporary car mesh assets. The asphalt, paint lines and grills I was able to create from real world photos giving them a crisp, detailed look.

Making Distance Meshes. Some of these were temporary, some custom made for the scene according to reference material.

Starting to polish up textures. Specifically, the ground for the courtyard and walls for the buildings.

Working on the last larger building mesh; the train station. Also added detail to the shop fronts.

Added the drone mesh that William had made to the enemy AI programmed by Timothy Grey. I added basic custom textures and modified the mesh slightly.

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Making the Pit Area

On the 20th of September I began work on the pit section that would serve as the introduction to the gameplay within our game. I started by making the deferred decal textures that I would use to guide the player though the space. These were not difficult, and I quickly moved on to modelling the basic blocks I would be using to create the jumping puzzle. I knew I wanted to go for a simple geometric shape that was worn down and beaten about. This was inspired by the games Destiny and Destiny 2 where the Vex would have monolithic geometric structures constructed out of detailed, yet basic, primitive shapes. 

I took a primitive cube, subdivided it, sculpted some dings and scrapes into it and added a single face bevel to the edges. This keeps with the theme of simplistic geometric shapes within the game but the damage, combined with a detailed material, gives the prop a clean, yet sophisticated look. They were often many times the size of the player in terms of scale and so added to the monolithic sense of hte game area.

 All the cubes were aligned with the world space axis in units of 90 degrees. This helped on a practical level so that the cubes would line up flush to one another and it gave the whole scene a sense of order in relation to each other. There are two cubes, one 2x1 rectangle and four quarters of and 2x2x1 with a negative cylindrical hole. This piece means I can make curved ramps, arches, tubes or half, cylinder shapes.

  I started by making a basic jumping route, tested it a bit and tweaked some distances and scales, added some more, and got team members to test it. The whole process was shorter than I expected, I got most of the structure done in a day or two and polished it in another day or two. This also meant that not only myself, but the team was happy with the layout. Level layout should not technically be my job anyway as an environment artist and not a gameplay designer, but I was happy to help.

The tricky but was the lighting after. As the space is quite dark because of it being down a deep well, I wanted to play on the concept of having it so dark that the player can only see the essentials of the platforming experience, this would limit their need to explore and work well with the whole motif of the game where the player begins by falling into a pit of darkness and ends by being shot out of the top on into the blazing sunlight.

Again, I looked to the Destiny games to see how they did some of thier dark levels, and I remembered a specific boss fight (the Sunless Cell Strike) where the three players have to fight in a completely dark cavern where the only light comes from the boss itself and players when they activate abilities.

Our player character lights up when it uses abilities, but I knew that this would be ridiculous to require the player to move in order to see. I settled for framing key jumps with light (like how Wheatley does in portal 2)

and guiding players with glowing particle clusters.

 The biggest problem with this was the iris settings on the game camera. The desert by nature is  a bright place and my bottom of the well scene is about as close to absolute dark black as I can get. I could balance the exposure of the post processing volume to look current at low light but as soon as the camera looks at the pool of fluid ability pick up thing, the images would darken to compensate for the bright material. It was a water material which in the past ive found to have used emisive channels however, in this particular material, there was not emisive. It was not technically emitting any light, yet it was the brightest thing in the room. It still is as I havent found a fix for it yet. I tried replacing the empty node with 0 and that doesnt work. I tried having and internal space ppv and an external space ppv with exposure looked on both but i couldn't get those to balance out smoothly ether. The last thing I have left to try is to increase the ambient light level in the space with a couple of point lights and balance it out the exposure in the ppv. This would bring the values closer to what the exterior conditions would be as well.

It was about this time we had the GDM playtest. I was manning another game project I was also part of but was right beside this project was well low key listening to feedback that was being given regarding the work i had done. That afternoon I had added the most light that area had ever had since I started working on it to the point where it was almost too bright for the tension I had planned. This was after that morning some of my colleagues started to complain that it was too dark as I think they were expecting a light and breezy platforming adventure without realising this was the darkest, lowest point of the sentient tower and of the game itself. We also added a point light to the player character that was always on and cast some slightly creepy shadows on the player characters face. So I would stand beside the game while watching another and hear a few players mention how dark it is. Then I would have three colleagues come up to me and get my attention and and tell me its too dark. And this would happen again, and and again and again. I would go home and come back the next day to work on something else and I would have three or so more people tell me by the way the level is too dark, fix it. I would go home for the weekend and have my phone periodically light up with chat to do with the project and, did you know, we had lots of people say the level is  too dark. I get to Uni on a Monday to add more light to the level. Before I get my laptop out to even open the project I get told the levels too dark, you might want to fix the lights in the first area, learn to light a level.

I finally get to edit the lighting in the level and find that its simply the settings form the build we used to showcase hadn't carried over from what I had designed.

This kind of communication behavior is unacceptable and beyond irritating. It try to be patient with my team and receive criticism well but I cannot stand constantly being told information I already know, especially without being able to do anything about it. I know this kind of thing never happened when I was leading Project Kowhai.

At the moment I am working on fixing the lighting for the entire map as the directional lights and dynamic sky blueprint from the GDM demo build are glitching. Once thats fixed I can add and balance the first scene like I had intended to do.

D. (2018, July 20). Destiny 2: How to Get Whisper of the Worm - Exotic Sniper Rifle Guide. Retrieved October 8, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRewTTLRkYk&feature=youtu.be

I. (2015, September 15). Destiny: The Taken King - Sunless Cell Strike Mission. Retrieved October 8, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWLP0JXcrpo

I. (2011, May 21). Portal 2 Walkthrough: Chapter 5 The Escape. Retrieved October 8, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm2bu9HezEE

[nathannewlandbct-blog]

Big update on studio

Game progression main vision

To catch up on studio blogs I will be posting first on the main vision for the game as i see it currently and then in the next posts break down the work I’ve done, section by section.

Intro area

 When the player starts the game, they walk arround a sand mound and look up at the tower. They then go through a large, cathedral like, hallway, the floor drops out and they plummet all the way down into the tower's basement levels. Its dark, especially compared to the bright desert light they were just in. They find themselves among debris and see light coming through a small crack in the wall. The player squeezes though the crack to find a large vertical cavern space. The tower is hollow and they can see light streaming in to the top, many, many levels above them. Its dark and foggy, much colder than the surface and almost damp. The light from above doesn’t quite reach the lowest levels and all the light down here seems to be coming from glowing bugs hovering in a cluster. They seem to be attracted to this glowing area on a platform above.

 The player can see the outline of a staircase, they move closer to have a look. It is a staircase, quite old and broken looking. Following it up, it is broken. They look arround and see the glowing platform is beside them. They jump to it and find a pool of glowing water. The player goes up to it and the pool drains. The player character glows blue and a new icon apears in the HUD. They can see a ledge in front of them and decide to jump to it. They keep jumping up and arround the side of the tower, following clusters of bugs. They make it to the top and the light from the top of the tower reaches them and they can see clearly now. Looking down, they can see the hole they were in, but not the bottom. Its covered now with a dome of transparent material that they can walk on and not fall through.

 Hub

Jumping up onto the curved platform they find it consists of two levels. There are ramps that lead off from the centre out to doors. Following these, the player navigates there way though the inside of the tower. There are more bugs to lead the way, though not blue anymore. The player reaches the outer wall and finds a doorway marked with red.

Tower 1

They follow the bridge and can see a red hue glow from the doorway on the other side. Going through the wooden door on the other side, gears turn behind then and the door closes. They look arround and see another ability pond. The same happens again as the pond drains and the player character glows red. Another ability apears in the UI and they use the dash to jump arround and up this tower. At the top they find another door which opens for them as they approach. Going across the bridge they notice the main tower is not as tall as it was when they entered the satellite tower. The bridge is broken and they must simply use the dash to get across. A groan is heard as the player lands. They return though the tower interior to find that is slightly different. Arriving at the hub, they find this is slightly more damaged and the player continues on to another tower of their choosing.

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Moving Tower WhiteBox Test 1

Last night I mocked up a rough concept of what one level in our tower could be in terms of layout and map flow. I modded the basic parts and added a rotator component to test the gameplay. 

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Game Concepts

Yesterday I quickly mocked up a couple of concepts that Xav and I came up with.

The first is a 50's retrofuturistic Russian colony on Mars that needs to be managed from a central tower. The player in first person navigates a control room in a tower trying to balance resources to the colony. A couple plot twists occur and cause the player be distracted from resource management and a larger threat to the colony later becomes obvious.

The second concept is to make a space ship that has been caught in the gravity well of a dying sun. They must manage ship repairs while the ship is burning up around them and a rocket fuel leak that is not obvious to the player at first. 

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NZGDC part 1

Today was the first day of NZGDC. In the morning I got to the Skytower not knowing exactly where it was. I ended up going to the casino before finding the convention center. Once I got there I got my battle pass lanyard and found a friend from second year and hung out with him for a bit. Then the Limbus team showed up and I joined there circle. Niagara VFX in UE4.20 was the talk for the morning. Because of demand, the GDC organizers had a secondary, less advertised sign up section. Because of this I was backfill and would get let in if there was space after the VIPs.

It was interesting but I was tired from waking up so early. I took quite a few notes and copied as many material graphs as I could onto the little pad paper from skycity.

Niagra VFX in UE4.20

 Modules -> emitters -> particle fx

Currently in beta release. Don't use to ship

Time line has emitters

 emitters have stacks

Stacks have modules

modules have flow script editors

editors have HLSL

The attribute spreadsheet is available for debugging

Look at fight scene example with the two robots.

Vector from float node breaks vectors into floats for operations such as multiplication.

I went back to colab for lunch and was really glad I had an excuse to not be in studio asked be actually learning something interesting.

The afternoon was environment art in UE4. Again, I only just got in. For the first hour or so was material instances and landscapes. A lot of this I already knew (which I can be quietly proud of) but I took some notes and drew some graphs anyway. It got more technical and I'm glad I got back into landscape materials as recently as yesterday.

It was a very fun day and much needed break from the usual studio.

Environment Art in Unreal Engine

Material slots in the asset inspection window have highlight and isolate functions.

SetMaterialAttributes has less overhead than MakeMaterialAttributes.

Saturate is a cheaper version of a clamp.

Mask RGBA can be used to split up a Vector4 for multiplication.

ML needs "inputUVtileing" to have inputs within the master graph.

Use ML for substance textures.

Dynamic lighting for large landscapes for less overhead.

Distance field AO

Movable direction light

Directional light has checkbox called atmosphere fog/sunlight.

Square brackets change landscape brush size.

Investigate adding strata lines to a landscape material on dirt layer based on slope.

Alt Shift O opens a popup content browser.

Preview weight will stop the preview of a landscape material from being black.

Landscape grass type can be set up and referenced in material editor as landscape grass. This requires a grass mask.

Wetness layer material doesn't go into the layer blend.

WorldPositionOffest does not add verts but World displacement does.

Investigate Auto LOD groups and rules.

Proxy LOD for optimising distance meshes/buildings

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NZGDC notes part 2

Friday was the last day of NZGDC18. It was a lot of fun and really interesting to see the state of the industry Ive been studying in a broader context that's greater than the little white room Ive been in for two years at the top of my uni tower. This post is part two because the notes from Wednesday are at uni and I’m home for the weekend. I’ll do part one later.

Concept Art Ashen - Arorra44

Fogs purpose is to desaturate the background and add depth by contrasting the background with the foreground.

Ask for a prop sheet from the concept artist as well as the usual concept art

Art Workflows - Weta Gameshop

Thick model edge champhers are better looking when mipmapped

 -\_/- is better than -I_I-

Slight angles are better for normal baking

Quads are better for spherical surfaces. Use smooth or bevel with a value of 1

Investigate maya's hard and soft normals

Investigate the UV tools: Unitize, move and sew and unfold V

Separate unjoined parts pre bake

Headpose within HMD - Magic Leap

Headpose = the transform and rotation data of a HMD

When using head as a direct control

Head variability can be high

Good for short, momentary actions

Low resolution better

A variety of social non-verbal gestures can be deduced solely from the headpose of the HMD

IT Networking and security - Rocketworks

3-2-1 rule for network security

Three backups, two different formats and one offsite storage

Words -> DNS -> ip address numbers

VLAN: a physical LAN divided up virtually into multiple isolated networks

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What I did for studio V

This is my description of my role in the development of Exosense this semester. It is an excerpt from the Conceptual and contextual statements document our team will submit on Monday for assessment.

 Nathan Newland (Level Design, Material Design, Lighting)

My main role in the project was creating the environment for the player. This involved the concepts of level design, lighting and material design. I studied the concept art I was given by Kavita and tried to emulate that within the 3d environment as close as possible, bending the concept only a few times where necessary.  Initially, I sculpted out the “intro” and “puzzle” areas in blender and imported them into the unreal engine, where I created materials for the mesh and lit it appropriately. I then filled it out with the assets the rest of the team gave me and a few of my own as well. This process was iterated on and polished over the course of many weeks.

The concept of cooperation and the use of visual and auditory stimulus was core to how the levels would have to be built and colourised. I started the player in an area that was more open and spacious to help the player learn how to play blind with minimal visual input. The colors are more muted in the introduction area. This is because this area is closest to the surface and furthest from the subterranean alien technology that is found later in the game. The intro area also has a burning spaceship wreck, so the more muted colour palette helps the flames visually stand out from the background. Also the exit of the cave glows to show players subtly the way out of that area. As the players progress though the game the colours become increasingly more vivid and striking, symbolising the players decent closer to some sort of alien technology discovery that would be the climax of the game. In discussing with the art department, specifically Kavita, we decided on cooler, darker variations on blue, purple and green as environment colours. This became the cool grey/brown of the intro level, the vivid purple of puzzle one and the various blue hues of puzzle two.

We wanted the game to have a contrast between the players and the environment where the environment was stylistically aggressive and inhospitable but the players were cute, friendly and innocent looking. My job in this was to make a stylised environment that was subtly aggressive but not overly so, while incorporating natural curves and sculpted forms with geometrical alien technology. I did this by using aggressive angular lines and triangle forms in the rocks, spikes and crystals that are scattered within the environment. The roof of the introduction level lowers abruptly and tight, constricting tunnels are used between puzzle areas to create a slight feeling of oppression and constriction in certain areas. This is not constant however, as puzzle two opens up into a comfortably large cavern, though there are spikes on the roof to break up the soft and smooth form of this cave.

During the final weeks of the project my main development laptop had to be sent away for repairs and so I had to pull myself out of the main development pipeline. Conveniently, most of the environment design had already been done and any remaining could be handled by Traz or the rest of the team. I began focusing on more paperwork such as the statements required for submission and setting up our booth for showcase.

Personal Reflection

This is not part of the official document and is my personal reflection on how the project went and my role as part of it. Although it turns into a bit of a rant, I did enjoy my work this semester.

As is the case with most studio projects, the amount of learning done is actually very minimal, which is odd considering this is for university. Instead, it becomes simply the application of knowledge I already know t a larger, more complete project than what I could do on my own. In the breaks between university semesters I can learn new workflow methods, programs and techniques and make mistakes, however, when I come back to university there is no time to be messing about learning something new when there is a pretty product to finish. This is true even more with this semesters project than last semester’s.

With ExoSense, I stared the project with the research phase. This was an arduous process of everyone setting on a concept they were happy working on for the rest of the semester. It took way too long, two or three weeks to figure out what we were going to do before we even started working. My plan was to decide on the project before we stated the semester so that we could hit the ground running with development. This did not happen due to several reasons but mainly a larger group with more voices that have to be heard in a democratic decision. When we finally settled on the concept that became ExoSense, I began working solidly on level design and material design how I wanted. This continued well though out the project’s development cycle up until about three weeks before the deadline. My main development was having blue screen errors throughout the semester that became increasingly more common to the point at which doing any work was impossible. I had to send it in to the original supplier to be repaired. This meant that I was without my main development machine and so I had to pull myself out of the main pipeline and focus on less hardware intensive tasks that my less capable back up laptop could handle. As such I began to work more on the paperwork required for submission and the showcase booth set up. I was not as hands on with development in the last three or so weeks I would have liked to have been.

Moving on, in the holidays I plan to spend time learning more game development skills within my area and planning the project for next (final) semester. In order to make next semester work better, I will have the whole project planned before semester starts and potentially resume my position as project lead as I was in final semester second year.

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Contexts of Game and Play Stuff

Imagine a single post that included everything Ive written about the development process for ARDN611 Contexts of Game and Play in one place without the other fluff of colab studio projects. That’s what this is!

Week 7

Wednesday

I have plenty of research to do for my ardn611 paper before tomorrow morning and my home Wi-Fi connection has been obliterated apparently. I'll have to go to maccas perhaps.

Week 10

Monday

I went though a bunch of my asset bundles in prep for making my rooftop experience thing for ARDN611. I have until Thursday to make something showable that I can talk about for a few minutes. I plan to make a realistic and believable experience that is vertigo inducing and thrilling without having much in the way of a game.

Tuesday

Today I worked more on my submission for adrn611. I'm not especially happy with it in it's current state and I don't know how well it'll be received.

Wednesday

Today I worked exclusively on my rooftop experiment level. It's getting close to a point where I'd be happy to use it as a concept submission which is all where supposed to make.

Thursday

Last night I worked on the rooftop experiment project till about 11pm. I have t at a mostly mvp point for assessment, even though mvp could be anything and it's really just an arbitrary point at which I'm somewhat satisfied with it.

The player starts in a stair well and is led out onto a rooftop where the wind is blowing and noise of traffic is distant below. They can then turn left and ether jump onto of the stairwell or over a short hand rail to a lower level with a ball to kick around and exposed edges. This lower space plays with claustrophobia at height somewhat as the ceiling is tight a low and three walls are completely open and exposed. Wind noise and floating papers add to the effect of this being an unsafe, windy area.

The upper level goes up a 15 degree incline and onto a flat area surrounded by a tall wall. This kind of tall wall is common on towers with roof access for safety reasons and can vary in height from taller than a person to hip height approximately. Having this wall helps me as an environment artist not have to fill the surrounding area with filler buildings however as soon as i let the player jump up on the wall this meant I had to fill every space they can see from the perimeter, something I haven't yet done for this project. On the top space there is a ball to roll around, some rubbish to kick off the edge, some cubes to shoot with the default fps gun and some more environment filler assets. When I was testing the map myself I found the ball was much more entertaining as I had anticipated. I tried almost playing pool with is as I herded it around with my gun trying to put it in different places.

I got feedback on my scene. Jenna wants it to be more cohesive. Why are there balls and things on a rooftop, why is there a gun, that sort of thing. So more of a polished, sellable product. Others thought it looked great and were impressed by the visuals.

A guy called William made a flying VR game in unreal for the same project. I talked with him a significant amount and played his game. I even put on the headset, lay on two chairs and went for a trip out of the classroom, down the elevator and past one of the quad restaurants.

Week 11

Thursday

Today I went in to my play ardn611 lecture and saw the first half of the presentations of the games the students have made. I'm next week so I have till Wednesday night to polish my game.

I spent two hours making it vr compatible and the rest of the afternoon trying to make a climbing mechanic for it where the player can grip the environment and manipulate their transform and rotation. It's been done before but there aren't much resources out there on how to do it and I have not a whole lot of programming experience. To finish the evening I installed the cranes in the best location I could find for them.

Week 12

Monday

I tweaked the rooftop experiment after duplicating the project a sixth time. All of these deups except the latest will be deleted after Wednesday morning. Anyway there's still bugs but I got Garian to test it. Got some screenshots to.

Wednesday

I fixed the issue of floating boxes in the VR rooftop level by using custom simple collision instead of complex. Had another playtest with AJ this time and took screenshots and notes.

 Thursday

Today I gave my presentation on my rooftop vr game I titled Vertigo. Despite my slight nerves it went well, I spoke confidently and had the scene audience engaged through the whole 5 minutes. I threw in some technical aspects, some more broad and relatable concepts and a few jokes. Now all I have to do for the paper is my research assignment.

Week 13

Monday 

Later that night I did research into the art of movement based first person games but didn't have much success.

Week 14

Monday

I made a somewhat large chunk of content for my research paper but it needs formatting.

Friday

Last night I finalised my research paper and handed it in online. I wrote what I think is quite a big document but I couldn’t find an official word count. I'm quietly pleased with it and am interested to see what mark I get for it.

[nathannewlandbct-blog]

Week 6 to week 14

I haven't uploaded my general development log in quite a few weeks so here we go.

Week 6

Wednesday

Today I added basic cone shapes as stand in stalagmites that Traz will model. I fixed the holes in the mesh of the nine rocks I've currently made.

 Week 7

Tuesday

Today I messed around with the lightmap errors I have been getting in the caves. Aldo can in to Uni and he suggested cutting the mesh up more. I was thinking about this but didn't really want to tackle it. I did however. The cave is now in many different pieces bit still with broken lightmaps. I checked the unwrap within blender and will manually unwrap it and mark my own seams. Hopefully this might work.

Wednesday

Today I had to present a slideshow of our work so far with the group which went well. I was going to go on a photogrammetry mish which would have been fun but had to sit through the presentation instead. I have yet to see how the results are without my being there.

I have plenty of research to do for my ardn611 paper before tomorrow morning and my home Wi-Fi connection has been obliterated apparently. I'll have to go to maccas perhaps.

  Week 8 and 9

These were holidays. I did pretty much nothing.

 Week 10

Monday

Colab would call this week 8 but i like to count the holidays as working weeks to keep myself busy and productive. Usually this works but not this holidays. The first week i was taking as a much needed break and the second was pretty much full of other non game development related events.

Today i reopened and checked my latest version of the studio project and uploaded it to git so my team can use it. I also went though a bunch of my asset bundles in prep for making my rooftop experience thing for ARDN611. I have until Thursday to make something showable that i can talk about for a few minutes. I plan to make a realistic and believable experience that is vertigo inducing and thrilling without having much in the way of a game.

 Tuesday

Today I worked more on my submission for adrn611. I'm not especially happy with it in it's current state and I don't know how well it'll be received.

I had to get up early for vie this morning which made me very tired for the rest of the day. Stefan had a brief lecture on the fine line between giving the user a meaningful and effective experience and real torture in VR. We then went to a new experimental room in the art and design faculty area where three Vives were set up. I was finally able to show off PKVR to most of the old crew including Nathan Young, Garian, AJ and Sam my new colleague for a different project. We had lots of fun making the user stand on a rock, physically jump and teleporting them down the hill. They all found it difficult to do even though they were in fact just jumping a few centimetres on the level floor of the office space. Another cool moment was when Nathan was looking at the sun and noting how bright it was. He put his hand up to shield his eyes and realised that this works like in real life.

 Wednesday

Today i worked exclusively on my rooftop experiment level. It's getting close to a point where I'd be happy to use it as a concept submission which is all where supposed to make.

 Thursday

Last night I worked on the rooftop experiment project till about 11pm. I have t at a mostly mvp point for assessment, even though mvp could be anything and it's really just an arbitrary point at which I'm somewhat satisfied with it.

The player starts in a stair well and is led out onto a rooftop where the wind is blowing and noise of traffic is distant below. They can then turn left and ether jump onto of the stairwell or over a short hand rail to a lower level with a ball to kick around and exposed edges. This lower space plays with claustrophobia at height somewhat as the ceiling is tight a low and three walls are completely open and exposed. Wind noise and floating papers add to the effect of this being an unsafe, windy area.

The upper level goes up a 15 degree incline and onto a flat area surrounded by a tall wall. This kind of tall wall is common on towers with roof access for safety reasons and can vary in height from taller than a person to hip height approximately. Having this wall helps me as an environment artist not have to fill the surrounding area with filler buildings however as soon as i let the player jump up on the wall this meant i had to fill every space they can see from the perimeter, something i haven't yet done for this project. On the top space there is a ball to roll around, some rubbish to kick off the edge, some cubes to shoot with the default fps gun and some more environment filler assets. When I was testing the map myself I found the ball was much more entertaining as I had anticipated. I tried almost playing pool with is as i herded it around with my gun trying to put it in different places.

I got feedback on my scene. Jenna wants it to be more cohesive. Why are there balls and things on a rooftop, why is there a gun, that sort of thing. So more of a polished, sellable product. Others thought it looked great and were impressed by the visuals.

A guy called William made a flying VR game in unreal for the same project. I talked with him a significant amount and played his game. I even put on the headset, lay on two chairs and went for a trip out of the classroom, down the elevator and past one of the quad restaurants.

 Friday

I changed to colour of the basalt pillars in the intro cave to a more muted grey/brown with a subtle purple highlight. This looks more consistent with the rest of the cave and adds to a more natural colour palette to ease the player into the camera vision gameplay. I also cleaned up the hierarchy with folders.

 Week 11

Tuesday

Yesterday Traz gave me a rough block out of the second puzzle level which I have installed and have been fitting out yesterday and today. Traz also today gave me a retopologised version of the intro cave but it's not the same scale and origin as the original cave so making it work would be tough.

 Thursday

Today i went in to my play ardn611 lecture and saw the first half of the presentations of the games the students have made. I'm next week so i have till Wednesday night to polish my game.

I spent two hours making it vr compatible and the rest of the afternoon trying to make a climbing mechanic for it where the player can grip the environment and manipulate thier transform and rotation. It's been done before but there aren't much resources out there on how to do it and i have not a whole lot of programming experience. To finish the evening i installed the cranes in the best location.

 Week 12

Monday

Today I showed AJ my problem with the iris door being individual pieces and are some tweaking she came up with a cool solution that's animated as well. I should import and test that sometime. I also need to find the version of the static mesh cave from Traz that has something group information. I need to add more rocks and stalagmites to the second puzzle area and upload everything to git for Mark to test the level.

I tweaked the rooftop experiment after duplicating the project a sixth time. All of these deups except the latest will be deleted after Wednesday morning. Anyway there's still bugs but i got Garian to test it. Got some screenshots to.

 Wednesday

I fixed the issue of floating boxes in the VR rooftop level by using custom simple collision instead of complex. Had another playtest with AJ this time and took screenshots and notes.

 Thursday

Today I gave my presentation on my rooftop vr game I titled Vertigo. Despite my slight nerves it went well, I spoke confidently and had the scene audience engaged through the whole 5 minutes. I threw in some technical aspects, some more broad and relatable concepts and a few jokes. Now all I have to do for the paper is my research assignment.

 Week 13

Monday

Today I drew up a concept for the open studio layout. Roughly it consists of two tellies angled at 45 degrees away from each other in convex form with a plinth or table in the centre for controllers, business cards, food, etc. Behind the tellies on the floor is storage space for our gear and a projector lighting the roof. On this i plan to have a spinning asteroid with our logo in the middle. On the back wall is our art poster. Perhaps we might need a large company/game logo for the back wall as well. I spent most of the afternoon mocking this a asteroid scene up in unreal.

Later that night I did research into the art of movement based first person games but didn't have much success.

 Wednesday

Today was prep for GDM. Even though we're close to the end of the development cycle this is the first meeting we've all been able to attend, bar one. We showed of the game and got quite a few play testers. There wasn't much specific feedback however almost everyone enjoyed it and no one disliked it that was obvious. Lots of notes were taken by other team members and the manning of the exhibition was handled well by other team members without my having to step in. Even though I'm not the sole lead of this project these moments still make me proud of my team. I had lots of food this time. Tomorrow I have to wake up early for adrn611.

 Week 14

Monday

Today we had a meeting and one of the things that we decided was we wanted to introduce players to visually impaired gameplay much more gradually. Basically a black screen with floating green text is not very inviting. So were adding a main menu (this will be marks responsibly, he doesn't know it yet) and Traz will be making a cutscene intro with help from Kavita and me. I have to open the skylight to let light and stars in, make a huge cliff face and a ramp.

I made a somewhat large chunk of content for my research paper but it needs formatting.

 Friday

This week I haven't done a huge amount of work for the studio project as I have started to feel the pressure to do my ARDN611 research paper. The biggest recent changes I've made include moving the second door to the end of the second level and adding smoke effects behind it. I also added the large cliff that Traz made for the intro level.

Last night I finalised my research paper and handed it in online. I wrote what I think is quite a big document but I couldn’t find an official word count. I'm quietly pleased with it and am interested to see what mark I get for it.

[nathannewlandbct-blog]

ExoSense WIP Screenshots

I realised I haven't updated the work in progress pics for a while so here are some shots of the tutorial area and the first puzzle as of today the 4th of May ‘18, 10 weeks of development.

[nathannewlandbct-blog]

Here are our slides from our latest presentation for studio. It shows ExoSense’ current WIP state

Week 7 Formative Presentation

Above are our updated slides where changes have been made, particularly in our context and concept slides. Before this, we had many irrelevant images that didn’t really portray our fundamental idea well and by removing most of them, we’re able to show the most relevant precedence and a clearer vision. 

We’ve also demoted our initial concept of power imbalance because it’s less to do with general power and more about the balance of abilities/senses. Our methodology slide has also been updated by Nathan Y. to show how we make decisions about the gameplay experience based on our concept of co-operation. This was well received by Ben as it laid out our decision-making process far better than a bunch of links to books or websites (which are completely viable in other projects). 

At this point, we just need a demo working for the next AKLgamedev and Ben did ask us if we were able to achieve this in a little less than two weeks. We most likely can if we use our time during the break wisely. We are still having some conflict with the design of the first level as well as lighting issues that need to be resolved. I want to create more assets for the first level to build upon the alien/isolating experience we’re aiming to achieve.

[nathannewlandbct-blog]

Creativity and Process

big document incoming below

John Cleese on creativity and the Open and closed modes

John Cleese describes two modes of thinking within the creative workflow, the open and the closed. He describes the closed as one of focus where someone has a task, the y work on it, they follow through with it and complete it. Distractions are eliminated for sake of efficiency. The open mindset however is one where there are less stresses and interruptions from everyday life where one is more relaxed and can ponder concepts and ideas in a more open and critical way. Balancing these two is also important. In order to create something new one has to think openly and freely. Once that idea has been found it is necessary to focus down on it and bring the idea to completion without doubt and distraction.

“It’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than important things that are not urgent and little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about”

Cleese’s plan to create more opportunity for creativity by forcing the open mode mindset is to have a space that one goes to semi-regularly that is free of distractions where one can ponder the problem effectively. About half an hour is required for the mind to settle and one also needs a break after about an hour. Therefore, an appropriate amount of time is perhaps about an hour and a half. This should also be done every couple of days thought the week as opposed to intensive sessions.

His final point is how humor has a place in even the most serious discussions. It can relax and lighten the mood and lead to more of the open mode mindset. Cleese points out the distinct difference between serious discussions and solemn ones.

 The seven habits of highly effective artists

Daily work. This means practicing your craft regularly, daily if you can. Do so will give you significant hours of practice in a way that iteratively builds on each session of work.

Volume, not perfection. This point I do not totally agree with. He describes a focus on creating a large body of work rather than focusing on a smaller, higher quality or work. This is so that more practice can be done and lessons learnt in the iterative process. However, I personally think it is more effective to have a few high-quality works that represent you as an artist. This is more impressive to the customer and shows you have the capacity for some truly great material.

Steal (well). Stealing other people work is obviously a bad idea. However, taking inspiration from other similar work can help a game designer avoid mistakes, and make good decisions. It’s basically research.

Conscious learning. This reminds me of the difference between hearing and listening. We may hear sounds but immediately forget then because we are not actively listening for them. If we are actively hearing sound, we take notice of it and it becomes input that we base decisions on. A musician may hear the roar of the crowd but they are listening for the sound of the other band members as cues for their own parts. What this has to do with conscious learning is that the very fact that when we learn something new in our creative field and we realized we have just learnt something valuable, that lesson will stay with us more effectively than having just made the realisation and learning in and of itself.

Rest. This is also mentioned by John Cleese in his lecture on the open and closed mental modes. Rest is a crucial part of having creative ideas. Without rest one becomes stressed and closed mind and focused on whatever task they have in front of them, rather than open minded about the nature of the world around them.

Feedback. Playtesting, critical review, peer review. There are many names for feedback but they all serve the same point, to give diverging alternate points of view on what the artist has made. Often feedback can be overly negative, most of the time is somewhat negative, but it is important because as mistakes are made and learnt from sooner they become less expensive and painful than if they had been left until the end of the project.

Create what you love. If, as an artist, one does not enjoy getting out of bed in the morning and going to work then they shouldn’t be doing that work. It’s that simple. When an artist is not enjoying huis work he cannot fully appreciate it or understand it and then it becomes a sub-par mess that no one understands.

 Thoughts of Shigeru Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto is the man behind the famous games of Nintendo such as Donkey Kong and Mario. He has become a legend in the game design field for his work on these games in the early stages of the video game industry. The majority of those who had made games before him were technicians and programmers but he came from a design background. This game him a different, more holistic perspective of video games where there was a story and meaning and that these had to unfold before the player in a meaningful way.

Games have to have a sense of accomplishment. A huge part of video games is the risk versus reward factor, this could be as quick as peaking around a corner quickly in a fast-paced competitive shooter or saving whole alien races from annihilation in a sci-fi RPG. Rewarding the player for their skill is what gives the player enjoyment and is the whole reason why people play games in the first place.

Game makers have become more designers rather than technologists. Nowadays we have a whole field in the video game industry called game design. Usually this is higher up the hierarchy even of the classic game programmer role which has been around as long as video games themselves. This field wasn’t around when Miyamoto made his classic games and so his unique approach to design before excellent programming was ground breaking and ahead of its time.

Wrap up

Creativity (like a lot in life) is less of a skill and more of a choice. There are certain situations and techniques that can make the process easier and original ideas more attainable such as open-mindedness, rest and play. Practicing your artistic technical skill is also very important so that when the inspiring and original ideas comes it can be executed to its highest degree of quality.

References

Blender. “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Artists.” The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Artists, YouTube / Blender, 8 Nov. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM39qhXle4g.

voxdotcom. “How the Inventor of Mario Designs a Game.” YouTube, YouTube, 12 Jan. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-NBcP0YUQI.

VideoArtsGroup. “John Cleese on Creativity In Management.” YouTube, YouTube, 21 June 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g.

[nathannewlandbct-blog]

ExoSense Environment WIP

Here are work in progress shots of ExoSense, my teams’ studio project. Current state is at bottom of gallery.

[nathannewlandbct-blog]

Agency, Complexity and Emergence

Research on Agency, Complexity and Emergence in Video games

September 12th a toy world

This game is a top down isometric view of a middle eastern town in which there are a mixture of terrorists and civilians. The player has a targeting reticle attached to their mouse that they can use to send missile strikes to blow up the terrorists. If the civilians are killed, other civilians gather and start morning the body. If a terrorist is killed and there are civilians nearby the civilians will ether get killed in the blast also or they will rush to the body, morn it and then jump up as terrorists themselves. This game is meant as a social commentary on the war on terror in the middle east. It uses a comic book “drawn” aesthetic and a top down view to soften an otherwise visceral experience yet it retains the meaning that it wants to convey as social commentary. In this way it is both fun and makes the player think about bigger issues in a non-confronting way.

 negative possibility space

rewarding the player for their work, equivalent to how much they put in. Not letting the player make a choice or work toward something without being rewarded for it at the end. This can be in level design where if a player works really hard to get somewhere in the level that’s of the beaten track or hard to find only for them to find nothing; this can be really punishing for the player. In my experience, open world games do this a lot where the designers simply can’t put a collectable gun or rock on every mountain in in their huge, expansive world. This concept is also applicable in narrative design where the player can choose what to say in a given context, that should be fed back to the player later during the story. The Mass Effect trilogy and the various telltale games are good examples of this, both of which I have personal experience of.

 Global Games: Brazil

In this video Brazil is described as an emerging market to both make and buy games. Brazil has a reputation for huge amounts of piracy in the games sector due to poor economic conditions, taxes and government control. However, it has a large population ready to consume games and a quality university education system required to make good coders and artists. Brazilians have a good track record of 2d and 3d art that would contribute well to game development.

All that is nice but what makes it relevant is if Brazil started making games this could bring more variety and ingenuity to the games sector as a whole. This not only goes for brazil but also other emerging markets, even New Zealand. We make a couple large, successful games but we have no AAA presence here. Something I am personally disappointed in. If we had this, many more quality games would be made here and our video games industry would grow greatly.

 Emergence

Emergence in games is basically where there are simple rules with complex results. This means that gameplay arises based on combinations of simple programmed rules. This can be good for the game producer because it can mean less work for them but it can also be negative in the form of bugs or unrealistic exploits. This means a lot of playtesting on the designers’ part to minimise these risks.

 Bibliography

ExtraCreditz. “Global Games: Brazil - How to Kickstart a Thriving Game Industry - Extra Credits.” YouTube, YouTube, 21 Feb. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnOjSL2RLwA.

Ian Schreiber, Ian. “Level 4.5: Emergence.” Level 4.5: Emergence: Game Design Concepts, learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-4-dot-5-emergence.

 ExtraCreditz. “Negative Possibility Space - When Exploration Lets Players Down - Extra Credits.” YouTube, YouTube, 17 Oct. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnxVOUSzX4A.

 furazaka. “September 12th: A Toy World.” YouTube, YouTube, 2 Feb. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByzZ8PnTNHQ&feature=youtu.be.

[nathannewlandbct-blog]

Many Weeks in a Row

Here are the weekly updates for weeks 3, 4 and 5.

Week 3 summary

Monday

Today I experimented with adobe's colour pallet maker and made a large cave SM to place in the planet surface level. I am struggling to get the transition between landscape and SM invisible and seamless. We may not even use the exterior map anyway.

 Thinking of red faction Armageddon, that game takes place mostly within a cave environment. The player will stay in a cave system for multiple hours of gameplay at a time, across multiple levels making that when the player is finally lead out to the surface it's a poignant moment in the game. It releases a sense of claustrophobic tension the player would be under. Also, at the end climax of the game, we could have the player dive really deep toward an objective such as a boss fight and upon completion be ejected quickly into the sunshine. But that's all if we were making a full game.

  Tuesday

Today I made a rough interior cave mock up with project kowhai meshes and textures.

We had VIE this morning and I got placed in a group and briefed on the idea. It sounds great and should be really fun.

 Week 4 summary

Tuesday

Today I worked out how to have the player spawn within the collision of the vertical cave mesh.  They can now run around on the floor of the cave where before they were spawned outside and fell.

 Wednesday

Today I finished the first pass at the into cave section and am working on puzzle 1 now and lighting it all properly. I also did a blog post for the art and design paper.

 Thursday

The morning I spent in the library doing research and writing a blog post for adrn611. I'm a bit behind so doing some catch up work.

 The afternoon I tweaked puzzle 1 level more and added stand in characters. The spider character doesn't fit in the tunnel between rooms so that will need reworking.

  Friday

Today I worked on my VIE paper. I downloaded and installed the latest version of the substance toolkit and messed around with the b2m program which I hadn't used before but looks awesome.

 Week 5 summary

Tuesday

Today I went to the VIE paper with Stefan. It was very basic. He covered physics in unity, a topic I'm already familiar with. The rest of the afternoon was basically spent on making a rock substance.

 Thursday

I found a workflow to sculpt stylised low poly rocks that look decent. I tested them in the scene and found I need to work on scale and some flipped normal faces. Then they need texturing somehow.