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DD2000 - Emails and Working Environment

Emails

I did attempt to email a few people for feedback and advice for this presentation, namely I emailed people at White Paper Games and Santo Campo but unfortunately I was either met with nothing but silence or a reply telling me that they couldn't help me at this time so unfortunately I am unable to relay much more info on the subject here i'm afraid.

Working Environment

In terms of what I’d like for a working environment I am quite flexible I wouldn't mind working for smaller teams or bigger triple A companies, my only preference for location would be somewhere that can speak english but other than that I would be willing ot travel and move in order to find a job, and if a good enough job presented itself even in a foreign speaking country I’d be willing to take it if the company provided lessons to learn the new language for example, CD Projekt Red provide polish speaking lessons for non polish employees.

Other than that I am pretty much willing to move wherever even if it means having to go long distance to keep in contact with friends and family.

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DD2000 - Getting into the Industry

How to get in

The next thing to ask would be how do I exactly plan on getting into the industry myself, well from what I have found online I’d best start in smaller indie studios until I have the necessary qualification and experience required to go for a more triple A based company

This kind of way into the industry is corroborated by Neil Druckmann who says the best thing to do is just get into the industry anyway you can and earn enough of a reputation to be able to side step into your desired career path, he also recommends starting with indie studios to build up a reputation, Ninja Theory’s site also states that new developers should start in the indie section as a means of acquiring the necessary skills to make into the triple A industry

Portfolio

The main thing I’ll need to do is build up my portfolio, currently all I have to show for my portfolio is work that I have done at uni. This is something I’d definitely need to change going forward, I plan to do a lot more in terms of individual based projects on my own time, this was also recommended by Todd Howard as a great way to prove your passionate about developing games, as it shows your so passionate that you are willing to do your own workin you spare time

Specific area I would need to improve in though would be programming and scripting of all kinds and languages, this was one of the more prominent demands for those going into level design or narrative design based fields but it's also probably my weakest area in terms of developer based skills

I’ll need to improve on my writing, I have received good feedback for it in the past but I still have room to improve which I aim to do by reading more literature to analyze writing techniques as well as studying writing in movies and games, particularly games so I can get a stronger idea of how writing practices work within the industry.

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DD2000 - Key designers and companies Part 2

John Gonzalez:

John Gonzalez started as a writer for lesser known games or games that weren't even released at the studio Outrage entertainment where he did all the writing, story, characters and dialogue as well as helped with scripting the cutscenes but moved onto be the lead narrative designer at Ubisoft Shanghai on a game in the Tom Clancy series, Tom Clancy’s End War, his primary role being the writing and scripting for dialogue systems that worked with the use of AI but also worked extensively with all the other fields such as design based roles, audio and the tech roles.

It was after this however that he scored a place on what was his first role of note, Fallout: New Vegas, at Obsidian Entertainment were he worked as lead creative designer and the lead writer as well as being the narrative designer for all four of its downloadable content packs

After development has ended on Fallout: New Vegas he moved to Warner Bros Games were he was one of the lead designer for Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor also working on the writing and story for the game too, after the release of that game he settles in as the lead writer at Guerrilla Games until finally earning the position of Narrative Director on Horizon: Zero Dawn, which is the role closest to what I would like to achieve

Ninja Theory:

Ninja Theory are a british based company the have quite a variety of titles to their name, they've worked on well received story based fighting games such as Heavenly Sword and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West but perhaps their most well received work was the Indie/AAA game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a very narrative based game that aimed to tackle subject matter usually not tackled in the games industry.

Their push for more mid tier games to return allows for a wealth of new opportunities for the up and coming developers of the industry to try and earn a place higher than just indie and perhaps even work their way up to the triple A portion of the industry.

They also provide plenty of support for newcomers in the industry and especially post graduates who are looking for place to earn experience, they offer internships and junior roles when they can and even offer advice on their website for how to get into the industry.

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DD2000 - Key designers and companies

I researched companies that I’d like to work for as well as inspirational designers that are in story based game design roles and how they specifically made it into the industry.

Neil Druckmann:

I find Neil Druckmann to be on of my most inspirational developers because of the kinds of games he makes with The Last of Us being one of my favorite games.

It was interesting to note the Druckmann didn’t start off in a narrative based role or a design based role but in fact a programmer, he studied programming in college specifically as a way to get into the industry and when he finally landed himself a job at Naughty Dog, one of the companies that I would most like to work for, he quickly worked his way up from being a programming intern until sidestepped into the role of a designer after proving he had a solid understanding of design to his boss at time Jasin Rubin, he worked on the Uncharted series were he worked his way up further the design chain until he got involved with the writing process as well, until finally he worked his way up to being the creative director and writer on the Last of Us

He continued to work in this role though acclaimed release, Uncharted 4 and through most of the unreleased The Last of Us Part 2 until he was finally made vice president of Naughty Dog Itself.

Todd Howard:

Todd howard started with a more humble beginning having tried to earn a role at Bethesda Game Studios since high school he settled for doing small work until he had earned enough recognition to be able to earn a spot a Bethesda Game Studios while they were still a relatively small company, where he worked on a few lesser known Terminator games before moving onto the Elder Scrolls Series with The Elder Scrolls Daggerfall, he was given the roll of lead on the Elder Scrolls spin off game, Redguard until he was made made the lead for the mainline Elder Scrolls games as the games Director

As Bethesda acquired the rights to the Fallout series he was made director on that series as well

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DD2000 - Game Inspirations

I’ve looked into a few select games that reflect what I wish to create when I’m in the industry, and the different narrative techniques they use to invest the player.

Fallout

The Fallout series is known for giving its players the freedom to progress and play however they see fit and while this open nature somewhat prevents it from telling a more deeper gripping narrative, it also makes it incredibly immersive for fans of western role playing games as the amount of options afforded to them makes player feel as if they can do anything and create their own narrative.

The Last of Us

The Last of Us offers a completely different experience, a linear narrative experience, it does offer some freedoms in its moment to moment gameplay but overall everything is leading the player to the same events and the same conclusion with the same characters in the same setting, but while this sounds like a negative the Last of Us actually uses its gameplay to draw the player into its story and characters and make them relatable in a way non interactive media just can't.

Its less about giving the player a sandbox to make their own story in and more about letting the player experience someone else's story.

Mass Effect/The Witcher

There are also games that offer somewhat of a middleground for this, mass effect for example allows you to create your own character to an extent, but aspects of that character is always set such as the characters voice, which also limits the amount of personalities the player can act out in game. But it still affords enough freedom of choice in its story and the dialogue that can be uttered by the player avatar

You then also have games like the witcher which forces the player to be a predefined character with a predefined voice and personality but the game offers players choice in the story and how they choose to play.

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DD2000 - Research Blog

Presentation Research Blog

In the games industry I aim to achieve the role of a narrative designer, as such I have been researching other narrative designers or designer's in similar roles such as designers who also do the writing for a game. I’ve also looked into companies that I’d like to work for and games that reflect what I hope to achieve in the industry.

What is a Narrative designer?

I’ve been looking into what a narrative designer actually does and what i’ve found is that narrative design is actually a very loose role in the industry, being involved in many different branches of an individual project, however they primarily encompass the roles of a writer, the role of level designers and the role of gameplay designers. They can however stretch into other aspects of development dependant on the project.

A narrative designers primary goal is to create a synergy between the gameplay and the story of the game, this can be done by writing the story with the players actions in mind or by utilising specifically gameplay mechanics to enhance a story beat or even constructing smaller gameplay features to add to the story

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DD2000 - Presentation references & Bibliography

https://www.edmcrae.com/article/what-is-a-narrative-designer

Article about narrative design

https://venturebeat.com/2016/05/26/uncharted-4-creators-share-advice-for-game-developers/

Neil Druckmann & Bruce Straley Interview

https://www.newsarama.com/7724-uncharted-territory-behind-game-writing-w-neil-druckmann.html

Neil Druckmann Interview

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/02/22/the-past-present-and-future-of-naughty-dog-an-interview-with-the-co-presidents.aspx

Interveiw about neil druckmann

http://www.ninjatheory.com/wp/?page_id=922

Ninja Theory into the industry page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoYDjzGN44Y

Todd Howard interview

https://www.edmcrae.com/article/what-is-a-narrative-designer

What is a narrative designer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnrgonzalez

John Gonzalez Linkedin

https://www.naughtydog.com/greenhouse/job/790886?gh_jid=790886

Naughty Dog Level Design Job

https://www.naughtydog.com/greenhouse/job/783516?gh_jid=783516

Naughty Dog Scriptor Job

http://sms.playstation.com/careers/263/senior-narrative-writer/

Santa Monica Studios Narrative Writer Job

Images

https://www.gamestm.co.uk/reviews/fallout-new-vegas-review/

Fallout New Vegas Pic

http://unrealitymag.com/video-games/breaking-down-the-best-fallout-3/

Fallout 3 pic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_(series)

Fallout title image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us_Part_II

The last of us title image

https://www.hardcoregamer.com/2017/12/18/why-the-last-of-us-is-a-game-about-love/283643/

TLOU image

https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitxer:Mass_Effect_logo.png

Mass effect title

http://gamingenthusiast.net/2014/05/14/cd-projekt-red-unveils-a-new-image-and-details-of-both-the-studio-and-its-leading-title-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/

Witcher Title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAJcKlMYvjg

Mass Effect 3 Image

http://subjectivelybiasedrants.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-best-quests-of-witcher-3.html

Witcher 3 image

http://vgboxart.com/resource/3126/naughty-dog-logo/

Naughty Dog Logo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda_Game_Studios

Bethesda Game Studios Logo

http://www.moddb.com/company/ninja-theory/images/logo2

Ninja Theory Logo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_Games

Guerilla Games Logo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Druckmann

Neil Druckmann Photo

http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Beat/Web-2016/Business-Notes-Bethesda-Area-Ranks-First-Again-in-STEM-Pay/

Todd Howard Photo

https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/interviews/inside-the-post-post-apocalypse-of-horizon-zero-dawn-w465656

John Gonzalez Photo

https://www.gamer.no/artikler/anmeldelse-fallout-4/194222

Fallout 4 image

https://kotaku.com/13-things-you-might-not-know-about-the-last-of-us-1674102405

The Last of Us image

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfiS_PV3V-4

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice image

https://segmentnext.com/2017/03/02/horizon-zero-dawn-flashpoint-choices-guide/

Horizon: Zero Dawn Image

https://www.game.co.uk/en/skyrim-special-edition-1330081

Skyrim Image

http://www.levelup.com/PlayStation-4/juegos/49680/UNCHARTED-4-A-Thief-s-End/review

Uncharted 4 image

https://www.kinguin.net/category/867/fallout-new-vegas-ultimate-edition-steam-key/

Fallout New Vegas DLC Image

https://www.marketing91.com/foot-in-the-door-marketing/

Foot in the door image

http://infinitetactics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/rebelius-team.html

Indie Studio pic

https://www.quora.com/How-many-departments-are-in-AAA-game-dev-studio

AAA studio picture

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XB2178 - Specialism

Goals for specialism

My aim within the industry is to become a narrative designer, a role that combines both gameplay and storytelling, as such I felt a fitting specialist project would be to create my own dialogue system as well as a story, characters and dialogue to go with it, which I felt worked well towards my aim, I was also planning on doing all the modelling for the assignment as well.

For the first part of my specialism I focused on just getting the framework for the dialogue system working, a challenge in itself given the sparse resources on the subject of dialogue based systems, the few that are out there are limited and outdated and inevitably lead to more problems down the road anyway.

However by the end of the first semester I had a solid, if not a little janky, working base to build upon going into my second part of the project, where my goal was to improve upon the system as well as write a story and dialogue with about seven characters to talk to.

Of course not everything goes to plan, in fact it rarely goes to plan, as such there were numerous changes throughout the project for a number of reasons, some good and some bad.

Modelling

One of the first major aspects of my plan that I changed was myself doing all of the modeling for environmental assets and for all of the characters as well, I instead opted to use premade assets and to do none of the modelling myself, I changed this for a number of reasons but the most prominent would have to be that it was for the most part irrelevant to what I want to specialise in, nameley narrative and gameplay. I felt this would have distracted from the more important areas of my project and at the same time they didn’t really push me towards my own goals. This combined with me being somewhat burnt out when it comes to modeling for sci-fi environments ultimately led to me deciding against doing the modeling for the level. This would also free me up to work harder on both the dialogue system and actual dialogue for the characters, as well as giving me additional time to bug fix and refine the game rather than rushing out a project that does everything in a medicor fashion.

In the end I feel this was definitely the right call for the project as to try and do all the modelling would have only led to lesser results on all fronts

All environment art assets were acquired from the unreal marketplace, all character models and animations were acquired from Mixamo

Amount of characters

So when planning out the story and characters for my game I had planned on their being more characters than ended up being, I envisioned about eight characters in the game that the player could speak to and gain information from, as the story is a murder investigation I was going to have four suspects and four information givers, however I found that too many characters would be too confusing to keep track of and two of the information givers were rather meaningless to the story. Also wary of the games length becoming a tad overlong I decided the best course of action would be to merge some of the characters together, this kept the story a little simpler and a little more concise while also making the four main suspects seem more intertwined a little bit.

The end result is five characters in total, one information giver/ tutorial and then the four suspects whom I merged most of the information giver dialogue into.

Objective Marker

One thing that I decided to add as oppose to remove was objective markers that point the player towards the characters they can talk to as I felt it would be too easy for player to miss speaking to a character by walking past them and just not noticing them, the objective markers ensure they notice all the characters.

They objective marker works similarly to the game Dishonored, were when facing the marker it appears more prominent but when facing away from the marker it scrolls around the edge of the screen, it also tells the player the distance between them and the character they wish to speak to.

It was actually rather simple to create in the end as the instructions for how to make it were easily findable online.  

Journal

A feature I was originally planning on having a journal list or evidence list of sorts that would provide the player a way to see the info they’ve already gathered, I managed to implement this in a basic form but I ultimately removed this for a few reasons. It would make the investigation too easy and I wanted to strike a middle ground in terms of difficulty and I wouldn’t have enough time to properly balance it, the second reason I removed it was because I wanted players to pay attention to the dialogue and not just skip through only to read the journal list at the end, I felt this was the best way to encourage players paying attention. And finally the last reason I had it removed was because of me having lowered the number of npcs in the game which made the story and characters easier to remember, had I kept the original eight characters that I had planned then I would have probably kept this feature too but with the lowered amount it works fine without.

Dialogue System

So obviously a major part of my project is the dialogue system so I felt it extremely important to get this right especially.  

I already had the framework from the first part of my project but their was still a lot to improve on, one of the first things I aimed to improve was the possible length of a conversation sentence, in the original dialogue system for the first part of specialism it was restricted to one sentence replies from the npcs which didn’t create for very fluid dialogue and made it extremely hard for me to get an adequate amount of information across, so I saw this as the first thing to improve, I blueprinted a system that let npc’s have continued sentences which allowed me convey more information to the player and extend conversations naturally where they would occur which gave me a lot more freedom when it come to writing the dialogue.

For much of the rest of the project, the improvements I made to the dialogue system were to make it easier to use on my end, making it faster and more efficient for me implement my own dialogue and sorting the blueprints into reusable functions that allowed me to streamline the process, while it still wasn’t great or even that practical to work with, it was still a lot better than before the second semester.

Finally I improved the UI of the dialogue system, where it had previously been using a weapon wheel for its dialogue wheel, I changed it to better suit the six option limit I intended for the dialogue. I also added an overlay so that the text stood out against the background and option boxes with lines drawn to the wheel to make it clear which option the player is picking.

The Dialogue

The dialogue was surprisingly difficult to write for, while I was no expert when it came to writing in general, I’d had a little experience, but writing branching dialogue for a dialogue system proved quite the challenge.

Once I had planned out the story and characters I moved onto the dialogue, in order to differentiate between the characters, i planned each characters dialogue a little differently to each other, both in the structure of the dialogue branches and the dialogue itself, after all the dialogue was planned and written I tested it out in game to see which kind dialogue structure worked and which didn’t, finding some dialogue to be too easy to fail too quickly I went back and rewrote certain characters dialogue with one of the dialogue structures that worked better to ensure that players didn’t feel cheated or dissatisfied with how easy it is to fail.

A number of challenges arose when writing the dialogue however, specifically in writing enough options that were of equal quality to each other, it wasn’t easy writing dialogue for options that i knew no one would see. but because of the possibility that someone might just by chance happen to click that option I needed to make it the same quality as the rest.

Further challenges arise in trying to write dialogue for a game feature, were dialogue needs to be a certain length because too much could cause it to go off screen or clip into another option and each npc reply is another set of blueprint nodes that I have to make and implement, its also an interactive story driven game so replies need to be long enough that players feel they got a worthy amount of story from picking an option but not too much otherwise it would become boring.

There is also the issue of having to write dialogue that makes sense regardless of what players picked previously, which makes it really hard to reference back to previous things stated during dialogue because it's possible that this specific player didn't pick that option in the past and so it wouldn't make sense to them now.

What went well

The dialogue system, mostly, while it is still very janky even after I’ve polished it some I feel it ultimately succeeds at what I was hoping to set out for.

From people who have tested the game i've heard they liked the dialogue specifically, though I’m overly critical of my own work it is nice to hear such positive feedback all the same, it is however still an area that I wish to improve on going forward in future though.

I’m glad I managed to get the character models and animations in as even though they don't specifically relate to narrative design they do help players identify and reaffirm the characters personalities for the player.

What Didn't

Also the dialogue system, while I am overall pleased with the result it doesnt change the fact that this was the most difficult thing to make and refine of the whole project, hampered by its initial limitations as the tutorial that I used as a starting point for it clearly did not intend for it to be used for something like this and that it's incredibly impractical for such a full scale project.

Another thing that didn’t turn out like I hoped was the level itself, while I created a much larger level with a wider array of assets, I was unfortunately unable to get it it package  or build due to an unknown lighting build error for which I couldn't find a fix.

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XB2001 - Final Pictures

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XB2001 - What Didn’t and What I’d Do Differently.

And What didn’t

Initial Idea

At the start of the project I had wanted to do an open environment with multiple paths to completion with the gloo gun from Prey being the main mechanic. worried this would run too far afoul of the 5 minute play mark however I decided instead to do a linear level with the same mechanic, I created a tower based level that involved climbing, gloo gunning, stacking objects to get to high areas.

But the linear environment limited how much i could do with those mechanics and upon play testing, testers found it to lack any fun, it occured to me that the testers didn’t want to just follow the path and that the gloo gun was only really fun if it felt like you were paving your own way.

Realizing I should have just stuck to my original idea, I decided to scrap the level and start fresh with a new one that provided more options and freedom for players to experiment but with the same mechanics.

What I’d do differently/Improve

I would have liked to have added more audio as the game is currently, making it feel more empty even though there is a lot of content in the level. I unfortunately ran out of time before I could implement any of this. Another area that I would have wished to improve would have been the lighting. This was the first time that I was really experimenting with lighting in a project of my own, and while I think it could have turned out much worse I think there is a lot of improvement for me in this area. The final area that I would wish to improve upon would be the story. As at the moment it is currently very limited and doesn’t really explain anything. This being a huge personal problem to me as a designer, because I want to be a narrative designer specifically.

Overall, I am very pleased how the project as a whole turned out. This was the first project in which I incorporated a lot of feedback, getting people to test the game quite extensively allowed me to refine the mechanics and the gameplay and since the gameplay was my main focus, I feel that I have accomplished my main goal with this project.

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XB2001 - What Went Well

What Went Well…

The Gloo Gun

The first thing that went well was perhaps the most important, the Gloo Gun, being the main way to progress through the level it was important to get it right, fortunately I managed to get a basic version working very quickly which allowed me to test and refine very early on.

The first thing I found with the Gloo Gun is that it was very easy to slip off the Gloo Projectiles, as the mesh was a sphere so to combat this I turned off the collision of the mesh and added a flat invisible collision to make it easier to balance on.

The next thing I found was that players would get themselves stuck by trapping themselves or making a mistake when making a platform which prevented them from progressing and it could even cause lag if too many projectiles were left in the world. With this I set the projectiles to destroy after a set time limit to prevent any issues like this, I tested to make it enough time to accomplish whatever goal it their trying to reach but not long enough that it would become to frustrating if the accidently blocked their way.

Grab Mechanic

The mechanic to grab objects was quite finicky to get working, while getting the basic pickup was easy because we had been taught that in lessons, the actual refining of it to work well with my other mechanics was the hard part. A number of issues include being able to phase through walls which means you could drop it out the map. Also the way it interacted with the sticky projectiles, when coming into contact with the projectile it would balloon around the until projectile deleted itself or got destroyed. After fixing this by messing with the pickup settings, I found a problem where interacting with the projectiles it would start bouncing up and down. It would even sometimes crash Unreal Engine 4. I was able to fix this by messing with the collision of both the projectiles and the pickup object. One of the final issues was, if a projectile was stuck to a crate while it was picked up, it would throw the player around the room. I fixed this by causing the projectiles to destroy themselves if the object was pick uped, but it would only destroy the ones attached to that object.

One of the additions to make the pickup objects more usable was to add a transparency effect that allowed the player to see through the object whilst holding said object.

Overall, I am pretty pleased that I was able to fix all of these errors in my project, within the time constraints that I had.  

The Level

Testing the level throughout the course led to me improving it in many ways, I had issues with players not knowing where to go, some challenges being too easy and some being too hard and also different testers would choose the most obvious route most of the time. By the end of the project everyone who played the game, would choose something different and progress in a different way. Most of the feedback was positive with many of them even calling it fun, which is the fabled goal of any developer.

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Essay Reflective Blog

My essay focused on emotion in media, as its an integral ingredient to effective storytelling, engagement and most importantly, entertainment.

To start with researched into games themselves, the intention of designers when developing certain aspects of their game when they desire to create an emotional reaction in players, whether this be through gameplay, story, atmosphere or characters, often done with the games approach to realism and how this can influence the way players view of certain aspects of the gameplay which further influences how the player views the story, I used This War of Mine and The Last of Us as examples here firstly because of how well reviewed they were for the emotional themes found within them and secondly due to the amount the developers specifically discussed their intent in regard to the emotional themes they wanted to explore in the game, I also used Silent Hill 2 as an example because I managed to find a retrospective article for the game that supported all the claims I had made about the atmosphere and storytelling found within the game.

I also researched into why entertainment that imposes such a strong emotional reaction on its audience is so heavily sought after, I mostly looked into the phycological research on this which focuses on the chemical reactions found within the brain when subjected to such stimuli and while there is still plenty not understood about this, the common throughline was that it increases the amount of endorphins and dopamine produced in the brain, which causes a higher attachment to entertainment that can cause these reactions.

I researched how other media creators accomplished the desired emotional response, starting with film and television I was mainly looking at how these use visuals to do this as the visual aspect is what separates the cinematic mediums from others, such as books and music, I looked at Steven Spielberg's Schindler’s List, Spielberg being renowned for his film making and Schindler’s List being regarded as one of his most emotionally charged films due to its subject matter, I also chose for the fact that had a unique visual aspect used with the red amidst the black and white that's used specifically to signify an emotional change in its main character, I also used Mr.Robot as an example for tv, similarly for its unique way of framing characters to highlight emotions.

I looked into how books use imagination of the reader to emotionally invest them and give them a sense of freedom despite the linear narrative of a book, specifically award winning writer Claire Fuller talked about how readers fill in the gaps that the writer can't.

Music was a little harder to research as most artists I looked at didnt talk about it from a technical perspective but more from their own emotional perspective but I did also look into television and movies using music to enhance their visuals storytelling.

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1500-word Reflective Design Blog Post

References and Research

For our game we chose a sci-fi spaceship setting so the first step for the project was to find references and inspiration that could give us a strong idea as to what we wanted to create, luckily there is a plethora of sci-fi material available to draw from so we had a lot to choose from, due to the enclosed spaceship space and horror aesthetic to the game, the most obvious choice to start with was the Alien series, both the game and the movies.

This was a great help in establishing the tone and style I was going to use when it came to modelling the environment, in Alien the ships have this grimey yet practical feel to them that lends an element of believability to them, large sections of the ship use dark colours and dim lighting, everything has a rough metallic feel to it yet doesn't seem dilapidated, where most of the ship feels grimey, the living spaces such as the kitchen and dining area and the cryo sleep room instead are often more cleaner and brighter and seems more livable, this was definitely a feeling I wanted to mimic in the various rooms and locations found within our game.

Tacoma was another sci-fi property we looked into, a game with a rather simple yet effective art style, this game was a big source of inspiration in terms of how to approach the models and textures themselves, given the narrow time limit we had for the projects deadline we felt striving for such a simple yet effective art style would be the best way to ensure the desired results for the game.

While we looked at many other sources of inspiration, I feel these two were the most influential on my work.

Models

The assets look best in game with full lighting and metalics and roughness applied however this can make it hard to see all aspects of the model so the images are of the maya versions.

Walls V1

This was the first variant of wall and first model set that I made for the game, the idea being to create a wall set that can be placed together in any order to facilitate the larger environments that we wished to have in our game, having the walls be pushed out was to give that sense of artificial breathing room, that if you were to design a real ship you would try to make it seem less claustrophobic by making it seem like there was more space than there actually is.

Walls V2

With the second wall set I went for a more industrial feel as that was one of the core aspects we wanted to create with the ships aesthetic, it's a lot more hard edged than the first variant and with a lot more of a rustic and worn texture, though I tried to avoid making it seem completely dilapidated.

Walls V3

These walls are used almost exclusively in the more livable area of the ship such as the bed room and locker room, my thinking behind this was that the areas that people inhabit in their personal time tends to be more taken care of and less worn down and dirty, simerly inspired by the living quarters in the Alien series which as mentioned above are brighter, cleaner and more livable.

Walls V4

The fourth set of walls came about when building the higher ceilinged second floor, the other wall types didn't look great when stacked simply looking repetitive and boring when overused in such high quantity so i decided to create a wall that could be flipped and stacked onto itself to alleviate that repetitive look while also providing a wall type that could be repurposed in the lower ceilings of the third floor.

Door

The door is pretty simple and none too complex, i simply tried to replicate that style of door often seen in typical sci-fi, though i feel its shape gives it a more alien feel than the usual angular style more commonly see however.

Tables

The first table i made with simple practicality in mind, four legs and the top but found this didn't fit in all areas of the game so i created a second variant with a more built in base that gives a more sci-fi feel and fit the more industrial areas of the game as well as providing some visual variety.

Desk

For the desk I wanted to make something that at one point may have looked fancy but through prolonged use shows more wear and tear, i gave the desk a more sleek design but with the texture just adding little bits of dirt to it and scratching around the edges to suggest its been used for a while.

Oxygen Purifier

For the purifier I wanted to make a big bulky machine to make it easier to spot, I added the text on the screen so players could identify that this is their goal as hinted at by the terminals.

Generator

Because the generator is located in the most industrial section of the ship I decided to make these the most rustic object, I didn't make them too big as the player is required to navigate through them.

Floor

For the floor panels I decided to add some colour to them because of their location in the crew section of the ship to break up the more bleaker colours found in the rest of the ship.

For the hallway floor i build indents and lines into it and added piping in the middle and added bloody footprints to suggest something sinister.

Counters

The counters are often topped by terminals or interesting objects so I decided to add an emissive bar to catch the players attention and draw them towards the interesting objects, i added the trays on top to provide a bit a variety so it didn't look samey.

Locker Door

I went through a few iterations of the locker trying some more complex looks but decided a simpler look with some angular indentations to give it a sci-fi feel was the best course, it would of also been easier for TK to get working as opposed to my other lockers that had more complex door openings.

Lift

For the lift I originally made a smaller and more personal lift with sleeker design, however after seeing the placements and what Johnny had in mind and the more cargo use I made it bigger and made the doors bulkier to give them a more mechanical feel.

AI Core

When it came to making the AI core i wanted it to be more visually striking than the other assets on the ship, I gave it a wiry cage like feeling with the core itself I made it bright blue with a glossiness to it to make it stand out, I added the rings which TK said he could make spin to further draw attention so players knew this was their initial goal.

AI structure

Similarly as the core, the actual structure itself I wanted to be eye catching so I made it big and imposing with a pointy edged design, the windows are to give a clear look at the rest of the level as well as have the AI core be visible from the outside.

Fence

For the fence and ramp i actually used a bench as a reference when modelling it as i didnt want it to just look like a normal fence, I added a greenish step to highlight it among the ship.

Vents

I didn't want to do just a straight box or tube for the vents as I felt that would be uninteresting to look at while climbing through them and wouldn't feel very sci-fi so i made sure to add plenty of indents, as well as a gaps so players could see out.

Ladder

I took inspiration from the ladder in Alien Isolation while making this as I felt the curved steps just looked more interesting and sci-fi.

What went well and what didn't?

I’d overall say I’m pleased with the outcome, I find there's a good variety in the models that for the most part capture what we set out to create in the beginning, there is enough detail in most of the models and they’re visually interesting to look at too, texture wise I find it a bit more mixed, where some textures I feel came out exactly as I wanted others didn’t quite work as well as I intended, regardless though it helped me better understand Substance Painter, a tool I was largely unfamiliar with until now and I don't think there are any textures that are glaringly bad in my opinion.

Another aspect I feel worked well was the modular design that I used for creating most of the models, allowing us to create bigger and more varied environments without increasing the workload to a ridiculous amount and impacting the look of the ship negatively, however I did make a few mistakes with this as it is my first time creating modular assets for an environment, I failed to use exact measurements for some of the different pieces, (E.g the door frames are a different length than the walls) which brought up issues when fitting the level together.

But in summary I am predominantly pleased with much of the outcome and look forward to using the skills I learned on this in future projects.

[samuelthorpfutureworks-blog]

Specialism Dialogue flow

Here is the flow of the dialogue and which options unlock new information, selecting good cop options prevent you from selecting bad cop options and vice versa, going either full good cop or bad cop will lead to you learning less information, mixing which options you choose will lead to you learning more information.  

[samuelthorpfutureworks-blog]

XB2178 Specialism Assignment One Project Plan

The Project

I aim to create an RPG style dialogue system that allows for the player to converse with NPC characters in a small environment with a first person camera, this should hopefully improve both my blueprint and writing skills.

I chose this idea because I’m hoping to work in both aspects of gameplay design and narrative and I feel a dialogue system will allow me to work towards both goals at the same time.

Research

The best place to start my project I feel is by doing research into dialogue systems, looking into the many possible ways in which to do such a system and how that impacts the intended gameplay and which type of systems work best for different themes, story and gameplay types, some games I was going to focus on were Bioware games (Mass Effect, Dragon Age), Bethesda Game Studios games (Fallout, Elder Scrolls) as well as a few others, I’ll also be looking around the internet for any talks, interviews or articles that could give me a stronger idea as to how these systems are created and which would work best for my game idea.

The second area of research would be on the writing of dialogue itself, I have a Sci-fi/Cyberpunk theme in mind for the game so looking into the writing of such stories in games among other mediums as well should hopefully give me some insight into how to write fitting dialogue for the setting.

Basic dialogue system

After the research phase I would move onto developing the idea, I plan to use Unreal Engine 4 with a first-person perspective for the player movement, I’ll try to see how far I can get following tutorials for dialogue systems and making my own additions and changes to make the system better fit the game idea.

Dialogue writing

After I have a working prototype of the dialogue system I’ll move onto the actual dialogue, I’m hoping to be able to write at least one full conversation for the end of the first project with a few branching dialogue trees and some investigation questions, Though this dialogue won't be very long I’m hoping it will be long enough to practice and show off my writing capabilities and the full range of options available through the dialogue prototype.

After I have a small basic script then I’ll move onto the next phase though I’ll likely continue to work on and make revisions to the script for the rest of the project.

Basic Environment + Characters

At this point I’ll work on to the art side of things, I plan on making a simple room with a working door and the NPC character model as well as a few clutter items, I plan for a simple art style, perhaps slightly stylised though this will be decided based on how the rest of the project turns out.

Polish

Once I have a working prototype with everything I hoped to accomplish finished then I’ll move onto tweaking everything, ironing out bugs, improving visuals and making changes to the script.

Voice Acting (wishlist)

This is solely a wish list item and likely won't be in to final prototype though if I'm lucky I’d hope to have some voice acting for the game though this is only after everything else has already been completed.

Assignment 1 work schedule

[Hours]

Mon / Tue / Wed / Thur / Fri / Sat / Sun

[2]    [0-1]   [3-4]   [1-2]  [2-3] [2-3]  [6-8

[samuelthorpfutureworks-blog]

Samuel Thorp Games Specialism Evaluation XB2178

For my specialism I wanted to do something involving both gameplay and narrative, I decided to do a dialogue system, I was focusing on just getting the dialogue system working with a little bit of test dialogue and a small environment.

Due to the lack of tutorials online it proved hard just getting started, I eventually found a tutorial that while basic and nowhere near the level of what I wanted to do, I felt it worked as a good jumping off point, I worked at constructing this basic dialogue system though because the tutorial was outdated there was a lot that I had to figure out myself, after this I worked on the UI elements, making them closer in design to the Mass Effect series dialogue wheel, this too proved difficult but I eventually found an example for a weapon wheel Menu and recreated it which after it was done I retooled it to work for a dialogue system instead, after that I worked for creating some temporary dialogue that would show off all options available within the dialogue system

What went well would be the dialogue system itself turned out very close to what I intended at the start, allowing for a variety of options including side optional branches, dialogue that splits and breaks off based on what you pick, and the ability to discover information that unlocks new options based on what you pick.

I’d say the only thing that I want to add mechanically to the dialogue system is to have multiple sentences responses in which clicking will move to the next sentence, this would allow for more run on dialogues with NPC’s, at the moment it is only a single short sentence per response which doesn't offer much freedom in what I can write.

Other things that I wish to improve on is the UI which so far just has a stock UI element that I found online, adding a custom UI that was made with a dialogue system in mind, as well as adding clear distinctions between options, currently dialogue options are very close together which can cause confusion as to what you are picking, this isn't helped by the wheel UI which is not as precise as I’d like.

One more thing that went wrong was the packaging process, when I packaged the first time it worked but the UI options were slightly cut off by the screen, i slightly moved the UI to the side that it fit within the screen but every time I tried to repackage the file it was met with an unknown error that I was unable to fix, hence why the packaged version is slightly to the right and has better lighting were as the UE4 version has corrected UI but worse lighting (I tried quickly changing the lights in case they were the reason for the problem)

I’d also like to create brand new art assets for the environment and character, for this first project I just reused old assets that I created during the first year of the course and the NPC uses the default person model from Unreal as  didn't have time to make my own like i wanted to.

Overall though I’m pleased for the most part with how this turned out, for the second project I wish to continue with the dialogue system, I intend to create a larger custom environment populated with more NPCs for the player to talk to as well as all the issues listed above to be addressed.

[samuelthorpfutureworks-blog]

Technical Games Design - XB2001 (3/3)

How creative do you think your solution is?

While the the act of teleporting is pretty basic, simply moving the actor location from one place to another, I’ve tried to make it so that it works as smoothly as possible to ensure it’d be fun to use and have little errors along the way similar to that of a professional game, the teleport ability itself I feel accomplishes this as to my knowledge there isn't any issues in the way it controls.

Ways of doing this such as allowing the usage of the player's weapon to remain intact, preventing the player from teleporting through objects, adding a small delay to the teleport so that players can't overuse the teleport and preventing them from “flying” out of bounds by spamming the teleport and making sure no issues prevent them from getting to the end of the map.

All these things add to the basic mechanic make sure it isn’t too simple and functions almost exactly as I intended it to.

What would you do differently next time?

I would like to do something much more complex next time with a bigger emphasis on testing and improving my blueprint and level design skills, perhaps adding more mechanics and features to it make something more original than it currently is.

I’d also like to fully realise the edge climbing ability so that it functions as I originally planned for it to, so that it's more than just simply a trigger that moves the player to set angle when they walk into it, requiring the use of a button prompt to activate it and also checking to see if the player is looking in the correct direction before they are allowed to climb and edge.

Perhaps adding a health bar with fall damage, requiring a precise usage of the teleport to make long drops with dieing would have also added to the gameplay as well as a mana bar that requires pickups to recharge, this could also have added to the level design by having the player go down a separate route to find a mana pick-up so that they can proceed with the remainder of the level.

And finally just some more time to focus on the level design to make some more complex platforming challenges, requiring more of a combinations of precise jumps and use of the teleport in order to beat the level, with all of the above additions as well could really allow me to be more creative with the level design and create a level that is much more fun to play.