#sharedplaygrounds

[the-omnari-group]

Alleylight: Keeping it Clean

This is a shot of Alleylight inside the Unity Editor. On the right is what the player sees, minus the water texture. On the left is how the scene actually looks, outside the bounds of the screen and with added perspective. In the middle is the island, which is a two-dimensional with a three-dimensional black capsule embedded in it. On the same three-dimensional plane, you’ll see the many vertical bars, each one spawning a specific floating object in a specific direction at random intervals. Each of those objects are also two-dimensional. This was done so that the workflow was easier on the artists, but also because we wanted the artstyle to be simple and understandable, so we made everything two-dimensional. The reason there still is a three-dimensional aspect, however, is purely technical, and partly because I was too lazy to deal with two-dimensional layers when it was just as easy, and perhaps even more organized, to fake layering in three dimensions.

Surrounding the spawners is a large grey border. That border is the “killbox”, and it deletes anything that strays into it. Essentially, this makes sure that anything that floats out of the screen doesn’t continue to exist and slow the app down. Instead, it gets deleted and makes way for new objects to spawn.

Finally, the grey plane behind everything is the “screen” that the water texture is displayed on. It’s translucent, so that the seaweed objects behind it show as if they’re underwater. Again, this was the cheap way to make the water texture layer correctly, in such a way that the island and floating objects appeared above the waterline, and the seaweed appeared below. This also all made for some collision failsafes, as all the collisions between objects are still calculated as if they were three-dimensional (albeit with movement on the Z axis locked, ensuring that objects can’t float into or away from the screen).

Of course, none of that matters to the end user. Though these solutions are a little hacky compared to the “proper and efficient” methods, they do work, with few downsides at this scale.

[onlyryan]

ARDN - reflection

DTB has been a great learning experience as I have taken on the role of a 3D modeler and level designer. Despite it being a Studio, it is essentially my 15 point paper, hence the majority of my contribution has been shown through the artifact. Looking back over the project I can see that I have made some positive progression in my design judgement and practical skill set. I have also found an efficient work flow in a group environment. I feel like Sujay has led the team very well, and this has helped my learning because he has encouraged explicit communication between each member. He set out a Trello board that entailed all the specific tasks for each member to help clarify these processes to keep everyone on the same page.

Due to this paper being 45 points for him, he has had the largest influence over the project and he took the responsibility to express the concept and what he would like (drawing out rough designs even). 

I looked at similar fighter games that our project was inspired by such as  Shrek SuperSlam(7 Studios & Shaba Games, 2005), Gang Beast(Boneloaf, 2014) and Super Smash Bros(Bandai Namco & Sora Ltd., 2014). Although we were looking at these games for their mechanics at first, I had a look into their aesthetic design as it made sense that both came hand in hand with one another. All of these games have cartoony, fantasy world designs and that is why we decided to go for this aesthetic opposed to a realistic textured game. 

After looking at Ultra Realism vs Stylization it was made very clear that there was a preference towards stylization with 88% of votes, 

“ Stylized. Always. A realistic look never really jumps out at me unless the graphics are really, really good or there's some impressive animations. ”

“ Stylized, since it's usually easier to justify things there than it is with realism. ”

“ Whichever style fits in coherently with the game's direction. ” (Seppli, Justin258, StarFoxA, & King, 2013)

While it may have been technically original to have a hyper realistic fighter 3D fighter game in this peculiar genre, I do not feel that there are the resources (time and skills) to develop the necessities of that project. We wanted to communicate the theme and it would be easier to achieve this through a stylistic aesthetic approach. 

I found this enhanced my work pace because he has led confidently, without being entirely overpowering. I still had the space to make my own design decisions on the specific aesthetics of the project, but it was nice to have a holistic perspective. This meant that the theme and concept wasn’t incredibly vague leaving it so broad where I have to make up content on my own. 

Sitting down for SCRUM meetings and planning out the next phase of attack was particularly useful. This allowed us as a group to implement the necessary changes whether it be discussion over bugs, changes in mechanics (adding/subtracting from the project), likewise with the aesthetics. In addition we could talk about the development of the project and make a collective decision for the transition of changes into the next sprint. This tied in well with the timing of Game Developer Meetups as we could showcase our work on the 3-4 week basis and gather some feedback from the gaming community. 

Here is a primary example of the workflow for the map design

I was then able to use the above reference from Sujay to form a list of the objects we wanted to have in the game. I was also able to use this as a rough reference for level design. Even though Sujay apologized for his drawing skills, the importance was that it communicated the ideas he envisioned.

At this point I had practically added all the assets and this map was technically at the first phase and suitable for testing (given that we made adjustments to the collision for the models). I started modelling some of the content plain and simply with some details. At this point we hadn’t decided on an actual accurate scale as we wanted to test it.

I was then able to implement these changes after we tested the prior map. The map above had a change in scale and few more assets added to the environment. We removed the over hanging fabric because it affected the visibility for players.

At this point I was able to add texturing to the environment. We changed the tables because we wanted to have a ‘rounder’ feeling for the environment (hence the logo is designed on a circular wooden surface).

I could then go onto areas such as optimization through poly-count (Silverman, 2013). This essentially meant focusing on the slightly more complex matters and going back through the work to make the project a  ‘usable product.’

Testing with a variety of audiences for feedback was also very useful as our game may be played very willingly by a diversity of people. Testing with the game community meant getting feedback from people who are engaged in the gaming community whether it be playing/making/both and may provide some deeper and more relevant feedback to the production of the project. Testing with the general audience meant seeing how suitable and friendly it is to casual people who may (if the game went commercial) play the game as it was aimed for (not just avid gamers, everyone). This meant aspects such as the control scheme which may be picked up easier by gamers, may have been different for the general audience of people who do not interact with 3D fighters or digital games at all. While understanding my individual job as a 3D modeler was important it also emphasized the importance of designing and understanding the audience behind the game too.

The project overall went pretty smoothly and this was due to good teamwork, communication and work ethic. I would say that in future it would be a good opportunity to strengthen our practical skills and also give new tools ago whether this be software or project management. We are still quite early in our career to simply stick to one particular set of equipment and I think with the right amount of time we may find smarter alternatives. I would like to move away from messenger and slack to try something new, and as suggested Hack’n’Plan is a recommended tool for game development because it allows for specific time allocation in addition to visual progression both as individuals and as a group. This may be particularly useful if we are working on a larger project (with more people potentially) in future and want to address a specific problem that is causing a choke hold in the development.

References: 

Seppli, Justin258, StarFoxA, & King, V. G. (2013, April 20). Ultra Realism VS Stylized Art Design in Games - Your Preference? Retrieved from giantbomb: https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/ultra-realism-vs-stylized-art-design-in-games-your-1429781/?page=1

Silverman, D. (2013, March 5). 3D Primer for Game Developers: An Overview of 3D Modeling in Games. Retrieved from gamedevelopmenttutsplus: https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/3d-primer-for-game-developers-an-overview-of-3d-modeling-in-games--gamedev-5704

[ncyrocks]

I AM THE UNRENAMING PRINCE

I stayed home for an extra 2 hours yesterday to work on my statements. I figured that Nathan, Mark, Kavita and Xavier would get on fine without me until the afternoon.

*Sigh*

Mark immediately told me when I came in that Nathan had attempted to implement level streaming into our map, and corrupted the whole thing in the process. They couldn’t get Unreal to read the level file anymore. Without that version working, we would have to use our latest backup, which was from the AKLgamedev meetup 2 weeks ago (and couldn’t be opened with version 4.16, which is what we’ve been using).

I was a bit annoyed, but it was what it was.

And it turns out that what it was was several copies of the same level in the same folder and under the wrong name.

That’s it.

Nathan never actually implemented level streaming, so nothing got corrupted. In trying to back up the level before doing so, he put several copies in the original folder and didn’t call any of them by their original name. So Unreal got confused and couldn’t open anything.

We were about to give up when I found that out by removing all but one of the backups and renamed the last one back to its original name.

Yeah, that was pretty much my day. Such is life.

[nathannewlandbct-blog]

Yesterday we set up our game for assessment. The end of semester four has arrived and we are getting this project marked on various points by the lecturers in BCT.

On Monday morning I got up early and arrived in studio to a bombsite. It was a complete mess everywhere with students rushing around getting their projects up and running for assessment at midday. We had most of the necessary parts already there and as more team members arrived we worked on getting things like the large TV display in place and decorated. As we had no wall we had to hang our posters from the display which I think is a bit tacky but it was our only solution as the pedestal we reserved never arrived. The business cards were printed nicely and we got heaps but the design includes no contact details. This was a very big mistake as they are basically glorified PostIt notes now.

Others were working on packaging the game and getting it up and running on the laptop. I basically went between everyone and helped where I could. We were working right up to the end in a very stressful final sprint to get the game working. Eventually we did with not a moment to spare.

We then had lunch and celebrated for the rest of the day and (some of us) into the night. Here at Project Kowhai we work hard and play hard.

To quote the end of my conceptual statement:

Overall I am happy with the game. There a few things we wanted to do if we had more time and skill such as animals, a few more mechanics, a larger map and true photogrammetry assets and environments. I have been able to learn a lot about Unreal Engine and partial open world level design as well as specific things like material and tech art visual scripting and particle effect manipulation. The most significant thing I have gotten out of this project however is my experience of leading this team. My skills as a people manager have grown significantly and I have been exposed to a more corporate business focused aspect of game design which can often be overlooked. It has also made me familiar with all the different sub skills and responsivities within the team on a broad strokes, holistic level. 

This has been a great project with and even better team. 10/10 would game develop again.

@vintagexvr, @kavitacreativetech, @ncyrocks, @markyeoh, @garianleighton-anderson

[garianleighton-anderson-blog]

Game Development Meetup

So at the GDM the other week we presented what we had made so far. We got some helpful feedback but I was particularly interested in the sound. Only one person made a comment on the soundtrack which was something along the lines of: ‘I’m not sure if the soundtrack is happy or eerie’.

This was a good sign because he detected the two different moods that I wanted to combine. Because you’re lost in the woods, the mood wouldn’t be cheery, it would be tense. However your’e in the beautiful NZ forest which I want to uplift as a place to behold with a sense of amazement.

I was also playing around with the ambient tracks that I made. Something that I found was that a stereo ambient track in unreal screws around with the players sense of spatialisation and just makes it sound like birds are behind you somewhere but when you turn they stay behind you. This rips you out of the environment so there needs to be a change. I’m going to play around with place spatialised sound sources around the map and seeing how that works. Otherwise I’ll need to create a mono ambient track to stop the stereo from ruining the audio.

I read in the unreal engine forums that there is a global setting that limits the number of wavs on the map at once. I might be able to change this but I could find a work around.

[claudinenalesumct]

Interaction & Play - Week 4

This week was about learning and implementing the Scrum methodology. When watching about the Scrum method, I could instantly see how this could apply to our group since we are essentially proposing a product. Although we are not building the actual product, it can be easily adjusted to suit our needs.

I don’t believe we need a burndown chart though. For this project and the fact that we only have 8 weeks left, there isn’t much that a burndown chart can do for us. However in the future with more lengthy projects, I can see its benefits.

For Tobias and Hayden, this week was about looking into other types of connections other than Bluetooth. This is so we are proposing the best and most reliable product to Sarah.

For me, I spent the class creating a timeline/task list for all three of us by planning together what we would like to achieve/do each week.

Above: Timeline for Tech Tent

A big milestone is that we are aiming to finish and pitch our proposal to Sarah by week 11. That way we have a week to reflect/document how it went and add it to our final presentation for week 12.

Along with a timeline, I created a Resources List to help get track of any tech examples we see that apply to us and a separate column for academic resources.

Above: Resources List spreadsheet for Tech Tent

Being Project Manager/Scrum Master, we’ve created a routine where I will look at what needs to be done at the start of the week (looking at the Weekly Starters) and adjusting our timeline.

For Week 5 we have a meeting with Sarah on Wednesday and will be constructing a scale model of the Glamping tents to start basing our prototype design on.

[gmonro]

Myers Briggs and User experiences

First off, these should have been posted last week. I have done the myers briggs test a few times and each time have been an ENFP. In terms of the rest of these things, I am unsure how they will relate in further classes and what it actually says about me as a person. I thought that the last note, where I said I was more focused on people and domination that it was hard for me to judge considering I also love exploration games, but at the end of the day, it would be more about friends and enjoying the game with friends. 

Finally the user experience. Overall this is a part I have been struggling with as I am trying to imagine how other people would react to the app. I would like to try and get as many reactions as I can to create a very realistic and broad idea of possible reactions to the app itself. 

[sophiem-bct]

Shared Playgrounds - Solo or Group??

Coming into this paper I was dead set that I was going to do a Solo project exploring the concept of creating a game/tool kit that is designed help people come up with more innovative and creative ideas/solutions. I was inspired by people and ideas such as; Edward De Bono - The inventor of lateral thinking and Intermediate impossibles (juxtaposing ideas). Play - to enhance peoples creativity and curiosity (researching theories of people such as John Cleese). Creativity as a way of living. More effective ways of brainstorming that are not just 2 dimensional, rather full body, immersive processes.

Even though I am still every passionate about my idea I have decided to keep it in the back of my mind to marinate and come back to in the future. This is because I believe that with only 12 weeks I wouldnt be able to take my idea as far as i would like for open studio. I know that its not all about the end result, however I would want to have a product prototype to display to people and there is just too much research and method testing to do before I would be able to even think about creating a physical prototype. I would not be happy presenting my idea as a researched concept to others as I think I would struggle to convey what I wanted. As well as this I also think that it would be more beneficial to collaborate for this studio paper, especially considering its my last studio paper and not collaborating would be a waste of an opportunity. Gaining collaboration skills is very important and a good way to make you rethink your ideologies and systems of working . It helps you become more adaptable which is ultimately one of the most important things to be in the workforce and life. 

[hatthewmart]

Interaction & Play - Intro

For the introductory week of my Interaction & Play class we all collaborated together as a class to create experiences and games to play in Aotea Square just for inspiration  for the actual project that we are going to do. Our first task in the class was to write down some random ideas and then we put them down in groups and grabbed random ones. My ones were “silence in a public space” and “tag but you have to punch them”. My original idea for this was to utilize the large space of Aotea Square and make it a big game of Tag... but you couldnt speak to anyone if you were playing. As the class progressed and the people in the class exchanged what their ideas were, this initial idea shifted to be more enclosed and hilarious. It developed from the is large open game to a game where everyone is blindfolded in a small pen like area (say 5m x 5m) and everyone has punching gloves around. If you get punched you become “it” with the other person and its pretty much just a game of tag but its until there is one person who isn't “it”.

After this exercise, we went and found out which personality type we were with a test called the Myers Briggs test. This is quite a well known test used all over the world and it very popular. For me personally I am an ENFP which means i am classified under “the campaigner”  

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for – and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool – for love – for your dreams – for the adventure of being alive.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

This was decided over the course of the lecture as we added information about what we enjoy in games and overall personality questions. 

Starter - I am very fond of the beginning phases of projects where you research and conceptualize and i think its definitely one of my strongest attributes that i bring to the table when im in a group project.

Connector - I like hearing opinions of others and what they have to put to the table and how I can interact with them to make the best project.

Extrovert - People are great.

Lawful Neutral - This is on the classic alignment chart which is used for role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons to decide how a character acts. I chose Lawful Neutral because i feel as if it represents me the most accurately as I usually stick to the rules but I am quite carefree and usually dont have a very strong opinion on things.

[kylieclarke-bct]

Final Weeks of Studio + Entire Semester

The last three weeks have flown by so fast! I am sitting here, coming to the end of the last week of uni - with mostly of my work done. The only stuff our group needs to do now is to set up our studio - add all the extra bits we have needed to complete such as the process book, children’s book, posters printed etc.. I have also realised that this could potentially be my last blog post for the semester, which is a scary thought.

A little update on what has happened over the last 3 weeks leading up to submission (which is 4 days away):

Website - Our friend, Walter has kindly designed and coded our website for us who specialises in this and gets paid for doing tones of design work. He developed a website in a few days that showcased our personality as individuals, as well as the brand, Doodle Dolls.

Children’s book - Katriel and Sophie have been working on this section, with Kat doing all of the drawings and colouring, and Sophie getting it binded this week. 

Packaging - Sophie was working hard on completing this, though she unfortunately didn’t feel well near the end of week 12 - therefore Amanda took over and started to design the inside and cover pages for the packaging. We kept to the same colour scheme as the website. 

Statement Writing - our group managed to write up the first 500 words of each statement that was the same - to then go into the next few hundred talking about our individual processes and concepts/research. Ben gave us a lot of feedback on this and stated that writing the first section as a group would be the best way to keep it consistent. 

Portfolio/blog Update - I have updated my portfolio, with a new design and new information on Doodle Dolls. I am currently updating my blog.

Posters - This task has taken a lot longer to process, where I have gone around in circles for the past week developing these. After developing our three posters (Two freestanding poster banners that will stand on the side of our exhibition + a huge wall banner with all of our contact info on. All posters will be 600x1600mm and will be printed externally), we were able to gather feedback from a couple of lecturers. Ben’s feedback was by far the most critical and comprehensive. We did unfortunately gather this feedback after we sent the posters to the printers, resulting in a stressful email to the company asking them to delay our printing until we could make the changes. We learnt our lesson straight away - to wait for all feedback before we sent them off to printers. About 24 hours later, Amanda and I came up with new and improved versions. We don’t think they are perfect because we were pushing for time, but we hope the lecturers especially Ben, appreciates the improvement.

Process Book - This was my job over the last two weeks, which included the collation of everyones write ups for each section of the book (we had roughly 80 pages worth of content - including images and references). This process was also a lengthy one, where I individually designed each page for the book, labelling each file in order so I could combine the pdf’s, and then print for my first iteration to take back to the team and get any feedback. A few things were changed, though we kept a lot of what Ben’s feedback was from the posters, and I tired to implement certain aspects into the book, to follow the theme and communication. This will be getting printed tomorrow in time for Monday’s deadline. 

The final bits and pieces we are finishing off now is our construction of our exhibition and the final bits like printing out our statements for assessment etc. 4 more days left and we will be all done! Very excited!

[the-omnari-group]

Alleylight: Next Steps

Alleylight V1 is, for all intents and purposes, feature-complete. It features exactly what we said we’d do, and there aren’t any outstanding bugs that would annihilate the thing after an extended period of time. But not everything made it in, and there’s still more things I could add.

Firstly, during the class showoff, I was tipped off by fellow classmate Patrick Tuohy on a method to smooth out the Kinect’s intense jank tracking-wise. I’m still not well versed in the actual scripting inside that black box of an SDK, but Patrick mentioned using normalized vectors and effectively lerping joints between their current position and the position the tracking data is returning. This would help with the fact the skeleton’s tracking points tended to jump from one side of an object to another, so instead of the object being batted away as one would expect, it effectively phases through the tracking point, potentially not even interacting at all. Naturally if and when Alleylight is actually deployed to the public, the average joe on’t have the technical knowledge to forgive such an occurrence, so this seems like a good fix to investigate sooner rather than later.

Then there’s the matter of the seaweed. At present, all the seaweed in the scene is its own separate gameobject, but all it does is sit there with a random rotation and position that I set manually and will never change. While some wavy animations for them were made (though never given to me and thus never implemented), a secondary objective was to make them react to a fake water current, and also to react to objects floating over them. The first method - which would kill two birds with one stone - would be to change each weed into a three-dimensional cloth mesh, and applying a slight constant force to it. Given that the floating objects already all have three-dimensional colliders, all I’d need to do is make them touch the seaweed colliders and that’s both problems done, albeit rather expensively performance-wise. Option B, and the one I was planning on using before I suddenly remembered cloth physics while writing this, would be to add joints to the stems of each weed, and then adding a trigger collider to the other side of the leaf (does seaweed count as a leaf?). When an object enters the trigger, I apply a constant force along the floating object’s vector, which should make the weed flow with the object. While this method is way less performance-intensive, it might not look very convincing, considering that the weed is still a solid, non-wavy object.

The last thing that would require considerable effort on my end to implement (i.e: Not adding sound because that’s easy) is a dev mode to allow the end-user to set up or modify the space on the fly - something pretty important for a projection mapped thing that may or may not have the obstacles where we guess they are in development. In theory, because of the way the island was created, moving it around should be dead easy. The hard part is making it so the obstacle-shaped hole can have its shape changed for different obstacles. Other than allowing the user to spawn completely-black primitives and making them composite the obstacle together, I’ve got no solutions to the issue at this point in time. Someday though, someday.

[onlyryan]

STUDIO PLAY/INT&PLAY

Over these past few weeks, I have been working on a few different things, some new and some processes which require revision.

Since we were pushing for an mvp, refinement was not of the essence, hence there were bugs that popped up and changes to some of the models. Once I finished touching up the astronaut I gave it to Finley who finished the model with some nice texturing:

Before

After

I followed up by re working the pick up items. Here’s  a look at the initial pick up materials:

We weren’t really feeling it for these models as quite a few of them didn’t have a nice flow, noticeably the rough and sudden protrusions from the spheres. In response, Finley mocked up some new concepts for the objects for me to work on:

And I further developed them into my own interpretation of the models where I felt necessary:

I am now currently working on the space rocket landing pads and platform dock where players will build their spaceship and see their dock progress as they build their way through a collection of materials:

These platforms are comprised of:

- Base platform

- Launching platform

- Banner/sign

- Energy supply

- Satellite

- Rocket Stabilizer 

- Rocket in lotus form

- Hopper

[ncyrocks]

Nathan’s Studio IV Week 11: HOLY SHOOT 2 WEEKS WHAT

ACTUALLY THOUGH WHAT

This week:

I’m not sure who was more important to the code getting done but it got done anyway

We’re kinda missing something but we’ve got a workaround

[nathannewlandbct-blog]

Working on the Glacier DLC Expansion Pack 1 Ultimate Collectors GOTY Edition

Week 9 is the first week of development sprint 3 and the first week back from the “uni break”. I got a bit creative with the landscape, solved a worrying bug or two, and added more assets.

Monday

Today was our first day back from our self imposed mini break or extended long weekend. It was also the beginning of sprint 3 of our production pipeline. Everyone was well rested and ready and reading to go (aside from one ill member). We talked about what we did in the weekend which included Nathan and his experience at GDC and my games that I played and took inspiration from. Also things like general things like where people went and such.

Xav had a new idea. Based on feedback from the GDM we wanted to make the space around the initial cave a shear cliff face that the player would not want to climb. Zav’s idea is to have a huge glacier in our landscape, potentially serving as the cave itself. This is a great idea and I started implementing it. However, adding a glacier means moving the environment from a central north island bush to a South island landscape. This means repainting the entire thing and rethinking entirely what flora I have, how much and where it goes. Lots of work for me.

Mark is working on modeling a hut. Should be finished end of today or first half tomorrow.

I think Kavita is now working on glacier art.

  Tuesday

Today I used a couple BSP brushes to block out where a glacier might go near spawn. This is on the cold version I made yesterday. I then added a metal to it that was white with a blue emissive. This looked better than expected. I then put a crevasse down the middle and a temp player sized block for scale reference. It was then I realized how huge this ice block is. I then gave it a nice looking texture with macro variation and a variety of texture maps.

I will show this to the team (and Aldo) and ask them weather then want to pursue this, go back to the original project or find a compromise somehow. My vote will be to go back to the original project but take cool screenshots of this project for promotional purposes. This would mean we still need someone to model rock face static meshes. This will probably be me. At the very least I proved I could do it. A thought I just love. In saying that though it needs work to look good.

  Wednesday

Nathan has finally cracked how to build our project. He's had to jump through so many hoops to get it working. I'll record specifics when I get them.

Mark finished the shed model but had issues unwrapping it so much we had to get the modeler from Aldo's team to help who really knows what he's doing with blender.

Xav painted it in Substance Painter and I will figure out how to import it tomorrow.

Kavita wants to move into modeling tasks. I didn't have a specific job to give her at the time and might have to follow this up tomorrow.

Garian made a night ambience track. It's dark and grand sounding. I think it could be good.

I had a bit of trouble finding the most up to date project among all my duplicate testing and debugging versions. The current one has been renamed kowhai 0_4.

 Thursday

I implemented the steel shack and everyone was impressed with how good it looked including me. I now have Kavita working on a more advanced shack that she drew from her concept art.

I went to a small presentation run by our lecturer Stefan about his recent trip to Germany and the VR research he did there. It was very interesting and I'm glad I went. It did however leave me away from my team for another hour after I hadn't been in all morning. (they didn't see most of this though because they were on a apparently tortuous field trip this morning). When I got back however I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mark had made a drinking bottle canteen and it was being painted by Xav and Nathan has been doing some interesting and useful research into the effects of hypothermia.

I moved one of my trees into a file folder higher up in an attempt to fix some save errors and subsequently broke all my foliage. At the moment I am repainting it all and will drop the landscape between the two lakes in an attempt to make more of a canyon that funnels the player more effectively. In this canyon I will put a path up to the hut.

We plan to make a broken boat by the dock in the first lake. This is where the player will find the fire kit and will hopefully use it to warm up after they go through the water.

 Friday

Mark, Kavita and I were in today. I played with the foliage, saved and went to have lunch or something. When I came back UE4 couldn't load my map. I went through the backup folder to find the most recent version of my map and was able to successfully load and work from that. I renamed that 0_4_2. The foliage is in in a logical manner and the groove cut in the landscape been the two lakes. I put the metal shed on the hill upper hut location and also by the first lake. Mark made a longer pier that I implemented also. I will surround it with foliage so much so that it hides the shed from the ridge and is seen when the player comes out of the lake. Mark also programmed a teleportation function that will make testing different areas of the map during play much easier.

I played the latest Just Dance game. I'm not very good but I think I have potential. I might get a dance game for my Xbox one Kinect. :P

Just kidding about the DLC. For now...

@aldovisini, @markyeoh, @ncyrocks, @vintagexvr, @kavitacreativetech, @garianleighton-anderson

[garianleighton-anderson-blog]

Project Kowhai

Garian Leighton-Anderson, Sound Designer, Foliage Designer.

Conceptual Statement

“Project Kōwhai is a survival game set in the New Zealand bush, developed to educate people about the realities of surviving in the bush. The player is taught indirectly, through experimenting with the game’s realistic mechanics and learning the best way to survive through failing in a safe environment and being encouraged to try again through the entertainment value of the game.” (Project Kowhai Game Design Document, 2017). Being lost in the New Zealand wilderness is nothing to be taken lightly and Project Kowhai aims to educate people in the correct survival methods to employ when one is suddenly dropped into such a situation. Becoming lost can happen suddenly and without any preparation so it’s important to have prior understanding of survival to be able to bring a degree of familiarity to whatever you may face in an unfamiliar environment.

Project Kowhai is essentially an environment simulation made to look and feel realistic. This is achieved through realistic graphics, sounds, and game mechanics typically associated with survival games such as hunger, thirst, and body temperature. All the mechanics are constructed to replicate how they would work in real life. These mechanics come together to affect certain aspects of the player character’s wellbeing. For example, the more you run, the quicker you get exhausted, and must return to walking. Although not to quite realistic scale, these mechanics add to the simulation aspect of the game and to the intention of giving people realistic expectations as they play and fail and try again. The player is intended to survive though playing and learning and figuring out the best things to do. This is to do with the idea of ‘learning through doing’ rather than teaching by telling.

One main aspect of Project Kowhai is the lack of a main user interface that players in the gaming community would come to expect from a survival game. This aims to provide players with only what they would know if they were in the situation. For example, there would be no visual feedback indicating how hungry or thirsty you were, a person would just feel it. To substitute, Project Kowhai relies on the use of sound cues to tell the player whether they are hungry or thirsty etc.

It was discussed to use HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) audio for realistic three-dimensional sound interpretation for the player. HRTF was successfully incorporated in the project and adds to the realistic feeling of the environments however in the process of packaging the game it causes issues and all audio becomes stereo panning. This makes the game a little less real feeling, but it is something that you wouldn’t miss unless you were looking (or listening) for it. This leads us to explore and discover how to package Unreal Engine games with the Steam Audio plug in that was used to achieve this audio effect. All audio for the project was created using Foley techniques and music making techniques. The main music for the game is used to give and uneasy feel while blending into the background of the environmental ambience. This is another if the instances where realism was sacrificed for feeling. Although not exactly how I intended, the audio for Project Kowhai still encapsulates the main purpose which was to add to the realistic experience in the New Zealand Wilderness.

Contextual Statement

Project Kowhai sits amidst the likes of Fire watch and other open world games while developing and incorporating survival based mechanics to develop the educational aspect of the Project. Inspiration in the development of the environments was drawn from games such as Fire watch (2016), Tomb Raider (2013), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011), Battlefield Bad Company 2 (2010), and Assassin’s Creed III (2012). As described by Nathan Newland. Educational aspects are inspired by survival programmes such as Man Vs Wild. Specifically, the New Zealand editions of the show where Bear Grylls demonstrates how to survive in the New Zealand wilderness. We took the open world wilderness aspect from these games and combined them with an educational approach to produce a New Zealand relevant ‘Interactive Educational Experience’. Rather than for purely educational purposes, Project Kowhai is intended to be a ‘Serious Game’. A serious game is a game developed with the purpose of being useful to the player (Girard, Ecalle, & Magnan. 2012). The game aims to educate people to the realities of New Zealand wilderness survival. According to Chalmers & Debattista, 2009, serious games that teach people situational experiences through simulation must have a high level of realism for the player to associate those simulations to the real world. This was one of the reasons for Project Kowhai to be based on real world locations and environments, and to take on realistic graphics and survival mechanics that apply to real world experiences. In terms of foliage, all tree and plant models are based on New Zealand indigenous species of Plantae. Using such foliage added to the New Zealand based environment and learned through game play testing at events such as the Game Development Meetup that there was an emotional investment with players from New Zealand given that It’s set in their home land, a very under used environment in the game making community. The need for realistic graphics in the game enforced one of the Team’s goals which was “to capture New Zealand’s natural beauty and increase its appeal.” (Young, N. 2017).

The audio For Project Kowhai was intended to be a heavy lifter in terms of realism. For instance, in lieu of a visual HUD, the player would gain feedback on their wellbeing based on sound cues. Also, the environments heavily depend on accurate audio representation to enforce the realism; a key element in the development of Project Kowhai being a 'Serious Game’. The game’s environmental audio is all based on New Zealand natural environments. Foley in the gaming industry is quite like that of picture film. Foley is a technique developed by Jack Donovan Foley, which is basically the imitation of sound to later add to a film to be more believable. Inspiration for the game’s sound track came from the likes of Fire watch (2016) OST and Journey (2012) OST and according to the mood that Project Kowhai went for, was made to feel eerie and tense.

    References:

-          Cooney, X. Leighton-Anderson, G. Newland, N. Singh, K. Yeoh, M. Young, N.  (2017). Project Kowhai. Auckland: AUT University. Unfinished Project.

-          Girard, C, Ecalle, J & Magnan, A. (2013). Serious games as new educational tools: How effective are they? A meta-analysis of recent studies. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 29, 207–219.

-          Chalmers, A & Chalmers, K. (2009). Level of Realism for Serious Games. UK: University of Warwick.

-          Hibbard, M. (2015, 18 March 2015). Recording Foley and Sound Effects: The Fundamentals. [Weblog]. Retrieved 28 October 2017, from https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/recording-foley-and-sound-effects-the-fundamentals/

-          Baumgartner et al. (2006). The emotional power of music: How music enhances the feeling of affective pictures. Brian Research, 1075(1), 151-164.

-          Pitkanen, P. (2013). Creating and Designing Sound Effects for A Mobile Game. Finland: Tampere University of Applied Sciences.

-          Campo santo. (2016). Firewatch. : Panic.

-          Thatgamecompany. (2012). Journey.: Sony Computer Entertainment.

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Interaction & Play - Week 5

Week 5 was heavily focused on our meeting with Sarah on Wednesday. It went very well as she gave us a Nordisk magazine and the Glamping magazine specifically for Glamping tents. The Nordisk magazine had all the specs in it which was exactly what we needed and we were able to pick the specific Glamping tent to prototype with as Sarah gave us knowledge that it was the most popular.

We also discussed when we’d like to pitch our proposal to her (10th Oct) and what happens after. We all are very committed to this project and would love to work with Nordisk afterwards to make this happen, so when Sarah agreed we were very happy that this proposal would be the start of a future project.

After the meeting, we really started to knuckle down on our concept. We knew that we were pitching interactive lights on a Glamping tent, but with the specs and everything, we are able to decide what’s going where etc.

I wasn’t in class so I caught up with the team via Facebook. For Hayden and Tobias it’s mainly working with the specs and for me, I am focusing on our pitch presentation for next week.

For our Youtube presentation, I’m going to simply voice record over it.