Over the past week, I have been chopping together all of the different aspects of my essay into a more logical form. Trying to pace the information in a logical manner has been tricky, but I think I've found a good pacing for the essay now. It is now broken up into distinct chapters, and towards the end of the essay, I have tried to bring everything back together in order to make it easier for the reader to process everything. It is a very conceptual argument, and one that has had me reading a lot of scientific papers. Because of this I've tried to reinterpret the information as clearly as possible, which I believe I have done sufficiently, but was certainly a challenge. I am happy with the breadth of my sources, and I am really happy with how the essay has turned out. It feels like a piece of writing that could genuinely be useful to someone. As I was typing it all up, I got really exited about where the essay had started, and where it has arrived. Being the largest body of writing I have ever produced, and also the first full on research paper I have ever completed, I'm sure it's not perfect, but I am proud of the result. I did not end up with an artifact, my assignment became a purely theoretical paper. I think this works for the style I went for, as an artifact would really just be a convoluted and unnecessary way to produce the same information. All in all, while the timing did make it tricky over the Wellington Armageddon period, I am please with the work I have produced, and I definitely learned a lot from this assignment.
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This week marks the final of the asset creation process, I heave learned many unreal techniques that aided me. The Terrain generation process and how to blend textures based off the generic unreal terrain modeling tools. I learned how to blend textures based off global variable arrays that trigger from volume spheres. Materials that sway in the air, materials that react to light in certain ways and finally a shader that works!. I figured out how to manipulate blueprints to what I need (Generally). And thus this was created in its place, A download to the game will be put on google drive at some point and a link to the essay complimenting my intentions. Also click the link to my Artstation: www.artstation.com/artwork/rYkJm
I've been researching as to how I could improve the trees leafs to better suit the level, however after 7 hours of reading through the witness's blogs I still haven't figured it out. But since this is all I have to show. However, towards the end of the week I figured it out! I managed to get the tree shader to work and look half good. Now was the time to build the game and asset ready for testing from my peers. . . but behold! the university computer that I was using died and I lost all of my materials. . . so i decided to complete it next week, again.
I created some rocks to fill some gaps between open areas, while they look plain, I sculpted them like that so I can change the color to suit the scene better through materials in UE 4. After thinking for an hour or so on what should go inside the middle of the scene I came to the conclusion that a monument of illusion should persist. So I started to googled things that look appealing to the eye at certain angles. The artifact replicates a search or journey for something. The object/structure in the center is inspired by the Impossible statue in Belgium. The statue was created by mathematician Mathieu Hamaekers 3D Penrose triangle but the concept was first created in 1934 by Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvard and popularized by Roger Penrose in the 50’s. The triangle is essentially an optical illusion that plays on the viewers perspective as they move around. From one point of view the object is a straight-lined triangle and from another the edges become curved. This links to the idealization behind the artifact which has themes of verisimilitude and perspective, meaning that a persons sense of realism depends on their perspective - just like how the “impossible triangle” changes its form depending on where it is seen from (perspective). So after trying to wrap my mind around how to go about modeling the object I finally managed to get a similar object which at certain angles represented the desired effect I was looking for.
The past two weeks have seen a drastic decline in my work on this assignment. One week was spent getting ready for Armageddon (felt very literal at the time), and the other week was spent down in Wellington at the expo. I managed to squeeze a bit of writing in here and there, but never had enough free time to really sink my teeth in. I’m at the point where I just need to write the essay, and now that I’m back, I’m sure I’ll be able to finish it in time. I’m going to write out a plan of attack, and then try to hit a word count quota every day.
The research is all finished at this point, it is just frustrating that I haven’t been able to write as much as I would have liked over the past two weeks. Just before the Armageddon crunch, I had a crit in a small group with Tece. Engaging with other students work was helpful, and seeing how they had gone about their assignments was really useful. The feedback I received from the session was really helpful as well. I have a few new leads for a final little bit of research, and then I’ll have everything I need. I really like writing and research, so i’m a little disappointed that I haven't had as much time as i’d have liked, but i’m sure i’ll still be able to do a good job. After 10 odd hours of studying how to get materials to interpolate between multiple material structures that work dynamically with terrain mesh and foliage instances I finally managed to get it to work. So basically I placed several volume trigger spheres into a scene that scale inwards to the center: Once the player walks into one of these trigger spheres a timeline curve is activated that transitions a float from 0 to 1. This float is a global variable which I can access through the materials that I have applied to the mesh in the inspector: And finally, the end resulting in a colorful environment (Of which needs color correcting). As soon as I have completed I will then do my enclosed study about how this artifact has effected the players perspective and cognitive responses from the start to end.
Over the uni break I really focused on my research. After my initial research during the proposal, I had a few avenues to look into. After working on my Super Metroid play journal over the holidays, which is almost finished, I’ve realised a few things. When researching feedback loops, it often comes back to biology. There seems to be an intrinsic way that biological feedback systems and feedback systems in a video game relate to one another. They are really one and the same. The more I look into it, the clearer this becomes. The analogy is this: If an animal hunts successfully, then they receive the nutrients and energy needed to continue hunting and succeeding. They could eventually end up as the leader of the pack. This is a positive feedback loop, in that effects are amplified. The male lone wolf has a clear goal; be the leader of a pack to ensure power and breeding, and along the way, eat and sleep. If they do these sub-tasks (eating and sleeping) well then it makes their goal easier to achieve. In Super Metroid, the player has a goal: Find and kill the last Metroid and defeat the space pirates. Along the way, depending on how effectively they complete their sub-tasks (find and collect missiles, health and powerups) it makes this goal easier to achieve. This is called homeostasis in biology. Homeostasis is ‘any self-regulating process by which biological systems tend to maintain stability while adjusting to conditions that are optimal for survival. If homeostasis is successful, life continues; if unsuccessful, disaster or death ensues. The stability attained is actually a dynamic equilibrium, in which continuous change occurs yet relatively uniform conditions prevail.’
During a talk with Jordan, after mentioning these things to him he said that ecosystems came to mind. I think that this is the perfect grounding for my essay. I should also mention that I have decided not to make a digital artefact to accompany my essay, but a paper one instead. Feedback loops are something that you can theorise, and the outcomes are really quite predictable. Due to this, making a prototype and having people play it, and collating the data seems like a waste of time. I can already figure out the outcomes from a change in the loops, I don’t need players to test it. Because of this, I’m thinking of instead using screenshots of the game to recreate sections of the game with different loops to illustrate my points. The final part of this essay would be somewhat of an ecosystem analysis. After re-scoping my essay, I think that this idea of understanding how ecosystems work in games is the most interesting thing. Looking at the rules in the game world, the thing under the hood, and how these could be considered as the laws, similar to our own world. 30 FPS effects the environment, and effects the gameplay loops. The way the game is made effects the ecosystem. The things within the world, be it characters, items or the physical environment, all tie in to keeping an ecosystem balanced. At the end of the day, that’s what an ecosystem is; a balance of systems. If any of these things is changed, the balance of the ecosystem is thrown out of whack. Re-centering my essay around feedback loops and how they exist in an ecosystem, I believe, is the right way to go, and I’m excited about what I’m going to find. Today I furthered my understanding and have formally decided to make the switch over to Unreal Engine 4. The reason for this switch is simply because it looks and run better for what I am trying to show. For example; Materials are easier to blend between other materials, Animations and image effects are built in, lighting and shadows are more accurate, reflections and post effects suit my designs further than Unity can. Hence fourth I took the liberty to research the following:
Things I need to complete are now narrowing down and almost time to start piecing together the puzzle. And once I have everything working mechanically, I can then move forward with why I done everything the way I have. Over the last week and a bit I have been creating numerous amounts of foliage to occupy what will become the asset to my study. Below you will see some silhouettes of some different types of flowers. Further down the page you will see which ones were chosen. I asked people from Facebook to choose 4 of these that they liked the most. From that I drew the textures in Photoshop before placing them on low poly plants in Blender. I encourage whomever's reading this to comment on which ones they like and why.
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