Individual reflection.
Over the course of development the game has taken allot of turns and corners to get the game the way it is today. Many discussions, misunderstandings, frustration and success came from almost every day being with one another. I think the main things to take from the whole process would have to be a more clear and defined point and settling with things that I may not agree with but compromise with the group. There are times where I felt that I could have done more than what I had done. For instance the majority of my time was spent teaching and helping where I would rather have been making art assets for the game. I would have liked to create a wide variety of aliens and creatures that would be seen throughout the level, however I was busy with other things and development was rather slow. I hope to take what I have learned and proceed to take this new found knowledge into the next development cycle. I also feel like my writing skills hinder my ability to demonstrate the amount of work that I had done. I cannot remember every little thing that I do during the day which I usually broaden to cover tasks completed. I think keeping an active computer on with a notepad with things that I've done will prove beneficial for the second semester.
0 Comments
Today we did the final touch ups for the game, got all of the documentation in order, and packaged it up. I redid the prison pipes textures last night, and have now implemented them in the game. The old pipes were far too realistic-looking, with rust, and old paint all over them, and they really didn’t fit. Since they are quite abundant in the level, I thought it would be worth while redoing them for vertical slice. The result is a nice, clean PBR texture, with a hand painted coat to make them more cartoony. With everything I’ve made implemented into the game, I focused on the GDD this morning. With a bit of spare time, I took some screenshots of the game, to give examples of the textures. Now that we have a pipeline for every aspect of the game, and now that we have all of the building blocks we need to create levels, I'm really exited about the next stage of development. I think things will be a lot quicker from this point on, and we can really focus on the level desings, which are really the most important thing. One thing I still need to work on is my documentation. I took a very relaxed approach to Hack n' Plan, and going forward I want to make sure that I update and log my work every day. Creating the textures for the game has been really fun. Texturing both the character and most of the environment , I've really learned a lot, and have even added some software to my skillset. Going forward, I want to develop my texturing skill set further, with an emphasis on environmental modelling and texturing. Week 8, the final week, this week I was busy helping to find bugs within the games levels and address them appropriately. I worked with the team to correct the lighting in levels, I also recolored the first level and helped find bugs within levels. I helped to fix the guards files within the file construct. It was a busy week and art assets weren't the main focus this week as there wasn't much more we could do, so focusing on making the game work was the main priority. Since I have almost no access to the game files I helped out as much as I could in class. After one stable build was created I made a short video intro for the presentation that demonstrates the basic and core mechanics in the game.
During the final week of vertical slice, I worked on finalising and polishing my level design. I spent a lot of time also finding and fixing bugs within the game to ensure that it is fully playable. I added a new text display to show the player how much money they have collected when picking up coins and trophies. I also incorporated a Perlin shake function onto the text to make it shake whenever the player picked up money and the money count increased. This provided extra feedback to the player when collecting money. I also made the text fade out after a specified amount of time of not collecting any money. This is due to the fact that one of the aims of our game is to minimise UI elements as much as possible. I also changed the alarm system to trigger a door to open and set a list of guards to chase the player. This occurs after the player triggers a laser beam.
Due to the fact that my scene is the largest of the three for vertical slice I also had to optimise the level to cull objects which were not seen by the player. To do this I split my scene into 2 worlds which would enable and disable all objects within each world depending on where the player was in the scene. This worked effectively and increased performance within my scene. Finally, I also added a cut scene for the end of my level which switches to a second camera that shows the player taking off in their van as the guards try and stop him. This will be the final ending to our vertical slice level. Personal Reflection: Now that our vertical slice is completed, I am very proud after looking back at what we have achieved as a team as well as individuals. There have been many times during the vertical slice where we were unsure of the exact direction that the game was heading in and it was hard to see how the game would function with the combination of everything that we had been working on. Thankfully within the final week and a half of development, we managed to combine all mechanics and art into a level split up into three sections which is fun to play through and shows off the majority of the mechanics which we intended to implement. There are a variety of aspects of our game and production process which I am very proud of. One of these is the fact that we as programmers set out to make our systems within the game as modular and easy to use as possible. I believe that we successfully achieved this as the majority of our mechanics such as grapple swings, alarm systems, doors, lasers and AI have all been designed in a way which makes them easy to set up and use within future level design. I am also proud of the way in which we worked together as a team and communicated with one another to complete each of the tasks that we set out to do. We were rigorous with our planning for each week and the effective use of our team production plan ensured that we were always on track and knew exactly what we had to be working on. I was also proud that the team took our game down to Armageddon to have it play tested and get feedback on things to improve. This greatly helped our production as it allowed us to get feedback on the perspectives of others who played our game which could then be worked on to make the game better. On a more personal level there are a few aspects of the game which I am very pleased to have contributed to. The mechanic that I am proudest of implementing within the game is the grapple mechanic. I took this mechanic on board for the entirety of the vertical slice and continuously made an effort to optimise it and make it feel as smooth and satisfying for the player as possible. I spent many hours on this mechanic to get it to feel the way that it does in the current state of the game and I am very happy with how fluid and satisfying it feels to grapple within the game. A lot of thought went into this mechanic to perfect it and maximise its use within the game. For example, the way in which it prioritises grapples within the player’s view, pulls the player up when grappling from the ground, and the way in which it provides constant feedback via the line renderer and button prompts to make it easy for the player to notice them and use them. I was very happy when the majority of play testers told us that this was their favourite mechanic within the game and the one which they wanted to see more of. I was also very proud of my level design within the final level of the game. I placed a lot of time and effort in planning object positions and guard patrol routes in this level and I am very happy with the way in which the level plays out as a whole. I am also particularly happy with the end cut scene that I made for the player leaving the level in their space craft. I am also proud of the external saving and loading which I have implemented into the game using JSON. This can be expanded upon in the future to create a more elaborative saving system in the future. There were a couple of mechanics that I worked on which did not make it into the game at this point, however I am still happy with the way that they turned out. These mechanics include the ventilation system which would allow players to traverse the scene by entering and exiting vents as well as the over world car driving implementation which was super fun to drive around in. Hopefully in the production process we will be able to incorporate these mechanics into the game. There were however some aspects of the vertical slice which did not go to plan and there were times when we made some mistakes. One of the biggest challenges for me was the fact that for a long time our game seemed to have little direction as we had many mechanics which we wanted to implement into the game however were unsure of exactly how they would interact with one another when playing the game. We also initially over scoped the vertical slice process by trying to incorporate an elaborate story within the game. Initially we designed our vertical slice level to follow a story line and this caused us to waste a lot of time on a level which would at the end of the day not actually be used. However, as a team we were able to overcome these obstacles and at the end of the day have a successful vertical slice to show for it. I think that one aspect we can work on as a team is our use of time management when working on the game in the future. On a more personal level there were some mistakes which I made along the vertical slice process. One of these mistakes was when I was not willing to give up on the “arm physics” within the game. I wasted a lot of time on this mechanic within the game before realising that it was not the ideal thing to use within our game. I also failed to stick to the coding naming standards which we had set out to use at times during development and this is something I would like to improve upon in the future. On a whole I am very happy with the way that our vertical slice turned out. There were many lessons learnt along the way and it has been a great experience to work in a team environment over such a long period of time. I am confident in our team and our ability to further improve the game during the production phase to come. This week was the final rush to finish the game. I implemented a teleport system to connect each of the three levels. I spent a few hours implementing a pause menu and moving the debug control options to this pause menu. I made also improved the look of the ‘BUSTED’ sign when the player is caught by the guard by making it world space and therefore emit light. I added a tutorial section for the grapple introduction which tilts the camera up at the grapple point. The camera was also given a reset functionality when the right stick on the controller was clicked. I spent a few hours polishing my scene and fixing bugs.
With the final vertical slice build now complete, I can say with certainty that I am proud of what this team has accomplished and I am very happy with what I contributed to it. There are a few aspects that I think went particularly well for me during this project. First, is level design. When Wellington Armageddon was approaching we essentially had nothing due to over scoping our level. I worked with Conrad and we quickly put together a level design and I created it in-engine. It was far from perfect but it was just what we needed to get the game in the hands of play testers in Wellington. The feedback from those playtesters and the ones from MDS in the same week proved invaluable to the development of our game mechanics. After Armageddon and the deadline for Vertical Slice drew closer, the team found itself in a similar state as we did not wish to use the Armageddon level for submission as it was more of a gauntlet which threw all of its mechanics at the player at once. Zac and I picked up our whiteboard markers and designed another level which introduced mechanics slower and had more context to its design. We quickly had a solid design which we did not deviate much from during development. The level was split into three scenes so each programmer could work on one. We each put a lot of time into our scenes and I am very happy with how they turned out (mine is the middle scene). Because we didn’t have much time, we used ProBuilder to create the level which proved to be very efficient. The AI turned out alright. They have some expressive animations and provide at least a basic level of challenge and engaging gameplay. I think one I the things I would like to focus on after Vertical Slice is providing more ways for the player to mess with the guards because that’s always fun. Right now they don’t really do a whole lot. There were a couple features that I made which I was also super happy with purely because they looked so pretty (or at least I thought they did). I especially love how the main menu turned out as the endless running of the characters encapsulates the game’s themes nicely. It’s also nice because it’s only about a dozen objects that keep getting pushed back and forth. The 3D text for the title turned out well because it was affected by the post processing and therefore emitted light. Also, when the lamp flew past the title text, it overlapped it which looked really neat. Another aspect that I think looks quite slick was the ‘BUSTED’ text and cell bars which slide in when the player is caught by a guard. Finally, I was quite happy with how the grapple cable turned out. It’s still a bit janky, but it’s a big improvement over what it was. The team and I also made a lot of mistakes and learnt a lot through the process. The biggest mistakes came from project management and my own stubbornness. There were certain aspects of the game that were over-scoped or cut due to the game’s mechanics changing resulting in a lot of hours that can’t be seen in the final product. One big one was using physics to control the player’s grapple arm and have it stretch towards the grapple. Dylan spent a lot of time trying to get this to work and we discussed that we should opt for a simpler implementation. Unfortunately, my stubbornness did not let me give up just then and instead I wasted a few more hours. After trying for a couple days to get it working, I conceded that it was time to give up on the physics. A similar thing happened with the character controller. Early on we had people playtesting the game and we received feedback that the movement did not feel nice. Zac suggested we use a plugin which was designed to create fun movement in platformer games. That sounded good but somehow to me, it seemed like using the plugin was accepting defeat for being bad at programming. So, I wasted another evening attempting to rewrite the movement which of course amounted to nothing and we used the plugin. I learnt two things here. 1) It’s easy to make movement in a game but it’s difficult to make movement which feels good and 2) there is nothing wrong with using a plugin which will save you time. The game’s scope and mechanics also changed significantly over time. We intended to have a larger level and built a significant amount of it. There was a light narrative weaved into the design of this level so I developed a lightweight dialogue system to convey narrative context to the player. However, this level was unfortunately scrapped because it was over-scoped and there was simply not enough time to complete it and make all the space interesting. The final Vertical Slice level had almost no narrative context and so my dialogue system was no longer necessary. It may come in handy later, we shall see. The continuous evolution of the game’s mechanics and levels was an interesting learning experience which also, unfortunately, involved a lot of hours which did not amount to anything. However, with the strong mechanical foundation we have created I expect production going forward to be smoother and more efficient. Week 8
This week I built the Audio Manager. Because the game did not have many (if any) sounds, I sourced all of the sounds I presumed we would need on Sunday. This included grappling noises, jumping, various whirring sounds for other mechanical actions, footsteps, guard sounds, and music. On Monday, I built the Audio Manager from scratch. The Audio Manager that I built overloads the existing audio source structure. Using a custom sound struct as a base, I created a basic overlap/transition sound function, which is used to transition between two different music tracks. This transition is not as tight as I hoped it would be, which was frustrating. I tried three separate approaches (including using DOtween) in order to create a better method, but all of them had various issues with the way I was currently doing my AudioManager. These sounds were then linked up to the game in various ways. I implemented footstep sounds using animationevents, which solved the issues with other mechanics interacting with feet trigger colliders. I added sounds for the player attaching to the grapple, and in the process also fixed an issue with connecting to the point while in the air. When it came to adding guard noises (like a mic click to recognise enemies and footsteps) I had to rework the state logic, which now works a lot more smoothly. Checks for current and previous state now work correctly, which was helpful in several ways. Music was also a big component of my sound choices, and I chose what I considered a fitting theme for the main menu of the title. I envisioned this track as being the ‘main theme’ of the character, and because we did not manage to get the ‘mission impossible’ moment of stealing a valuable in the game, we did not get an accurate time in the level to show the music off. In the production version of the game, I would hope to pull the track apart and use elements of it in the background music, which would change and flow differently. As well as this, I also worked on finalising my level. After the lighting was redone, I playtested the level several times, fixing several graphical issues (like transparencies and their reflectivity) and AI pathing issues (guards getting stuck in random places) that were present in my scene. Preproduction Reflection The preproduction process for us resulted in a title that I am happy with, and I think that the learnings that we took from the process will help us to be a more efficient team. The first two weeks were a result of our game not having extra development not taken into account, meaning we had to rebuild systems (and create entirely new ones) in order to reach a baseline point. Our character design had to be changed as we moved quickly in a different direction, and we had issues coming up with a character that we all agreed on. We avoided these issues, rather than solving them, by just creating a character and moving on. We knew that the character had to have one arm (for the grapple hook) and went from there. Conrad’s initial sketches looked quite different from the finished 3D model, which is only moderately surprising - given the changes that occur when a piece of art transitions from 2D to 3D. The amount of time that we wasted with the grappling hook being physics-based was frustrating later in development. We spent several weeks trying to get this system working, and while we got close several times, we repeatedly encountered weird graphical issues that prevented the arm from behaving realistically. The decision to move to a hand-animated arm was one of the best decisions we made during development, as it forced the team to move on. The level development was also a point where we had a huge takeaway. Corne’s initial designs were all agreed upon, and his building the prefabs was a well-intentioned idea that we agreed on. However, the huge spaces that we created just weren’t conducive to gameplay, and we scrapped them entirely. If we had made this decision even a week earlier I believe it would have been much better for the game. Our level design as a result of probuilder has dramatically improved, as It meant that Dylan, Josh and I were able to create a scene each and combine them into one level. It made the most sense for this because we were the most experienced with the mechanics and systems, and wanted to design ‘puzzles’ rather than ‘environments. Moving forward, I think this approach is far better. I am happy with the way I developed the first area, which introduces the player to mechanics by leading them in a variety of ways, from subtle to image-based. Using the first guard as a way to teach the player about stealth was very interesting. Creating transparent windows allows the player to see the AI at the expected time that they arrive there, and the shorter walls help the player see his head. Overall, my design philosophy with this level creation system was to create the puzzle first, and then design the environment around the puzzle. This was most obvious when Josh and I created the overall level design, and we were able to clearly mark areas where we taught players mechanics. This meant that our level development went much faster than we expected, and we were mechanically done after a week of level development. A week of polishing and adding effects made the levels look visually impressive, which I was very happy with. My impression of the entire process is positive, mostly to do with how much the team as a whole learnt about design processes in developing a 3D platformer. We chose a genre and game style that is incredibly reliant on feedback and ‘feeling good’. If a platformer doesn’t have good jumping, then the game feels bad. This meant that we had to put a huge amount of effort into the controller, which paid off looking at the final product. While the controller is not perfect, the systems we have built give us the opportunity to further develop the controls and mechanics of the game. For the production segment of the game, we have laid the groundwork for the rest of the title, which bodes well for our next segment of development. This was the last week we have on the Vertical Slice build, and I’m pretty proud from what we’ve come from. All there was for me to do this last week was to finish off refining the security guard animations and make a particle effect for a portal that takes the player to the next level. Vertical slice had taught me a lot of the pipeline that is needed for an indie development team. Where I thought that the game had looked like it had turned in the wrong direction, it came around in the end and I’m pretty happy about that result. There were a lot of places for improvement in a team and personal improvement.
This was the first project that we worked on that left most of the animation on me while the others were working in the preferred areas. This left a little pressure at the start, as I didn’t know how we would approach the different animations. The jump was one of the few problems that we faced when it came to making the animations all animated. It was hard to understand what we needed to but we were able to get through it relatively easy without too much content be laid to waste. There was a lot of discussion, especially when it came to the arm, but again we were able to get through it. Some things that we’ll need for the future is me being to use unity and be able to be confident in adding my own animations to the build so that I can personally test the animations myself rather than waiting. Some parts of the rigging progress I’ll need to able to understand how to edit the rig and add my own parts to it. I did learn a lot from trying to replicate Juane’s rig for the security guard we he was absent. Another part of rigging is that I need to improvement on is my skin weight painting so that mesh doesn’t deform when that animations occur. The list could go on, but I’ve got a log of what needs to be looked out for in the future. I’m glad that we were be able to do this at the end of year as it gives us a taste of self-driven game development the aid from the tutors to keep the team on track. The vertical slice part of our production has been a valuable learning experience. There are plenty of lessons we took from Rapid prototyping into the vertical slice which helped the process along. For me Vertical Slice was a challenging problem. I was designing a level around certain mechanics for movement and grappling that was based in a narrative story arch we came up with. At first this meant I was making modular pieces for a Prison level. These modular pieces and their scaling was the first hurdle to cross. Narrative is extremely difficult to nail down. Im not a writer and therefore trying to make a story work in the context of a level proved to be a time consuming process. I made ALOT of props ( both static and animated ) as well as modular pieces and hero pieces to tie rooms together. In the end alot of these werent used since our final level changed. The changes came mainly from a big change in direction for our Grappling mechanics. Moving from physics based to animation helped us fix alot of issues, but it also took a long time and many iterations to get to it. The same for basic movement and jumping. We actually iterated a few times before we found our current systems to work the way we wanted. They still arent perfect but by the time we had them we needed to quickly build a level. The level reflects this. Its a great playground to show our game as a Vertical slice , but not a complete level in a narrative sense. I worked on alot of texturing in the last 2 weeks. This gave me time to get a really quick substance designer and painter workflow. This will be greatly useful for production next semester. UI workflow as per previous projects was quick and simple since ive been the UI designer for every project we have done. In the last week ive just been polishing and testing stuff. I also started on the presentation. Vertical slice felt a bit more like prototyping at times. Since we spent so much time iterating on movement and grappling. Its was fortunate that we had Prefabs for the AI and other functions/mechanics so working with them was easy and adjustments were simple to implement once we had movement finished. I had hoped to flesh out the narrative and level design more, but we did the best we could in the time we had. https://media.giphy.com/media/3ohzdI9x9biPJYwxaM/giphy.gif
This week was crunch time on the texturing. Most of the 3D props in the scene are completed, but the level itself was bare, or was using placeholder textures. I spent a bit of time researching cartoon PBR tileable textures, and I applied my new knowledge of texturing in substance designer to create textures in photoshop. I’ve found that creating PBR textures entirely by hand has lead to a far more cartoony look than using Substance Painters PBR materials. These are good for a base, but certainly require a final layer of hand. I’ve created a series of PBR handpainted tileable textures to be used throughout the Area 52 level in order to create a cohesive visual experience. Some materials suit an industrial cargo area, others work well for generic sci-fi walls and vents. All of them use the same palette of greys, and I’ve added a coloured wall panel to try and liven up a few areas of the game, as the level is quite desaturated and grey. We’ve used emissives and bright particles to brighten things up, and the main character is bright orange so as to stand out on the dark background. I went through the GDD today and wrote up most of the information relevant to art. The game is pretty much entirely textured now, the only texturing left to do now is going over objects with a hand painted layer. The textures involved a lot of trial and error. I've never really made tileable textures before, especially not cartoony ones, so most of them required quite a lot of tweaking. At this point, however, I am confident that texturing from this point on will be much quicker now that I have established a pipeline. I also made a decal to act as a sign within the game. It's a simple BARRACKS sign, to let the player know that enemy guards will be in the next area. We wanted to lighten the mood a bit and add a funny element, so I added some graffiti that the guards have scribbled on themselves. Below are screenshots of the textured applied to simple cubes in-engine, as well as a screenshot of the textures in-game. This week our game jumped to a whole new level as we started to work on a finalised level design and implementation. After Josh and Zac planned the different stages of the level I was assigned the final part of the level to design. This section was intended to be made up of larger areas for the player to move around in and was aimed to incorporate as many of the mechanics learned to this point as possible. Much of my time this week went into designing this level using the new pro builder tool to construct the buildings and then manually place all the objects within the scene. Before creating the different rooms of the level, I first planned each room using a drawing to map out obstacles, goals and guard patrol routes. This proved to be very effective as it gave me a design to follow when putting the level together. The first small room/corridor is designed to introduce the player to the mechanic of laser beams within the game. The idea in this design is to get the player to navigate under and over the laser beams before reaching the next room. If a laser beam is triggered then the door at the rear of the corridor is required to open and release some guards which will run towards the player. This second room requires the player to navigate around guards on the floor before being lifted to a platform where they can unlock a door to the next room. It is designed in a way that requires the player to navigate through the room to reach the platform before being able to access the grapple points which are higher up and allow easy movement across the room. In this way, it combines our stealth mechanics with the fun mechanic of grappling within the same room. The third and final room in my scene is designed to focus primarily on the movement using grapples and platforms to stay above the guards which are on the floor below. However, if the player makes a mistake and falls to the ground they are then forced to traverse the room with more difficulty as they will need to be weary of the guards. The scene will end with the player reaching their space ship on the perimeter of the “space station” and then flying off to escape the space station. Other than level design and creation I also reworked the way in which platforms work within the game. This is because the moving platforms did not correctly update the players position whilst standing on top of one which would result in the player sliding off. To counteract this, I implemented the platform movement in a way which made the player and camera a child of the platform whilst standing on top. This ensured that the player remained on the platform regardless of its speed and allowed for smoother movement whilst on the platform. I also implemented the spark particle which Juane created to generate whenever the players rope connected with a grapple. This created some extra game juice as well as feedback to increase the fulfilment from grappling even more. Some other changes included reworking the way that the grapple pull works when engaging the grapple whilst grounded to accommodate for the new grapple animation. I also changed the pull to pull the player to half the distance between the player and the grapple. This was done to decrease the chance of the player becoming caught on the ground when pulling to a grapple.
|
AuthorContrary Scholars ArchivesCategories
All
|