Over this past year, my definitions and ideas of what world design, and worldbuilding are have evolved a lot. Going into Pat and Adam’s classes, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what we were going to be covering, but week after week I was surprised by the depth and specificity of the different things covered.
I’ve always loved fantasy, and especially loved the history behind why a place is the way it is and the things that live there. I always loved history in school, and have continued to seek out and absorb as much history as I can. Thinking about worlds as real, tangible places that have always existed, not just appeared as the games starts, has been a really fulfilling experience. Thinking about the people, their religions, their ideologies, the environments they live in, the language they speak, the maps they write has been so much fun, and I feel like I can really create and flesh out new worlds far better than before. There should always be a reason for everything. This is a piece of advice that I learned in my jaunt at a fine arts school, and i think this is really important to bear in mind when designing games. I like the idea that if someone asked me about absolutely any detail about my world, however minute, that I could tell them exactly why that thing is the way it is. Thinking about approaches like the inside out, outside in approach has also helped me scope my projects a lot better, and helped me figure out how to start designing a new world. Thinking about how mechanics and game designs can be interwoven with the world design has been hugely beneficial as well, and I think this is evident in the current project I’m working on with my team Contrary Scholars. I’ve tried to apply everything i’ve learned in world building to this project, and to this end, I’ve tried to make sure that every design decision is justified and explainable. Being able to have a lecture every week, and then try to implement the new things learned into a constantly evolving project has been a really good way to reinforce the things i’ve learned. Games like Dark Souls, The Witness and Braid have been really great examples that I’ve taken a lot away from. Redesigning theme parks and analysing maps has given me a greater appreciation for the design of spaces, and how things relate to each other in space. Things like lighting, composition, the time it takes to traverse different areas and scale are all puzzles that I now feel equipped to deal and experiment with. One of my biggest takeaways from these world building classes has been the emphasis on architecture. Architecture has always been something i’ve been interested in, but that has always seemed so daunting and alien. I’d never quite taken the step to actually learning about it, and when I found out that architecture would have an emphasis in the world building classes, I was really excited. I now feel like I have a really good, stable understanding of the basics of architecture, and a solid launching point for my own investigations. I look at buildings, and cities, and how spaces are designed differently now, and I’m sure this will have a huge impact on my work as I move forward. Always answering the question of ‘why’ has always been important to me, and I now feel like I have the tools I need to build solid, believable and exciting worlds going forward. Huge thanks to Pat Dunal and Adam Thompson, I’ve learned a lot this year, and I only hope you guys keep up the good work, because I know a lot more people would really appreciate the things I’ve learned over the past year. - Conrad Baked lighting is something that I haven't done in unreal engine before, so this week's blogpost has been really helpful. Learning how to set up reflection probes, bounced ambient lighting, and the use of textured planes to create sun-shafts has been really insightful. I feel like I know what I need to know to create larger, more complicated baked lighting for large scenes. I tried to get the lighting to come through the window at just the right angle to create some interesting lighting on the leaves of the pot plant, whilst also casting a nice shadow on the back wall. I was never really into lighting in games, but have always had an interesting in the lighting of films, so this has been a cool experiment in achieving a certain mood.
Spec OPs: The Line is one of the best games I’ve played in the last decade. While the gameplay is predominantly standard cover-based shooting, what really made this game stand out to me were the ethical decisions the game asks you to weigh up - could you, or should you cross ‘the line’ - and the stunning visuals of a post-catastrophe Dubai. The architecture of modern day Dubai is widely considered some of the most impressive and beautiful in the world today. The neo-futurist cityscapes of Dubai make the city appear prosperous, modern, innovative and gives it a sense of power and stature. This is why Dubai set the perfect stage for an experience revisiting ideas from Joseph Conrad’s classic novella, Heart of Darkness, as well as elements from the more modern filmic adaptation, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. After the worst recorded sandstorms in history, Dubai is buried, with the rich escaping and millions of migrant workers and resident left behind. Spec Ops: The Line follows Captain Martin Walker as he descends into a hostile and buried Dubai, in search for Colonel John Konrad, a decorated war hero who stayed behind in Dubai with the 33rd battalion of the U.S army against orders, to help the evacuate the locals. Konrad, suffering from PTSD from his time serving in Afghanistan, begins committing atrocities against the people he was initially trying to help, and it’s captain Walker’s job to find him. Sand is a primary mechanic within the world of Spec Ops: The Line, and it’s presence is constant. The world itself seems to be swimming in a sea of sand, and the primary gameplay takes place within partially and sometimes entirely buried skyscrapers. Parts of the world can be strategically destroyed by the player, allowing sand to pour into spaces, burying enemies alive, or creating new ways to traverse levels. The sand is also thematically important, representing the smothering and constantly present morally ambiguous decisions the player must make during their journey through Dubai. The world itself bleeds into the game’s mechanics and theming, and this unity creates a really powerful world that feels alive and real. The skyscrapers of Dubai make for very interesting level and world design. Because of their tall nature, the player often finds themselves in extremely high places, often having to repel to other buildings to proceed. In contrast to this, because of Dubai’s constant sandstorms, players will also find themselves in submerged portions of neo-futurist architecture. This contrast produces nice variation in gameplay, and again seems to represent the player’s journey with rises, and subsequent falls. Lighting is also very powerful in the game, and broken sections of building, or gaps in the skyscrapers constantly provide sunlight pathways for the player to follow. The way the sun glints off the sparkling sands is also a really nice touch, and really helps to catch the players eye and draw them forward. Spec Ops: The Line feels like a really thoughtful and lovingly made game. Questions of ethics and morals are often avoided in games, as these decisions have a tendency to make players feel uncomfortable, or confused. But the way the game’s world, it’s setting and the way these things are intertwined guide the player through the experience, really makes the decisions feel real, and impactful. The architecture offers level layouts that are refreshing and original, and the cityscapes of Dubai are faithfully reproduced and reinterpreted. The aesthetic of the game is much more than than just a visual aspect, as it is intrinsically tied into the game’s mechanics and themes. Metroid has always been one of my favourite games. Metroid has also always been quite confusing. The layouts of levels is confusing, the mechanics can be confusing, and the sheer size of the levels compounds all of this confusion. The maps have always been really, really important in these games, and are usually pretty useful and well thought out. A game that’s space is so confusing in 2D is even more confusing when translated to 3D, and this is why Nintendo put so much thought, time and effort into the maps in the Metroid Prime trilogy. Metroid games often have you visiting areas, leaving areas, revisiting areas and discovering hidden areas. Metroid Prime is no different, except that now, you’re exploring the world on a whole other axes. The traditional 2D maps of Metroid were not going to work in Metroid Prime, even though 2D maps often work well in 3D games. In order for the complicated hives that are the worlds of Metroid Prime to be legible, the team at Nintendo had to come up with a whole new way to show their maps. In order to help you understand your location in 3D space, they used the 3D space to create the map. Instead of a static plan of the area you’re in, the map is a dynamic 3D model of the gameworld itself. It updates in the same way that the traditional maps of Metroid do, through finding map files or by exploring, but it’s the way that the map can be rotated, zoomed into and twisted around that really helps players understand the spaces they’re in. You can pan and zoom the map right into separate rooms, or all the way out to get a good sense of the bigger picture, and see where you are in relation to the rest of the game. The sheer size of the map can give the player a feeling of claustrophobia, as you’re buried right in the middle of it. Seeing the beehive like structure of the map can really drive home Samus’ isolation as she digs through, what can feel like, a massive labyrinthine structure. As you pan and scroll the map , perhaps in a particularly confusing section of the game, you really have eureka moments as you begin to figure out how all the rooms and tunnels join together. The interface of the map is made really easy to use with the 3D controls, and this tactile experience makes the map not just work and look cool, but feel really good too. The map in Metroid adds a lot to the game, and even pushes the game's themes and feelings further. This is a great example of a map that has been thoughtfully hand crafted for the experience, and one that is weaved into the game's mechanics and themes, and isn’t just a generic map to be begrudgingly glanced at. The map is integral to the experience, you really want to use the map, and this is a sign that it’s simply a really good map. S.T.A.L.K.E.R is a survival horror game that I finished. This makes is really stand out amongst most other horror games, because I’m too scared to play horror games. S.T.A.L.K.E.R was a different story however, as even in it’s most terrifying moments, the atmosphere made the game so compelling, and made it feel so real, that I just had to make it to the end. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R, you awake from unconsciousness in ‘The Zone’ with amnesia, unable to remember how or why you arrived in such a horrible place. An alternate reality, the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R takes place in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, after a second catastrophic nuclear reactor meltdown caused strange things to happen in the area. The game has a nonlinear storyline and has features such as trading and two-way interaction with NPCs. The world is typically very dark, dirty, abandoned and dilapidated in appearance. People sparsely populate the land, and the player spends long periods of time alone in the wilderness of irradiated northern Ukraine. There is hostile military presence, clans of bandits, hellish mutants and dangerously unpredictable radioactive anomalies that constantly threaten the player. There are warring factions that the player can join, a myriad of weapons and armours, and even strange artifacts that can improve the player's physical abilities. All of these things work in tandem to create a world that truly embodies a ‘dog eat dog’ world. The player is constantly searching for food, water, medical supplies and equipment to keep themselves alive, and this creates an atmosphere of survival, distrust and selfishness. Your terribly maintained weapons constantly jam and misfire. The way all of these systems communicate with one-another makes the gameworld really feel alive. Because of this, it’s really easy for you, as a player, to leave your real-world ethics and considerations behind, and put yourself in the body of this dispossessed stalker. As well as the other people, monsters and environmental hazards you’ll encounter in The Zone, there are unique environmental hazards as well. Emissions, or blowouts, occur when when sudden releases of excess noosphere energy is released from the center of the zone, and when this happens, the player has a time limit to reach safety. The sky darkens, the screen shakes, a loud rumbling is heard, and birds drop dead from the sky. I remember hiding from my first blowout, and seeing the crows dropping dead at the entrance of the train tunnel I was hiding in and thinking to myself, wow. They really didn’t need to do that, but they put that extra little bit of effort in, and boy does it make a difference. The game has received a lot of flack over the years for its glitchiness, it’s bad translation and it’s difficulty. But it’s the difficulty that makes it so effective, it’s the bad translation that adds an element of uncanniness and it’s the homemade game engine that allowed things like parallax occlusion back in 2009. I played through the game for the first time in 2015, and it blew my mind when I saw a brick texture with parallax occlusion. The X-ray graphics engine was used to develop the game, and alongside the parallax occlusion, things like HDR rendering, normal mapping, motion blur, multisample anti-aliasing and the fact that a million polygons could be rendered on-screen at any one time, meant that the world could really look and feel authentic. The game is really scary. It’s really hard, and it’s very vague. But for such a dead land, the world feels so full of life. The atmosphere of the game is very complex, one of constant survival, stress, strategy and prolonged feelings of fear and despair. But there are also subtle nuances, moments of fulfillment, fleeting moments of safety and warmth. NPC’s sitting around a campfire playing guitar, eating and drinking, in the middle of a rotten, mutant infested forest. Coming across this type of scene after an hour in a terrifying locale gives you such a feeling of relief. After talking to the NPCs, trading information, food and ammunition, after listening to the guitar, enjoying the glow of the campfire, it’s really hard to then tear yourself away from that, to trudge off back into the woods, alone, and immediately in survival mode again. The atmosphere of S.T.A.L.K.E.R is very complicated, as it’s a complicated game, and while it’s certainly not perfect, it’s a really powerful example of an atmosphere that feels authentic enough to pull me through a really scary game. Open World Review: World of Warcraft
In my younger days, I played a lot of World of Warcraft. Ever since I watched the trailer for the game on the Warcraft III: Frozen Throne CD, I was obsessed. My parents wouldn’t let me get the game for a long time, as it had a monthly subscription, a whopping $20, not the kind of money a 11 year old has. It wasn’t just the orcs, dragons, dwarves, dungeons, swords and magic that fed my obsession, it was the sheer scale of the world itself. I had always loved playing videogames, but had never seen anything even remotely like World of Warcraft. I first played the game at a good friend of mines, and he showed me the starting area of one of the games various playable races. It was only once we left that area that I remarked ‘Oh, there’s more?’. This was when the map covered the screen. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I played that game for the following seven years after that moment. While I don’t play the game any more nowadays, I’ll never forget what that open world had to offer. I’ve still checked back every few years to see what’s different, but these days it’s very different to the game I played as a child. The easiest way to talk about World of Warcraft’s world design is to compare its earlier incarnations to the more relevant ones. When world of warcraft first came out, it was laid out in a way that really made you feel like you were a unique and important person in the world, and that you were making decisions for yourself. Quests in World of Warcraft were all essentially optional, and there was nothing stopping a Troll player from running all the way to the Orc’s starter zone, to complete the quests there and play through the game as if they were an orc themselves. Did this have a huge effect on the gameplay? No. But did that simple fact that you COULD do that make you feel like someone with agency in the world? Definitely. Now, thirteen years on, you can still do that. But there are a lot of things you have changed. Those quests I mentioned earlier? While most of them weren’t designed very well (essentially every quest was a kill/fetch quest: kill x amount of a monster, collect x amount of this thing a monster drops when killed), accepting them, going and doing them, and then handing them in required a bit of skill. Firstly, you’d have to find the area you wanted to quest in on the map, and make sure it was for the right level bracket you were in. If it was too low level, you’d get virtually no experience, and you’d receive outdated loot. If it was too high, you’d get your arse handed to you just simply trying to get there. Once you found the place, you had to find the hub, usually a town or outpost of some form. Once there, you’d run around the town collecting all the quests from prospective quest-givers. You’d have to read each quest, absorbing the hand-written information like a sponge as you stared at the map and tried to figure out where everything was in the zone. You would then plot a mental path in your mind, a path that would take you around the zone in a logical fashion, so that you could complete multiple quests in one journey, and hand them all in back in town at the same time for massive experience. You’d stock up on health and mana potions, reagents you needed to make certain objects to help keep you safe in the wilderness for longer. You’d send messages to all of your friends, to see if they were around and if they wanted to tag along to help you out. Sometimes you’d bump into random players while out on a quest, and you’d team up with them. It felt really organic. There was strategy, there was planning, and there was a huge sense of exploration. The friends you made on the road could become some of your best friends, and could even invite you to join their guild. Once in a guild, the world grew even bigger again, as access to the games darkest, scariest, meanest content was only possibly with very organised teamwork. Nowadays, while the core things are the same, there are some huge differences that really make the game a lot more autonomous, streamlined, and monotonous. Questing is essentially the same: You look at the map, you find the zone, you get the quests, etc. Only now, your map highlights everything you’re supposed to do, where it is, and in what order you should do them. Each zone on the map has it’s level bracket displayed, and once in a zone, little highlighted areas show you exactly where the monsters are, how many of them /10 you’ve killed, and there’s a handy little arrow on your minimap showing you exactly where to go. The game plays itself. You don't really need to think all that much, you just have to press the buttons. Need a party to team up with? No need to travel into town and talk to anyone, just click the ‘party finder’ button, and join the que. Need to beat a dungeon? Join the ‘Dungeon finder’ que. Need a guild? Same deal. Health and mana replenish themselves quickly outside of combat, so don’t bother buying/making potions and food anymore. No one ever needs to read another quest, just instantly smash the ‘accept’ button, and follow the arrow. While the game is far more accessible now, the magic has been lost in that quest for accessibility. No longer can you get lost in a poisonous swamp. No longer will you run out stuff and have to claw your way back to town. If you do get in a pickle, don’t rely on that stranger to help you, they won’t notice you, they’re just staring at their minimap. The world is longer designed to amaze you, to crush you, to confuse you, to reward you. It’s designed to get you through it as quickly as possible, so you can get to that precious end-game content. For this blog post, I wanted to see if I could rapidly create a cityscape using LeoCad. I looked for objects that looked like streetlights, vehicles, towers, power poles and other mechanical or urban forms. I used simple boxes to create the illusion of depth in the city, with the main focus being on a small set of objects in the forefront. I created a strange little street in what could be a more run-down industrial section of a city. I tried to interlock pieces in a logical manner, and tried to let the scene build itself in this regard. The layout was decided by the way parts locked together, and I chose the most interesting shot from this.
For this weeks blog, I've analysed that pacing of the third level in my team Contrary Scholar's current production, KLEPTO - Space Thief.
For the most part, I think that the pacing of the level is pretty good. It does gradually increase in difficulty, there are sections of increased excitement, and there are rest periods where the player pauses to take in the scenery. There's also rest periods where the player collects pickups. It's perhaps not as steady as it could be, but it does have a sense of increasing difficulty. The nice long rest section leading up to the final grappling section is quite effective. After solving the second box puzzle, the player stands on a platform that zooms up to the final challenge, starting off slowly and gradually speeding up. This gives the player a quick rest before attempting the final challenge, but also amps them up as it increases in speed towards the top. Players tend to be 'in the zone' most of the time, and are only pulled out of flow when they fall during grappling sections, so these are possibly too hard too soon. THE CAMERA DESIGN OF JAK III
The camera design of Jak III was the most refined of the series so far, and was the pinnacle of third-person camera design at the time. It utilised classic third person camera techniques, such as those developed in Super Mario 64, and refined them to create a very fluid responsive camera system. This was of huge importance in such a fast-paced action-adventure game, with an emphasis on combat, speed and verticality. The camera in Jak III is a dynamic third-person camera. This means that while most sections of the game give full control to the player, it does have some subtle automation. For example, if the player jumps, the camera pans up slightly, and also rotates upwards slightly, making sure that the player can see whatever it is that they are jumping up to. Another example of this, is as the player heads down a slope, the camera often shifts to a slightly higher angle, rotated to face downwards. This is again to reveal what the player is heading down towards. If the player is stationary, they are free to move the camera as they like, but as the player moves, the camera automatically follows and tracks the player, making it easier to focus on the task at hand, removing the distraction of having to control the camera. Without these three techniques, a game that requires a lot of jumping, and heading both up and down in levels would feel extremely unfair, as the camera would often occlude obstacles in the player’s path that deviate from a straight or horizontal route. Being a dynamic camera has some other bonuses as well. Jak III, while being first and foremost a platformer game, also has heavy combat elements, including the use of guns and projectiles. In a first-person-shooter game (FPS), the player’s reticle or cross-hairs indicate where the player’s weapon will fire a projectile. This is very clear, and if the player misses, they generally understand that it was because they didn’t line up the reticle with the target correctly. In a third person camera perspective, however, it’s not so easy to aim a weapon, as you can’t stare down it’s sights. A lot of games opt for a lerp between a third to first person camera with the push of a button in shooting sections, and this works in a game with a lot of tactical shooting. But Jak III is a platformer, so instead the developers built the world and it’s levels around this limitation, instead of slowing the pace of the game down during shooting sections. The camera in combat sections will often pan up to a higher view, allowing the player to see more of their surroundings. This helps the player orient themselves to face the enemies they wish to engage. Automatic locking on, and a laser sight help the player understand which enemy they are aiming their weapon at. To further aid the camera, the levels are built in a way that enemies can be placed in rows, in succession, or in a way that flows well, and feels good as the player runs and guns through the levels. Designing your game so that the camera is an integral element is extremely important, and the harmony that Jak III strikes between it’s level design and camera design makes the game a very fluid experience. After all, not noticing the camera is a sign that it’s a good one. For this blog post, I decided upon the neo-futurist movement, and decided to use the famous Zaha Hadid as my influence. One of her designs, the Wangjing SOHO, designed for SOHO China, is a neo-futurist complex comprised of three curvilinear asymmetrical skyscrapers. I wanted to create a cityscape scene with similar architecture, from a low angle at a certain time of day. I wanted there to be organic shapes, as well as reflective surfaces, so as to capture the sun's reflections. Der Spiegel describes Hadid’s designs as ‘resembling curved sails that appear to swim across the surface of the earth’, and to this end, I wanted to create a scene that reflected this image.
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World design theory (WDT)DevelopersThe goal of this blog is to relate current and past attempts at world design to further improve our understanding. Archives
October 2017
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