Weekly Summary: 5

19:41 BA2a , Interactivity , UE4 0 Comments

At the beginning of the week a primary focus was modelling a harp in Maya, as I'm wanting key items to either be a single colour in a black and white world, or 3D to really stand out and feel like they don't quite belong in the game world. I began blocking out a harp...



...to soon learn that there's a far more economical way of approaching that which would only appear from one angle, I was telling myself that unwrapping would be a simple case of using a single planar, but I don't even need to do that. I learned that if I used a single poly plane and projected a diffuse, an alpha, specular and normal map onto it, no modeling was required!  Adding a convex curve pushed it out a little bit more, adding a little more dimension.




And with a little specular...


Its a minor but useful change. Very time efficient and I'll be working on putting this in the game with perhaps a few tweaks!

World Swapping and Movement Modes

As so far I only had one world which you could run about in, and needed a second identical world, I copied and dragged out a new one, switching up the colours for now. I'd also fleshed out and finished the geography for my map.


The prospect of creating the float mode perplexed me, I thought I'd need loads of different nodes and inputs, when all I needed was an ascending Z axis input and setting my character to "flying", a mode already in UE4.


Battling with nodes and much rewiring of connections allowed the teleport to happen and floating to only occur in the other world, having to use some basic maths to work out the exact unit the character needed to move.


An error that was occurring consistently, was that being hit by an enemy in the purple world would teleport you back to the original one, meaning that when you try to swap, you're in black space due to the co-ordinates that had been programmed. So I decided to copy the enemy blueprint and have a separate set of enemies in the second world, that will launch you to the beginning there, using adjusted co-ordinates.

Collectibles and Other Mechanics

At this point I was also trying to implement collectibles and the ways of "winning" my game. Collecting orbs, small suns, from key locations within the map is how you can reach the end gate at the top and have it let you leave. There'll be seven orbs in the game, but only 3 are needed to escape, so you don't have to explore every nook and cranny to get them all, this will also lead to variation in people's playthroughs, people will be able to use different routes to each other and have slightly altered experiences and encounters. The harp, currently a blue, stretched, platform sprite can be collected via hitbox by walking into it.



The harp itself is proving difficult to set up. Once collected, pressing R should propel enemies that would otherwise reset your position away from you, essential for getting past certain rooms. Many methods have been tried, even changing the enemies from actor to pawn blueprints, yet I can't seem to get it all working quite yet.




The enemies need to be pushed in a radial fashion; i'm hoping to achieve this very soon.


Another current struggle is setting up the interactions for Death, I'm aware I need to use text arrays and a widget blueprint to set up UI for option selections, but the tutorial im following is providing fruitless results. The text and options are far less complicated than what I'm following, I'm really rather stuck with this currently.



The gist of the "conversation" will be either leaving him, but not before collecting an orb, or doing as he says and giving up.

The other way of winning and collecting orbs to escape has also proven difficult to achieve, I've set up the variables and nodes and have a boolean in place that checks to see if you've got the right amount to end the game, but I'm unsure as to why its not working.





 Another kink to iron out, but I'm confident in fixing theses issues promptly and I feel like I'm finally learning the logic and language of nodes.

I'm slowly setting up differences in item, npc and enemy locations n the separate worlds, visual polish will cement this.

After battling with Spriter and being robbed of my walk cycle, I simply set it up again, to create a flipbook in UE4 to have my own character walking and flying around the map.



In summery, I tackled most of my mechanics this week and whilst I have a few glaring issues to fix ASAP, I should have my core game finished very soon, aesthetics need to be tackled hard next week.

Some stray doodles about the first room, enemies, death and general ideas:



I'll end this post with coming clean about what my game is really about as well, as its such a personal issue I've been wanting to avoid it. This game is very much about manic depression, namely my own, and im trying to express my own reality here. The enemies are bad notions that land you at square one, there is a literal "rock bottom" where you can talk with death and most of the text spouted by npcs have deep personal links. Masks are  a big motif, comedy and tragedy, and they're more personified than the people wearing them- representative of the persona we project to others. This project is rather self indulgent and is a projection of self, the game is intended to be more metaphorical and artistic than pure fun. I've long regarded games as art, but its only through making one have I seen the breadth of creative possibilities in design.

Finally, this is also a dedication to my grandfather, a fellow thespian, artist and sufferer. I'm hoping to put some of his paintings in the game, to have a little virtual room in dedication to him. He had a penchant for the comedy and tragedy masks, I see it only fitting to use them in my game, as they summarise binary moods so well,

Weekly Summary: 4

18:59 BA2a , Interactivity , Research 0 Comments

At the start of this week, I blocked out the majority of my map to use as a basis for the game, building from the tutorial I'd followed on creating a 2D platformer from scratch.

I was introduced to the use of a construction script alongside the typical event script, both were used
in creation of the lift.




I'm unsure as to the use of the lifts in my actual game, but for now they're staying to playtest my level as I work on implementing the core mechanics. I now had the working bare bones of my prototype.

Lecture: Lean, MVP, and Playtesting

We had a lecture that covered a brief history of development models, ways of working to generate content, a game, in the most efficient way possible. There's the linear waterfall model...

The agile/scrum model...


The Lean method, brilliant for startup and smaller indie endeavors...the 5 whys are a way of tackling a problem, to keep drilling down by asking why, what is the root of everything?



And a break down graph that shows what this all really means


From a simple look, you can see the Lean method goes through the same process very quickly again and again, it fails faster to work out problems at much quicker pace, eliminating waste. The lean philosophy dictates that anything not adding value to the customer is  waste, waste can include unnecessary code and functionality, delay in software development process, unclear requirements, insufficient testing, bureaucracy and slow internal communication.



Amplify learning by testing the second something is done to change and alter and get feedback as soon as possible, this will get your product to where you want it to be much faster. Deciding as late as possible is another good factor of Lean, software development comes with a lot of uncertainty and making important decisions is best left until later, where you can make decisions based on fact rather than presumption.

An MVP, as Eric Ries Author of "The Lean Startup" describes, is a "version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort". So for my prototype, I need to create the core "game loop" which makes my game enjoyable and invokes flow, test it to see how it works and adjust accordingly. An Indie company would have very few developers, a few months to create their game and have a few mechanics to fine tune. To test the market with their MVP also.

Playtesting is imperative, but feedback must be valid, be it personal or from forms to gather metric data. Personal data can be good from a small pool of people, as it can illuminate issues that metric data might not be able to show you.

NPC BLUEPRINTS

I soon tackled blueprinting NPCs into my game, who I want to flavor my game world , I followed a tutorial to find a base but had to fashion my own set of nodes.


The basic components were a mesh or sprite, a text renderer, a box collision and a scene root. I wanted text to appear when you approach an NPC and leave when you left, and I could program text appearing when near, but couldn't make it leave, or more obtusely, text would already be present but coming close to the sprite would make it disappear.


However, I deferred from the tutorial and added variables, one to appear when close and another of blank text to appear when leaving, this got me exactly what I wanted.



I also wanted my character to feel uncomfortably quick, so experimented with the general character settings and ramped up max acceleration and max speed, however I may have to learn to remove the speed up and have my character sprinting straight away. Some brief feedback I received was that the fast movement felt like a joy, it was liberating to move so quickly. The NPCs were used as landmarks around the map and the boost offered by a fast moving lift, if a jump was timed correctly, would catapult you high, an anomaly as a mechanic! Enemies were also blueprinted, with collisions, that teleport the player back to the start if they reach you.




RESEARCH LECTURE

Within our first Research lecture, we were introduced to the topic of Creating Coherent Worlds, how fictional worlds are built and how we as people at a very young age imagine worlds to enter and interact in, from cardboard boxes to table tops with Lego sets. Whilst we're making games on a rather small scale, how can we think about our fabricated game worlds on a larger scale? Whats influenced us? And what are the origins of the game worlds many of us escape to today?

The game Circus Charlie, a rather old game now, took direct inspiration from the Circus and used its aesthetic and music  to translate into a game; people like going to the circus for entertainment, surely a game based around it would be appealing?

The game Kingdom hearts, a collaboration between Disney and Square Enix, has Final Fantasy characters intermingling with Disney characters, it works surprisingly well with a Pop aesthetic twist to the conventional Square Enix tropes. The character Pinocchio comes from Carlo Collodi 's story, written in 1881, which was translated into a Disney film which has then been blended into Kingdom Hearts, a whole world called Prankster's Paradise is present in the game and must be explored. The film AI takes a sci-fi approach to the tale, the wooden puppet becomes a robot child and the Blue Fairy is a strange projection from extraterrestrial beings.

Bioshock Infinite's world however  has roots in the "ideal America" and theme parks like Coney Island. One can see how all breathing, alive worlds designed and made to exist in games have strong links to other real life entertainments and how these have contributed to entertainment today, in the form of games. For my 3000 word research task, I'm to unpick game worlds and analyse what has fed into their creation.

Playboard and Sketches


Sketching out mechanics such as character interaction, use of the harp item and two movement modes, I realised  I didn't know exactly what I wanted my character to look like.

So I sketched out some silhouettes and began iterating.




I soon decided on an idea, and explored through sketches what I wanted from my simplistic design. The sun and moon no longer being your guides or helpers, I like this idea of an inanimate mask that when put on speaks through your mute character, and can give you hints and tips as to what to do next. Advice and her personality would change depending on what mode you would speak to her in.






I then sketched a side on view, painted in photoshop and began using the animation software Spriter to cut up my sprite to be animated for my game.


I've been learning to place down bones to rig my character, to animate a walk cycle. I hope to have a few animations in my prototype, if I can add them in the end!

Personal Work- Mood painting

09:18 Personal Work 0 Comments

Many personal things affecting me recently caused me to throw any form of planning or sketching to the winds and just throw myself at photoshop, colour first and with no greyscale. I had a lot of fun with this! Much can be improved and I would've spent more time on it, if I had it. I hope to post more personal work and studies here alongside my project work, on that note, I'll get on!

Weekly Summary: 3

14:29 BA2a , Interactivity , UE4 0 Comments

I began the week teaching myself some further, fundamental UE4. I followed more of a tutorial. creating a sliding door through blueprints that works via hitbox.


Going back in time a tad, I also learned the fundamentals of creating a 3D platformer, with explosions because education.



Back to this week, we also learned how to create jump pads and changing their trajectory, creating a pistol that fires bullets and collectibles that disappear when you touch them, in this case ammo but it could be used for many things in a 3D game.


However despite learning about 3D, im choosing to make a 2D platformer. Many of these nodes and blueprints could be applied to a 2D game.

I've decided to push my sun and moon idea, to create a platformer based on opposites that will affect all aspects of the game. There'll be two versions of the same world, two ways of movement and aesthetics to reflect this, alongside two ways of finishing the game. It'll be heavily metaphoric and interaction with NPCs will play a big part in the user experience. Taking a lot of inspiration from the way Middens felt to play, I want my play aesthetics to be abnegation, exploration and challenge. Abnegation and challenge may oppose, but that's intentional.

I got to work on mood boards discussing:

Overall theme and mood- an atmospheric world, what is joy and what is sorrow, something I felt was that figures carry sorrow really well, but to truly demonstrate joy, something more abstract, consuming and large scale like light or an environment works best.


Main Character- Im looking into wanderers, Snuffkin from the Moomins came as a key point of reference, harlequins and the Tarot Fool came to mind as well.


The Sun and Moon characters- are taking more of a back seat as characters in my head now, however I still want them present and very different.


And movement, shadow puppet aesthetic and various items to perhaps be usable in game.




I also sketched and fleshed out a basic plan for my level, the geography, though this is a first draft. I looked into game map layouts from older games as a starting point.






Red Xs are NPCs, purple triangles and orange squares are enemies, the white dot is the player, the green X is a way out of the game and the blue treble clef is an item.

Whilst designing the level, I had the idea of using the chakra points on the body as reference for the map.


Having a different challenge at different levels of the map, on the theme of each point, is the gist of what I'm thinking. Survival would put you in a life or death situation or Communication would have you talking to many people. Im thinking about making the game quite autobiographical, the chakra points leading psychological themes.

I also went over a few doodles to flesh out some preliminary ideas.







 I intend to have the basis of a working prototype next week, working on nodes and how exactly I can get the two world concept working in game. I also originally had the idea of basing my game in a tower, which I blocked out in Maya to paint over...


However I've left this idea of basing it around the tower, sun, moon, star cycle in the tarot to expand and push it beyond that, now thinking about basing it more around the human psyche, but we'll see where  the project leads in coming weeks...