18/12/2019
Pre-Production
Week 1
This week we finished up all our Unit 9 work and started on pre-production of our Game Project. We brain stormed some ideas for what we could do and finally settled on a 3D thriller exploration game, where you must try to eat your food in the media are without getting caught. We thought this Idea would be especially good, because this allows the player to explore a 3D model of the Media area, which can help potential students, at which this game is aimed at, familiarise themselves with it. As potential students, i.e. Teens aged 14-16 or 17-18, are our target audience, our main focus during this period was to not only create an idea we genuinely believe is good, but also to make sure that idea resonated with the target audience and what we are trying to advertise to them.
Once we had the game idea planned out, I decided to start working on some concepts for the art style. First I referenced an actual sausage roll, so I could get an idea of what they look like, then I tried to simplify it. I didn't have much success with that, so I moved on to something I'm more familiar with; Characters. As we aren't able to do anything photo-realistic, I didn't try to design anything realistic either. I did however experiment with more and less cartoony styles.
In the end style 1 and 4 were most popular and so I was tasked with trying to combine them. This actually very much reflects the results of the audience survey we conducted, as the students there voted between fantasy and realism pretty evenly. So designing something in the middle of those fits perfectly. We conducted the survey To get feedback from the student body, so that we could assure absolute accuracy when representing the college in the game.
Since we would also be doing low-poly 3D models, and needed to keep the shapes simple, I also tried to design this 3rd style to be very angular and edgy. An important part of the style, was that despite the stylised appearance, the teachers still needed to be recognisable enough for even students who don't know them yet, i.e. our target audience, can recognise who they are and become familiar with them. And I do believe that this style is able to do just that. It also fit into the modelling style we had decided on for, as it was pretty basic shapes with more detail added in the textures, similar to the game night-shift, that we did some contextual research on.
This style was then OK'd and so I designed a side view for the character and started modelling it with Ella.
Since we would also be doing low-poly 3D models, and needed to keep the shapes simple, I also tried to design this 3rd style to be very angular and edgy. An important part of the style, was that despite the stylised appearance, the teachers still needed to be recognisable enough for even students who don't know them yet, i.e. our target audience, can recognise who they are and become familiar with them. And I do believe that this style is able to do just that. It also fit into the modelling style we had decided on for, as it was pretty basic shapes with more detail added in the textures, similar to the game night-shift, that we did some contextual research on.
This style was then OK'd and so I designed a side view for the character and started modelling it with Ella.
First we ignored the clothing and hair on the model and made sure that the actual puppet of the character was modelled out correctly. We modelled it with very basic shapes, and then rounded out all the square parts.
Once this was done we moved on to the hair. This part was very difficult, as it is quite a complex shape. We ended up having to model it in 3 separate parts, so we could get it to look right. I think we made it work quite well in the end though.
After this we started on the clothing. We thought he shirt would be the best place to start and so we began that next.
Alongside this, I was also tasked with mapping out a floor-plan of the media are, and so I measured all the rooms and drew one. This was especially important, as we needed the recreation of the media area to be as accurate as possible, as it is supposed to be a way for potential students to explore where they might possible be going to school in the future.
Then, using these measurements I created a mock up of room 112 in Unity. I encountered some problems, however where I couldn't get the first person character to move.
Week 2
This week I mostly continued working on things we had already started. Ella and I continued working on the shirt of the model and managed to finish it.
Then we added the trousers and belt, which was quite simple and didn't take too long.
Annette also helped me identify the problem in the slice and we managed to fix it.
Production
Week 1
Now that we've started on production for our game, we divided our class up into different teams, so everybody knew what they would be working on.
I joined the art team along with Daniel and Ella and was made Art Lead. As I was the character designer for the group my task for this week was to finish off the rest of the model sheets, so the modelling and animation team would be able to model them all.
Ella began making the Title Menu screen and Daniel edited some posters for in the game as well as designing some UI items.
When I was done with the model sheets I started working on the game over screen which I have almost finished already.
Overall I think we've been making good progress, as everyone has been working at a good pace and we've gotten quite a bit done already. However it will be important to keep up this pace if we want to finish all our assets by the deadline. I am hopeful we will be able to do so.
Week 2
I managed to finish the game over screen this week. At first I designed it to emulate the actual wanted screen in school, but glitchier, as this fits the theme of our game.
However after receiving feedback from the team, we decided that this screen was too "scary" for a thriller game, and so I was asked to redesign. I simply replaced the image in the monitor with one that closer resembled the real one and the team liked it much better. Whilst I still prefer the actual design of the first one better, I do agree that for our purposes the new one will resonate with the target audience much better.
Lastly I also started animating the first fully rigged character model. Using a reference sheet I managed to get the basic movements of the walk finished, however I ran into a problem where I couldn't figure out how to get the character to bob. Faz will try to identify the problem over the weekend and let me know.
Week 5
I have successfully managed to fix the problem with the walk animation, by simply locking the location, rotation and scale in the needed spots. Thanks to this I was able to finish it.
10/02/2020
Final Product
Evaluation
One of the most initial ideas we talked about for the game, was to create a horror game surrounding stanmore college. However after re-evaluating this in a later session, we decided against this and continued to brainstorm other ideas. We thought of doing a stanmore fighting game between the teachers, but ultimately could not because it would've been inappropriate to condone violence in the college. Then we thought about a Pokemon type game where you had to collect the teachers, but we were worried about its similarities to slavery and so we decided against this as well. Both ideas would have been good ways for potential students to get to know their teachers, however the above mentioned issues unfortunately outweighed this. By chance we started joking about a game where you would have to escape the teachers to eat a sausage roll in the media area, however this just happened to be the idea we all liked and what turned into our game in the end.
One of the biggest changes to the game was that we switched out the main food item. The idea for the game had been centred all around eating a sausage roll, however after conducting surveys, we realised that people actually ate and enjoyed chips more. And as we wanted the game to resonate with a students experience in stanmore, we changed the food accordingly.
When creating the art assets, I did not have any issues, however it was different once I started helping with the modelling. I needed to get used to the controls in blender again as I had forgotten quite a few things and this caused me to have some issues in the process. However none of these held me up too long and were always a quick fix. Other members of the team, as well as staff, were very helpful during these times, as they understood certain things much better than I did and were happy to help. I also believe that not understanding certain things and needing help from others, helped to build good communications with one another and improve upon my skills in that area.
I was definitely able to improve not only my 3D modelling skills, but also my confidence in them, however these were only low poly models and so I am curious to see how I would do with something more detailed. I also managed to get a better understanding of how texturing and animation works in blender, all of which can be seen in the character models.
I do not think that I was able to improve upon my time management skills as I often avoided writing myself deadlines on the board, so that I could just get my work done as soon as possible. I know that this is something that I need to improve upon, however I still prefer to work without. I do however think that leading a team and being responsible for part of the workflow running well, helped me build up my organisation and leadership skills.
Despite the game remaining unfinished, and therefore there not actually being much to do, we received quite high reviews for it at its debut. People seemed to really enjoy walking around a tiny recreation of the media area and seeing models of familiar settings and objects. They said it was "fun to walk around", "easy to control" and "entertaining". However, as an unfinished project, some negative feedback was unavoidable and so there were also people saying that it "feels empty" and "needs NPC's". They also remarked that the "studio is very bright" and it would be "better if it was interactable". However at the end of the day, we still received an 8-10/10 rating, and so I am quite satisfied with the outcome.
I am relatively happy with the outcome of this project. Whilst we weren't able to finish adding in all the assets, I think the assets themselves turned out really well and the things that we managed to put together in Unity looked really good too. I was a bit disappointed with how some of the characters were modelled, as you could tell that lots of things were done very lazily. However I do know that I did not draw my character sheets perfectly symmetrical either, which is something I definitely wish to improve upon in the future. I enjoy the overall theme of the game very much, as I am a fan of creepy things, and so all the glitchy effects were very fun to design. I am fairly happy with the way I designed the game over screen, however I would like to get better at designing menu layouts for games, as I am not entirely happy with the way I designed and laid out the buttons and Title. I think I did my job as leader of the art team quite well, as we were able to finish all our work very well and very quickly. However it was quite easy as there were only 3 of us and we are all hard and talented workers. I would however nonetheless like to take credit for making sure everyone was assigned tasks they were most capable of fulfilling well and that were, as of the moment, most important according to the workflow of the other teams.
Production
Week 1
Now that we've started on production for our game, we divided our class up into different teams, so everybody knew what they would be working on.
I joined the art team along with Daniel and Ella and was made Art Lead. As I was the character designer for the group my task for this week was to finish off the rest of the model sheets, so the modelling and animation team would be able to model them all.
Ella began making the Title Menu screen and Daniel edited some posters for in the game as well as designing some UI items.
When I was done with the model sheets I started working on the game over screen which I have almost finished already.
Overall I think we've been making good progress, as everyone has been working at a good pace and we've gotten quite a bit done already. However it will be important to keep up this pace if we want to finish all our assets by the deadline. I am hopeful we will be able to do so.
Week 2
I managed to finish the game over screen this week. At first I designed it to emulate the actual wanted screen in school, but glitchier, as this fits the theme of our game.
I also designed a mini-map with icons, but as I had already made a floor-plan beforehand this didn't take long.
Ella managed to finish the Title screen, and also designed a success screen. Daniel moved on from the poster editing for now, and finished off the rest off the UI items. At this point, apart from textures from the 3D models, we have completed all the art assets and so we will be moving on to help out the other teams. I am very happy that we not only managed to finish everything, but did so ahead of time.
Week 3
As we have finished all our Art assets, we have started working with other teams this week. Initially all 3 of us were helping the modelling team, however Daniel moved over to the Unity team soon after.
I managed to make a clock, blinds, and foam wall padding model, after which I also modelled the Student character.
I was quite intimidated by the modelling software, and was worried I would not be able to crete models at the desired quality. However in the end I understood the software more than I thought and I was able to create models I am proud of.
Week 4
This week I helped out with more object models, such as the chips, the caution sign, the plastic chairs and the curtains.
The curtains were a model I had been avoiding, as the numerous folds seemed very intimidating at first glance. However after giving it a try it was easier than I thought and I ended up with a model I was really proud of.
After this I also created textures where necessary for these models, and the ones I had made before. I have also made the textures for the finished character models so far, and will be making them for the future ones.
Lastly I also started animating the first fully rigged character model. Using a reference sheet I managed to get the basic movements of the walk finished, however I ran into a problem where I couldn't figure out how to get the character to bob. Faz will try to identify the problem over the weekend and let me know.
Week 5
I have successfully managed to fix the problem with the walk animation, by simply locking the location, rotation and scale in the needed spots. Thanks to this I was able to finish it.
After that I created the animations for two more models and with Ella's help, this concluded the animation work. Then I simply needed to create the texture for the texture for the last character models, and my work on this project was done.
10/02/2020
Final Product
Evaluation
One of the most initial ideas we talked about for the game, was to create a horror game surrounding stanmore college. However after re-evaluating this in a later session, we decided against this and continued to brainstorm other ideas. We thought of doing a stanmore fighting game between the teachers, but ultimately could not because it would've been inappropriate to condone violence in the college. Then we thought about a Pokemon type game where you had to collect the teachers, but we were worried about its similarities to slavery and so we decided against this as well. Both ideas would have been good ways for potential students to get to know their teachers, however the above mentioned issues unfortunately outweighed this. By chance we started joking about a game where you would have to escape the teachers to eat a sausage roll in the media area, however this just happened to be the idea we all liked and what turned into our game in the end.
One of the biggest changes to the game was that we switched out the main food item. The idea for the game had been centred all around eating a sausage roll, however after conducting surveys, we realised that people actually ate and enjoyed chips more. And as we wanted the game to resonate with a students experience in stanmore, we changed the food accordingly.
When creating the art assets, I did not have any issues, however it was different once I started helping with the modelling. I needed to get used to the controls in blender again as I had forgotten quite a few things and this caused me to have some issues in the process. However none of these held me up too long and were always a quick fix. Other members of the team, as well as staff, were very helpful during these times, as they understood certain things much better than I did and were happy to help. I also believe that not understanding certain things and needing help from others, helped to build good communications with one another and improve upon my skills in that area.
I was definitely able to improve not only my 3D modelling skills, but also my confidence in them, however these were only low poly models and so I am curious to see how I would do with something more detailed. I also managed to get a better understanding of how texturing and animation works in blender, all of which can be seen in the character models.
I do not think that I was able to improve upon my time management skills as I often avoided writing myself deadlines on the board, so that I could just get my work done as soon as possible. I know that this is something that I need to improve upon, however I still prefer to work without. I do however think that leading a team and being responsible for part of the workflow running well, helped me build up my organisation and leadership skills.
Despite the game remaining unfinished, and therefore there not actually being much to do, we received quite high reviews for it at its debut. People seemed to really enjoy walking around a tiny recreation of the media area and seeing models of familiar settings and objects. They said it was "fun to walk around", "easy to control" and "entertaining". However, as an unfinished project, some negative feedback was unavoidable and so there were also people saying that it "feels empty" and "needs NPC's". They also remarked that the "studio is very bright" and it would be "better if it was interactable". However at the end of the day, we still received an 8-10/10 rating, and so I am quite satisfied with the outcome.
I am relatively happy with the outcome of this project. Whilst we weren't able to finish adding in all the assets, I think the assets themselves turned out really well and the things that we managed to put together in Unity looked really good too. I was a bit disappointed with how some of the characters were modelled, as you could tell that lots of things were done very lazily. However I do know that I did not draw my character sheets perfectly symmetrical either, which is something I definitely wish to improve upon in the future. I enjoy the overall theme of the game very much, as I am a fan of creepy things, and so all the glitchy effects were very fun to design. I am fairly happy with the way I designed the game over screen, however I would like to get better at designing menu layouts for games, as I am not entirely happy with the way I designed and laid out the buttons and Title. I think I did my job as leader of the art team quite well, as we were able to finish all our work very well and very quickly. However it was quite easy as there were only 3 of us and we are all hard and talented workers. I would however nonetheless like to take credit for making sure everyone was assigned tasks they were most capable of fulfilling well and that were, as of the moment, most important according to the workflow of the other teams.
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