Reflection on group work

Being a small manageable group, all has gone well.
Managing my own time has been a little rocky and difficult recently, it's been the hardest part of this group work - which is a seriously good thing! Working in this tight group has been effortless and very enjoyable. We all have a say and are heard; shaping the project as a functioning group, and not a dictatorship.

Simone has been absolutely at the forefront of research, and has really excelled. She's fantastic at doing broad, specific and niche research, adding to the project directly (not just ticking boxes for projects).
She's also created some wonderful concepts that have really shaped the feel and scale of the setting. Something Simone has also taken up was the backstory - really fleshing out the character development and pushing for details that can feed designs. I'm really impressed with this, and after sitting with her and going through the whole plot - typing it up and making substantial adjustments we now have something concrete that we're both very happy with. I have absolutely no qualms with Simone and I think we're going to make a great duo going forward.

Mathias has worked with us well - researching the technical aspects we will later run into within the cut scenes. He's also added a lot of effort in shaping the puzzles and interaction with me (over beers).
I'm sorry to see him go, as I think we could've accomplished much more detail and technical prowess in this project with him on-board.

We were like Charlie's angels, but are now Cagney and Lacey :/
Still awesome, but one man down.

Simone's Research and Stuff

Simone's concept research:

Concept art = Research on the job:

Concept art is the first step in the creation of a game. This stage is where the ideas and designs for the game are created in a visual form. We design and create worlds and the objects for a client to their vision, as well as creating content from basic description if the client isn’t sure what they want. Concept art are there to create new designs to make that game stand out from the rest. This will include; creating environments, props (weapons, furniture, jewellery, etc…), characters, vehicles, and so on. The artwork for the artist crosses over a lot of different areas such as marketing art, but their main job is to create work that can be used through out the pipeline in other departments. The artwork does not have to be an illustration, but detailed enough to convey the designs to the team.

There are many different artists that I look up to and also some that are up coming who’s art is still improving. My top three artists that inspire me are: Feng Zhu (http://www.artbyfeng.com/), Kekai kotaki (http://www.kekaiart.com/) and *Sandara (*deviant art name: http://sandara.deviantart.com/). Their work is very impressive to me and I aspire to be able to create work just as impressive in my future.

Feng Zhu has helped me so much in improving my concept art work, as he has been creating free online videos tutorials about different ways that he creates work and what he thinks about other subjects in this field. He explains different ways to create designs and techniques to render these designs to a more presentable level. He also goes over things like portfolios, how to create a better visual library and the difference between illustration and industrial design.

Listening to Feng Zhu, a highly regarded in the field and noted for his designs in Star Wars, Transformers and Dead Space (to name a few) makes the information that he is giving you even more valuable.

My role in this project:

My role within this project is to create designs for different game elements that will be within the game. I will be designing the environment of the level that will be played as well as creating characters and props that will be shown. These designs will be created through paintings (Photoshop) and sketches(Photoshop and hand drawn). At the later stages of this project, there maybe some time to create marketing art for this project, but that will be decided later on.  

I have created a backstory for our game (not the finished story, just my own idea of it) which can be seen within my own blog. 

So far this term, I have created designs for the entrance to the tunnel/mine and designs for the tunnels themselves. Below are the images of these designs.

Tunnel/mine Entrance

Tunnel Designs

Research into mines and tunnels

The game demo that we are planning to make is set within a mountain base for one of the factions that will be a main part of the game's story. The feel for the game is based within the science fiction genre which made it slightly more difficult than creating a game around modern day where I could reference the technology that created them and how they have been constructed.

I found many different images for mines as well as their entrances, but I was looking for something that could show similar lighting to what we were thinking for the actual game. We are looking for something dim, but lit enough for the player to see the environment around them. The main light will be coming from small lights spread in small intervals along the tunnels' lengths lighting the way to the different locations throughout the demo.

The images that I have collected all have a similar arch shape to their tunnels. This is something that I have taken into consideration when designing the tunnels for the demo. Some tunnels also have a straight cut ceiling which gives a more hardened man-made look to the tunnel compared to the arching shape, this may be due to that fact that many of the arch shaped tunnels have a jagged surface to them, breaking up the man-made look for a slightly more organic style.

The floor of the mine tunnels are mostly exposed rock with a set of rails running along them, though some do not have the rails but instead have a smooth surface or one that is covered with some kind of flooring. There is an image of a mine from the game ‘Dead Space’ which has been broken apart on one side and has a panelled floor.  This image gave me a good idea of different aspects that a dark sci-fi game could look like and elements that could be included while designing the tunnel/mine for our game.  

Parachute test:

For the end of the demo we talked about having a cut scene where our character jumps off a cliff and releases a parachute. After we talked about this I started to look at parachutes in games and tried to find some rigs on the Internet. To my amazement I had problems finding any parachute rigs, and I didn't find any game rigs. I ended up focusing on the parachute in Just Cause 2 since it plays a big part of the game and you can use it whenever you want.
Looking at this I was thinking about using the method I used on my auto swim rig for the swimming motion. It's basically a sin wave. So my plan was to use this to add random noise to the different parts of the parachute. When I actually started trying to make the rig I had gotten another idea. To use nCloth in Maya and bake the simulation to joints. This worked surprisingly well and only took me a couple of minutes to set up and have it working perfectly. After baking the simulation to the joints I also animated them to make it look like it's opening up. Here is a quick demo of the test and how it is rigged in Maya. I've done another test where I put more turbulence into the nCloth and again this worked perfect.

Destruction test:

For another cut scene we planned to have a cave in if the player doesn't respond to the warnings he's given and get out. So I started looking into doing destruction in game. At first I played with the idea of real time physics, but quickly realised that it was unnecessary and would require more work to look good. Since it's a cut scene we have full control over the sequence and we want to have control over the falling pieces as well. Because of this we're going to do simulation and then baking out the simulation to the objects. If this is going to the objects themselves or skin the objects to joints that have the simulation I'm not sure. I will have to do more test on this and see what the difference in speed and efficiency is. When I've looked at presentations of how other big game companies have done destruction they have simulated and used joints, so there must be a reason for this. Here is the test I did. The workflow so far is this: Use a plug-in called SOuP to shatter the objects -> Use the Bullet plug-in to simulate the rigid body -> Bake the simulation to the translate and rotate of the objects -> Export to Unity. I recently discovered that the GDC Vault has a lot of free presentations where I've found a lot of great techniques that I am eager to try out. I've mostly looked at FX in games and this is something I really want to focus on in the future, in addition to rigging. These are some of the most interesting and useful slides I've found so far (And yes, I do love Naughty Dog):

• Creating Flood Effects in Uncharted 3
  • http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015453/Creating-the-Flood-Effects-in
• Pushing for Large Scale Destruction FX
  • http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015886/Tackling-Large-Scale-Destruction-FX
• The Tricks Up Our Sleeves
  • http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015898/The-Tricks-Up-Our-Sleeves

Project Planning

As the group leader, I've been looking into different group planning methods.
I used to use google calendar, as I could allow others to subscribe to it, and could clearly see the dates of the tasks. Though as more tasks overlapped - which they will - it became cluttered and difficult to see what was most important.
Ideally I want some kind of Gantt Chart of a year, that can be zoomed into for months.
We're using freedcamp at the moment, because it's a free service that allows users to remotely view the same information - our milestones and planning deadlines.
I've seen a website that offers a Gantt chart view, and also some PC software that does the same - it's just a case of finding something that everyone can use and open (as it may come down to having a file on dropbox that's constantly updated). The problem with the PC software, is that Simone is using a Mac...so we need to find something that will work on both..

Something I've found myself doing is over-estimating how long things take to build and complete. My estimations of time (especially during time in uni) are a little too long, and I think realistically we can complete tasks much quicker. Even though my personal deadline is quite a while before the actual hand-in, I still think that the milestones are generous.

[edit]
I've recently found GanttProject, a PC/MAC software that should enable us to view the project as Gantt/Brainstorm etc and gives flexible dates and responsibilities. I'll start filling it with the information I already put into FreedCamp.

The beauty of this project is that I can visually see all of the milestones, which ones overlap and assign people to the individual tasks. They're also colour coded as to the type of work (concept blue, modelling red).
There's also a wonderful resources tab that people can open to see which tasks they personally have to complete.

The Idea

This is the main plot basis (not revealing what happens IN the game demo though).

Date 2068

Elita (our female lead), once a military nurse who fell far behind enemy lines, now a spy for MI9 (Once a covert group set up during WW2 covering military intelligence, disbanded in 1945; now reformed) protecting European interests and lives. War has raged between the three superpowers of the world; China, Russian and the USA – the battleground being Europe. (For a century the three largest superpowers were fighting a cold war. First was the space race, second the net race and finally a fight for the European continent.) 

Elita was promised an extraction to safety, to her family, in reward for her services. Her motivation starts clear; to help others and fight for freedom. But who is she working for and what will they make her do or become.

Demo Plot

Elita is tasked with finding military codes within a highly guarded base currently occupied by the Chinese, set into a mountain in the Alps. She's working for MI9 to serve her continent, but also waiting on them to get her to safety – something they haven't been doing, as she is quite useful for them. After a communiqué with the commander of MI9, she enters the base.

On entering Elita, masked and kitted out for stealth (though unarmed) must traverse through the maze of tunnels, sneak past guards, find key cards and operate the correct terminal to steal the data.

How the game will work:

A lot will go wrong, and rather than dying/game over Elita will be transported back to the beginning, ready to start sneaking and finding items again. This is so that the game will not be considered 'too hard', as some of the puzzles are quite tricky. There will be quite a few set-piece animations and cut scenes, to build the atmosphere and reality of what could happen..

Link to Vimeo scripting test

This is the scripting test within Unity.
https://vimeo.com/40512901

Josh Research

I've been mainly researching the technical game-building aspects of making the game. This meant teaching myself javascript and making a series of scripts that test what we need in the game.

This shows that we can physically make the game in all technical areas. We still have a few tests left to run, but what we're going to do, and have been advised to do, is to make a fully working prototype using blocks to play out and trigger events in the entirety of the game.
To learn javascript I used http://www.codecademy.com/ and a book from the library. I had to also use a LOT of reference from the unity manual (as certain functions worked differently in Unity than in websites).

I've also been looking at the importation of complete cutscenes into Unity - meaning I could animate the whole scene in Maya, and then export that whole cutscene. This should make character contact and interaction seamless and smooth.

Looking back on my research it's mainly pipeline research, which is where I'm always really interested in projects. I like finding ways of doing, and making things work efficiently.