It’s Been a While – Update of Sorts

So it’s been a very long time since I’ve had the time or the motivation to write anything here. It’s been a very busy couple of months for a few reasons, mainly being the crunch time in University, with coursework submission catching up with me and, with no classes to speak of, I’ve focused solely on the work. Trying to get it done and out-of-the-way so I can try to enjoy the summer without waiting impatiently for the results coming through. Hopefully not panicking about those results at the same time,

This blog is generally going to be a little different from my normal. I will go into the stuff I usual write about (dem vidja gaymes) but that’s not all. Anyway, let’s get this going.

3D Modelling Update – Environment Progress

So I’ve not really updated what I’ve done with my 3D environment lately. Focused mainly on my group work,for multiple reasons; making more progress in that and it’s part of the coursework submission to hand in a reflective essay, with weekly logs.

Though I have made some progress in 3D, it had gone a bit slower than I initially hoped. All the research has been done and is fantastic, but the character model in particular still needs a bit of work, which I can’t really show here just yet. I have worked mainly on my 3D Environment, a Near-Future Hong Kong Dock.

EVE Online – How I Lost Almost 15 Million ISK in One Day.

This had been one of the worst days in EVE Online I had ever had. I had done a couple of missions in the morning, purely to gain some money and standing with some agents. Pretty regular work with my Cruiser, standard encounters, nothing unusual going wrong or anything. I decided it was time to get to Low Sec Space, getting some more income that I’ve desperately been needing as of late. Boy, was that the wrong move.

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Basic Designs Complete!

So that’s the final 5 level designs extended and ready for me to prototype for the coder to play around with. It went well, honestly, especially being done when I’m not actually in Uni. I’m proud of them, I feel like they’re going to be a highlight of the game, just like the art style and premise. Of course, they’re not 100% finished, as nothing in a game these days really is.

There’ll be some tweaks and tweens here and there no doubt, making sure that everything works correctly and is fun, but I imagine the entire group will gladly help on that part and put in their suggestions. It also leaves room for expansion in the future, if we have time to make the game even more interesting. I might do some more sketches, if that does come to pass. It would mean that we’d definitely have something to go on after that, and shouldn’t be too hard to just add in at that point.

All that’s really left for me to do now is continue on my research articles on level design in a couple of games. I’ve already made some decent progress, and no doubt I’ll be adding to them over the next few weeks. It also gives me a chance to gather more images and articles about level design that will be really helpful in just making sure that once we have them in our game, they’ll be easy enough to change to be as close to perfect as possible.

That’s what I hope anyway. It’s at least going well so far.

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Level Design Update

This is the third time of me trying to write this, so bear with me as I try to collect my thoughts from about 8 hours ago (after the university computers with Internet Explorer decided not to save any drafts of even let me publish…ugh.)

After focusing on what we needed to get done from now on during Monday’s meeting, I’ve been expanding on the five selected level designs, making them larger and adapting them to the assigned instruments we gave them. This involves my current work of turning one of my earlier, vertical designs into a more horizontal level, with a piano theme. This hasn’t been as difficult as I thought, and even in today’s meeting I got some nice little tidbits of info from our Team Leader in how I could finish off the design.

While I work on these five, gathering up more research as I go, I’ve tried to think of other ways to make the levels more interesting. While adding environmental hazards will be a late addition to them, I think it might make them more dynamic, and it’s something I’m looking into while I am making these levels longer and more complex. It will also mean that trying to adapt the idea from some of our character artists would be easier. (This involves our main character luring enemies into hazards, rather than defeating them himself).

While I fill up my research with images, I do plan on writing a little something to go with them about two games in particular that I’m taking my most inspiration from, as they both have a lot of good platforming elements to them. While Rayman: Origins is a more classic platformer in every sense, it has brilliant level design. They’re fun, not lengthy and full of interesting challenges and obstacles. The other, being BIT.TRIP RUNNER is more obvious in it’s inspiration for the game, being musical based. The focus on that game, for my research at least, is how the music interacts with what you do, and the songs basically play because you, the player, are doing well. It warrants more attention, and I feel like it’ll be good to sit down and do a little in-depth research for them. It at least wouldn’t hurt.

With today’s meeting going rather well, it ended up with us deciding a few things. One, is that we will take an entire week to collate all of our work and try to get a lot done. This is great and gives me plenty of time to iterate these expanded designs and try to make them as fun as possible. It also means that I have more time to try to fit in this research I so desperately want to do. Two, we came to an agreement that we should be trying to book the sound booth to start recording Foley work for sound effects, which a lot of people seemed to be into. This is great news, as it gives us a chance to have some fun while getting things done, especially with the sounds and music being a vital part of our game. I can see it being a great time.

Overall, the past couple of weeks have been up and down, but are ending on a high note. A lot of work is starting to get done and what is being presented is a lot more focused and relevant than ever. Our coders have done an amazing amount of work and we almost have a fully working prototype with our own art assets. It’ll be great to see once it’s all together in one place.

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So much work!

Two meetings last week went rather well. The first, which I was late for due to prior engagements, was just generally seeing where we were. This resulting in us pretty much finding out that we were completely done with most of the music work. The only things we really need to sort out are backing music and sound effects, which we can hopefully get done soon. I can imagine renting out the sound booth will be a hell of a lot of fun when we finally get around to doing it. We also got a nice road to walk on for the future, which led me to knowing exactly where I wanted my level designs to go. It gave me the focus I needed, which helped a great deal.

The second, however, let us progress in some of the level design ideas which I’m extremely happy about. Having other people look at and critique what I came up with was the most helpful, and I’m hoping this week we’ll be able to make even more progress. Because of the first meeting, I managed to make more than 5 designs around not only the decision to make them more Vertical, but I even tried to design some around specific instruments or types of instruments. The Harp level went down well, like I had hoped, and we even got deeper into the design of the gameplay elements of that level, including invisible walls, a bonus challenge and even the positions of the other musical notes to collect.

This project really is going so well so far, and I can’t wait to see what we come up with by the time May rolls around.

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Research, research, research…

With time to kill before the group meeting this week I decided to continue doing some more research for the 3D Modeling module. As I still haven’t decided what character Archetype I wanted to create, I started with some more research on my Environment.

I had quite quickly decided against doing the Romantic – New York setting and went for Cyberpunk – Near-Future Hong Kong, so naturally I went straight into finding images from games like System Shock 2, Deus Ex and E.Y.E. while looking at movies like Equilibrium, The Matrix, Blade Runner and The Fifth Element. There is a definite style I’m wanting to go for, as well as plenty that I’m trying to avoid. I want it to look clean, pristine, more like Equilibrium, and not a high-technology paradise. I want it to look mor dystopian, and kind of creepy. The real scene I decided to go for, following these ideas was a Dock. It was a bit simple, but I have a good picture of what it should look like in my head. Hopefully, I can make that come across well.

The other thing I’ve looked at are pictures of Hong Kong as it stands today, focusing on pictures of its coast. It already looks semi-futuristic, with tall buildings filled with bright lights at night. It’s easy to see how things could be changed to make it look a little closer to what cyberpunk is actually described as. Getting a mood board together is really helping bring it all together. Though if Photoshop decided to work on these computers it would be a great help… 

There’s still a lot of work to be done. Once I’m comfortable that I’ve got enough details down and reference material, then comes the part of actually modelling the scene itself. And of course, the completely separate character model. There’s certainly a lot of work being done, and I’m excited to see what I can come up with by the end of it all.

The Work Starts Here

Well, today was probably the most productive this week so far.

The first lecture today (god-damn, 9am start) was just going over what the Game Engines module will be about. It seems pretty basic stuff, and looks like it might be more theory than coding or modelling, which is nice. The coursework is a report, so that’s definitely a benefit for me. It’s something that does interest me, especially since we’re touching, briefly, on level design.

After that, it was a bit of a long wait before the first meeting with the group for Entertainment Design at 12. This went better than expected. Though a few people didn’t turn up, we talked a bunch and got a good amount of ideas to at least get started on. Everyone also seemed to be able to input what they thought easily, which is a huge relief. With everyone feeling comfortable contributing it should be pretty easy to get stuff done.

All that needs to be done now is come up with a few concepts for our idea and then bring it all together next week before we have our meeting with the lecturers.

Of course, that’s after another early start tomorrow for 3D Modelling and a lectorial.

Semester 2, Year 2 Begins

Today was the first day back to Uni after the Christmas break, and in general it went a little…differently than I expect. The one lecture we had today lasted around 5 minutes, telling us our groups for the work we’ll be doing this semester, that we won’t have lectures for this module and there’s no practical lessons this week.

This means I have not only Tuesdays, but Mondays off too. This would be great…but I’m going to University to learn, and I’m hardly going to be in 8 hours a week. I have mixed feelings about this 4 day weekend.

On the plus side, the group work will be a lot of fun. I’m sure it’ll be great once we get stuck in and meet the people we aren’t familiar with. Hopefully a couple of us are good enough at code to get stuff done. A Facebook group has been made and the friends requests have been sent out. Things are looking up.

For this module in particular, there’ll be a reflective essay, so I’ll probably be updating this blog a little bit more regularly with the work being done at Uni throughout this semester, just to make things easier by the end of the year.

I’m excited to get stuck back in. Can’t wait to see what the rest of the modules will give us.

Star Wars: The Old Republic – Sith Juggernaut Prologue, Chapter 1

I’ve played a lot of The Old Republic since I first got my early access. I’ve managed to reach level 35 and am now part-way through Chapter 2 of the Sith Warrior storyline. I’ve been granted the title of Sith Lord, have my own starship and 5 different companions. I’ve loved every minute  of it, and it’s been great really digging into an MMO like this again. Though I did enjoy my time with EVE and APB (and I will continue to play this, to some capacity) I just haven’t been sunk in to this extent since World of Warcraft. I’ve done lots of bonus missions, daily Space Combat missions and generally as much of the side planet quests as I want to. I’ve still got a lot that I’ve not experienced on certain planets (I’ve not managed to find many Holocrons or Datacrons as of yet..) but I can’t wait to go back and explore these when I decide to give the story a break.

Though that is becoming increasingly hard to do, as this is one of the best story lines in a game I’ve experienced in a long time, and it’s in an MMO.

WARNING: Here be Spoilers! I talk about events in the Sith Warrior Storyline.

Image via Wikipedia