http://scottbrebner.carbonmade.com/
Here is a link to my new online portfolio. I figured since I'm not far from leaving the comfort zone that is University I should probably have an online presence I can consider "professional". It will be a space where I put up the more important (or complete I should say) pieces I do.
Tuesday 5 August 2014
Friday 20 June 2014
End of File
Well, here we are. The following post is a duplicate of my Individual Game Design Document with, of course, the addition of video footage. Enjoy:
Conceptualisation:
As far as End of File’s original concept is concerned I found the idea fascinating and wanted to change very little. This seemed to be the general consensus from the rest of the team so we did not waste time discussing the base idea; rather we devoted our early processes to conceptualising different puzzle that revolved around the use of perspective. We tossed around alternative mechanics and the one I pushed the most was that of extrudable shapes. As wonderful as the perspective puzzles were, I found the game needed some form on interactivity, no matter how basic. The extrusion satisfied this and I utilised it in the majority of my puzzle designs. I tried to combine it with perspective (as seen in puzzles like the "Catwalk" or the "Hole in the Floor") to keep the core element of the game alive in my designs, but I also tried puzzles that isolated the extrude mechanic. Some of these were more for platforming type puzzles to satisfy that classic urge to climb about and explore. One puzzle I am particularly proud of that uses extrusion but indirectly plays on perspective is the "Gravity Shift Staircase". This was one of my first designs and by far one of my strongest and I am grateful that the James was able to implement it early so we could refine it.
An idea I was able to contribute to EOF that was separate from Adrian’s original vision was the characters of Jerry and Kathleen. I found EOF’s narrative lacked a human (or more broadly, natural) touch and had the potential to alienate players and make the game an emotionless experience. I created a series of notes that are visible to the player from certain places in the EOF world. They are written as if they are embedded in the world’s code. Finding these comments gradually unravels a somewhat passive-aggressive conversation between the dominating Kathleen and apathetic Jerry. The purpose of these notes is to expand the narrative of the EOF world as well as providing some comic relief from the constant puzzles. Other ways I wanted to make EOF more natural was through the geometric “flutterbys” and “cube clouds”. Having recognisable natural elements in the blocky environment would ideally invoke a sense of comfort in players, particularly in “Jerry’s Sanctuary”, and make the world seem less uncaring.
Of the numerous puzzles and environments that feature in EOF, six puzzles and two intermission spaces were of my design. As the majority of them are stair-based extrusion with a defining feature or two, they are quite mathematical in the way they are made. I drew inspiration from the idea that these spaces would be produced by code. I tried to make the other spaces follow a pattern but utilise more interesting shapes for variety.
The soundtrack of EOF was produced by Chris and I. I only ended up making two of the eight or so music tracks we had. My attention was directed at all the sound effects which I created using edits of audio from freesound.org and my personal collection of sound samples. Originally I had an array of ten perspective glitch samples and eight extrusion glitch samples but the extrusion sounds never made it to the final game. I also composed the high pitched glitch shriek for the falling intro sequence but produced this after I had already made my asset montage so it did not feature. This isn't necessarily a bad thing either as it is harsh on the ears.
Together with Reece I designed the GUI for the pause menu and produced the tutorial screen seen at the game’s beginning. The original idea was to have an animated PNG for each button which would glitch out but fix itself when the player moved their mouse over the button. I created the frames in Photoshop and rendered them out as a GIF from Premiere but unfortunately we ran out of time to get the code to accept them so we had to settle on having the buttons flick between two images; glitched and stable.
During the last few days before the submission I found myself playtesting our game every time Adrian and James made a change. Out of familiarity with our content I made both the trailer and walkthrough for EOF. As I worked on the trailer I tried pairing the footage we had with the different soundtracks Chris and I produced. Unfortunately the pacing was too constant for all of them so I reverted back to the original song Adrian had used in his teaser trailer in his initial pitch of EOF (”11” by InSpectr). I decided to leave the walkthrough silent considering all our puzzles are visual based and it is far easier to just show the solution than talk about it.
Where to from here:
I believe EOF has excellent potential for further development beyond what we managed in the time we had. Given an extra couple of months I believe we could develop a version of EOF to play on the oculus rift. We would also have time to bang out the bugs that we ran out of time to fix as well as produce more of the puzzles we had originally conceptualised. Adrian mentioned rebuilding the game from scratch in Unreal 4. Despite being able to hang onto our Maya assets I would use the opportunity to review and refine what we have. We could argue that EOF is designed for the oculus rift or at least would provide a unique experience for it so I would gladly put in the effort to create an adaptation.
Some of the things I would change would be to have more coherency in the colours selected for different level e.g. for each level stemming from Hub level 2 would have a background that is a pastel shade of purple with violet highlights on doodads. I would like to try something similar with the shapes that we use. Imagine a series of extrusion based puzzles where the environment is mathematically precise squares followed by a series of perspective bridge and ramp puzzles where the environments are incredibly angular. I would like to improve the quality of the music I produced as well as creating new tracks for different atmospheres. For the sound effects I would like to create more original sound effects to gradually replace the open source ones.
Conclusion:
End of File has been an excellent experience. The team was easy to work with and we were highly productive as a unit. I can appreciate the importance of playtesting now as it was our go to method for debugging and polishing. End of File is a game I can honestly say I am proud to have helped develop.
As far as End of File’s original concept is concerned I found the idea fascinating and wanted to change very little. This seemed to be the general consensus from the rest of the team so we did not waste time discussing the base idea; rather we devoted our early processes to conceptualising different puzzle that revolved around the use of perspective. We tossed around alternative mechanics and the one I pushed the most was that of extrudable shapes. As wonderful as the perspective puzzles were, I found the game needed some form on interactivity, no matter how basic. The extrusion satisfied this and I utilised it in the majority of my puzzle designs. I tried to combine it with perspective (as seen in puzzles like the "Catwalk" or the "Hole in the Floor") to keep the core element of the game alive in my designs, but I also tried puzzles that isolated the extrude mechanic. Some of these were more for platforming type puzzles to satisfy that classic urge to climb about and explore. One puzzle I am particularly proud of that uses extrusion but indirectly plays on perspective is the "Gravity Shift Staircase". This was one of my first designs and by far one of my strongest and I am grateful that the James was able to implement it early so we could refine it.
 |
| Catwalk |
 |
| Hole in the Floor |
 |
| Gravity Shift Staircase |
Production:
Producing animated assets was what I sunk most of my time into. All of the doors, clouds and moving doodads in the game were my work. While Chris Read was also doing asset work in Maya, his was more environmental focussed than mine. I wanted to produce objects for both show and or the player to interact with. I constantly kept in mind that having such a minimal aesthetic meant we ran the risk of people seeing our game as bland opposed to minimalist. Of course our mechanic dictated our aesthetic but that is no excuse to make our world boring. For that reason I wanted to fill it with a range of moving objects that showed that this strange environment the player is exploring is alive, emphasised further by the natural elements I mentioned earlier. Many of the doodads serve no other purpose than to look cool and move on their own, but that is just fine. The colour coding used in EOF means players can tell what is important straight away, so I was free to make my assets as excessive-yet-pointless as I wanted.The soundtrack of EOF was produced by Chris and I. I only ended up making two of the eight or so music tracks we had. My attention was directed at all the sound effects which I created using edits of audio from freesound.org and my personal collection of sound samples. Originally I had an array of ten perspective glitch samples and eight extrusion glitch samples but the extrusion sounds never made it to the final game. I also composed the high pitched glitch shriek for the falling intro sequence but produced this after I had already made my asset montage so it did not feature. This isn't necessarily a bad thing either as it is harsh on the ears.
Together with Reece I designed the GUI for the pause menu and produced the tutorial screen seen at the game’s beginning. The original idea was to have an animated PNG for each button which would glitch out but fix itself when the player moved their mouse over the button. I created the frames in Photoshop and rendered them out as a GIF from Premiere but unfortunately we ran out of time to get the code to accept them so we had to settle on having the buttons flick between two images; glitched and stable.
During the last few days before the submission I found myself playtesting our game every time Adrian and James made a change. Out of familiarity with our content I made both the trailer and walkthrough for EOF. As I worked on the trailer I tried pairing the footage we had with the different soundtracks Chris and I produced. Unfortunately the pacing was too constant for all of them so I reverted back to the original song Adrian had used in his teaser trailer in his initial pitch of EOF (”11” by InSpectr). I decided to leave the walkthrough silent considering all our puzzles are visual based and it is far easier to just show the solution than talk about it.
Where to from here:
I believe EOF has excellent potential for further development beyond what we managed in the time we had. Given an extra couple of months I believe we could develop a version of EOF to play on the oculus rift. We would also have time to bang out the bugs that we ran out of time to fix as well as produce more of the puzzles we had originally conceptualised. Adrian mentioned rebuilding the game from scratch in Unreal 4. Despite being able to hang onto our Maya assets I would use the opportunity to review and refine what we have. We could argue that EOF is designed for the oculus rift or at least would provide a unique experience for it so I would gladly put in the effort to create an adaptation.
Some of the things I would change would be to have more coherency in the colours selected for different level e.g. for each level stemming from Hub level 2 would have a background that is a pastel shade of purple with violet highlights on doodads. I would like to try something similar with the shapes that we use. Imagine a series of extrusion based puzzles where the environment is mathematically precise squares followed by a series of perspective bridge and ramp puzzles where the environments are incredibly angular. I would like to improve the quality of the music I produced as well as creating new tracks for different atmospheres. For the sound effects I would like to create more original sound effects to gradually replace the open source ones.
Conclusion:
End of File has been an excellent experience. The team was easy to work with and we were highly productive as a unit. I can appreciate the importance of playtesting now as it was our go to method for debugging and polishing. End of File is a game I can honestly say I am proud to have helped develop.
Tuesday 17 June 2014
Make Like Flanders and Doodily-Daddily
With the addition of the intermission spaces I wanted to create some doodads to bring them to life. These animated geometries serve no purpose beyond aesthetic but do indicate that there is more to our world than cubes.
I also built and animated these but that happened post video so you'll just have to pretend that they look totally awesome in motion. It has yet to be tested whether I actually managed to fix the animation, but the Flutterbys may yet make an appearance too.
Adrian and I have been discussing the intro menu quite a lot recently and what we have in mind is a room that the player spawns in that has the menu controls as interactive buttons around the room. The player will spawn in front of a wall that has the player controls on it described as unnecessarily complicated/computerised versions of what they actually are ie. move (vector translation), run (velocity amplifier), look around with mouse (visual tracking).
Thursday 12 June 2014
Kickin' Ass and Bakin' Frames
The one thing I both love and hate about implementation is you find everything wrong with what you've created. Unity doesn't seem to agree with Maya's graph editor post- and pre- infinity functions so I had to go through the clouds I'd made and bake the loop into them so James could put them into the cloud generator he's been working on.
The second space is more active with animated pieces. It makes use of the power conduit I made ages ago as a little something to add more life to the world.
I've also managed to create some pretty cool looking intermission spaces for the player to roam in between puzzles. I found some stray faces in the first intermission stage which I cleaned up as well as adding a message for players to find.
Awesomesauce.
Friday 6 June 2014
Post Beta Reflection
I felt our Beta presentation went really well. Adrian was thorough and efficient in explaining the aspects of our game whilst keeping it interesting. I think you could tell that as a team we were proud of what we had produced at this stage in the project. I was piloting the demo while Adrian spoke, showing off the elements as he mentioned them.
Something I noticed that Kah and Stuart mentioned afterwards was how much time was spend in corridors. I think what we need is some more diversity in what they look like, as well as some open traversal in which players are able to explore a bit more to satisfy their platforming urges. Although our aesthetic may be simple there is an element of beauty that comes with the minimalist design.
I have collected several people to playtest our game over this week and most of them tried running around the levels to explore before they addressed the puzzles. If we were to give them more space to play around in it would give players room to breathe, and they can tackle the puzzle when they are ready to progress. EOF is an experience, so there is no reason why we should rush it.
Other feedback was as follows:
-More difficult puzzles (well yeah fair enough)
-Bounce section (three of the four discovered the extrude launch and loved it. They want a puzzle designed around it)-Indication to jump off edges (if stuck its okay to fall off an edge to respawn)-Side-stepping (people still fidget when trying to line up perspectives)-Static indicators (only works when not moving and within an expanded proximity but part of the screen fuzzes in the direction of the solution. This would only work if the player stands still for 3 seconds or more, kind of a "I'm desperate for a clue" moment)-Make players aware of sprint function (self explanatory)-Payoff for random exploration (more hidden messages)-Hideous blue (Thomas didn't like it)
As far as indicating falling is okay I think it would be as simple as placing the cloud assets I made beneath the levels as well as above them. If players see an object beneath them then that gives some indication that there is space below them, not just an infinite white drop. Some of the more reckless players may try to jump on the clouds in which case they will be teleported safely back to the level and the lesson will have been learnt.
To avoid people fidgeting when trying to line up perspective I think we need some kind of "Patience is a virtue" message that appears if they try to line up a solution but give up because they keep shifting out of the solution zone.
The static indicators may be a bit harder to accomplish and the team has yet to discuss whether we think it is necessary or not.
I have produced another glitch title for the menu as well.
The tamer of the two is what the option looks like when the player's mouse is over it. Otherwise it glitches out as the second image shows.
Something I noticed that Kah and Stuart mentioned afterwards was how much time was spend in corridors. I think what we need is some more diversity in what they look like, as well as some open traversal in which players are able to explore a bit more to satisfy their platforming urges. Although our aesthetic may be simple there is an element of beauty that comes with the minimalist design.
I have collected several people to playtest our game over this week and most of them tried running around the levels to explore before they addressed the puzzles. If we were to give them more space to play around in it would give players room to breathe, and they can tackle the puzzle when they are ready to progress. EOF is an experience, so there is no reason why we should rush it.
Other feedback was as follows:
-More difficult puzzles (well yeah fair enough)
-Bounce section (three of the four discovered the extrude launch and loved it. They want a puzzle designed around it)-Indication to jump off edges (if stuck its okay to fall off an edge to respawn)-Side-stepping (people still fidget when trying to line up perspectives)-Static indicators (only works when not moving and within an expanded proximity but part of the screen fuzzes in the direction of the solution. This would only work if the player stands still for 3 seconds or more, kind of a "I'm desperate for a clue" moment)-Make players aware of sprint function (self explanatory)-Payoff for random exploration (more hidden messages)-Hideous blue (Thomas didn't like it)
As far as indicating falling is okay I think it would be as simple as placing the cloud assets I made beneath the levels as well as above them. If players see an object beneath them then that gives some indication that there is space below them, not just an infinite white drop. Some of the more reckless players may try to jump on the clouds in which case they will be teleported safely back to the level and the lesson will have been learnt.
To avoid people fidgeting when trying to line up perspective I think we need some kind of "Patience is a virtue" message that appears if they try to line up a solution but give up because they keep shifting out of the solution zone.
The static indicators may be a bit harder to accomplish and the team has yet to discuss whether we think it is necessary or not.
I have produced another glitch title for the menu as well.
Wednesday 4 June 2014
Beta Polishing
For a beta shine. I figured I should put a post up to show I'm still alive. I didn't forget about you internet, I swear. Anyway, I realised I never put up proper images of the tower level I whipped up ages ago.
This is more of a luxury level and won't feature in our initial beta. I is pretty much an obstacle course for extrusion and perspective which should satisfy the player's inner platformer. Whether it makes it to the final game, I don't know. I'd like it to be in because it looks fun to run around in but I've learned not to get my hopes up with these kind of things with due dates looming so near.
I don't have any shiny new images to show you guys either. The past week has been dedicated to herding stray normals and touching up things we want in the beta. Polish, polish, polish. I want to see my face in those levels...
I don't have any shiny new images to show you guys either. The past week has been dedicated to herding stray normals and touching up things we want in the beta. Polish, polish, polish. I want to see my face in those levels...
Monday 26 May 2014
Time to Refine
There is also a loop track for this that carries any echoes from the loop. I animated the power core but I found myself struggling to push it any further than anything basic considering my brain currently feels like its been filled with glue.
My current goals are to fix the floor of the hole puzzle due to misbehaving normals. I need to process the sound effects I found into usable sound bites and improve the core if I think it necessary. I also have two more puzzle ideas but I'll only put the effort into making them once we have a solid demo. I believe we are at the point where we should be refining what we have rather than cranking out more content. Quality over quantity and all that.
Thursday 22 May 2014
Cube Storm
Tuesday 20 May 2014
Puzzle Bulking
I love how simple our aesthetic is. It's so easy to crank out a puzzle once it's been conceptualised. These two I started today and I'm pretty happy with both.
The first has a very simple concept; extrude the blocks horizontally to form something to climb on. It only differs from the early ones by having extrusion be horizontal instead of vertical. Climbing around the pillar in the centre of the puzzle should be entertaining as it isn't a linear path. The solution is obvious from the start so this puzzle is more for bulking out the beta. These are the types of puzzles I think would go well to bracket the more difficult ones, almost as a means of reassuring the player that the game isn't cheating... much.
This is a perspective-extrusion combo puzzle to be put anywhere in the world. It relies on the player having a limited distance over which their click will respond in something extruding. This will require them to build a staircase to reach the block that extrudes into a bridge. From there they can reach the middle platform and extrude another block. Unfortunately this block maxes out just too far from the ledge the player needs to get to, and they need to use perspective to make it reach that last bit. There is also another hidden comment left by "Kathleen the programmer" for her comrade "Jerry".
Monday 19 May 2014
Intentional Glitches
I think I called my sister a glitch in life once, as siblings do... She's tough. Anyway, here's a re-cap on what I've been up to for EOF recently: firstly I finished another level for extrusion staircase puzzles (with one or two more on the way). It was supposed to be quite simple but then I realised that there will be a decent amount of trail and error with getting the stairs to line up and there will most likely be an element of backtracking necessary to get it perfect. The ramp downstairs is also slightly concealed to encourage a bit of exploration.
I also slipped this in beneath one of the drops. I had this idea of adding a bit of comedy to the game by having comments from the "programmers" of the world who are in the middle of a passive aggressive conversation about the state of the system. These comments are all one-sided shapes, therefore can only be viewed from the right angle. For this reason they would be placed in areas that the player could only stumble onto them by accident.
I also collected a bunch of base sound effects that we can use in the game. Most of them are variants on glitch noises so we'll have a range to choose from. The credit for these sound effects belong to those who uploaded them to freesound.org;
http://www.freesound.org/people/syn2x-v0/sounds/2314/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Robert%20Bar/sounds/101226/
http://www.freesound.org/people/gumballrimpoche/sounds/65428/
http://www.freesound.org/people/AlienXXX/sounds/195533/
http://www.freesound.org/people/klangfabrik/sounds/178128/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Jace/sounds/35291/
http://www.freesound.org/people/VlatkoBlazek/sounds/185761/
After talking over the current soundtrack with Adrian he said that the music we had was too upbeat. I produced this to create a more ambient, lonely feel: https://soundcloud.com/scotty-brebner/eof-ambience
Another thing I've started to consider is the aesthetic that will be used for a glitch when the world changes. How we're going to project the image to the character is currently undecided as we need to look into what our options are such as camera filters or invisible planes with the texture on them etc. Regardless, I gathered some images to look over the type of textures I want to create.
Rather than full screen disruption I prefer the sort of glitches presented in the second image. Completely messing with the screen makes it clear that we're hiding a change behind it but I believe the right level of subtlety will conceal the tackiness of a jump by presenting it in a an intentionally jumpy way... if that makes sense...
http://www.freesound.org/people/syn2x-v0/sounds/2314/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Robert%20Bar/sounds/101226/
http://www.freesound.org/people/gumballrimpoche/sounds/65428/
http://www.freesound.org/people/AlienXXX/sounds/195533/
http://www.freesound.org/people/klangfabrik/sounds/178128/
http://www.freesound.org/people/Jace/sounds/35291/
http://www.freesound.org/people/VlatkoBlazek/sounds/185761/
After talking over the current soundtrack with Adrian he said that the music we had was too upbeat. I produced this to create a more ambient, lonely feel: https://soundcloud.com/scotty-brebner/eof-ambience
Another thing I've started to consider is the aesthetic that will be used for a glitch when the world changes. How we're going to project the image to the character is currently undecided as we need to look into what our options are such as camera filters or invisible planes with the texture on them etc. Regardless, I gathered some images to look over the type of textures I want to create.
Wednesday 14 May 2014
Channelling Bowie
I feel like I'm planning the labyrinth with all these staircase puzzles. It's been good to get back to modelling the little mind-benders now that my other classes have had their hand-ins.
There's still plenty to do before these become usable however. There's a rendering issue with single sided shapes and since the rooms are cutaways from squares that means I have some tweaking to do.
I also cranked out a new set of doors that wouldn't be lost on the Enterprise. I make a little "pssshhhh" noise in my head every time I see them open.
Once I do the perspective trick door in this style then we'll have enough door assets... maybe... hopefully... I don't want to animate a 32-piece door.
I also cranked out a new set of doors that wouldn't be lost on the Enterprise. I make a little "pssshhhh" noise in my head every time I see them open.
Thursday 8 May 2014
My Current State of Work is a AAA Battery
Alpha, Asana and Assets. So today was the alpha presentations for everyone's games. We got to see Odyssey and The Mountain's alphas which gave us some scope on where we should be at.
The main points of feedback were that we needed more puzzles and we need to adjust our aesthetic. As far as puzzles are concerned its just a matter of cranking them out. We're going to split off into designer/coder pairs and produce a puzzle each which we'll stitch to the main world once they are completed. The edge renderer for the aesthetic is quite volatile at the moment and is spamming random black lines on otherwise blank surfaces which looks a bit nasty. Something we were considering was this glitch aesthetic for concealing the perspective transitions that could be applied to the general appearance of objects. Shapes could have a cyan/magenta/yellow edge to them that are ever so slightly displaced, kind of like the red and blue used in a 3D movie.
Other gameplay elements that we need to work on are getting the jump more natural and making the collision sphere for the player against walls and such a bit smaller. We need to fix the checkpoint teleportation for when the player falls of the edge of something as well because at the moment they just fall infinitely.
I've been working alongside Chris to produce some music and here is my first attempt at a game soundtrack ever:
https://soundcloud.com/scotty-brebner/sets/puzzling-echoes
I used FL Studio and some plug-ins to produce it. At the moment its a bit energetic and the kind of music we need is more ambient and incomplete. Only once the player starts fixing the world does the music become more whole.
Lastly I have a new set of assets to work on. The original perspective door I made was cool as far as the illusion was concerned but it looked boring. After a talk with Adrian we decided on making our corridors widened octagons and our doors resemble Star Trek airlocks.
Pretty much once Iv'e got my level with James sorted I'm going to work on producing a 4-piece and 8-piece door as well as recreating the perspective illusion with this new shape.
The main points of feedback were that we needed more puzzles and we need to adjust our aesthetic. As far as puzzles are concerned its just a matter of cranking them out. We're going to split off into designer/coder pairs and produce a puzzle each which we'll stitch to the main world once they are completed. The edge renderer for the aesthetic is quite volatile at the moment and is spamming random black lines on otherwise blank surfaces which looks a bit nasty. Something we were considering was this glitch aesthetic for concealing the perspective transitions that could be applied to the general appearance of objects. Shapes could have a cyan/magenta/yellow edge to them that are ever so slightly displaced, kind of like the red and blue used in a 3D movie.
Other gameplay elements that we need to work on are getting the jump more natural and making the collision sphere for the player against walls and such a bit smaller. We need to fix the checkpoint teleportation for when the player falls of the edge of something as well because at the moment they just fall infinitely.
I've been working alongside Chris to produce some music and here is my first attempt at a game soundtrack ever:
https://soundcloud.com/scotty-brebner/sets/puzzling-echoes
I used FL Studio and some plug-ins to produce it. At the moment its a bit energetic and the kind of music we need is more ambient and incomplete. Only once the player starts fixing the world does the music become more whole.
Lastly I have a new set of assets to work on. The original perspective door I made was cool as far as the illusion was concerned but it looked boring. After a talk with Adrian we decided on making our corridors widened octagons and our doors resemble Star Trek airlocks.
Wednesday 30 April 2014
Cores, Clouds and Flutterbys
Saturday 26 April 2014
Knock Knock
So I now feel I have a lot more direction in what I need to accomplish before the holidays are out with EOF. Pretty much I need to be developing a basic ambient soundtrack for the game which we can build on and develop. I would like to collaborate with Chris Read on that as I liked some of the sounds he used in his recent Spatial Ambience project.
I also will be dedicating some time into making animated assets for our game environment. We played Fract today for inspiration and one thing in particular that I liked about it was the number of little things that were going on in the environment based on player proximity. When you walk around little shapes dance about or glow to indicate you're going in the right direction. Whether or not the assets I make are interactive for the player is yet to be decided. One such asset that will be interactive is the door concept I put forward:
I like this idea that the doors themselves are a tacky optical illusion. Based on Adrian's description of the game we should be able to poke fun at both the player and ourselves with these simple little visual tricks.
I also will be dedicating some time into making animated assets for our game environment. We played Fract today for inspiration and one thing in particular that I liked about it was the number of little things that were going on in the environment based on player proximity. When you walk around little shapes dance about or glow to indicate you're going in the right direction. Whether or not the assets I make are interactive for the player is yet to be decided. One such asset that will be interactive is the door concept I put forward:
Tuesday 22 April 2014
Cube Creeps
Technically this is progress:
These little cube crabs would be a creep that appears throughout EOF. Whether or not they are incorporated into the puzzles or are just a creature that hangs around is yet to be decided. Either way, they're pretty cute.
Friday 18 April 2014
Project 2b Reactionary Evolution - Post Submission Reflection
Today was submission day for Project 2b. Overall I am pleased with the final result. It certainly isn't perfect but the I am proud of how the model looks. If I was required to do the project again I would definitely be patient when creating the low poly model. As I needed to remodel mine it meant I had less time to work on the UVs and high poly details. The remodelling certainly allowed me to try out different tricks and methods for sculpting which were initially lost on my first model as I was trying to recall my skills from trimester one last year.
Before I rendered these out I experimented with importing the different levels from Mudbox into Maya but including the normal and ambient occlusion maps to see the different quality.
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| Level 1 |
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| Level 2 |
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| Level 3 |
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| Level 4 |
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| Level 5 |
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| Level 5 - no normal |
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| Level 1 |
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| Level 2 |
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| Level 3 |
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| Level 4 |
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| Level 5 |
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| Level 5 - no normal |
It is unfortunate that there is no place in this for EOF as it would be cool to refine it further with more time. Alas there is no room for it in the near future. My goal for work on EOF for the break is to begin producing draft soundtracks and sound effects. I figured that our aesthetic and code may change but if I can nail the feel of the game aurally then it is done and as final as we make it.
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