Craig Lang - Games Designer: Beta and Final Scene

Beta and Final Scene

For the final level my environment artist created a new unity project with the final models and assets fully textured. I also got a fully rigged and textured character model from my character artist. I turn the transparency on the character material and added a blue point light to create a ghostly feel.

I finalized the keys by adding a light to the keys. I then added an OnMouseOver function in the key scripts which activates the light when the mouse hovers over the object.

 I wanted certain items such as the fireplace to slide open when unlocked. I therefore created another door and instead of using rotation I used snapTo and DoorMove. This allows the object to move position rather than rotate.

For the cutscene I created a new scene. I added all the slide images my concept artist drew for me to separate images on a canvas. I then created a empty object and added the following script. this script destroys the image after a number of seconds I command in the script e.g 10 = 10seconds. I also added an if statement which allows an audio clip to activate once a certain number of seconds have passed.

 

I added a lantern and candle with fire particle effects. I also added a script very similar to the camera script which moves the lantern to a target area when called.

 

 

 

 

Team Work- Character artist - design development

 Hello , I am back with new work to present myself :D . I am currently working on as a character artist in team . My job is to develop Character with movement a mainly personality. Our game will be about World War 1/ Library.  So that was start. I started gaining ideas of mad professor or scientist. First man , come to my mind was PhD. Frankenstein.  So I made some research. So I created Mood Board.

I had picture in head . Very intelligent, gentle but rude , sarcastic funny and bit coward. So I my first sketches was out of my image. I had a free time in Costa - Coffee and I saw really funny looking guy and I quick sketched him really fast ... KEEP IN MIND these are just sketches.

So he was sitting and waiting for his SO.And he was so kind to sit there for few minutes and let me finished the drawing . He was not that old but I needed PhD. professor , old looking .So I added few wrinkles and glasses I was happy with finished drawing . Even my team-mates decided to use it as main character.

wounded scientist

I was happy to make my main character on one go . But I thought that a didn't make enough work so I  draw some more.

Himmler WW2

Next part, of process was clothing and basic look of the character every part of this job is still in process just quick drawings and base ideas that come to my mind . I had and idea of suit or stereotypical teacher outfit.   

I tried to combine suit with the professor outfit. First I draw with refference just quick look . Why just quick , because I don't want to create something already exist's and get too evolved in real life.   

                         This is combined form . Next time I will upload more finished version .

So I was thinking about character design as character with personality . Firstly I have created little back story.

Today was a weird day,. I am really tired even though I had a good nap. Feeling weird “Franz skratch his head. Unknown person was looking at him from mirror. He panicked ,keeps trying to pick up his glasses laying on the table in front of him.The table was full of  documents that he does not recognize. He does not recognize the room he is in. Franz has a funny feeling , something like Deja Vu. He keeps trying to pick up his glasses but it keeps flowing through his fingers like water. He panicked , he is trying to pick up everything what is on the table pen, documents he is trying to smack the vase but with no success . Franz desperatly falls on the floor . He noticed somebody lying in the dark corner of the room. ”I know him” he said. He slowly approaches body. “Hello’’ he said with shaking voice ”are ,aare you allright, he asked and approaches even closer. With fierceful face, he want to step back. He tripped over something on the floor small but heavy.He does not care. He sat on the floor for a while thinking about what is he looking at. “It is me . it it is my dead body. Game play starts . 

When I have a backstory I have already picture of Franz in my head .I didn't have much time to draw him so i used the Matte painting technique to make him fast a accurately.So I found photos of the people in suits from 1920' and pick the best.

I was playing around the ideas of proffesors.But then I though that it will be difficult to create hair so I add him hats.

So me and my team decided on the first one on the right.Then Ben and Craig pointed out that he should look like ghost . I added some filter effects and play around with layers.

And then we decided we will not use non of them :( But that is not that bad I love making concepts.

Then I created this to help team sort out the story.

Team Work - Character Artist - Step 2 - 3D part

Hello .  I just stared doing 3d Base mesh to create base looking character for our Environmental designer.I didn't draw Character below , I was just looking for chubby character in ''T'' pose to help show how will 3D character look alike .

So I created 2 plain planes and add them a LAMBERT with texture (picture above).

Then I used the QUAD DRAW tool in maya to define outline of Character. Then I extruded the faces to add Third dimension to model .

Next step is to look it like actual character. So  I am adding more and more edge loops on arms legs atc.

Problem is that character need to be done in smooth view . This will smooth edges and make it look more organic. But it will massively increase the VERTs .  

Normal view 1170 tris

            And there is a problem I have limitation of  10 000 triangles . And I am already

8 672 tris in depth . So a really need to sort this out 

Smooth 18 672 tris 

After this model I saw that it is useless and I started working on more slim version.(more muscular)

So I went to Zbrush I selected prefab of muscle man tool and make quick snapshot in T pose .

 After that I was looking for more realistic humanoid so I found this guy to help me get that impression of human.

I started modelling but I am stupid guy and I forgot to print screen my work flow.

So I started modellign from right hand side a later I will mirror it

I mirrored it .

I created box and added bevels.I twiched it so it is maching  the refference.

I started to create face .I have created the tube. Deleted all the faces except the one that is shown upper.

I start to matching the faces to refference photo.And I forgot to print screen everything else sorry,

I started rigging the character and this shit happened.

I have created skeleton

I UV unwrapped. And paint it in the photoshop .

Then I exported as fbx and imported to the Unity and the hard part comes on.

So I attached these parts like. Riggidbody,Capsule Collider, very important Nav mesch collider, scirpt to move and follow.

Then I coppied the script from Evans lecture and pasted in on my character and Voila it worked .. my character is moving and my job is done :D .

Conclusion 

I really liked working on this project because I learned a lot . Before I never worked as a Character artist never so even though this character is not pretty and perfect I like it . Nothing first is prefect .My team was amazing we made really good game . 

Joshua Gardener - Concept Artist - Game Cover

For the final of my work as concept artist, under the production art is the production of the game cover, the piece that goes out and serves as physical marketing to the masses.

And here it is;

On designing this i made sure to carefully assess our games strengths in order to best design the cover to appeal to an audience that is recipient to those themes. since our game has strong story and environment usage my cover became focused on the mystery invoked by our game rather than being character focused. Additionally popular trends right now are character focused covers, so being an exception to that rule should help us stand out from the crowd.

The imagery in the cover is the things left behind by our protagonist, leaving an omen of what is to become of him, thus evoking intrigue to our story. the short passage at the back is also meant to go hand in hand with that to flesh out the story with only the cover itself.

In terms of the production of the cover, i made use of photos i had taken of my own pocket watch alongside a pair of glasses, to get the right perspective for crafting the drawing, modifying things where needed and then building it up from there. 

The cover worked largely as a composite and test for everything i had learned thus far, good imagery and colour usage, sourcing material to aid my construction or for proper usage on the cover to give indication to age and our company.

As such i am proud of this cover, it definitely pushed me to be much better at digital painting than i had been previously, and stretched my efforts of resourcefulness to their limits.

This has been a very intense project, and i had a blast working with the other lovely members of the team, hats of to them and this is Joshua Gardener, signing off.


Sources used in the construction of the image;

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/stack-vintage-books-10121481.jpg

Book stack

https://a.1stdibscdn.com/archivesE/upload/8419/3935/8419_1337812600_4.jpg

Desk Texture

http://media.kotaku.foxtrot.future.net.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2015/01/pegi_ratings_system.png

Pegi age ratings and criteria

http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1253/12539083/2378034-9794697466-pc-dv.png

PC game logo

http://forum.unity3d.com/attachments/splashscreen-jpg.16690/

Unity Logo

http://bgfons.com/upload/books_texture3025.jpg

book texture

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/tf2freakshow/images/d/d8/Steam-logo.png/revision/latest?cb=20121224140150

Steam Logo

http://orig02.deviantart.net/8a74/f/2007/223/b/4/old_crackly_parchment_texture_by_teeth_man.png

Parchment Texture

Joshua Gardener - Concept Artist - Animated Intro

Nearing the end of production, my next job covers the creation of stills for a intro sequence for our game; these i created by mimicking old silent films to better compensate for our lack of voice acting.

To accompany this the still are almost all in first person as i want the surprise of the main character being a ghost to be the final reveal, and hence leave the player with some sense of impact on the events, keeping them in the dark almost as much as the main character himself.

The stills were overall quite challenging to do as i wanted to make an effective opening considering the restraints that we had, hence i made a slow paced intro the made the most of each shot, not needing the movement of an animation to convey the message of the start of the story well to the player.

Joshua Gardener - Concept Artist - Gameflow Storyboard

Next from me as concept artist is the Gameflow storyboard, this document is meant to show the in game progression and pathing from a narrative point of view.

The slides themselves are designed to tell the story itself, so i won't repeat myself here. however i will elaborate on the importance of capturing the game flow as a storyboard, by laying out the game we've made as a story it helps the team figure out what aspects are interesting and where we can improve as game designers, as this allows us to view our story from a slightly more distant view.

overall we hope to intruige people with the narrative of the game, especially by ending the vertical slice with a cliffhanger of a locked room murder discovery. aspects like this are key within the industry itself as it means you are drawing more people back to your product when it is fully released.

Joshua Gardener - Concept Artist - Art Bible

For my next role as concept artist i have prepared the Art bible for the team; the art bible being a visual representation of what we should be going for when we develop the game, this being to keep the team more focused when making design decisions.

The art style for instance we went for is dark and slightly Gothic, emphasising dark colours with higher contrasts between light and dark, this also means we overall have to be careful of our placement of light within the scene as this affects how the player observes the scene.

The character we opted for is a professor/scientist looking character who as a result of early events becomes a ghost, for this we have the design for pre death and post death of the character. in life he has a fairly dusty and grim colour scheme, reflecting the dark times of being on the German side near the end of world war 1. when a ghost the main character is covered in a spectral mist.

Our Gothic styling meant that our level of detail had to take into account a fairly good amount of detail to capture the withered or decayed imagery typically present in Gothic art. so our emphasis on the stone and wood textures is important. its also effective to remind ourselves that we need our propaganda image and books to be fairly good quality because of our setting and narrative. so it helps remind us then need of backing up our design decisions due to narrative assertions. 

We strongly asserted early on that our camera was going to be highly controlled, making use of systems like seen in games like Until Dawn, our camera is specifically set to display our scene in controlled angles in order to provide more atmospheric camera angles, whether this is to present the environment in a more aggressive way, or to unsettle our players is up to us.

Colour palette's are fairly straight forward, yet are important to remind ourselves of, good uses of grey scale applies excellent contrast in the scene, while our pale tones make our ghost theme more prevalent.

Retreading some ground, we reinforce our setting atmosphere, with the importance for our game to be on the emptyness and cold nature of the environment, so the absence of heat in the environment is crucial as a reminder.

moving onto technical guidelines which act as a good group reminder for how to organise and conduct themselves within programs in order to make sure other members in the group can find their work or identify which pieces they are.

Lastly it all comes down to our inspirations, the art style moodboard received some fabulous inspirations from Bloodborne and Resident Evil, to Tim Burton's unique creepy drawings, and movie's like hotel Transylvania provide some charm to the darker Gothic styling.

The art bible was quite a large source of work, the effort of trying to make sure you sum up many of the key factors for the team to remember in a few pages of a document is definitely challenging. like the excellent examples i was able to find the importance of showing and not just telling is something i was trying to implement.

Craig Lang - Game Design: Alpha

Alpha

I was given by my environment artist an updated greybox for the level. I was also given constructive feedback from the last greybox level from other game designers. Listening to their comments I adjusted the cameras to allow easier movement around the level. I also made sure all cameras have ignore raycast activated, as the target interfered and got stuck on the triggers.

I then started to work on my inventory. I first created inventory slots by creating images and placing them on the far side of the level. I added myinventorymenuscript and event triggers. For each event trigger I attached the script and activated each void function within the script (down, drag and up). This allows the items to be dragged to and from the inventory.  I also created an empty object and attached the myinventoryscript. This identifies where to send the sprite images to. 

I then created a mykeyscript, mylockedscript and DoorUnlocked scripts. This allows the keys to only work when they are picked up and dragged from the inventory and onto the locked objects. 

 

I then created a grabbanddropscript which allows the player to pick up objects.

After I got the inventory working I wanted to improve the interaction with my keys. I wanted the key to appear and rotate in front of the camera to allow the player to examine what they have collected. 

I created and attached a empty object with a trigger box onto the main camera. I then created this script to allow the object when called to appear in the trigger box.

However I found out that by calling the object in the keyscript instead it was much easier and worked a lot better as well. 

I then added a rotation script which allowed the object to rotate.

 I then moved onto the pause button. I created a pause button and added a pause script. However I struggled with pausing and resuming the game successfully. I made sure that Time.timescale = 1 whenever the scene was loaded. I made sure of this by writing that line of code in the menuoptions script. I turned timescale to 0 in the pause function and that created a successful pause function. I also stumbled across LoadLevelAdditiveasync. this allows me to load my pause scene over my current scene. This is good for this scene as my pause scene contains little components and data. However if my pause scene contained more assets it will eat up memory and slow the game down.

For the volume  I wanted to be able to turn the volume on/off throughout the game. I wrote this script and attached to a prefab. The prefab also contains the main camera and it's child components. The reason why I had to create a prefab was because the script calls for the main camera's audiolistener and turns it on/off when called. I have to add the prefab to all scenes otherwise the script will not be able to identify the audiolistener.