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. 

Craig Lang - Game Design: Early Scripting

Early Scripting

I was given the first greybox design from my character artist. From there I added several cameras and trigger boxes. 

I also added this door script to all the doors. I grabbed this script from an old project file. the script allows the door to rotate on it's axis when player enters the trigger. 

I realised that not only does my original camera script not work properly in my new project, but it's not efficient coding. I therefore created a new script for the camera with the help from other game designers. This script calls the main camera to camera areas when the player enters that trigger.  This means I can have one camera active and call it to any position I want within the level.

I added a Nav mesh to the scene in order to start working on the point and click movements. I had to adjust the area radius very low as I wanted to make sure the Nav mesh covered the whole area.

I used globals to identify whether a key has been collected or not when constructing my keys. I had to create two globals scripts as I came across a weird error when unity refused me to add more than six globals to one script.

On the keys I created public game objects for the key itself and and audio. I used onmousedown so that when the player clicks on the key it calls the globals and also the audio. I also made sure that the mesh renderer is destroyed as well.  When the player exits the trigger the audio is destroyed. 

I created a capsule for the player and added thirdpersonscripts already present in unity. I also added a rigdbody and a Navmesh agent. This allows the player to physically interact with the environment. I added a playermove script which allows the player to identify the navmesh and it's target object. I then created a sphere for the target and added a targetscript.    

I decided to start creating my menus. I created separate scenes for each menu. One for the main menu, one for the options menu, a sound menu, video menu and subtitles menu. On each button I assigned an event trigger and called its respected function from the menuoptions script. I use the loadlevel script function which calls and loads which ever script matches the number in the build settings.

Ben Matthews - Environment Artist. My Documentation. Bibliography.

Texture and Image References

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-          Decorcamp.com,. 'Textures >> Wood >> Flooring Parquet#36 Wood Floor Texture - Decorcamp.Com'. N.p., 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.

-          Etsy,. 'Items Similar To December 8, 1918 - German Newspaper - WWI - World War One Amazing! On Etsy'. N.p., 2015. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

-          Flickr - Photo Sharing!,. 'Old Clock'. N.p., 2015. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.

-          Gamebanana.com,. '2048² Aged Wood Panel Floor (Devhub > Gamebanana > Textures > Wood) - GAMEBANANA'. N.p., 2012. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

-          Invaluable.com,. 'Lucian Zabel Works On Sale At Auction & Biography | Invaluable'. N.p., 2015. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

-          Ivangraphics.deviantart.com,. 'Tree Bark - Texture, Pattern'. N.p., 2015. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

-          Legacyinspections.com,. 'Legacy Inspections'. N.p., 2007. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

-          Mb3d.co.uk,. 'Metal Rusty And Patterned Seamless And Tileable High Res Textures'. N.p., 2015. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

-          Mb3d.co.uk,. 'Plaster Seamless And Tileable High Res Textures'. N.p., 2015. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

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-          N/A., Andy. '30+ Stone Texture Examples - Designrouge.Com'. designrouge.com. N.p., 2013. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

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-          Salvomie.com,. 'Salvomie : Reusable Metals > Wants - Page 1'. N.p., 2011. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

-          Sites.google.com,. 'WW1 German Propaganda #3 (Deutsch Propaganda #Drei) - Hannah & Adrian's Wiki'. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

-          TextureX,. 'Free Wood Textures Wood Grain Texture Table Surface Brown Stock Photo Design'. N.p., 2015. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.

-          tileable, Rough. 'High Resolution Textures: Rough Stucco White Dirty Paint Streaky Plaster Fine Detail Wall April 2014 Texture Seamless Tileable'. Seamless-pixels.blogspot.co.uk. N.p., 2015. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

Ben Matthews - Environment Artist. My Documentation. Level Tri Count.

For this project We were given a tri count limit of 100,000 tris. I counted up the number of objects in the Unity Scene using the Hierarchy and added up their total tris. I did this to ensure a 100% accurate tri count. And to make sure I meet the hand in requirements.

The More We Know: The Price of Knowledge. Level Tri Count.

Bookshelf Open Cupboard, Broken Shelf. 413 tris x 32 = 13,216 tris.

Bookcase with Book Texture. 240 tris x 31 = 7,440 tris.

Tall Pillar. 80 tris x 12 = 960 tris.

Short Pillar. 80 tris x 18 = 1,440 tris.

Large Safe. 194 tris x 1 = 194 tris.

Window. 136 tris x 20 = 2,720 tris.

Main Entrance Counter. 56 tris x 1 = 56 tris.

Key Rack. 660 tris x 1 = 660 tris.

Main Entrance. 626 tris x 1 = 626 tris.

Banister Upper Straight. 934 tris x 2 = 1,868 tris.

Banister Upper Left. 1,472 tris x 2 = 2,944 tris.

Banister Stairs. 1,111 tris x 2 = 2,222 tris.

Stair Joining Piece. 2 tris x 1 = 2 tris.

Straight Stairs Short. 208 tris x 1 = 208 tris.

Straight Stairs Long. 256 tris x 2 = 512 tris.

Inner Wall Supports. 288 tris x 1 = 288 tris.

Tower Window. 262 tris x 2 = 524 tris.

Tower Banister. 778 tris x 1 = 778 tris.

Large Desk. 2078 tris x 1 = 2078 tris.

Plate with Food. 420 tris x 1 = 420 tris.

Chair 1. 730 tris x 1 = 730 tris.

Logs. 12 tris x 41 = 492 tris.

Single Door. 736 tris x 6 = 4,416 tris.

Double Door. 1004 tris x 2 = 2,008 tris.

Chair 2. 224 tris x 44 = 9,856 tris.

Library Walls, Floor, Roof with Materials. 2,276 tris x 1 = 2,276 tris.

Table. 590 tris x 14 = 8,260 tris.

Small Round Table. 192 tris x 4 = 2,360 tris.

Fireplace. 312 x 1 = 312 tris.

Fireplace Metal. 560 x 1 = 560 tris.

Log Burnt. 12 tris x 3 = 36 tris.

Gas Lamp Wall. 172 tris x 12 = 2,064 tris.

Poster 1. 2 tris x 8 = 16 tris.

Poster 2. 2 tris x 1 = 2 tris.

Book Row. 92 tris x 91 = 8,372 tris.

Book Stand. 118 tris x 1 = 118 tris.

Book Open. 200 tris x 10 = 2,000 tris.

Book Dark Blue. 144 tris x 7 = 1,008 tris.

Book Blue. 144 tris x 1 = 144 tris.

Book Brown. 144 tris x 2 = 288 tris.

Book Brown Leather 1. 144 tris x 1 = 144 tris.

Book Brown Leather 2. 144 tris x 2 = 288 tris.

Book Black Leather. 144 tris x 4 = 576 tris.

Book Green. 144 tris x 7 = 1,008 tris.

Book Purple. 144 tris x 1 = 144 tris.

Book Maroon. 144 tris x 5 = 720 tris.

Large Painting. 244 tris x 3 = 732 tris.

Rug. 2 tris x 2 = 4 tris.

Rug 2. 2 tris x 2 = 4 tris.

Beer Glass. 294 tris x 2 = 588 tris.

Quill With Feather. 980 tris x 3 = 2940 tris.

Lantern. 454 tris x 1 = 454 tris.

Candle With Holder. 700 tris x 1 = 700 tris.

Key Silver. 224 tris x 3 = 672 tris.

Crate. 88 tris x 21 = 1,848 tris.

Key Gold. 148 tris x 2 = 296 tris.

Ground Plane. 2 tris x 1 = 2 tris.

Small House. 20 tris x 12 = 240 tris.

Block Lighting Bias. 36 tris x 1 = 36 tris.  After Alterations in Unity – 84 tris.

Lab Set. 2994 tris x 1 = 2994 tris.

Gas Jar. 144 tris x 5 = 720 tris.

Lever. 188 tris x 1 = 188 tris.

Total: 99,820 tris.

Ben Matthews - Environment Artist. Finishing off the Level in Maya/ Unity.

Once I had finished building all of the textured parts for the level I began exporting them individually as FBX files with the media embedded. I exported them directly into the assets folder of a new unity scene which I had open.

You can see here how I made everything once.

I made everything once with the intention of exporting the objects from Maya to Unity and then duplicating them around the Unity scene. I will fully build the level within Unity.

I placed all of the objects into Unity and constructed the level.

I decided to tidy up the Hierarchy in Unity by grouping the assets together. This allows Me to keep track of the number of objects within the scene. 

I tidied up the scene and applied finishing touches to the level. This included lighting and adding mesh colliders to all of the objects in the level. I did this to ensure the player doesn't clip through objects in the world. The lighting also helps to create atmosphere and set the scene.

I made all of the library walls, floors and ceilings two sided to stop light pouring in. This will create nice crisp shadows around the windows and build upon the atmosphere.

When I turned the faces two sided I noticed thin white lines of light seeping through the mesh. To solve this I edited the lighting bias. I also placed a long thin block across the edges where the floor and walls meet. I did this to block any remaining light from breaking through the edges of the mesh.

I then added in Fog along with a ground outside and external buildings. I also changed the Sky Box from Unity's default Sky box to a simple Gray Lambert. This really added to the fog and removed any hint of a horizon. It now appears like an extremely overcast day. It also builds upon the atmosphere and premise of the story line. It is a ghostly, barren world. Was this caused by war? Or is it symbolic of the characters death? I wanted to leave that for the player to decide.

I then went back through all files that I will submit to make sure they are well organised.

For example:

I reorganized all of the objects within the scene into corresponding groups that make it easy to find individual assets within the Maya file.

This was the final step in the construction of this level. It was now ready to hand over to the game designer.

Final Screenshots.