WEEK 4 - Getting things together, slowly but gradually!

The start of week 4 and I am starting to feel a bit worried about our progress. Even though this might be just the fourth week of our unit, things don’t seem to be going well. A lot of work is needed from us to get back on track!

The tasks that were supposed to be completed last week were not entirely done. Things such as the ANUBIS model sheet, ANUBIS concept art, ENEMY concept art are semi-finished. We received feedback from our lecturers that “it is not necessary to be spending much time on the ANUBIS” (for now) since we have other priorities to clear out first! Although this is the pre-production stage of our project, we got to be pacing up to the production phase as our game scope is pretty large. So, we thought of multi-tasking this week!

As per original Gantt chart, I was supposed to start texturing this week. Unfortunately, that couldn’t happen because modifications to the character models were needed and other workflow clashes were encountered. My 3Ds max software that had crashed the previous week had to be reinstalled again. Paulo had lost some textures files and had to redo them. Amos’ laptop seemed to be crashing as well so it needed urgent repairs. Once again, tasks needed to be postponed.

On the other hand, Ahmed reported to me that he wanted to work on something else (other than modelling). I thought it would be best to redistribute work at this stage since things are slowly growing vaguer instead of more defined. Hence, I worked on creating a separate list of modular assets which clearly outlines a breakdown of every asset that needs modelling and texturing. After begging JP for the list of assets, I distributed the work fairly to everyone with the clear columns of who models what and who textures what. That week, I also assigned some of the concept art work to Ahmed as he wanted to do it. I asked him to complete the ANUBIS model sheet as a priority and perhaps work on an action pose, color scheme and ideation for the TANK character.

On Tuesday, the team had a meeting with the games guys. We tried and tested some of our wall textures in the game and played around with basic lighting to check if the colors reflect well. The feedback we received from our lecturer was that “it looked too repetitive”. He asked us to make some more variants to break that monotony. He also suggested how we could make variations to our floor tiles, and so Paulo was onto it! See below the wall and floor textures Paulo was told to make!

All textures were hand drawn and hand painted by Paulo on Clip Paint Studio.

On Wednesday, I finally scheduled a meeting with Soubra and JP to discuss the story-line and JP finally showed up! We had a good one-hour discussion and brainstormed a decent set of ideas for the backstory and the actual (game) story. The backstory was crucial in order to give the game play a direction or an end goal. We updated the GDD and worked around any additional changes that might be needed. We also gained feedback from some peers about the viability of the ideas so as to objectively make sense out of it. We backed our ideas with basic research as well. Finally, we decided on the kind of attacks that will be needed from the animators before ending the meeting. It was good – (and I had some hope that day)!

In games class, we learnt a lot about texturing and lighting! Learning about normal maps, height maps and the synchronization of the two was very helpful.

I want our assets to have such a glowing appeal that gives off an eerie vibe to the game but also makes it immersive. (Reference from Diablo III assets)

Since we also have to work with the lighting as part of our LO’s, a good insight into each of the different kinds of lighting – ambient, point, directional, spot and area lights – allowed me to see our game in a new “light”. I decided what kind of lighting I would want to experiment with for the game and did a little research on it.

I am aiming to create a mood and ambient surrounding such as this reference image! We want to set such a mood for the game so as to feel the true immersive experience of the actual environment as the player plays it. (Fisher, 2015)

Self-evaluation:

I personally feel that I do not achieve as much as I think I should be achieving due to the many problems we encounter and have to deal with. Almost everyday we deal with conflicts on Discord between members from the animation and game design sides. Everyday there has to be a session where the two argue, and requires the entire group’s attention to resolve it. As team lead, I also have to be dealing with individual complaints and concerns, which disrupts my workflow. But I guess it is part of my job! I try my best to compensate for this over the weekends (where I get most of the work done)! However, I believe I can achieve better with proper time management skills.

In conclusion, I am glad that despite the team losing focus from time-to-time through discord arguments, we are still able to revert to our original ideas. Some of the team members require to train themselves to better receive feedback and criticism from lecturers and peers, and for that I should be able to convince them (as a leader). After this week's workload and progress, I am starting to regain my faith into the project. Let's work harder this upcoming week!

References:

Fisher, R. (2015). Egyptian Temple [image]. Retrieved from https://www.artstation.com/artwork/EvKw2

Blizzard Entertainment (2017). Diablo III [video game]. California: Blizzard Entertainment.