BGP Week 8: End Game

We are finally at the end of the last week and we are pretty much done. We could have fleshed out the level with some more variation among the props, but it was not really necessary. It had been nice if we had time to rework the level layout, since we did not really get the visual progression we were after. Still looks appealing though.

We did get the boss into the game, even though we considered scrapping him for a long time. His texture had been on the bottom of my priority list, so I did not start drawing it until the last week. Even though I had to rush it, I actually think his texture turned out to be the best one I created for the game. I think I have mentioned it before, but I am really starting to get the hang of the texture drawing. However, I am a little bit concerned with the actual gameplay during the boss battle. The original design for the boss battle was quite interesting, in which the player had to use the different spells to counter and avoid the abilities used by the boss. However, in the current version, the boss shoot streams of fire balls, spawn minions and send the player flying up in the air, (without actually dealing any damage). The best tactic seem to be running around the boss in a circle, and shoot fire balls yourself, occasionally clearing away the minions. I do not really know what went wrong there, but at least it looks good.

I feel really terrible, not going much deeper into how things turned out, but I have only got a few days to finish the report, so I really have not got any time to elaborate further.

BGP Week 7: Beta

Crunch, crunch, crunch. This week was beta week, and we had been working late to get as much done as possible, some days as late as 2 am. We have accomplished more this week than during any previous week. Personally I animated the ghoul character and painted more textures than I can count. However, there is still much that has to be done. There environment is near completion, but the character texture might require a repaint, spells need more impact feedback and the boss does not have any texture. There is also a huge amount of polish that has to be done on the functionality of the controls.

The controls was biggest issue according to the feedback received during the beta feedback session. The testing group was very negative towards the gesture system used to cast spells. It was considered unnecessarily complicated and more frustrating than fun. To be honest, I was not too surprised, the gesture system was a bit of a gamble, and we had discussed that earlier. However, we received did not receive any negative feedback on the gesture system during previous play testing sessions, so we dropped all plans of changing it.

The last week is probably going to be quite tough, for the programmers in particular. We will have it a little less stressful on the art side, though there is always room for more polishing, so there is no excuse to rest until we are past GGC.

BGP Week 6: Beautiful World

The level is finally starting to look finished. The environment has been furnished with textures and props, and all spells, while still requiring a lot of polish, have been implemented. It actually surprised me, how good the game looked when the graphics were implemented. At first I was worried it would be difficult to get the color progression right throughout the level. However, with Unreal’s lighting, it turned out beautifully. I can see why the engine is called “Unreal”.

I have not been able to complete many major tasks this week. Most of my time has been spent making simple textures for different props, and discussing the graphics with my co-worker in preparation for the screenshots and beta testing for the next week. on top of that, I have been working on the Ghoul texture. I have finally managed to find a nice work flow for the texture drawing. The diffuse texture for Mokhtar took me couple of days to finish, the Ghoul texture I have only worked on for a few hours, and it is almost done. It feels great to see both the project and my own skills evolve over such a short time.

BGP Week 5: Alpha

One of the major events this week was the alpha testing session. This was probably one of the most important events that occurred during the last few weeks, since we received some really valuable feedback from two members of the industry.  We were told that the most interesting part of the game was the story, which does not come through in the demo we are making. They suggested that we should try to get at least a little bit of it in there. They also told us that our scope for GGC (Gotland Game Conference) might be a bit big, and we should focus on polishing the bits we have got so far, instead of implementing more things. This means, that we would focus on getting combat with normal enemy units to be fun and challenging, and scrap the boss entirely. Ultimately, a bunch of assets facing the bin.

The alpha aside, I have spent part of the week making the GUI, more accurately; writing in Arabic for the first time in my life. When the player enters her “powered up” mode, a sign with Arabic text will appear on the screen. Being the group’s primary 2D artist, i took the task to draw it. The funny part is that I really did not know what I was writing, I knew one of the words are “Harakat”, meaning something in the likes of “waving arms around fancily”, and the other word meant “magically”. Our producer who can write in Arabic, showed me what the text would look like, and I simply drew the letters in a fancy way, taking inspiration from pictures of Arabic calligraphy. When stylizing the text, I accidentally got one of the letters wrong at first, resulting in  the sign saying something close to “Magical highway” instead of “Magically waving hands around fancily”.

“Magically waving arms around” in Arabic.

Now, you might wonder, what would make the Arabs need a word for “waving your arms around fancily”? Honestly, I have no idea, perhaps I will ask the producer, and mention it in my next post.

BGP Week 4: Sticks and Stones

I became ill this week, went to a few doctor’s appointments, prepared for the “public discussion” of our reports, and participated in the pre-alpha testing, so I did not get as much time on the project as I should have needed. During the short time that I managed to spend on the project, I made a  couple of textures for props and environment. We needed to get some more textures, or at least colors into the geame world, so we could see how the color choices turned out in-game, and what needed to be iterated upon.

We did some quick test textures, and slapped onto the rock walls, the result was far worse than we had hoped for. We had decided to use a limited number of “basic stone” textures, that could be applied to any rock. This would spare us a lot of textures, since there are a lot of similar looking stones in the game. Consequently, the shapes of the stones would not match the  textures. The result of the texture not matching the shapes looked incredibly awkward at some places, and we feared we would not be able put any more detail than some color variation into the stone textures, to be able to make it look okay.

At this point we had only used diffuse textures, and we discussed if the result would be good enough if we used normal maps to get some details in the stone. We did some more tests, with tiled normal maps, and the result was an improvement. One of our artists suggested using a single diffuse, with a variety of different maps randomized across all stones, using a single material. We made progress, but we will have to put some more thought into this before we have the appealing graphics that we want.

The stone texture in it’s current state.

Overall, I fear we might be falling behind schedule. We did not have much to show at the pre-alpha, far from what we have planned for the final product. Barley any textures are done, and there are still animations left to do. Along with the report, there are a lot of things to do, and not too much time. Hopefully, we will pull this together and have a playable (and good looking) demo at the end.

BGP Week 3: Ghouls

We are progressing steadily, jump animations and spells has been implemented, and placeholder enemies have been given functional AI. The boss unit has been given it’s first set of animations, along with some planned recoloring, that I’ll get into later. The cave has also begun to take shape, with several assets being modeled by our 3D artists this week.

Personally, I’ve been been working on animations and concept art, as usually. I Made the concept art for the ghoul, an undead man-eating djinni from arabic folklore, that is quite popular in modern fantasy. I gave the ghoul large hands and claws, since it would be their primary tool for ripping their victims apart and attacking Mokhtar (the ghoul might end up ranged in the end though, which would render the meaning of the hands misleading). The ghoul’s body is thin and starved, and he wears a torn loincloth and ripped turban to illustrate their poverty, a trait which puts them in contrast to the wealthy boss, as well as complimenting their hunger. He also wears a pair of ear rings, which apparently symbolize bad behavior in some middle-eastern cultures.

When talking about colors for the ghouls, we came to the conclusion we should change the color scheme for the boss. The original color scheme for the boss was almost the same as Mokhtar’s, and we needed to have more contrast. We also decided that we would give the enemy djinns will be given a more unnatural skin color (mokhtar, who is a djinn in disguise will not be changed). We chose to give the djinn a  blue white to grey color, a color often chosen for djinn in old arabic artwork that will presumably also have them blend into the blue areas of the cave, still ticking out a bit due to the orange colored clothes, and red spots on the skin.

We are still having problems with animating the spider, I have not had a go at it myself, but some of the other artists have tried but not gotten anywhere. We intend to bring the file  to the tutoring on monday, since the problem seem to be of a technical nature. Hopefully we’ll get to the bottom of it next week.

BGP Week Two: Style Guides

I spent this week animating new animations for Mokhtar, as well as making a style guide, and more concept art.

We realized that we had very little documentation of the actual art style, we all knew it was going to be stylized, with bright colors and an Arabic theme,  but the rest was only in my head and visible in the concept art, so I sat down to produce a style guide and some mood boards.

The style guide points out what the artists in our group have to keep in mind when producing graphic assets, some details are easily missed, even though they are present in concept art.

The picture above is part of the style guide of the cave, and depicts the visual progression of the level. The entrance to the cave is illuminated through cracks in the ceiling, and the colors are a warm orange and yellow. As the player ventures further in, the cave will get darker, and colder, with only a little light produced by glowing mushrooms or braziers. The cave will also progress from a natural stalagmite cave, to an underground city ruin, in which the evil djinni and his minions reside.

We also faced some obstacles this week, as we tried to rig a spider monster, the single minion enemy that was originally planned for the level. Motion builder would only take human skeletons, so one of our artists tried to fake a human skeleton for the spider, which lead to the rig being impossible to work with. We left the spider for the moment, since looking to other software for animation, plus remaking the entire rig would cost us much time, and would possibly not work even then. Instead, we set out to make a humanoid minion. This would not only be safer, but also give us the chance to adapt the minion to the art style and setting, as the spider had been one of the earliest assets created, and wasn’t designed to fit the style nor play any part in the narrative.

BGP Week One: Getting Started

Last week we started off with the big game project, and I’ll be back blogging about it. Were making an Arabic themed action adventure game, I won’t go into detail on what it’s about right now, but I’m sure I’ll write some about it later on.

The first week started off quite slowly, we hadn’t assembled the full group yet, and we were spend most of the time setting up the “office”, scrum documents and planning. We already had a bit of a head start, with several graphical assets, such as the main character ‘Mokhtar’, already ready to go. It worries me slightly as lead artist, to have graphical assets rushed this way, since we haven’t really had the time to fully define the art style of the game, and there’s a risk the rushed assets are either going to fall out of style, or limit the art style, if furnished to include the assets. However, I believe it’s for the best, since We’ve only got 8 weeks, and the art style was after all, nearly settled.

I spent most of the first week working on getting the art style set, and producing thumbnails and concept art for the cave in which the level is set. I also worked on the animations already started for the finished Mokhtar model and reworked our lead designer’s concept art of the boss the player will face in the end of the level to fit our style better, and properly communicate the character’s personality.

The boss, who’s name I don’t recall right now, is an evil Djinn (or Djinni?) who resides deep inside the cave, with servants who provide him with food and riches. He doesn’t appear as filthy as I wanted him too (filthy being one of his important traits), the scruffy beard is really all that communicates that. The jewelry is supposed to make him seem rich (obviously), and I think they do the job quite well, even though it probably wouldn’t hurt to add add some more.

Overall, this week was spent getting on the rail, the programmers mostly made themselves familiar with Unreal 4(the engine we’re using), planning and documentation were made, and the final members we needed were recruited.

3D Character, another update

Since I am quite busy, I will try to keep this short. The model and textures are pretty much done. There is some tweaking that can be done at places, for instance the shoulder puffs, which do look a little bit odd at this time.

There is also a missing polygon on the hat that only disappears in UDK, and a disfunctional alpha texture. There is also some ugly seems under his crouch, however, that might not be of such high importance, considering nobody will really look there.

Missing piece of hat.

I have a lot to do this week, so I might not have time to actually work that much on the final touches on the model. What is most important now, is that I get rid of the hole in the hat, and get the tunic skirt part and feathers to be double sided.

Photogrammetry and Stuff

I read Andrzej Poznanski’s article; ‘Visual Revolution of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter’, and was quite fascinated with what they could do. However, I am wondering, getting the model to render appropriately was quite some trouble, the main pro of this method was to get believable wear and tear etc, and the model must still modified to reduce poly count and get a nice edge flow. Would it not be just a easy to just take reference photos, model the model yourself, then only take photos for textures? I have not yet modeled any high-res models, nor do I have a lot of experience with photogrammetry, and they would not be using it if it did not pay off, so I am obviously missing something.

As a kid, I used to do a lot of Warhammer painting, as well as terrain making. Crafting model miniatures is something that I have always been interested in, and  while making scans of environments from real life is of moderate interest to me, something that I would really like to try out some day is making a game composed of actual hand crafted props. Imagine for instance a Harryhausen or Burton inspired game that actually looks like a stop-motion movie, or a maybe something in fashion with ‘The Dark Crystal’. In short, I think this tool can be (and probably is) used for more than just realistic graphics. If miniature sculpting for games was a profession, it would probably be my dream job.

A pro for using photogrammetry for miniatures instead of outdoor environments, is that you would not have to worry about the weather. Of course, since you have to sculpt the model yourself, the whole point of using photogrammetry to capture the creations of nature is lost.

A tree house I started working on a few years ago but never finished. The only miniature I’ve got here on Gotland.

When modeling faces, one thing that I find important to think about is that many of the loops circle around certain features, mainly mouth and eyes, rather than the entire head. This seem to be mainly due to that the face muscles actually circle these features in that way, and it would look right if lines were drawn differently. However, it also saves polygons, since we need a high level of detail in the face, relative to the back of the head, and since the loops for the details around the eyes and mouth can be restricted to that area, we do not have to waste polygons circling the entire head.

The nose/cheeks and forehead are the areas that have horizontal loops circling the entire head, they are really just part of the base shape of the head (except for the nose being slightly extrude) and really do not have that much detail. The nose tip and nostrils probably make up the most interesting topology in the face. They nostrils have individual loops such as the mouth and eyes, however, the between the tip and the nostrils, the loops the there are also some of the outer loops of the mouth.