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 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.

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.

3D Character Update

I have finally finished the mesh my model of Strauss. It sure took some time, but I am quite happy with the final result. I think his large head and collar might be making the rest of his body look less fat, but I think making the head smaller would make him look human, which would not be very good, so I think the balance I have got now is pretty okay. I am also wondering if maybe should have added some thickness to the free-hanging part of the tunic, but might just not be necessary.

I realized that his weak leg should be at the same side he is holding the cane, so I switched thick leg is now on the opposite side of where the fat is leaning towards. I think it looks better since before, there is a better visual balance from left to right, and he looks even more twisted when everything is not on the same side.

I ended up at 2893 triangles.

Character Modeling

The time for modeling characters has arrived. I started modeling my gnome in class, unfortunately, I have treatment sessions for my psoriasis during in the afternoon, and have to leave halfway through class, then catch up later with tutorial videos.

I did get some problems, since the tutorial seemed to be from an earlier year, and there seem to be some differences from what we learned in class. I heard from classmates that one of the things I missed was how to twist the arm to get the appropriate curves on the edge flow: I did not find any of this in the videos.

I also encountered some difficulties with the body, since the character I am modeling has quite a bit of excessive body fat, which affected the edgeflow a lot, forcing me to tread away from the the guide and think for myself more, when putting down my lines. However, I guess that is a good thing.

I also realized that I have not defined any of his clothes yet. I am not sure if it is a problem, but I might have wanted to do the puff shoulders.

Finally, I am a little worried about doing the face, it looks very different from a normal face. I have made an edgeflow plan for it, but I am not entire sure it will work out.

Anatomy – Analysis of Me

This week we were to bring a few organic sketches and drawings to criticize and give feedback to each others knowledge of anatomy.

I did not receive as much feedback as I had hoped for, however, there were a few things they mentioned that I cold agree, I probably had to work on some more. One thing that was mentioned was that I had a tendency to use straight lines a bit too much. This does not happen all the time, but it is visible in some of my drawings. I think it is mainly because I do not always have a good workflow, and easily get stuck on small details and lose the perception of the entire picture as a whole.

I was given some really good advise on how to practice to avoid breaking the flow and getting stuck on details. I was advised to give myself time challenges, give myself maybe five minutes to make a quick drawing, leaving no time to stop and iterate on minor details. I was reminded of the importance of drawing a lot, and fast to get the flow of drawing the all parts of the body into my head (cognitive therapy right there). The only timing I have previously done on my drawing (except during life drawing sessions) is occasionally looking at my watch and saying to myself; “gee, I have been drawing this hand for three hours, maybe I should move on”.

Another thing I need to practice more is life drawing. There are a number of parts of the body that I do not exactly know how they look, especially on the back. I am often too lazy to actually find good references when drawing these parts, and that is a hazard for my learning. There is one thing that is far worse than not knowing, and that is knowing wrong. Adopting a flow were I draw faulty anatomy could take me a painful amount of time unlearning, and you never want to have to do that.

 

As for a plan on what to do the following months to improve, firstly, I would like to spend more time on life drawing. Not only human figures, but also landscapes (which I would say is one of my big weaknesses), props and clothing (especially armor). I used to do life drawing on a daily basis for some time, but started to drop that habit as school got more intense. In any case, as a first goal, I would like to become more secure in human anatomy, and make sure I know the musculature. For this I would also try the speed drawing exercises suggested to me.

As a second goal, I would like to improve my ability to interpret movement and action into my drawings. I studied animation before I came to Gotland, though only the basics, and I am eager to continue exploring that path, learning both how to properly breath life into my still art, and animate. For this there are two books I would like to spend the time reading through; Drawn to Life, that was part of our course literature last year, and The Animator’s Survival kit. I would also like to read Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life, but I from my understanding it is difficult to come by these days.

Finally, as a third goal I would like to be able to put all these things to use, and design my own creatures, with believable anatomy and movement. I have always been interested in mythology, and creating my own worlds and creatures is something I really enjoy, and would like to get better at. For this I would probably need to look into traits of different animals, focusing on analyzing their traits, and how the compliment the animal’s lifestyle and ability to fit into it’s natural habitat.