Alice in Wonderland; Post Mortem

It's important to reflect on projects, to think through and document all the lessons learned- both practically and emotionally, and now that we've had a week to cool off from our hand in, it's time to do just that. Our Alice in Wonderland project was the largest group project we've been allocated; spanning 10 weeks (+3 unofficial Easter weeks) and it was also the first time we've been dictated random groups in accordance to our specializations. I think this is where I learnt the most- not necessarily in technical skills where I feel I've made bigger leaps in other projects, but rather in management and communication. Especially so, since this is the first group I've been in where it's been an issue. I'll revisit this shortly though, let's start with the positives.

What went well is the overall atmosphere we managed to create in our two, highly contrasting levels. I think our forest beautifully managed to strike a balance between a grounded Oxford forest, and still have that Alice in Wonderland flair- through the use of assets like playing cards, books, and clocks as platform pieces intermingled with the vibrant greenery of the large leaves in comparison to our shrunken Alice. We accomplished some nice vista shots, that I like to believe are largely down to my highly detailed composition planning of the forest level. Especially so since this was an area that I conceptually worked on alone and was responsible for the design of the most of the assets within it.

 It was a strange system though, where our original three levels were divided up into three people managing them respectively. Myself for the forest, Jake for the Hallway, and Christy for the Canal. The dynamic was effective and efficient during white boxing and early engine/mechanical stages and worked nicely as a system, where I felt in control and the workload was divided up equally between people who were conformable with engine.  However our system fell apart heavily when it was deemed necessary to take the engine files and merge them into one cohesive level. Logically this makes sense and I accept that it was required, but once it was done my input on the area I had brought this far was taken out of my hands and my input became more verbal, aside from the occasional day where I would be able to work with it personally. 

Aside from that this had a huge knock on of side effects, it meant that Jake was now managing all three areas which is a huge amount of responsibility, and there wasn't much we could do to help, since only one person could access it at once, but this meant that the fine details in our levels fell apart a bit since it was too much for one person. For example I made 4 rocks that could easily be manipulated in size and scale to form nice walls and rocky banks almost seamlessly, but as the engine person wasn't as familiar with how they worked as I was, I feel they were laid out in a way that didn't maximize their potential. I mentioned it a few times, but it was a low priority task and by the time it became and issue, they were all already placed and it would become a huge job to reorganize them. I know other people felt the same way about their assets as well, but because it was all funneling through one person, time wasn't allocated to nicely placed population as much as it probably should have been. 

It's easy to say that we could have avoided this by keep the engine files unmerged, but this would likely also lead to more problems later down the road,  instead trying to merge already delicate and nice engine files together. Not sure how- but I'm certain something would have gone horribly wrong here. What we could have done is just have days where the engine was free and accessible to everyone to just adjust, fix and make small changes to their assets and the level before it became too late to change. 

The fact that I only now realize people had a problem with the way our group was structured speaks largely for itself, the group wasn't hostile or uncooperative, it was simple generally splintered. Problems that people had weren't addressed and because of this communication suffered and the overall quality of the level went down. The ironic part is we were all in labs everyday, and mostly the same room- and this was still an issue. My problem wasn't specifically with communication since I had a lot of contact with the team, both teaching and learning. I should mention that everyone was great at being prepared to listen and adapt to new techniques, as well as sharing freely any information or tricks. I think Christie stood out as someone who taught the group a lot of technical skills. No, my problem was with formal criticism. I think that while most of us talked a lot, it generally wasn't as formal as it could and should have been. It felt more like everyone was just 'updated' and aware of what people were doing, but not criticizing or being critiqued. In future there definitely should be a daily meeting where we talk about how to improve everyone's current assets. 

What I think worked well was the quality standard that people reached for and attained. While our art style changed dramatically from the ‘set’ style, everyone adapted as we went along and we still arrived at the same style, but without all the stylistic trims we’d planned to do. This was mainly due to how the ideas changed while we were whiteboxing. Despite the change, no ones assets were out of place or looked like they didn't belong, this was mainly because we were abiding by a realistic style standard. However once again, while the assets people made were realistic, sometimes- and I'm guilty of this as well- took criminally long. I'm going to specifically mention Sarah and Hannahs Rabbit and Caterpillar. I don't think these assets were relevant enough in the level to take up the time spent on them, which was the majority of their time, even though each character was only on screen for about 12 seconds each! The problem though is that they wanted characters for their portfolio (as they are charter artists- which we had three of) on this was their final project of the year- which is entirely fair. Our decision to let the caterpillar and the rabbit become major modeling characters was a mix of obligation to abide by the specialization list, and the knowledge that in these early stages of the project we wanted our group to fundamentally work happily together. It seems unavoidable really, you can't expect someone to not want to spend eleven weeks working on something that's going to help them get an job/internship in the department they want. 

I feel the best way to have worked with this would have been to set much stricter deadlines, because while there was deadlines on texturing and certain assets, they were all entirely ignored and this was never addressed as a group. People just worked at their own pace which left us in the frantic mess that we were at the end of the project. We definitely needed stricter deadlines.  

We had to cut out level down in raw length multiple times this project, using only a third of the original cave plan, and cutting out the canal entirely (which was a sad day for all) and our level was still too long. We should have started with a much smaller concise level plan, and just expanded after the DMU hand in, for the separate Off The Map hand in, which we still have a long time for. This would have meant we had a high quality level to showcase our artistic abilities, then afterwards, we could work more on having a fancy game. The fact is, by the time we knew we had a level that was too big, all the individual stages had already been worked into too much for it to be worth cutting. The work we would lose just wouldn't compensate for the extra man power dedicated to one level with the remaining time frame. All we needed was a better schedule and less characters being made. 

Integrating mechanics naturally and organically into our level was also something we had relative success in. The falling leaves and house of cards were two simple puzzles I made that helped the player feel involved with the level without breaking the flow of the game- it also meant I had a blast stacking physics based cards for a few days. The more complicated puzzles in the hallway that Jake and Christie did also hit their mark as they were all very integrated into the scene and felt like organic puzzles. 

In fact as an entire game it felt very fluid and cohesive, aided by dynamic cameras- although maybe too many for my liking- and matinees for cut scenes and explanatory purposes that made the level feel more like a game.  I especially like the underwater cut scene and the teapot one, as they were both integral for explaining the scene. They also looked cool. Props to Jake on that one. 

On a personal level, I'm pleased with the quality of the assets I created, and also the processes I learnt- there's more detail on that in prior blog posts. But despite this, and the fact that one way or another- everyone worked really hard on this project, I just don't think it lived up to our expectations. It's hard to point out whats makes the level so disappointing for me, individually everything looks great but I think the we just missed out on the fine details, and ironing out the strange camera and buggy behavior.  It's a shame because I was proud of the project until about the last week, when it struck me just how much work still needed to be done with it. It was a challenge to stay positive after that. I also think every was just tired with it in the last few weeks, peoples motivation was lower, especially after our character redo and essay hand in.  I think the most important thing to learn from this project is organisation and scheduling, in groups I've been in we've managed to get away with only having a loose schedule because we worked so well as a team and were constantly helping and being involved with each other. It wasn't the case this time, so I feel we needed stricter deadlines and to be formally critiqued on our assets on a daily basis. 

My action plan for Summer is pretty solid, I'm already stuck a new student contest that I'll talk in more detail about another time, and I've got a small game art team together working on making a fully functional co-op platforming boss fighter game- we even snagged a programmer for that one. So yeah, summer will no doubt keep me busy and focused. In terms of Alice we're unsure. The plan was always to work past the deadline but now that it's passed and the general negativity about it, I feel everyone, or at least most people, will be to burned out to continue. We've decided to give it a few weeks to take a break, and see how we feel after that. 

Once More, with Colour

So I'm revisited the rocks, after a hearty break and mushroomy fun. I couldn't help but brood over what woes these rocks would bestow upon me this time around.
It actually went totally fine and was a relatively painless process. 

Basically since I'd worked out all the hard stuff in my last confrontation with them, most of the issues were already ironed out. On top of that I had my poly painting experience with the mushrooms to fall back on, and overall it was a relatively painless experience. The only thingy worthy of note, is how lucky I am that it did go so well- because unlike with the mushrooms, this time I was completely reliant on the poly paint to work, since the rocks had been unwrapped in zbrush, so while they were perfectly technically even, trying to hand paint the texture sheet would have been impossible to work out. My last resort would have been using a tillable texture, since I was aware of the possibility coming in, but luckily it didn't come to that. I much preferred using a polypainting method for these assets as the rocks have lot's of small details and dents that I was worried wouldn't quite come through in the normal map, and wanted to pronounce these features through the diffuse map as well as the height.

Overall I think they came out pretty good. There's two concerns I want to address overall about the rocks though. One is that because I didn't end up using the original assets I modeled for the rocks, there was no need to be constrained to their shape. Making rocks from scratch in Zbrush is easy and simple and I think I could have gotten way more out of the shape if I had gone down that route from the beginning. But because I sculpted these rocks with the original intentions of baking them down onto the low poly, I never explored the shape as much as I could have. If I have to do rocks again, my pipeline would go more along the lines of: 

Model a high poly in Zbrush > Decimate a low Poly version > completely retopologise that version in 3DS Max or 3D Coat > Unwrap that in 3DS Max > Bake it down. 

I think knowing this process alone may have been worth all the trouble it's caused me, I've worked out a zbrush pipeline that works for me. 

The second thing I would address is putting more colour variation in the texture. The reference image I was using was just tone greys, but regardless I think I should have taken some colour liberties like with the mushroom and added hints of browns and reds to make them more interesting. 

I also worked on water, which was an interesting experience. I had to make 5 new bump maps to create the different textures, then base colours that change at different depths to create the refraction on shallow areas and darkness at deep areas. I thought the way it reflected light was really successful- in my unreal scene at least. Once again the problem of working on different unreal scenes is while my water looked great in mine, when I recreated the effect in the official scene, it just completely failed. It was dark and ugly. A problem that I could have addressed in the process if I had been able to work directly with the scene lighting. But all the tampering in the scene couldn't get my water to react properly to the conditions being used. It's out of my hands now, which is a shame, because I'd love to see it working. 

The Mushroom Factor

Fun week, good stuff.
The natural progressive step for me was polypainting, I love sculpting, it feels organic and natural and fun, so it didn't surprise me when I found polypaining and equally awesome way to work.

I am still limited to British mushroom colour- red and brown gets old fast when you have 5 different mushrooms to do, but tried to find way of stretchy colour and pronouncing different hues, even if it mean exaggerating life slightly. I felt it was necessary since all these mushrooms would be so large in comparison to Alice, that the colour would need to hold up in interest and quality. Also, it's worth noting that like the rocks, I want the mushrooms to be as adaptable as possible so all the different heads and stalks are separate exports, and certain heads and stalks are made to be able to interconnect with each other. This is to help keep variance where we need to and make the most out of the assets we've made. Especially since the colour palette was so restricted, most of the mushrooms look somewhat natural when combined.

This is one of the nicest and most detailed texture sheets I've made. Each part of it has had a lot of care put into it, which is why it makes me immensely sad that I've packed such detailed assets so tightly. I think these mushrooms could easily have done with being two separate texture sheets. When these were all baked out I was sad to see the quality drop from the sculpt to the bake, purely through how the resolution of the texture. Negotiations are taking place currently as to not have the texture size reduced further, I'll fight for my mushrooms. 

In the meantime everyone's assets are slowly coming together, alot of the plant life Christy made for the Canal level are being put in the forest and it looks really cool. In the meantime however, the forest engine file I've been working on is being absorbed into the bigger game. I want to say it'ss too soon, but I think that's just because I've been enjoying working with my own file, although it will be considerably harder to work with it now that I also have to abide my someones schedule as well. On the bright side our level is getting sewn together, and we'll soon be able to play from start to finish. Yay!

Rocky Trials

Trying to find a way to make these rocks work is a test in my patience as a human being. I've spent days now trying to use the sculpt without the original mesh, and it's been a huge trial and error process.

This is my first time trying to use a sculpt in zbrush that isn't just a bake, the hardest part is finding something that's  unwrapped. I've figured out decimating my sculpt, zremeshing, and unwrapping in zbrush to make an acceptable- but terribly optimized low poly rock to use as the base mesh. The problem now is unwrap space, I'm trying to import the obj in 3ds max to package it with everything else then use that fbx to bake the high poly onto, but for whatever reason that I cannot even begin to comprehend, xnormals won't align the high poly sculpt with the new unwrap. 

This rock is a time vampire and spending anymore time on it that I already have is going to cripple me emotionally. The only way I've managed to get this to work is using a low poly, decimated version with its own automated unwrap sheet all to itself. It's inefficient in both triangles and texture space, but I'm thinking I can just try and build extra assets into the texture sheet afterwards.

EDIT: OK! Some progress- I've found t hat once I bake it all out with 1 asset per texture sheet, I can then take that and then repackage it in 3ds max, under the strict condition that I cant reunwrap or change the unwrap sheet. This is still profoundly irritating but at least I can get at least to rocks on a single texture sheet. It's not much, but right now it feels like a good compromise. 

These rocks still need texturing, but I feel like the hard part is done. Did some mushrooms to decompress- making absolutely sure I liked the 3ds max models before I normal mapped them, in fear of having to repeat the same grueling process again. In contrast though, the mushrooms were actually therapeutic. 

Alice in Wonderland: Rock Edition

Rocks are the foundation of our level, in both the cave and the forest areas. As the forest area is my primary concern, when I started these rocks it was specifically for that area- hence why most are flat, as they are meant to be by a river, so I was trying to implicate the smoothing effect the water has had on the rocks to an extent. My intention was to do another set of rounder, rougher rocks for the cave, however the learning process took longer than expected so unless I get more time later, these rocks will be used for both. I think there is enough variance in shape to support that at least. 

I started in 3ds Max, unsure of our polycount aim or budget, so I started relatively low. On reflection, the original models were never going to be enough to supplicate the quantity and size these rocks needed to be, as well as how often they would appear in the level to not justify a much higher poly count. Regardless I didn't realize my error until far later. 

 I modeled my rocks so they had a different shape on each side of the rock, so when it decorating the level, you effectively had 4 times as many rocks, also with the intention that you could stretch the shape and rescale things for even more variance, When I started sculpting some detail for a quick bake, I got quickly carried away with the detail. It was a internal conflict to make the rocks as beautiful and detailed as possible without breaking the original shape of the model. Otherwise it wouldn't bake. What I got was an ugly hybrid. I was too carried away with the sculpting that I broke the original shape too much that the normal maps didn't work. It also occurred to me how much potential they had, and how satisfying and easy it was to model rocks in zbrush. I instantly felt that my new sculpted rocks were wasted on their original models.

I've been looking into re-topology software/retpoloising in zbrush so that maybe I could recreate my rocks based on the sculpt, and rebake based on that. 

Stacking Cards

So I spent this week stacking cards. Well not entirely, but it actually did take out a laughably big portion of my day- I think it was my favorite day so far. 

No but on a serious note this has been a solid week for me, I produced a fully functioning detailed blockout of the forest area, which included collapsible cards and a leaf falling puzzle. I also did quick blueprints for a double jump and bouncing mushrooms. They were both easier than I would have suspected- or maybe I'm just getting better at engine. Huh.  

Regardless, I made a huge amount of white box assets to basically map out the entire scene and all the unique assets we'll need to make it. This feels like a big jump in progression of the forest area and it means that forest assets can now be divided out and distributed. The forest has different areas of light and dark, you walk into a well lit open areas with sun rays lighting the character that contrasy from th incredibly dark and claustrophobic atmosphere of the cave. But as you travel thorugh the level, you also venture through shady and imposing sections- like the gnarled tree roots that block out the sun, as you climb up the tree and back into the light. As well as this there is verticality as you scale different areas then fall back down again to keep the path interesting and the player thinking, as well as areas of backtracking- from the teapot back through the log to the tree, which is now scaleable. 

I made a temporary stand in test of the leaf puzzle that basically functions as it should, to make sure it was possible to maintain a path that varies as different speeds of leaves reset at different heights. This meant doing a lot of individual matinees and lots of testing to make sure they always worked. Unfortunately since matinees aren't copy and paste-able, when we get a final model for the leaf it's likely that I'll need to redo them again. Which is fine, since they way it's currently structured isn't particularly tidy- it basically just works, but there's no finesse or leaf like motion to it. 

Alice vs the Redesign

This week we talked a lot about the length of the game and where we wanted to focus our attention, at this point it became clear that Myself, Jake and Christie were in charge of the Forest, Hallway and Canal respectively. Based on this any questions on direction on each of the areas tended to be directed towards us. I think this made the group more stable as there was now some form of internal organisation starting to appear. As me and Jake are the most familiar with engine, this also helps since we would be the ones working most closely with the mechanical aspects of the level. I've also noticed that a general pattern in all the groups I've worked with so far, is that the engine person tends to be the leader of the group, just because of the funneling process and the responsibility of the actual 'construction' of the level. It's also up to you to know what is possible and what isn't and design around our engine skills.

This week we also talked about our long term goals, obviously we all want to win the competition, but it's also important that at the end of the 11 weeks, we all have nice portfolio pieces. The problem is that is our three character artists then all wanted to do characters- naturally. It's a strain on the group since we felt that the only character necessary was Alice herself, and the others could be done on stylistic planes. However it's unfair on our character artists if this is what they wanted for their portfolio on our final project of the year. Our decision to let the caterpillar and the rabbit become major modeling characters was a mix of obligation to abide by the specialization list, and the knowledge that in these early stages of the project we wanted our group to fundamentally work happily together. It does make me slightly nervous though, since it means only the minority of the group will be actively working on the environment.

We also talked this week about what major puzzles we wanted, for definite these were a rabbit chase, a size puzzle and platforming puzzles. The details aren't quite ironed out but just knowing what gameplay elements we're working with makes it easier to concept around.

The personal kicker for me came at the end of the week when Jake returned from his trip to talk with the people behind the Off The Map project in Oxford. He basically told us that they were looking for something strongly grounded in Oxford and the lore of the book. This didn't fare nicely for my magical, emmisive mushroom forest. Yep.

I needed to re-coat my forest in a fresh paint of traditional British realism. Right down to the mushrooms. 

RIP emmisve mushroom lights. Week 1- Week 4

Alice and Concepting

When we were discussing our game plan, we decided we wanted to play out the story from the opening in the canal down through the garden. Despite this, most of our team concepted almost exclusively for the corridor, leaving us an abundance of hallway designs to choose from. The standouts tended to be ones that referenced architecture from relevant iconic places as well as smart designs like using the floral patter on the front cover of the book as a wallpaper design. Meanwhile this left me with almost complete creative control of the forest area. I'm not a particularly strong painter, but I did have some solid ideas on the direction I wanted to take the level, so I used photobashing to put a layout of the level together.

I wanted a strong sense of how magical wonderland was, and also the scale of Alice and how that would effect her perception of the world around her. I thought a lot of the picturesque background pieces could be done as graphic planes, with the foreground being modeled- for both effect and to reduce the amount of unique assets we need to decorate a level, as I was aware of the complexity of the scenes. But I wanted to embrace that business and cluster.  

My next job was to make it work as a cohesive level, I made a speculative route plan -that would be far more stretched out and spaced in the actual rendition of the level- trying to inlcude as much verticality as possible to try and improve some of the linearity that is often attributed to side scrolling games. I also considered game play mechanics as I went along- like a house of cards that fall down and has two different consequential routes depends on if you manage to jump onto the next platform before it falls, of if you tumble down with the rest of the cards. Also things like pushing a boulder to make a stepping stone to get across the 'river of tears'. Besides this I also added the 'theater planes' as the form of the oxford roof top landscape that's being engulfed in the river. 

A small but I feel nice addition is also the checkerboard sky, as the checkered patter is commonly associated with Alice and Wonderland and it aided the dream like atmosphere I was going for. On reflection though, it does look far to busy, I think the oxford towers could do with being lowered because they block out too much of the path Alice travels on, instead of just parts of it like I intended. 

Creative Differences

Our next big group decision was style. We knew we wanted a side scrollers but all had very different ideas of what that would encompass. Regardless, this is where our group had it’s first creative divide. Luckily everyone was reasonable  but it did turn into a strange battle of wills. Fundamentally, 3 of us wanted to make a 2d side scroller based around a 3d modeled world, this was founded on the fact that we had no concept artists, and what I mean by that is in reference to the specialization sheet I mentioned last week. Our 3d presence was far more prominent that anything else. It also offers a better opportunity to show case 3d skills for  portfolio pieces after the project is over (since none of us are interested in pursuing a career in 2d). The other half of the group was more inclined towards the 2d painterly aside, and I have to concede that the examples and style guides they showed us were gorgeous and the possibility was intriguing, but I honestly don’t think we could pull it off. 

Both sides of this debate tended to rally behind it’s ‘example’ game, which acted as a metaphorical battering ram, the representatives generally being Trine 2 and Child of Light. While there was no outright hostility in the group- quite the contrary we were communicating well and generally getting along, it did leave some tension in the group. Especially since there was no established ‘leader’ that generally emerges in these types of situations. 

To try and alleviate some of the underlying conflict, I put a style guide together that in-cooperated both 2d and 3d. It was generally well received, with a structured 3d world, but set up like a ‘stage play’ with 2d environments protruding in the foreground and mid ground, that makes the whole thing abstract and wonderlandesque. It was generally well received and helped unify the conceptual direction the group was heading in, though obliviously creative liberties were still encouraged, considered and discussed. We actually managed to come up with a pretty cool style between us, and I have every confidence that if it’s carried through to the final iteration, we’ll have something different and interesting. 

Alice in Wonderland

This next project is actually an external competition, the ‘Off the Map’ project made my Gamecity in conjunction with the British Library to create ‘exciting interactive digital media’. Our source material is Lewis Carrols’ classic Alice in Wonderland. Now, Alice and Wonderland is riddled with potential and creative opportunities, perhaps the only limit was our anchor to Oxford and the original text- which is very different to the popular retelling of the story. Loosely, our game had to be based in a fundamental world we recognize in the context of the story. But this is fine, Alice is a fantastic subject matter and I couldn't be happier to be making a game on it. I’m also very relieved to break away from my sci-fi streak, time to do some natural form! It really has been too long since I've modeled a bush...

This week was actually pretty controversial in terms of our years unrest, the first offender was our groups were set for us. While I’m not opposed to this in the slightest (I think it resembles industry working conditions more accurately) it was jarring. In our two years at DMU there’s never been a project where we’ve been set groups. I think the real problem is this project is by far our longest project of the year, almost tripling the length of our previous ‘longest’ time allowed for a project. It’s also our final project and an external completion so the stakes are fundamentally higher- it matters far more than any other group project that we are able to work well with our group. I think it would have made more logical sense to have randomized groups in every project but this one. Either way, I’m at lest somewhat familiar with the members of my group and am looking forward to working with them more closely- time to build some bridges.

The second aforementioned controversy was that during our introduction lecture to this project, it was mentioned that our projects would have to be a side scroller. I think I went through a very brief but dramatic roller coaster of emotions in the following two minutes; at first I was alarmed, then annoyed, then interested, then finally- excited. It was different and new and there are some fantastic 2d side scroller games I adore. Some people didn't have the same reaction and student battled staff for a day or so, before our staff relented and decided we could do anything, including the much desired 1^st person 3d world that most of us are accustomed to. Thing is though- by this time most groups (and I’m relieved to include mine in that statistic) had already warmed to the idea of a side scroller. If I had to guess, I’d say around two thirds of the year decided to do a side scroller.

Our groups weren’t entirely random though, the week prior to this we were asked to fill in a form where we chose our primary and secondary specializations. I was quite uncertain filling this o ut because I’m really not sure what I want to do, or be shoe horned into a job for this project. I think it was a defining moment where I had to choose between what I should and could do, verses what I wanted to do. I chose environmental artist, with a back up as an engine person. I think these are m,y strongest comparative suits and it would be unfair to any group I might have been put in to not sign up as mmy strongest roles. Ironically however I needn’t have worried so much, our group in particular (I can’t speak for other groups,) was terribly imbalanced. Out of five os us, we had three character artist, no concept artists and no engine person. This has knock on negative effects because then during job distribution we felt obligated to adhere to everyone’s jobs, which means we doled out three character jobs instead of an ideal one character- Alice. It also meant myself and Jake (who both had engine as our secondary preference) to do engine work, instead of any dedicated single person.

Right, so after deciding on a side scroller, we talked as a group about what category we wanted to go into out of the provided ones: Oxford, Garden and Underground. We decided that while we more more inclined towards the Garden and Underground which both had a written place in the book, we would read the source material before making any decisions. As I read the book I made a detailed document on all events and how they could potentially translate into game mechanics, like the dog, or chasing the rabbit, or chasing the animals to get dry. When we reconvened we decided instead of basing a game around a single one of these areas, we would just recreate certain sections of the book that would make worthy gameplay areas, and retell the story based on the events that happened in the book. We also made the conscious decision to try and align ourselves as closely with the book as possible, partially to please the British Library but also to make a streamline game experience. In regards to the inclusion of Oxford we decided to scatter referenced abstractly into the scenes, or include it in any architecture on the basis that because the world that Alice explores is her dream, that what she finds would be familiar. So all trees and fauna and anything else would be based on things you find strictly in Britain. The rest of this week was spent concepting and making stylistic decisions which I’ll go into more detail with next week. 

So the deadline has passed and we somehow managed to pull our level together.  Even if the final product wasn’t exactly what everyone had envisioned, I have to commend my group, we were all in lab everyday all day and worked really fantastically as a team. There has been a constant, positive flow of information and unlike the majority of groups- we embraced asset swapping and working to each other’s strengths. Jobs were shared and passed around, because everyone was putting in the hours, no one felt insecure or irritated, so there was no resistance to picking up other peoples’ jobs. However, there was some downsides to our communal work methods, for example there were times when working from an unwrap made by someone else that totally squared me. It didn’t make sense and wasn’t done in a way that I felt comfortable texturing it, so it had to be done again anyway.  But to reiterate, I would happily work with this team again, we all share the same methods, mind-set and maturity.

While I’m on the topic of unwrapping, I have to mention we did not have nearly enough planning for this. Assets made early soaked up a huge amount of texture space because we’d vastly overestimated how much 10 1024 texture sheets where. Anything made or unwrapped in the last few weeks which was largely small assets were completely debilitated by the lack of organisation and foresight we had planning. Assets were forget and had to be squeezed into horrifyingly small area on the texture space which left anything other than solid colour blocking completely out of the picture. My computers for example were the guiltiest offender, they were totally mismanaged after the modelling stages and by the time it came to packing them there was literally not a spare inch of space left. But this extended to mostly everyone assets and because of this lots of the texturing is very low resolution. It’s a huge shame actually because our composition and modelling were so strong and the left was lit so well that it worked really well in the engine before textures were even applied, that it was hard not to be disappointed when our textures weren’t up to the same quality. I think what we have to bear in mind is that we had a huge amount of assets and very little time or texture space. I want to say we could have managed our time better so that more attention could have been dictated to texturing, but I honestly thing we worked very time efficiently, the larger problem wasn’t working harder or faster, but instead simply choosing to make less assets or a smaller level.

Onto more positive things though, I think our level layout and design was really strong and we had great lighting queues to direct the player in the correct direction, because once again, our level was the minority in that it was nonlinear. The cylindrical nature meant there was always at least 2 directions to choose and because you had to find a key, all the rooms that you could choose to enter, including the empty ones, had a sense of purpose.

I had examples last week of the doors all having strong visual queues  using colour, but we also had subtle things we put in that the player may not even consciously notice, like the light shining on the key in an otherwise dark room, or the spot lights on the door. This meant that despite the ambiguity of the path and the explorative nature of it, the player was still aware of their next ‘goal’: Find the key, turn on the power, return to the door, etc.

I’m also particularly proud of mine and Jake’s work on lighting, the atmosphere was very prominent in our level and it was largely down to that, we had a very keen awareness of lights and light sources from the early planning stages of the project and that paid off in a big way. We also managed to get the alternate light scheme working when you turned on the power for a totally different effect- albeit not as different as we wanted because of the need to reduce the lights because of lag.

Speaking of atmosphere, our finished outdoors vista shot Annie did was also super cool- it went from claustrophobic cark to this wash of bright, open vastness that really contrasted with the interior of the level and making it feel even darker by comparison. It also sells the context of the place as when people were play testing our level, upon entering the outside, most would exclaim- ‘I get it now!’

While I am embarrassed by my texturing this project, it doesn’t devalue everything else we managed to achieve in this project and I’m proud of our work and progress, especially when you consider that we put this whole thing together in 4 weeks. I also learned a huge amount more engine skills (getting better at engine each project, awesome!) including matinees which I foresee being a huge deal, since they are so useful and easy to use, but look really effective and professional. Also learnt the value of modular parts and how efficient they are, if this is what we made in 4 weeks, I’m hyped to see what we make in our next project, that has a generous 12 weeks.  

It’s this week I realize how awesome modular components are. Our level is huge but we've managed to model and have it function as a game within three weeks because so many things were repeated. It’s also meant we can just model general assets that belong in the universe and then have them make up most of the busyness of the level- for example, computers, trash, bins, chairs, papers. We've actually modeled and abnormally large amount of small ‘population’ assets, to the point where we've literally just tossed them together to make a blockade on one of the corridors. It’s also meant we can easily change paths and routes (like how we made the broken and dangling drop off point last week.) It’s a very adaptable way of working.

Unfortunately it was a rocky modelling week on my end, but it turned out pretty cool I think. Basically I had manually to build a reception room for the level, and the plan was at the time was to make the reception unique and non-corridor based so I made the walls in a different way to everything else. In our presentation shortly after a point was made on some rooms not being ‘containery’ enough for the brief. As a reaction to this I revamped the room and removed all the custom walls and instead dismantled the containers and used parts of them to make the walls instead. So it was literally built out of the containers.

I also put thought into how it would connect with the hallway, so I left in fairings and metal beams so it looked like the wall had been roughly torn out but some of the foundations were still left in, holding the area together. I also thought about how I would light it while the power was down, and made a ‘grate’ which  bridges the lower containers to the stacked containers where the sun will filter through and hopefully speckle nice shadows over the center of the room.

For engine stuff, this week was massively progressive. I learned how to make matinees, which I used to animate all our doors so they automatically opened upon proximity to the player. Unlike blueprints, they were massively simple and intuitive, and with some basic research, you can accomplish some really cool animations. I also had it so lights came on when the doors opened, briefly lighting the next room. Following this, for locked doors, I lit them red and when opened had them change to green. But as much as I praise matinees, they break on a dime and cannot be moved.  This was the kickers as for some reason the engine file had to be changed or moved slightly, so the 20 odd doors I’d individually animated (there is no copy paste) were instantly useless and had to be redone.

The effect was really cool though and made the scene more interactive and immersive for the player. We also go our lights working! I mentioned a few weeks ago that the goal of the level was to make it down to the engine room and turn on the power, which opens the final door and turns on the lights. After getting the blueprints sorted for that (we had some trouble linking it to the door as well as the lights) the issue was that it absolutely tanked our engine. The frames dropped to sub 10 and it was virtually unplayable. This was because having 3 light bulbs in one of the rows to make an even spread of light in each of the columns was too intensive for the engine. Also, and perhaps more importantly was the attenuation raises were huge, and while this gave a great bleached effect, it was too intensive to keep, we also cut one of the lights and settled for 2 per row. This mean the corridors aren't quite as contrasting but it will suffice.

Regardless, it’s worth noting that our level is finally playable from start to finish, with all the mechanics successfully implemented which is a huge relief as we managed some really ambitious technical stuff and it's paid off, including action queues like 'press E to pick up' etc when close enough to an action.

This week we spent developing our visual understanding of the level through concepts, room and lighting plans. A lot of our planning was actually 3d concepted, I think it’s because for the majority of our group, including myself, our primary strengths aren’t 2d and with a 4 week timeline, we were under a lot of pressure to work fast. It was because of this that most a lot of the very basic room modelling was done over because 3d paintovers were such a crutch for us and have been prevalent as the ‘most efficient way’ of planning a level. It was actually a method I criticized at first, before quickly jumping ship and embracing it.

The different vaults we had planned were loosely assigned for concepting purposes, but it was generally accepted if you had a different idea or an adaptation to go ahead and remodel or paint something, having everyone involved in all the rooms kept the visuals in line so there was no sporadic difference in everyone misinterpreting the idea.  My ‘main’ room was the reception room which I painted various concepts for, bearing in mind that this was the first room the player would see upon playing the level, and also had to have a lighting setup t

hat would frame the large final vault door that was located at the back of the reception. I wasn’t overly happy with the quality of the paintings, but I think the ideas were strong enough.

The far right column was my adaptation of Jake Roddis’ container hallway design, using a mix of already created assets and a new selection of my own, I modelled a hybrid of our ideas which is what we went for. I think I was particularly diligent (to the point overbearing) on hassling everyone about being conscious of light sources and how they could be built into the walls and what not. I like the low lit atmosphere that Jake had created and used them in my first two concepts, but was also keen to try and a largely contrasting bright hallway. We liked both which is perhaps what spawned our primary mechanic. Based on these we decided that instead of collecting a key from the bottom floor, you could go into a tech room and turn on the power, lighting the entirety of the building. This was an idea we were all really excited for, as it would be like walking back through an entirely different level and completely change the spooky tense atmosphere. It was a way to offer a different player experience within the same level which we were all totally on board for.

This week also had big ramifications on the layout plan, we decided the hallway connecting the two layers didn't really work, we also had some pretty detailed concepts and whitebox models of the exterior of the container, but the player never got to see it. We decided to implement a way to interact with the outside so we had it as one of the corridors falling down, dropping you onto the roof of the containers below where you re enter from a hatch. We were fully aware that we were adding a lot more work to our pile when we decided to do this, but it was such a good way to show off our structure from a different perspective- as well as break up some of the monotony of going around a dimly lit corridor in circles- that we decided it was worth it.

It was soon after this change that our main concept artist Annie Wyatt painted our structure from the outside and in context.  This was hugely influential in selling our idea and because the touchstone and reference point for all environments.  It gave our building a bigger feeling of scale, to help ease the burden of modelling and outside environment, the plan is to just use heavy fog with lights underneath to insinuate a city or town below it, with large producing (but simple) towers breaking through the mist.