Games Project : Design & Planning Week 10/11

Unlike the previous 2 weeks of Unreal Engine work the next 2 weeks would be heavily focussed on level development and the creation of a main menu. We felt that designing levels would be easier than programming as at this stage we only needed to block out all the builds, enemies and cars which could be done with relative ease when compared to programming and animation. 

Throughout the level creation process we would refer back to the concept art that we had created back in weeks 4/5. We would also consult with each other and think about the genre of the game and discuss the possible locations, appearance and layout of the levels. With all this in mind we decided that the tutorial level should be all to do with the setting up of the story so in reference to the hospital setting it would only make sense for the tutorial to be a hospital transitioning into the streets where the first level would begin. 

This is a screen shot of the completed tutorial level. It is very basic and needs much work however this is what we had aimed for. We would block out a handful of levels so that when it came down to it we would be able to texture them all in the creation process of the full game meaning that the hard stage would have been done already. 

This shows that the concept art and level design have merged into one as here we can see that the artwork that was created for a level concept has been implemented into the blocked out level. We want to maintain this style of design and creation and stick to the original plan as much as possible rather than deviate. I believe that as a team we will be able to pull through and create the final prototype because we are constantly looking back at our work to reference it and make sure that we stick to the book. 

The important part of any game is the menu which I feel was done very well for a first time user of this software. This is all very basic but with the module next year I feel that as a team we will produce a great game that we can all be proud of creating and showing to our lecturer, our friends and even the public, who knows where it will end up going. 

.

Games Project : Design & Planning Week 8/9

For the next few weeks we will all be focussing on one primary objective. Now that we have finalised most of the details on our game we will be working on building and completing our prototype and bringing together all of our documentation which will include the concepts of our game, the technical details and design, concept art and minutes from each week along with our on going team blog and our critical appraisals. This post will contain updates of our work including screenshots of the prototype as it progresses and then in week 12 we will include screenshots of the final product.

The initial steps of creating the prototype involved learning how to navigate and use Unreal Engine 4 which was no easy task. We needed to demonstrate proficiency in the software in order to create the prototype and, later on, the full game. This journey was made easier as Unreal supply basic set-ups for different genres of games.

As shown above there are many options for developers to choose from but obviously we picked for the basic side scroller. This gave us a very simple movement system that had been programmed for us and a small level to navigate. After spending time looking into the layout and design of the software we looked online for tutorials and tips on how to develop our prototype. Luckily there was an official Unreal YouTube channel which provided to be a great source of information as there were plenty of videos that guided us through the first steps of Unreal Engine. I highly advise checking it out if you are learning Unreal Engine. 

Our week ended with our team leader reinforcing that these next few weeks would be spent mainly on just documentation and prototype creation.

This week began with myself and the other team member working on UE4 discussing different methods and animation techniques for our prototype. We had both looked into various tutorials to try and gain a solid understanding of how the movement system worked as we wanted to learn how to make a character run and walk on our own so that for future projects that knowledge would be already at hand.

The above image is the basic layout of  the character mesh which allows the user to add materials onto the mesh to create a different aesthetic appearance however the key part of that image is the animation tab at the top right which we used to bring together our running and jumping animations and, later on, our punching animation. The animating section of Unreal allows the user to view the animation from all angles which allowed us to watch for any discrepancies in the animation.

After some trial and error the running animation was smooth and worked perfectly. With that out of the way we focussed on level creation as our character's movement had been completed. We decided to leave level creation till after we had managed to get the movement perfect as we felt that would be the most challenging part of learning Unreal Engine.

Games Project : Design & Planning Week 6/7

This blog entry will be split across 2 weeks as we felt that we had assigned ourselves just a little too much work and believed that we would rather extend our work for 2 weeks and produce a good quality of work than have it for 1 week and produce something of low quality.

Our task list for the next two weeks were as follows :

. Develop and present one piece of concept art for a level
. Develop and present one piece of concept art for boss character.
. Develop and present one piece of concept art for a basic enemy.
. Develop and present one piece of concept art for protagonist character.
. Download Unreal Engine 4 and become familiar with the software

As a team we decided that this would be a two week long task as we would be creating a lot of art work and as none of us are very creative we felt that rushing this task would only create unneeded stress and in the end we want to produce high quality and work we can be proud of so we felt that having this task scale over two weeks would be beneficial. Having this over two weeks allowed us to spend more time honing key points of the game and start to brain storm different ideas that we could bring to our game.

Looking at the work that has been produced so far by our team I believe that it was definitely worth taking the two weeks to produce all of our work and take that extra time to complete it. I will post a few examples of our concept art below but I will also make a few posts containing all of the concept art we have worked on so far. Here are two examples of a basic enemy that you could encounter in the game.

Our focus on Unreal Engine was because we know that we will be using it next year in our Honours project so we felt it would be advantageous to learn how to use it now and then we would be one step ahead when next year comes round. We believe that by using UE4 we will be able to create our game just the way we want it in the sense that we will have the 3D effect we want but still remain a 2D side scroller. With this in mind we felt that spending time during this part of the year would mean that we would spend less time when we have to create the game learning UE4 in effect meaning we would be able to start straight away without delay.

Since working on the concept art for the design process I feel that myself and my other team member have gained a fuller insight into the genre we are working to create as to draw each of the characters and storyboards we had to go and look up gangsters, graffiti, gang tags and research the style of clothing they wore meaning that we are developing an understanding to this style and genre of game.

I feel that as a team we are really starting to show where our strengths and weaknesses lie and we are able to combat those. After these 2 weeks I feel that we will really start to blaze through the last remaining parts of our design. 

Our next tasks for the upcoming week will be :

. Discuss and present reasons why we chose this platform/genre

. Discuss and present the design aspects we wish to implement 

. Discuss and present the market and sale potential for our game