Quandary 31/10/2013

The last few days have been really good for us. The game is becoming less and less full of bugs and it seems it's almost ready. Tomorrow is the day we really need to finish and export to iOS. I still don't feel right about sound, it must just be tunnel vision I'm getting. Nonetheless, I'll be handing all edits to the sound over to Josh and he'll tell me if they don't sound right. I was worried the other day that they would be out of sync or too long so I made edits according. Will tells me they should be fine. I can't help but worry this late into the game, it's coming to the end and I'm worried that I'll miss something or something won't turn out right. The documentation is due tomorrow, so I've been working making sure that everything is in there. Honestly, I think I've done a good amount of work for the game looking back. Anyway, I'll keep this updated soon. Maybe for the last time?

Quandary 27/10/2013

Since Wednesday, I began developing some ideas for our presentation night. I came up with the idea of having shirts to wear for the three of us so I drew some designs and it’s still to be considered. The only problem with it would be the material used to print the shirts would be a bit dodgy. Meanwhile, I also came up with the idea to implement the sounds by myself to make sure that they fit with the game, just making sure that they’re not too long or too short. I’m doing that today, even though I don’t know most of the code that’s in the game. Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. I’ve also been working hard filling out the documentation due next Friday.

Quandary 23/10/2013

After discussion with the team, it became apparent that I needed to cut up the in game music into three 30 second songs. This would insure that the music didn’t become repetitive in a 10-30 second level. I created the assets according and showed Will, which he was pleased with. This week has been okay, or I should say up until last night. We thought we were ahead of the curve, but when it came to presentations last night nothing really built properly. It turned out a lot of the groups are behind as well, which Justin wasn’t happy about. Really, it was all about our code. All the assets are there, they just need to be put together properly. I told Will that I legitimately felt bad for Josh, who’s pressured into figuring it all out by Thursday/Friday. It made me really think about my role in this team. I know that, for some reason, I’m put in a position where I can’t help when it comes to implementation of the actual game. Will has been good at just doing what he needs to do for the game, and Josh has been great in coding. So they’re a good duo together. I feel like during crunch time, I need to be around with the team all the time even if I’m not doing much work. Once they’ve finished debugging and making sure the game runs, they’ll input my sounds. Almost all sounds are 100% but I’m just worried some sound effects won’t fit. It shouldn’t take long to fix those up if that does happen. Until then, I’ve just been fixing up my documentation and thinking of new posters.

Quandary 18/10/2013

This week, I began making some new sounds. The music I had produced earlier wouldn’t work with the new grid movement system so I created two new songs for menu and in-game and also finalised the sound effects so that Josh can put them in the game, which he hasn’t done yet but I’m waiting for him to do it so that if any of them don’t fit, I can edit them according. The game overall is on the right track, we should be ready to build next week, unfortunately we didn’t this week.

Quandary 10/10/2013

It’s been a full week since my last update, which I think is a solid way to update this journal so I can just summarize the week. Everything is going quite well. Will has just finished the grid code so we actually have movement, although I’m unsure on iOS. Josh is making excellent progress on the new menu. And I’ve been working on some levels. The level design process has been really challenging, I read an article about a guy creating a portal level with the level builder Valve created. He had a general idea of what he wanted to do but when he got to making the idea he found it to be too easy. So he kept adding on elements so it became more difficult, the more he added, the more he made his friend test to see if it was challenging, and the result was brilliant. I didn’t expect to learn anything from the article, but the more I read the more it easier to make challenging puzzle levels. Not to say that it’s now easy to make my levels challenging, but it helped with the process. The thing with Quandary is, we don’t have portals to play with, infact we don’t really have anything to make puzzles with. So I took the liberty of making pressure plates after thinking about it for a while. I was thinking of adding more but I feel like just the one mechanic can make the game fun. These pressure plates activate a variety of things in Quandary, for example one can activate a door and another can add time to your progress. This has made it much more fun to design levels, I can be a bit more creative. However I haven’t shown the team yet, so tonight I’ll be showing my progress to them. The game overall is going well. We’re on track. Next week we’re expecting to have a non bugged build running fully on the app store, so hopefully all goes well. I’m actually quite excited.

Quandary 03/10/2013

So after the holidays, the began our preparation for the alpha. I reported in with Will and Josh and they didn’t seem to have as much done as I would have thought. It turns out after the presentations that most teams were a bit behind. I feel that the holidays distracted us, we had too much “free” time and we took it for granted. However after the presentations I feel that we were a bit more motivated for the next 5 weeks that we have left. The most fleshed out thing we have right now is the main menu which is fantastic. Will’s progress with the grid movement system has been awesome, which is basically moving via a square grid on screen. I’ve been working on levels inside Unity, I got the assets from Josh. I’ve made about 3 or 4 prototype levels just to get the idea, so I’ll probably show everyone tonight. These next weeks are going to be full on.

Quandary 25/09/2013

I haven’t updated in 11 days, I’ve been quite lazy with this thing. Really I’ve been enjoying my holidays, but that hasn’t stopped me completely from doing work. It’s really more about the fact that I’m not really involved in the technical aspect of the game. Josh and Will are putting it all together and I’ve been trying to keep myself busy.

Quandary 14/09/2013

For the rest of the week, we began just applying some polish on the game. All the assets were in unity now and it’s time to prepare for the Alpha. Will and Josh handle most of the actual implementation but I’m usually there as kind of a brainstormer for how certain things should be layed out (like the menu). It’s great that we’ve prepared so early with all the assets, I feel confident that the alpha in 2 weeks time will be something that people really enjoy playing.

Quandary 11/09/2013

Earlier this week I was told to gather up as many decent songs as I could and sound effects to put in the game to test. I gave my team a usb with all said files on it and had to run out due to personal family issues. They enjoyed most of them but thought they were a bit too sharp and loud. So I’ll have to fix that up next. I feel like I haven’t talked enough about the overall progress of the game, so better late then never. The game I feel is going well as a game. The touch input is something we’re stressing about so much, not just to get it working, but for it to be fun as well. A while back I threw an idea to Will about having a pad with arrows in 8 directions. The player would tap whichever they wanted and would move one block (jumping included). Yesterday, Will said he was having problems with the joystick and Justin basically pitched the same thing. So we’re going for that now. I felt like I should’ve been insulted in some way but honestly I didn’t care, Justin was a more reliable source of idea giving. Will asked if everyone was okay with the idea, which I said yes to obviously. The joystick would make the player feel like it was the games fault that he/she was failing. Which it would’ve been.

Quandary 08/09/2013

After a week of drawing up posters and art prints, we decided it was best that I went back to working on sound. Mainly because we want to have all our assets done by Friday this week. That way we can tinker with what we have and prepare for a more solid Alpha coming after the week holiday. So we had a meeting on Friday and made a list of all sound assets we need. I’ve finished most sound effects and added some music but we need to figure out which ones are going to stick.

Quandary 01/09/2013

So on Friday we all figured out what we were working on for the weekend. It was mainly just a group meeting kind of day, where we ruled out the things that were bugging us most and how we could overcome them. I told Will I wanted to get back into some art stuff this weekend to build my profile a bit more so I decided to work on some posters, concept art and drawings, which actually turned out a lot more impressive than I thought. More soon!

Quandary 29/08/2013

So yesterday and today during our mid-week break I began designing levels. I woke up, got my sketch book and sat down to draw down a design. To my surprise, nothing came out on paper. I spent so much time just staring at the paper in front of me, and occasionally drawing a cube hoping something would come out. It turns out level design for Quandary is going to be hard. Like really hard. I attempted to find a source of inspiration from previous games like Braid and Portal 2, but really there’s the fundamental difference which is the individual mechanics these games poses. Braid is much a puzzler yes but it’s built around its time shifting mechanic. Portal 2 has the portal gun which allows the use of portals. So really Quandary will be all about different mechanics, but it lacks its main mechanic. The mechanic that it falls back on for puzzles, so basically we need to explore different mechanics like time slow or portals, but they won’t be a main mechanic, they’ll just be in there for a couple of levels. We’ll have to wait and see. See you tomorrow.

Quandary 27/08/2013

The prototype went well. Basically as much as we wanted it to. Everything we wanted to show was demonstrated, everything we wanted to explain was explained. The prototype is also a great starting point for our new phase, which is basically everyone starting and thinking about challenging levels and new mechanics. We had a team meeting after the presentation just to make sure everyone was on the same page with that, it’s important that our team understands that the game needs to be challenging. Otherwise it’s just a game with no real fun. It’s not what we’d want with Quandary. Anyway, more coming.

Quandary 26/08/2013

Today we began brushing up our prototype for tomorrow. This included new formatting and bug fixes, just making sure everything is ready.

Quandary 25/08/2013

11:00am So I’ve taken a few days for myself to relax, and come back this morning to see that Will and Josh have been working hard on compiling all our assets for the prototype. I love my team. Anyway, so they’ve put in some sounds that I’ve created and put on dropbox, I’m not sure which they’ve chosen. Hopefully they’ll get back to me on which ones need improving. 6:00pm Made great progress on sound today. Will listed the songs he likes and thinks should be in menu and in game, and edited according to what he thought would work. I got a copy of the prototype, which is great for a tech demo, but the menu needs touching up. I think that it’s fine to show off the functionality of the menus and customization, however it’s not at all finished. I think the main idea for our prototype is getting all functionality finished. That way after Tuesday we can just polish it up and create interesting and challenging levels.

Quandary 22/08/2013

I've been doing weekly updates on this journal however thanks to a recent reformat of my computer and the sheer brilliant attempt to not back up the proper document, I am now left 20 days without an update. So basically in the earlier days since my last update I was working on a style that would fit Quandary's overall theme, I drew a few textures and asked the team what they thought in which was mostly positive however we still aren't using them quite yet. But that's really just okay, Quandary looks fantastic without textures but we'll see how we go down the track with that. For the most of the later part of this month I have been working oh so hard on the Sound Design. Sound is incredibly important for any game but Quandary especially because it needs to be simple and slow paced but not too slow and just a tiny bit not simple...so really it's hard as balls to do. Simplicity is not just removing clutter, it's finding harmony in objects that work hand and hand together, or so I’ve come to learn. It’s really been quite a big task to do but I don’t see it as an individual task but rather a process of design just like making the game itself, so really it should take a lot of time to adapt to what the game will eventually be in the future. On a side note, we built to iPhone earlier this week and it looked fantastic. It only consisted of our first prototype level without any way of controlling it, but it still gave us a boost of inspiration and a preview of what’s to come. Until next week.

Quandary 02/08/2013

Spending the last 2 days trying to develop a simple style, we went into our 3 hour class with Marc. I told him that I was having trouble developing a style and he suggested making a lot of different themes and styles. So I started a very cartoon style grass texture for one of the blocks, and it worked quite well. So we decided to start designing some different styles for now, we’re going to work out what we’ll use them for later.

Quandary 29/07/2013

Today we began ruling out what Quandary is. Will has made a good effort in explaining the idea via his game pitch however we’ve begun discussing how it will play and what the mechanics will do. We still have a lot of work to do, we all agreed that the scope is around 20 levels, but for now we want to create level 1. We’ll be keeping the simplistic style that Will provided, maybe with a bit more texture detail.

Video for Underground Level!

Game Design Level Jason Kendrick Underground Level from Jason Kendrick on Vimeo.

Summary for Game Design Level

Overview.

This assignment was definitely a learning experience. It gave me much more of a hands on approach to modelling and Unity, mainly because I had to figure out most of the information and learn how to apply it in the most efficient way. I felt like I could be much more creative in this assessment then any other, really.
Of course there were some problems that I had and it just frustrated me to the point where I didn't want to look at it for a few days, but I always came back and eventually got it down.

The thing that I found most challenging was getting my theme down. I had it when I started, but then learned we had to incorporate natural elements. So I had to change the story based on the theme I then needed to convey. Finding a way to make it seem like an old phantom underground village that had been taken over by an industrial corporation was a big challenge, especially with gathering assets.

I was quite happy with how most of the assets turned out, especially the work office buildings, they weren't really an issue to build and (in my opinion)are the best asset to look at. The one asset I had the most issues with was definitely the large vines from the hole in the roof, mainly because the circle on the top didn't look three dimensional to look at, it just felt like a shell. So I added a sort of rim to it to make a good transition between the vines and the hole.

Overall, I spent a lot of time on this assignment and I think it was one of the best in terms of learning for next semester. It made me understand how 3DS Max and Unity go pretty much hand and hand together.

Final mapping and Asset list.

The level is just about done. Here's a Unity map for the objectives and the new asset list!

Asset	Priority
Stone Moss Floor	High
Buildings	High
Gate	High
Tents	Low
Mining Drill	High
Moss Walls	High
Steel Barrels	Low
Table with Computer	High
Torches	High
Campfire	High
Wooden Poles	High
Generator	Low
Mushrooms	Low
Vines	High
Pillars	High
Mining site office	High

Final video coming soon!

Revising the walls.

So the walls in my levels were a great starting point to give me perspective. But now, I'd like to revise these walls and add a normal bump map to them. I'm sure it will make them look better.

 Taking them back to 3DS max and using UV Unwrap to project the image by 2 poly's each, it's obvious these are already looking better...

the Left column is the original texture just slapped onto the model, the rest to the right is the new edited version, much better.


Now I'll make the bump map for the texture.

And applied in Unity:

Much better.

Designing the Office

The workplace office was something I wanted to include in my level mainly because I needed an enclosed area for the enemies to spawn in. It also feels like it's required if I'm having a giant drill in my level.

To achieve an office space, I need the inside and outside modeled. This office will be accessible to the player.

I've seen a few of these Mining Site Office buildings around. Found a few pics as well:

 So I'll start with a mid poly box roughly the same shape as the picture above, and the polys cut from the top so I can see what I'm doing on the interior, I'll then add in the floor which will be a separate plane (to make texturing easier).

I'll start with the interior first. It needs to be simplistic yet effective. Usually these portable buildings have stretched out tables against one of the walls, I'll start with that.

Looks weird now, but give me a few minutes.

Alright, now if we just put it in the building...

Cool! Seems to be coming along nicely. Now we need a few more thing to put in here.

Just did a quick model, honestly I have no idea what this thing is called. I actually have one in my house. I guess it's a shelf? I'm sure there's a specific name for them. Feels like it's perfect for this building.

I think we'll push the interior aside for now and work on the outside of the model.

Alright, so adding a little more edges made the windows fit a little easier. The door will be opened toward the inside of the building.

Now the ramp for access to the door.

And now for texturing!

Now let's take it into Unity and see how it is.

Designing the Mining Drill.

The Mining Drill is one of the most interesting parts of my level. Mainly because it's constantly animated to drill into the ground. It's also the last objective (which is to shut it down) in the map. I'm about half done with it however I'd still like to give a run down of what the process was like.

So far this is looking okay. But it needs more dirt around the top. In order to do this, I'll take the steel texture and run it through photoshop with a dirt texture.

This:

 And this:

So it will come out to something like this.

This looks better for a Drill, however with a little help from our friends at cgTextures, I can add some Oil stains to the top (the top being the bottom of this picture).

It's a little hard to tell but if you see at the bottom there are now dirt streaks going upward. Just that little more detail makes it look much more rugged.


And here it is textured:

Little touch ups like this make everything better.

Underground Environment: Mid-build thoughts and updated assets

The level is coming about nicely if I do say so myself. Some of the assets I've put in the game have turned out better then I'd thought when put under the lighting underground. There's still much more I need to put in, such as the enemies base. I need to put in something more at the beginning of the level as well. But so far so good.

This is my 3 objectives so far.

Objective 1: Save the two villagers and untie them from the poles.
Objective 2: Grab the key from the lockbox on the table
Objective 3: Unlock the tower door and shoot the core to shut the operation down.



I made these objectives almost completely different to the original, but I think they suit better for what I'm now implementing.

 Story:

The two villagers that you rescue are a few of the last survivors of an underground tribe, they are incredibly intelligent. You are saving the small desolate village from an illegal excavation and mining corporation that want to mine the land for a rare mineral. The Bookers find it as a good starting mission for The Kid.


Updated Asset list:

Asset	Priority
Stone Moss Floor	High
Buildings	High
Gate	High
Tents	Low
Tower (objective 3)	High
Ramp	Low
Fallen Rocks	Low
Stone Walls	High
Steel Barrels	High
Table with computer and lockbox (objective 2)	High
Torches	High
Campfire	High
Poles (Objective 1)	High
Generator	Low