WEEK 12

WEEK 11

This week, our team is preparing the beta code for the upcoming submission. Our current game has a tutorial area where the ship landed, a hub world that connects to other worlds, and a mushroom forest that is full of mushrooms. Noah did a really good job in making the mushroom forest, with paths leading the player to explore the map, and it doesn’t seem as empty as the alpha code map anymore. Greg is making the AI for the enemies. He showed us a demo clip of it and it looks really good. The enemies feel much scarier with how they behave (they have a hearing and seeing range) and with how fast they charge at the player.

As for me, I am preparing the intro animation for the game. Wildan gave me a run down of the lore, and I need to create an animation for that. It consists of two parts, the first half is the lore of where the creatures on the planet come from, and the second half is how our main character ended up on this planet. I created the drawings on Procreate, and I animated them mostly in photoshop . There are 1 or 2 clips animated in the after effect because I want to animate the positions of the things. The reason I am using photoshop over after effects is that after effects is taking too much ram, and for some of the scenes I need to draw additional backgrounds and shadows, so working in photoshop would be more convenient for me. I rendered the animation and sent it off to one of my teammates to put in the sound. Thanh talks about adding subtitles into the video. I think that's what I am doing for the following week.

This week, we are finishing up the rest of the game. For me, I will start working on the end credit scenes. Currently, I have a few ideas for it. One is an animation similar to the opening scene, where there is limited animation that tells the player leaving the planet. Another way is a scrolling credit scene that includes elements from the game. That one would have no animation (not the drawing ones), but it kind of relies on the music for it to be dramatic. I have to talk with the team about this.

Another thing I did this week is making variant creatures for different maps. Currently, I made the mushroom version and the icy version. The mushroom version has mushrooms growing on their back, and those mushrooms emit light to help make the scene feel more fantastic. I used a random shader to make the mushroom in different colors every time I duplicated them. As for the icy version, I made them look fluffy so that they can survive in a cold environment. I added some bone for the larger chunk of fur so that it bounces when it moves. I tried to animate it with wiggle physics by parenting those new bones to the ones I already animated, and let the computer animate the fur for me.

For this week, other than the end credit scene, I need to make more assets for the desert and icy jungle map. For those I am thinking of dead plants and rocks for the desert, and pale blue trees and chunks of purple ice for the icy jungle. I also need to make a desert variant creature for that map as well.

WEEK 10

This week, our team is developing the mushroom level and the introduction level of the game. One of our teammates is almost done with the mushroom forest map, and he will be doing the desert level next.

As for me, I am working on the intro animation in Procreate. I got a script of what needs to happen from Wildan, and I am blocking out the first part of the animation where the scientist first creates the creatures. I am not doing a very detailed animation, but should be enough to convey the story. I am going to use more stylised drawing for this to facilitate the animation process. Other than the animation, I also made a few tree models for my other teammates to work with. I created those by messing with the particle system for the berry one, and using a random node and color ramp to randomize the color for parts of the trees.

Next week I will need to block out the second part where it is more about how the player character ended up on the planet and why the spaceship is taken apart.

WEEK 9

This week our team is developing more maps for the game. Our mushroom forest is mostly completed, and it looks more lively with more types of mushrooms.
I did some more models for mushrooms to create more variants for my other teammates to create the subworld maps. I started making the crystals for another map, I made some as individual pieces and some as chunks so that my teammates could play with them when building the new map. The shader I am using in the screen shot is just a placeholder color, and I need to ask them to play around with the shader in unity.
For next week, I will need to create variants for the creature models so they blend in more to the environment. I also need to start on making more models to fill in the environments for different sub worlds, namely some icy trees and something for the desert area, which I need to discuss with my teammates.
For some 2D assets, I will be talking with Wildan about the opening cut scenes. I am thinking of making it almost like a slightly animated comic panel, so there will be less animation to make. However, the style of the opening scene will be determined once I take a look at what Wildan is trying to make. On top of that, I will be helping to make the loading screen. I need to ask them about the design they are looking for.

WEEK 8

This is the alpha code week. We are pretty happy with our presentation with our game demo.

This week is a relatively easy week for me compared with the last one. This week, my work is to create a model of the spaceship for the starting area, and come up with some parts for the player to collect. It was pretty hard to come up with what the player should collect during the gameplay. So currently I come up with a module, thrusters, a chip, a liquid container, and a paracel. I think I did an ok job with modelling the spaceship, I don't want to put too much attention to it as it is just going to sit at the start of the map. It took me some time to create this model because it is a free form model with no concrete design, so I undo a lot of the steps as I go. I come up with a logo for the company the main character is working for and paste it on both the boxes and the carrier to bring home the idea that the main character is a space mailman. I did not model for the back upper part of the spaceship because the player is not going to see it and just blocked it with a wall to separate the cockpit and the back. I think the difficult part for me in modelling the spaceship is that it makes sense and authentic enough for it to look like a space version of a typical postal van.

For the coming week, I will be fixing some issues discovered during the playtesting. Players found out that there is a hole for the player character’s mesh and it is stretched out when doing the running animation. So I need to throw everything into unity and check what happened with the models.

WEEK 7

This week, the group is focusing on creating the playable first level for play testing this weekend.

For this week, I did several things. First, I made some basic mushroom models for the game. I used colour from the reference photos, but we probably will change it to make it suit more aesthetically to the draft environment we have created before. I think I will create one more mushroom model to make it more diverse. Second thing is that I figure the original player model is badly modelled. The shoulder part does not have enough polygon for it to deform naturally, making the model’s mesh twist in a weird way. So I make another player model where it T poses so there will be enough polygons for it to look good. Thirdly, I created some animations for both the creature and the player. For the creature, it has some idle animations with occasional head turning and head scratching. It has both walking and running animation with the gait being slightly different. It also has a few attack animations, one for long range and two types of melee attack. For the player, they have the idle animation, animation for holding and using both guns and melee weapons, and jumping animations. I only did one type of running animation for the player. For the jumping animation, I divided it into 3 animations: start, duration, and end so that it would be easier to animate based on the character’s situation in the game. I haven’t tested the animation out just yet, so fingers crossed they are not making any trouble when I import them into the game.

For the next few days before the playtesting, I will need to finish the spaceship model for the first area of the game. I already have the draft of how the spaceship will look like, so I think it would not take me too much time to model it.

WEEK 6

This week is the midterm week and the team needs to focus more on those and there is not much progress as a group this week. For me personally, I need to finish a scene for IAT 445, which some of the techniques I use from that can translate to this project. Such as I tried out putting multiple animations to a single game object with an avatar mask.

This week, instead of making the walking animation for the player, I tested out the creatures’ animation first. Looping the animation works fine, but there are some problems as I tried to link the animations together. I created 2 animations for this test. One is an idle animation where the creature will stop and look around, another one is one walking animation cycle. In unity, I imported the two animations and linked it in the animation controller. I set it to do a loop of one idle animation followed by 5 seconds of walking animation. The problem I have encountered here is that during the 5 seconds where the walking animation loops, there is a glitch which makes the creature do an unexpected movement then continue the animation. I tried to export the animation from blender after fixing the first and last frame, but the problem still remains.

Next week I need to fix that animation and work on other animations. If I have time I will need to start working on other models. I probably will start with mushroom models first as they are the easiest to create.

WEEK 4

This week as a team we are working on the first prototype. We are building the first playable game for the coming submission, and I start working on the assets for the game.

For this week, I spent a day or two familiarising myself with Blender by going through the famous donut tutorial by Blender Guru. The reason I am using Blender instead of Maya (a software I had used for an animation course) is that Blender has a better sculpting tool and I have better control on the models (and is an excuse and motivation to finally learn to use Blender). Here are the progress and results of the tutorial.

Next I worked on the player model. I modelled it with adjusting basic shapes, sculpted and merged the torso. After a brief meeting with other teammates, I need to replace the hand with a lower polygon count so that it looks like they are wearing gloves. I may need to recolour the model as well.

For next week, I will make some mushroom models for the environment, and a monster/ creature model as well. After I fix the current player model, I will start rigging it.

WEEK 5

This week the team is working on the first playable build, and is named as the tumbleweed version. We have the basic movement implemented, and some models representing the player and enemies are used. We also did some playtesting on the burnaby campus and through the internet.

This week, I continue working on the models I made last week. As blender doesn’t have a preset ik control like in maya, i.e. to make ik controls the best method is to extrude a bone, clear its parent, and select another bone to pair up with the extruded bone and constrain them using inverse kinematics option. It took me some time to understand it but now I got a working rig for the models.

Next I tried some animation for the creature and tested out how to import it to unity. It was basic sitting and waving animation. I imported it as a prefab in unity. I found out that if I want the animation to loop, I need to duplicate the animation in unity to make the loop option available.

For next week, I will be working on the walking and attack animation for both player and the creatures.

WEEK 3

This week is quite an eventful week. We have our first GDD we have to finish and we will have a presentation on it on Wednesday, so we have to work on that.
This week I continue to develop the concept art for different variants of the Athikterians in each region. I also helped with the narrative flowboard. I did not expect it to have that many frames, so that was a surprise. As for the Athikterians, I tried to make them have features that fit into the region they are in. I tried to make them have similar form across the region so that it could be easier for me to model later. Those images will be my reference for later.
I also made the functional flowboard for our game with the screens I think our game should have. I took some liberty to assume how to control the change between screens for now, such as whether the tab will bring up the inventory, etc. But the final decision will depend on how the programmers config the controls.
For the coming week I will have to learn how to use blender as I need to start making models for the game and need to do some sculpting, so I will be making virtual donuts during the holiday and I will be looking at some time lapse on Youtube and see how they make character models. I am pretty sure I can pick up the essential skills I need to use blender and I hope the technique I learnt in Maya translates into blender. I will come up with the first versions of the models before next week.

WEEK 2

For week 2, our team keeps on developing on the concept we had last week.
This week I continued to develop possible characters and some environments for the game. Here are the sketches I did for the characters. So far, I have 2 designs. The one with features more similar to humans is the intelligent creature human had sent off in the story. Its form was originally inspired by MI-Go from Lovecraft’s novel, and as we talked about it, it became more of a chimera like creature. The other character is a giant, fierce looking creature with crystals growing from its back. The colour on the sketch is just there to show different parts of its body and we can make adjustments later. Those are the characters the player can interact with by talking with them.
Another thing I did this week is to come up with a possible structure. Right now we are pretty sure about the mushroom forest, so I came up with a fairy ring where the parts are located. We are saying that the mushroom would be bouncy, so there would be a lot of vertical platforms for the player to jump around.
The subworlds we planned to have are Crystals/ Rocky, Mushroom Forest, Desert, Icy/Jungle, and Land. There will be variants of the same creature, but adapted to different regions. So for the next week, I need to come up with concepts of those variants.

WEEK 1

14/9/2021

Hello everyone! I will be the visual artist and possible part-time programmer of the team.
This week is the start of the project. We had been generating different ideas, and we settled on an action game, set in space and on an unknown planet. The goal of the game is that we need to find all missing parts of the spaceship and on the journey to the goal there will be different creatures we can interact with and help out with. Players are going to explore the world and the story around the main character and the creatures.
We are talking about doing up to 5 subworlds the character can explore, one of them is a mushroom forest (maybe). Still need to think of some interesting structure for that. For other subworlds, I think we can do a village/ city that is made with crystals and rocks. Another one can be a deserted field with limited vegetation, but there will be more hostile creatures.
The picture on the left is the first draft of the main character. We are probably doing a more generic design with the character that doesn't show their face so that different players are more likely to emphasize with them. We may try a more cartoonish style of animation to give the main character some personality. I am working on the design of the NPCs. One of them is a more intellectual creature, so I probably will give that a more human-like feature with its design.
Next week, I need to work on the design of the npc, some enemy characters, and discuss the theme and notable structures for other subworlds with other teammates.