BCT Design work

We wanted to create a story-driven adventure game with meaningful character interaction. We wanted to market a commercial release of the game, however, as the project turned out to be quite ambitious and multifaceted, we decided to reduce the scope of the game and focus on what was realistically achievable in the semester. We wanted a core theme of Aeronautica to be innovation, as a form of the discovery aesthetic, where players would iteratively build different vehicles, revealing new game mechanics, however, the aforementioned scope reduction lead to us focus on the narrative aesthetics of the project, specifically, developing meaningful player interaction with our characters. Our agile design methodology has enabled us to easily pivot the design direction of the project and consequently produce the current version of Aeronautica, which playtesting has revealed to be well-received. 

Concept:

https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/188055810117/aeronautica

Modelling:

https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/188417849927/modeling

https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/188599985752/the-modelling-continues

https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/188600169777/skill-me-up-scotty

Progression Pics:

https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/188647134752/progression-of-kevins-rework

https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/188647175797/steves-modelling-progression

Playtesting:

https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/188375421762/play-testing

Reflections:

The name of the game this semester has been Up Skilling. Up Skilling is when you focus on a particular skill in an effort to become better and more experienced in it. This means that the majority of the learning that I have done has been technical modelling skills which have improved greatly over the course of the semester. One thing that is clearly evident of this is the multiple iterations that out main NPC Kevin has gone through.

Kevin went through two rapid prototypes. Initially based off of the Animal Crossing style he came out rather cartoon-ish and not exactly what we were looking for. After receiving feedback and making a few more attempts he ended up in a passable state and stayed that way for a few weeks while other work took priority. However as the semester went on and we made more design decisions around our characters style he started to look very outdated and unfit for the final project. This is why I had another run at making Kevin and settled on this design which the group agreed was a much improved state than what he originally was. I went through a long process of iteration at every step ( this is Version 26 of Kevin) and managed to show a process of learning through experience as well as receiving peer feedback.

The final Kevin (missing eye texure) which is much more inline with our other characters:

As the project has progressed I have been working on modeling a few other aspects of Aeronautica such as the boat and dock area however have still mainly focused on our 3 characters. After the second version of Kevin was completed (one used in our New Caledonia showcase) I immediately moved on to another vital NPC we needed which was Steve.

Steve is a grumpy old fisherman who lives on an isolated lighthouse and is a source of quest giving. Because of his temperament we thought a French bulldog would be good to characterize these traits. For his design Stuart gave me a quick sketch rather than to base it off of any pre-existing games.

For Steve I decided to go with a different modeling style which should have been implemented in the first place. Instead of making the body and clothes a single mesh they would be layered on top of each other. This helped tremendously when it came to adding animations to the characters as Zane has left our team and we no longer are using mocap data for our rigs.

The added use of the ngskins plugin and Stuart using Substance painter rather than Photoshop has significantly improved our workflow, both in speed and quality. I really feel as though with the addition of these to my arsenal I have picked up valuable skills this semester.

Following the same process I have also created a generic unnamed NPC who will be used as dock workers, street walkers etc. We chose a husky for this design but also left the character very generic so that he could be adapted into different designs with ease. This will be the base which I build all future character models on.

Week 1: https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/186451994042/interaction-and-play-week-1

Week 2: https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/186614103147/interaction-and-play-week-2

Week 3: https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/186775655792/interaction-and-play-week-3

Week 4: https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/186939795272/interaction-and-play-week-4

Week 5: https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/187102332772/interaction-and-play-week-5

Week 6: https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/188028711552/week-6-interaction-and-play

Week 8: https://krouxbct.tumblr.com/post/188055660327/week-8-interaction-and-play

My main role while working on Aeronautica has been to develop and create 3D models for the Characters who will be present in Aeronautica. Due to the very practical nature of this task most of my semester will be spent with my head down working on those models. The first Character that the player meets in Aeronautica will be the golden retriever named Kevin. Kevins design has gone through a few different iterations as we developed a further art style and plan for how the story would be laid out. 

We decided early on that Kevin would be a golden retriever as we wanted to embody the happy and friendly nature often associated with golden retrievers. The first island that players would see you be occupied by different dog breeds and they would be considered one ‘nation’.

Initially Stuart (Art Director) gave me the reference of Isabella from Animal Crossing to work off of however after completing the first version of Kevin it was clear we needed to make some changes and define our own style. This lead to us taking on a more realistic look to the characters while still keeping the body proportions in a more cartoon style. 

The issues that I mainly had with this model were separating each individual body part made for difficult animations and weight painting. The reason this was done initially was to ease Stuarts method of texturing by giving him smaller chunks of UVs to work on at a time. Eventually we moved on to using Substance painter to paint directly on to the model, making this process obsolete. Another huge issue that came with this model was weight painting and correctly rigging the character to work with motion capture data. We were quite fortunate to be able to use the mocap lab for this project, allowing us to record the Characters movements to be mapped on to the meshs at a later date. This also meant that our rigging needed to be up to scratch. Unfortunately I had never done and rigging before so this was a lot of crash course learning in the space of about 3 weeks. 

Over the course of this semester we have been constantly testing and improving Areonautica. Starting early in the project we made paper prototypes of our project within the first week, running through the over arching game play loop with members of the team and our BCT peers. This helped lay the ground work for constant testing. Being the modeler for the team the majority of my testing was done internally by creating a model and getting feedback from all members of the group however mainly Stuart (Art Director) and Max (Project Lead). I would be making changes constantly and asking fro feedback whenever possible. This helped form the characters in a way we wanted and gave me valuable experience in having others critique your work. I have also received expert feedback from our lecturer Laurent in specific directions we could take the characters style such as having a mixture of animals in order to give individuality to the characters. Being a part of a BCT studio space also lends itself to peer play testing as peers will constantly be around you giving feedback on your work. This is very relevant to our project as many of the BCT students would fall into our target audience of VR game players.

We have also been doing external testing. This has come in the form of a trip to New Caledonia which Jack took our project to play test and showcase at the University of New Caledonia. Over the course of a few days he was able to gather feedback data from an entirely new culture of people and therefore has helped our project appeal to a wider audience. We also had the opportunity to display our project for visitors from Vietnam who play tested and were very interested in where our project was going. They were impressed with the work we had done in such a short time and provided us with useful feedback on our user interface, helping us to make it more clear for users who haven't VR before.

In terms of external feedback solely regarding modelling I have been posting progress on the r/Maya subreddit, asking for feedback and methods to improve my workflow. The feedback that I receive there is highly technical and helped me to learn about edge flows and optimizing topology.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Maya/comments/dbld7g/looking_for_modelling_feedback_on_a_character_im/

This project had a interesting conceptualization process that developed over the course of the semester. Initially we had a few bare bones ideas that we all brought together an developed into a solid idea. The concept of social media is one that we are all familiar with and so we all had interest and something we could give to the project. I was quite excited about the projection mapping as it was something I had wanted to learn for a long time.

My role in the group was to figure out the projection mapping. I needed to figure out how we were meant to do it and what tech we would require. While initially this seemed pretty simple it ended up being a bit complicated towards the end.  We discussed which projection mapping software to use and decided on HeavyM as it was very user friendly and easy to learn. When I first started on the program I was able to pick it up very easily however as we added more intensive visuals the program began to suffer. At first I thought it may be the performance of the laptop but after switching to a much more powerful device it became clear it was an issue with the software. To get around this we decided to export the HeavyM video to PremierePro where we overlayed the better performing videos in the correct spots. Later on in the project I was also helping with organisation of the project as we all came into the crunch time. 

Before the final submission we decided to do some last minute adjustments and fix ups. We decided that the circular layout of the phones were too organised and did not covey the messages we were hoping to show. We decided to keep the rings however make them a bit more “randomized” . This was done in order to emphasize the crescendo effect of the installation. 

We have also decided on the length of each of the videos. The total length of the videos will be 1 minute with 20 sec of content followed by a 40 sec period of “black time”. This 20 sec window of content is used because the general attention span of someone viewing a picture or installation is around this duration. Since there will be sounds for this project, the short duration would hopefully be less disturbing to surrounding projects that the sounds running constantly.

We needed to do some stress testing in order to validate our idea for our project. We did this by:

Leaving the projector up and running to test out the different screens

 Using different materials to test if they showed better colour; single layer of sticker paper, double layer, and the grey tones.

Testing if the phones move despite being up for a long time and having the wall shake or any other disturbance from the surrounding area.

Securing a plinth to put our projector on

The only real issue we have had is that the projector might get bumped or shifted. We have tried to mitigate this by taping where our plinth and projector is meant to be however realistically in a showcase we would need to put up barriers to protect the device.

Back in the second semester of last year a few members of BCT formed a group with the intention of creating an experimental game within studio. As a team we came up with multiple ideas and finally settled on the project that was Bard. Despite choosing Bard, another interesting concept was that of Aeronautica which we had dismissed due to the difficulty, scale of the idea and that it didn't fit the brief efficiently. This semester we have decided to tackle this project with a more experienced and mature team.

One of the issues we have with Aeronautica is the big idea behind it. As a majority third year BCT student group we are well conditioned to the BCT mindset of having a purpose for each project. Initially we struggled to find something that would be effective to convey and looked to examples such as This War of Mine and Frostpunk. These two games effectively address current day issues within the context of a game and help provide an unique perspective about player choice.’

The greater meaning that we settled on was one of innovation, escapism and perseverance in the face of adversity. Innovation would be a key component in the building sections of play, forcing the player to think of new creations to engineering solutions.

The theme of escapism is taken in both a very literal and metaphorical sense. One could argue that the artifact being a game itself shows our escapism theme as using games to ‘escape reality’ is a common occurrence in some of the younger generations. It can also be seen through the idea of “flying away from your problems” which is looking like it will be a key goal and a major part of the game play.

The theme of perseverance is more strongly shown in the beginning of the players experience with the idea of those around you telling you that something can not be done, whether it be physically or economically, being used to present the idea of pushing through against the odds.

Week 8 was quite eventful week for our group. We had been struggling to come to a version of The Freyberg Novel which we thought would be successful in portraying our envisioned idea. Eventually we came to the conclusion that The Freyberg Novel has a few fundamental issues that we would not be able to overcome. We knew that getting a written piece to work in a public space would be difficult and were not able to solve the issues of collaboration, moderation and participation in the scope of this paper. Rather than just leave it there however we attempted to adapt our idea into a more confined and guided concept.

With it we came up with a Hero Generation Game were the participant would be given a random character and two powers to choose from. They could used this character or go for an entirely new re-roll thus leaving some aspect of expression but also allowing us to control the outcome. This character would then be displayed on the big screen allow with other participants creations. Passerby's would be able to vote on which Hero they thought was the best and the top voted would be come larger and the “Villain”. When another Hero reached the same number of votes as the Villain they would “fight” and the victorious character would be the new Villain.

Week 6 consisted of responding to Bens feedback from the previous week:

“Possibly through lack of clarity I inferred a conceptual tension between anonymity and collaboration in the presentation. This however was resolved before the end of the session. Identify and formalize both the internal aesthetic and extrinsic goals of the play experience? Be as specific as possible but as vague as necessary with your elevator pitch. This is your design pillar. The thing that you use when, for example, your team is not together. Everything you do should guide you towards that goal. If you truly believe it’s not your goal any more - you need to, as a team, agree to any changes you make. Without a guiding vision it’s too easy to get lost. “

Ben made a valid point in that our elevator pitch has been shifting quite frequently. We have lacked a strong indication on whether we want to have the tension between collaboration and self moderation. To solve this we will be trying to discuss where we plan to go with the future of the Freybreg Novel.

“Be wary of your interpretations of your current tests. I would argue that the experiments are too complex to extract focused feedback of any true value. There are so many elements (UI, placement, duration, phrasing of the instructions) to the installation and so many factors about the testers (the BCT student cohort) that may mean you’re not receiving feedback relevant to your target audience (more on user profiles below). As discussed in class, it is paramount that you do as close to an on site test before week 9 as you can. You may be able to ‘get away’ with doing something on AUT campus pre week 9 and then something straight after week 9 in Freyburg, but aim for the former.” 

Our initial plan was to test in Freyburg from the get go but we have had issues with finalizing an idea to test. The data we gathered from the “in-house” tests might not be as accurate to our user profiles however has given us an insight into how collaborative writing might take place.

“It would be very useful to formalize some user profiles (‘verticals’) and create some assumptions around them and select one or a few to design for as a scoping exercise for the project. E.g. We talked about: the luncher, the vaper, the walker, the wanderer, the meditater, the skater, etc already being in the space. But Auckland Live have indicated they want to bring people who live Auckland down from their apartments, so you should make at least one profile for that too. You will be able to test your assumptions around different profiles in weeks 6 - 9 but many will go unanswered and that’s just an extension of the project scoping you will need to formalize. Also interrogate the graduation threshold for the current user profile’s state and the desired state in The Transtheoretical Model (Stages of Change). You might also want to have a look at Will Wright graduation of players through game ecosystem it might not be applicable to this project but is still interesting for looking at product/service longevity.”

We have decided to focus our user profile on mainly the luncher and walker as those are more common in the Freyberg Place. We plan on designing the project with these two ideas in mind

“My advice regarding the factors affecting testing (UI/UX etc) is to use as many commonly used interfaces/languages as possible to lower the barrier to entry. Only re-invent the wheel with the parts of your project that need it. It’s fine to make some assumptions about, for example, using a keyboard being relatively accessible in the context of a 15 point paper. Start with easily recognizable mechanics: (we discussed some of these during the week 6 class) madlibs, those fridge magnets, a keyboard. Also try borrowing from other intuitive/popular products: Gloom, Once Upon a Time spring to mind.”

This is something we have a group have discussed quite extensively as we wanted the experience to be available to anyone to use. We thought that the familiarity of a keyboard was worth incorporating despite the technical difficulty to keep it operational.

“We did discuss the lock out mechanic being part of the allure of the interaction and the spectacle. But I would like to de-emphasize that feedback as it was just a specific example that popped to mind. Focus on testing the high level concept using as many existing mechanics/interfaces/languages as you can.”

Lock out was one mechanic we did focus on however it did adapt and change as the project moved on.

“Management of this project, making sure everyone is contributing efficiently, will be a challenge but if done well this could be an easy final phase of the project. I will try keep you in check with this during the class but you could, for example, as you approach the week 9 deadline, assign the power of veto to someone at random just to stop arguments from slowing you down (if they even occur).”

We have definitely come to notice that our team management has become a bit of a struggle. At the very beginning of the project we assigned Oscar the leadership position; giving him power of veto and the intent to organise our group. Despite this we have run into the issue of some members rarely making it to class and contributing very little to the group. We plan to talk to Ben in an effort to solve this

“As with the music project, you are in a position to define what kind of stories this project creates. I would advise not making it totally freeform and, if it were me, I would find a concept to ground the aesthetic. You could even select different concepts if you can’t agree (i.e. share the mechanics but see how you can bend them for different types of stories). You will undoubtedly have unplanned incidentals and players who deliberately subvert the aesthetic intentions but, taking a page from Thatgamecompany’s Journey, you can reduce the interface to the point where, although you probably won't be able to entirely prohibit ‘off-brand’ stories being generated, you will, for the general population, make it both obvious of what is expected through encouragement using aesthetic signifiers (themes, starters, words, colours, shapes, examples) or make it at least difficult to go ‘off-brand’ through restricting the system mechanics and interface (may limiting the type of words they can choose to some degree). I’m also reminded of this talk by Jessie Schell.” 

Last week we presented our project in a Crit session to the class. From the crit feedback we learnt that we needed a better way to make the mobile phones. Currently they are just made out of cardboard and lack the impact we were hoping for. Our fellow peers suggested a few options such as MDF or laser cutting to make the phones seem realistic however Clint remembered that he had some leftover phones from a previous students project and has allowed us to make use of them.

These definitely help improve the quality of the project however we just need to figure out an solution to how we can project onto the screens without glare.

Our solution we are working on at the moment is to use sticker tape to cover the individual screen areas and see if we can still project onto them after. Sheena did a test where she blue tacked a few of the phones onto the wall to test whether they would stay for an extended period of time. SO far the phones seem to be holding so we will be using blue tack.