#effecs

We were given a task of creating a game, walking simulator, within a 4 week period, in which we were grouped up with other 3D animation students and also game design students. 

Our groups first steps, were to create a concept and idea for our game. We collected different ideas, from adults experiencing depression, to bullying at schools, to focusing on audio cues to create a story line. 

We went along with the idea of creating a story line which gets built up from collecting objects around a house. The story is based on a child's scattered memories, therefore the house that the child is exploring is very fractured, and misaligned, and not how it is supposed to be. The more clues the child finds as to why this house is a blurred memory, the closer the child gets to seeing the house the way it originally was created. 

The main story line of this game is to take the player through the child’s traumatic events, ranging from arguments he has with his parents, to the parents divorce, to his pet dying as the final event. 

We plan to have the study within the house to be the last place that the child must visit, which contains a fireplace with spikes. The child, having a pet dog, finds out that the father had an argument with the mother, which led the dog to defending the mother by jumping onto the father. The father swinging his arm away and knocking the dog into the spikes located by the fireplace. 

We begin our work, by creating concept art for the building variations which the child ventures through, in order to collect his memories together. 

I created the house within Sims4 in order to get a sense of scale and how large the house will be. 

With the concepts out of the way, it was time to begin the development of our assets. Everyone in our group was given a set of assets to work from. I decided to create general assets - wall and floor textures, arches, shelves, windows, chandelier - as well as some of the study assets and the kitchen assets. 

At this point, we decided to create variations of the assets that we are creating, ones which were deformed in order to create a sense of mystery and confusion for the players. I decided to keep the UV’s that I create as the same UV for the deformed version of the same models, as it was going to make it easier to texture everything, and because the models were the same, the same texture could be applied to the models. 

The way in which I created the deformed assets is by using the transformation tool, found in Edit Mesh in Maya. This allowed me to select vertexes at different percentages of strength, allowing me to pull the vertexes apart and create deformities. 

I done this for every asset that this could have been done on, and just finished off my entire asset list I had. 

At this point, I had all of my models finished. I was asked to find some sound effects to use in the game, which I got from a https://freesound.org/. 

Another thing that we had lined up to do, is to record voice-overs from a script that another member of the group created while we modelled. We never got to doing this as I got ill, and my voice didn’t sound great for the recording, and no one else decided to offer doing the voice over. The recording got delayed to the last week of the project, which we didn’t have time to create the voice overs and implement into the game at that point. 

Next, I had to create textures for all of the models I have crated using Substance Painter. 

The last texturing part for me was to create, or find textures to use for walls, floors and ceilings. I decided to find textures to use, online, to save time - due to us running low on time now already, it was necessary to do so. 

The problem that I came across when finding these seamless textures online, was that they never had any normal maps for me to use. I looked online to find out how i could create some. I came across a website http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/. This website allowed me to plug in the texture and create a normal map out of it. Unfortunately, the results were not amazing, and so I decided to look further. 

Upon searching through Photoshop, I came across a filter on the university computers which was called xNormals. This filter allowed me to create a normal map out of any image I plugged into Photoshop, with various tools to change how the normals appeared and worked when plugged into a 3D software. 

At this point, our group fell apart due to arguments as to who is doing what, which assets were missing, delays, and miscommunication. I decided to take things into my own hands as the game designer unfortunately didn’t complete the tasks which we were led to believe, they would have done by this point - a white-box-model in which they had boxes in-placed for assets that they were going to replace when we finished our part of the job, allowing them to create the game, while we created the assets. This did not get done and the amount of time they have left for themselves to create the entire game in, was not enough to even get started. 

My job now was to create a simple Unity scene, with zero knowledge of how to use Unity, in which I use only my own assets to at least show my part of the work in which was put into this project, which never ended up working out. 

I found Unity to be a very simple and self explanatory program to use. I arranged the scene to my liking, applied the textures to new materials, and created boundary boxes. I used a pre-made prefab of an FPS player controller to create a little character who runs on top of the centre counter top, for them to just see the visuals of the scene. 

The last part for me to do in Unity, is to add in the lighting from the objects I made, which like I previously mentioned, is very simple and self-explanatory. 

At this point, I was finished - finally! 

This project proved to me that team work may not always work out the way you expect it to go, especially when you involve people who use different software to you, and have their own understanding of what your process of creation looks like. 

I admit that the project became a mess after the second week, as very little progress seemed to have been made during that time. I got ill, but I managed to still do my part of the job, as well as take on additional challenges, such as finding sound effects to use for our game, and find royalty-free textures to use for walls, and floors, and to also create normal maps based on these PNG files I could find. 

I do believe that this game could have been created in the time we were allocated, as long as the game designers understood that it takes time to create assets. The entire project was a 4 week project, and they waited to the end of week 3 to create the actual game mechanics and input the models. We got the blame for the delay due to us taking time to create assets - which was obviously going to happen in the first place, as we can’t create everything in a single week to then leave the rest of the work to the game designers for the next 3 weeks. It was a collaboration process, and they should not have waited for our assets to create the game. 

Inauguration Day

It’s still winter time at Lumyer