Modeled in Maya out of 6068 triangles, textured with opacity and emissive maps in Substance Painter. This is the last model for my asset pack, I used my concept work as a template for building the model. I’m pleased with how it turned out.

Evaluation:

Over the course of the first semester I struggled with this project, not in terms of producing work but in finding some way to connect the project to my overall ideals as a games designer. Over the course of the year the project has changed dramatically and I feel this is a result of me finding my own voice as a developer and having the confidence to pursue my own ideas rather than cling to traditionally held norms of design and practice.

At first I was planning what was essentially a top down 2D stealth game. What I ended up with was a 3D explorative game. How I got from one to the other was through a lot of consideration and experimentation about who I am as a games designer and what kind of game I want to make.

I felt that my original idea laid out in the early project plans was an attempt by me to cater to what a game is traditionally considers to be and this was a result of a mixture of lack of confidence in my own ideas and some personal issues that were affecting me. Over time as my confidence grew in the idea I had about the project that didn’t fit the more “gamey” feel of the plan I began to question if I should continue down the path I had set.

Over the Christmas holiday I questioned what I was doing with the project. I asked myself, “If someone else made this game would I be interested in it? Would I like it?” I had felt similar about a project earlier this year that while I did well in, I felt was quite hollow and not reflective of what I want to do with games. So, while thinking about what I wanted this project to be I thought about the games I like to play. I don’t play puzzle or stealth games. When I look back on the games I’ve played so far this year, except for two RPGs, they have all been what get classified as ‘Walking Simulators’. In general, they tend to be short games that explore a single narrative or mechanical point to the exclusion of all others. I felt that something along these lines was a better fit for me and for the project.

I had also felt somewhat uncertain about the projects theme.

Ultimate I felt that I had no right to be telling a story like this, and that it was so disconnected from myself emotionally that I wouldn’t do a good job of it anyway.

After some consideration, I decided to change the project quite radically. If this this was meant as a mini-honours project it made no sense to me to be doing something that would not be reflective of the things I want to do going forward from here, both in terms of the course and as a games developer.

Gantt Charts:

I’ll be honesty, I’m not a fan of gantt charts. That doesn’t mean I don’t see the usefulness of them but I think that usefulness only works in certain situations with certain types of work. When working as a team, as a machine that requires each part be moving in unison to achieve its aims, then the kind of time structure gantt charts offer is needed.

I prefer to work alone on my games. In fact, when working on these projects I often end up isolating myself from other people entirely for the duration. This helps me get to the kind of mind state that achieves my best work, works that is tapping into something deep about myself and expressing it though the game. When I work alone my work is messy, in that I tend not to designate time to specific tasks, I jump in a just try things and eventually my interest will catch on something and I’ll expand it from there. I feel a lot of the confusion and frustration I was feeling during the first semester

A repulsive love story:

Obviously, I couldn’t completely break with the Crusades theme. I needed to find a story that I could resonate with more that fit it though.

My family has been deeply involved with hermetic culture and spirituality for many generations. It’s something that I’d never felt played a large part in my own life until quite recently. I’ve been dealing with an increasing amount of death anxiety over the past year and though I don’t feel I’ve become a spiritual person, learning about my family’s past and way religion played into it has helped me deal with my existential dread. The Crusades represent the thoroughly awful and destructive form religion can take when it is mixed with political and social power. Returning crusaders were notorious witch burners, I imagine due to a mix of PTSD and the religious doctrinarian they went through. Subverting this I ended up working out an idea of a crusader returning home to discover his partner had been burnt as a witch. He had gift from his travels intended for her that was connected to her magic, and through burying her with it brought her back in some horrid form.

Body horror is a genre I’ve always had a liking for, the concept of uncomfort with our own biology and fear of it was something I felt connected with my death anxiety very well and allowed me to chanel into the work. I wanted this tale of a horrifying transformation but also have it be a kind of love story. A kind of reverse Beauty & The Beast was the way I thought about it.

Unreal:

While I’ve worked in Unreal Engine 4 on previous assignments this was one of the first real tests of my skill with it. This is the first beginning to end game I’ve created with it and though at times I did hit against some problems I think over all I learnt very fast what I needed and was able to implement the new skills quickly.

There are elements I would change if I had more time. I built a lot of the game around matinees and midway through the project they got passed into a legacy feature. I may revisit the game later and consider what the new alternatives for this are, but as I was already quite deep into things I chose not to change the way I was doing things.

 Visuals:

The area of the project I am most happy with is the games visuals. I put a lot of focus upon aesthetic values in media and I spent a lot of development time tweaking the games visual style to end up with a good match to what I had in my mind. I had two major influences I was from when it came to this, the first was early 3D games from the PSOne era. I’ve always had a fondness for the flaws of digital media, the scan lines of VHS tapes, the muffled sound of worn cassette tapes, and the z-fighting textures of games built on early 3D hardware. The post-processing effects I worked together have got that result of gagged edges and jumpy textures that I was looking for. The other inspiration was The Blair Witch Project and other found footage movies. Something about the lo-fi visuals of VHS recording has always appealed to me and I wanted a look that reflected these flaws in digital media.

Made out of 14,038 triangles in Maya, textured in substance painter with a 4k texture map. This model surpasses the Wheel-Lock Gun model for the most polys I’ve used to make a model. I unwrapped the model as I made each individual object, this technique made the later stages of modeling much more efficient and less time consuming.  

I’m very pleased with how the model turned out, in Substance Painter I started using masks on ‘Smart Materials’ which adds a lot more opportunities for fine tuning the way the textures look. 

I used the same logo found on the Wheel-Lock rifle to add more continuity to the set of models.

In the game the Cannon will fire cannon balls that explode before hitting their target to release a net that will entangle the beast it makes contact. Loading all 3 barrels will take a long time so players will have to make a decision on how many they want to load based on the situation.

This is the concept art I modeled the cannon from, I decided not to include the net carriers at the end of the barrels as the ammunition would have the net inside. 

These are all images I used for my textures in my scene and they are not my own

https://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1C1GCEA_enJE744JE744&biw=1744&bih=863&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=CzziWrKJGIaTgAaUu46YBA&q=georgian+blue+patterns&oq=georgian+blue+patterns&gs_l=psy-ab.3...2809.5032.0.5233.10.9.0.1.1.0.73.522.9.9.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.6.313...0j0i67k1j0i5i30k1j0i8i30k1j0i24k1j0i30k1j0i13k1.0.HycEzk5uvlM#imgrc=W4Ey1iNhpv3tyM:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=georgian+blue+tiles&tbm=isch&tbs=rimg:CfFAA6s65UZpIjics9pKmjt-yJj42g8y7JVm_1xN9kkm05loZ9dzVvjyDiLVlGCYmqiNmHaACqjz1azvb8N2VZEzZdioSCZyz2kqaO37IEedpgSjgXhaYKhIJmPjaDzLslWYRiFPJ0-dK1poqEgn_1E32SSbTmWhEHzRtuq33lASoSCRn13NW-PIOIEc2z-txq1vpqKhIJtWUYJiaqI2YRbxfgDHNRUJ4qEgkdoAKqPPVrOxFPDKIjAQUkLioSCdvw3ZVkTNl2Eb-ypb7CiQfH&tbo=u&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj0lYK26djaAhUGPBQKHWeFB08Q9C96BAgAEBs&biw=1744&bih=863&dpr=1.1#imgrc=_

My scene is half modeled now and I’m staring to think about how I’m going to texture it.

I’m not sure weather I should attempt learning Substance designer for things like my plates or just use images as Georgian designs are quite complicated