After presenting the final game and the criticism given I feel that the comments received were on the whole favorable.
Our assignment suffered from only have 2 members working on it at the same time; originally our team was composed of me, Rob, Julian and Ben. However Ben dropped out half way through this assignment and Julian did nothing due to "over heating" problems as usual.
Still with only 2 team members devoting their full attention to the assignment it went really well, we both worked on what we do best and pulled through. Rob took on all mapping related duties whereas I did all the modeling, to be honest I would have liked to contribute more to the actual mapping. Instead I got all of the game's assets created and I even made several custom scripts for use within our game, so on the whole we both did a good portion each.
Julian again did nothing, he tried to make an in-game script but even that was recreated by Rob, so overall all Julian contributed was a few ideas and 1 back story. The amount of work Julian has done is clearly visible in the group blog (0 Posts) whereas the blog is flooded by posts from me and Rob so we knew how far we were.
At least I came out of this with more experience in 3DS Max and Photoshop, I'm now proficient in creating detailed models, complex UVW maps to accompany them and I can even texture them to a satisfactory standard.
One thing me and Rob both agree on is how important the design process is; if we had more time and willing team members we could have had a better end result. Now we know to go through the design stage in great detail, this ultimately decreases the production time if almost every single aspect is designed prior to the game creation period.
To conclude, next time a lot more time must be dedicated to the design process, this then enables the workload to be spread out much more evenly, giving us extra time at the end to improve anything.
*NOTE: Group Blog Address - http://halfbytegame.blogspot.com/
Monday, 11 January 2010
Friday, 18 December 2009
Cargo Station: First Post
Since the assignment was given the group has co-ordinated reasonably well with the odd exception which was ultimately out of that person's control, however everyone contributed to some degree.
The work ethic was good and the amount / quality of work was also good, hopefully this ethic will continue over the Christmas holidays and on through to the end of the semester.
The group has been together for past group assignments and the end product as always been of satisfactory quality, all team members contributed well, our time keeping is good.
On the whole we work well as a team, we always do and as such we pour all our effort into our assignments to hopefully achieve optimal marks and as such are optimistic about this new assignment.
The work ethic was good and the amount / quality of work was also good, hopefully this ethic will continue over the Christmas holidays and on through to the end of the semester.
The group has been together for past group assignments and the end product as always been of satisfactory quality, all team members contributed well, our time keeping is good.
On the whole we work well as a team, we always do and as such we pour all our effort into our assignments to hopefully achieve optimal marks and as such are optimistic about this new assignment.
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Shuttle Hangar Assignment
This assignment was ok in terms of feedback recieved but personally I didnt like the work I produced it was very low quality. A major factor of this was the team itself, I did the majority of the work probably 70%+ I didn't mention this in the peer assesment simply because I did not want a debate on my hands.
I designed the level to begin with, built it, did all of the Matinee work and did most of the A.I. Scripting and even textures!. The only thing my partner did was do a small text file saying what camera's should go where, made 2 encouter scripts and did a make-shift storyboard.
The main problem with this is that Julian was initially suppose to do the matinee work and scripts but since he's so lazy and inefficient in the editor this was left to me. What makes all this worse is that because I had to do all this, the matinee and scripts were left to the night before the handin date.
The reason why I grouped with Julian in the first place was because I knew he would do some work, which is better than last time when I was with someone i did'nt know and I ended up doing all of the work by myself.
However having done the majority of the work the tools are almost second nature to me now, I am quite proficient with the Matinee tool and the A.I. scripting.
All in all I'm pleased with the work, the only thing that's dissapointing is the fact that Julian produced a (for a lack of words) crap trailer design. if he actually spent some time on his portion of the work and did research we would have had a superior trailer to demonstrate than the one we had.
- Vernon
P.S. I still don't want any action to be taken in regards to my peer assesment, thanks.
I designed the level to begin with, built it, did all of the Matinee work and did most of the A.I. Scripting and even textures!. The only thing my partner did was do a small text file saying what camera's should go where, made 2 encouter scripts and did a make-shift storyboard.
The main problem with this is that Julian was initially suppose to do the matinee work and scripts but since he's so lazy and inefficient in the editor this was left to me. What makes all this worse is that because I had to do all this, the matinee and scripts were left to the night before the handin date.
The reason why I grouped with Julian in the first place was because I knew he would do some work, which is better than last time when I was with someone i did'nt know and I ended up doing all of the work by myself.
However having done the majority of the work the tools are almost second nature to me now, I am quite proficient with the Matinee tool and the A.I. scripting.
All in all I'm pleased with the work, the only thing that's dissapointing is the fact that Julian produced a (for a lack of words) crap trailer design. if he actually spent some time on his portion of the work and did research we would have had a superior trailer to demonstrate than the one we had.
- Vernon
P.S. I still don't want any action to be taken in regards to my peer assesment, thanks.
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Matinee Tool Task Reflection
After finally getting this task finished there are numerous issues I had with UnrealEd. While working on the map I came to the conclusion that UED is a lot better than my previous attempt last year, this time production was much smoother and more efficient. With that said I still prefer Steams Hammer editor, its superior in most aspects when compared to UED, the only feature that UED has against Hammer is the ability to scale models in my opinion.
Whilst working on the map I have gained a better understanding of the software’s limitations and what it’s capable of achieving. Even though the editor is fairly easy to use it feels as if it’s restricting my creativity because of little issues like crashes and brushes becoming transparent etc. With Steam the engine is much more flexible allowing me as a level designer to create a much more detailed and immersive environments without worrying about the editor crashing or any other technicalities.
Creating maps in UnrealEd can be so time consuming, simply due to the fact that you have to type in the dimensions of each brush that you want, a technique I found to speed this up was the vertex editor. With this tool I was able to edit the brush how I liked before I either subtracted it or added it, also another technique I found was too copy and paste existing bushes I already had in the map and just edit them. With both of these methods I was able to speed up the creation time and effectively halved the overall creation time since I didn’t need to type in the dimensions of every single brush.
Possibly the worst aspect of this task was the Matinee Tool simply because the slightest error would cause a crash, even expanding the sub actions property in the actions tab would cause a crash. That aside after about 2 hours worth of trial and error I finally got my head around the tool and since then I encountered no more errors.
Another aspect of UED that adds to the development time and the annoyances list is the texture / static mesh browser. Nothing is clearly labelled, I can honestly say I must have spent several hours just in the browser looking though packs to find the right mesh or texture that I need.
The map on the whole from my perspective was impressive, as mentioned previously compared to last year’s attempt this map is brilliant. I originally planned 6 rooms but due to time constraints and development time I had to cut from 6 to 4 simply because searching for materials and content for the 2 additional rooms would have required another couple of days. Instead I decided to focus on the 4 rooms I had left and give them their own individual themes.
I originally planned for 1 main hall and 5 themed rooms as follows: Sci-fi, War, Egyptian, Outdoors and Japanese, all these are possible to create since the content is readily available. The end result with just the 4 rooms is satisfactory, the map actually looks like a museum compared to a game map.
If I were to do this task again I would firstly plan all the content I need i.e. textures, meshes, emitters etc. I would then create an encyclopaedia for future reference akin to the one I found online which actually helped me quite a bit http://www.unrealplayground.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20562. Creating the actual level wouldn’t take long at all since the most time consuming part is trying to fill the space in a map with meshes.
References:
Mastering Unreal Technology - Jason Busby et al - (2004)
http://www.unrealplayground.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20562
Whilst working on the map I have gained a better understanding of the software’s limitations and what it’s capable of achieving. Even though the editor is fairly easy to use it feels as if it’s restricting my creativity because of little issues like crashes and brushes becoming transparent etc. With Steam the engine is much more flexible allowing me as a level designer to create a much more detailed and immersive environments without worrying about the editor crashing or any other technicalities.
Creating maps in UnrealEd can be so time consuming, simply due to the fact that you have to type in the dimensions of each brush that you want, a technique I found to speed this up was the vertex editor. With this tool I was able to edit the brush how I liked before I either subtracted it or added it, also another technique I found was too copy and paste existing bushes I already had in the map and just edit them. With both of these methods I was able to speed up the creation time and effectively halved the overall creation time since I didn’t need to type in the dimensions of every single brush.
Possibly the worst aspect of this task was the Matinee Tool simply because the slightest error would cause a crash, even expanding the sub actions property in the actions tab would cause a crash. That aside after about 2 hours worth of trial and error I finally got my head around the tool and since then I encountered no more errors.
Another aspect of UED that adds to the development time and the annoyances list is the texture / static mesh browser. Nothing is clearly labelled, I can honestly say I must have spent several hours just in the browser looking though packs to find the right mesh or texture that I need.
The map on the whole from my perspective was impressive, as mentioned previously compared to last year’s attempt this map is brilliant. I originally planned 6 rooms but due to time constraints and development time I had to cut from 6 to 4 simply because searching for materials and content for the 2 additional rooms would have required another couple of days. Instead I decided to focus on the 4 rooms I had left and give them their own individual themes.
I originally planned for 1 main hall and 5 themed rooms as follows: Sci-fi, War, Egyptian, Outdoors and Japanese, all these are possible to create since the content is readily available. The end result with just the 4 rooms is satisfactory, the map actually looks like a museum compared to a game map.
If I were to do this task again I would firstly plan all the content I need i.e. textures, meshes, emitters etc. I would then create an encyclopaedia for future reference akin to the one I found online which actually helped me quite a bit http://www.unrealplayground.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20562. Creating the actual level wouldn’t take long at all since the most time consuming part is trying to fill the space in a map with meshes.
References:
Mastering Unreal Technology - Jason Busby et al - (2004)
http://www.unrealplayground.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20562
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