DMUGA Week 30 - The end is nigh! + Thoughts on reflective writing task

This week's progress was much needed because we finally got round to getting the level to a near-playable state! I'm so excited to finally see our level close to finished. We now really need to do the odd bits and bops, 1-2 more game mechanics + populating, optimisation, and any sound effects we can squeeze in before the deadline.

We had a team meeting on Monday and discussed the action plan for the next few weeks and what has to be finished by when, so that everything is done on time. This included scripting, asset making, populating, document writing, and managing the engine file between people who need to do their part.
I'm so glad we had this discussion before it was too late, and hopefully we can pull this one off.

That was the most productive part of the day, but I did also make a LOD for my philadelphus bush, and began starting working on the LOD for the big starting tree. Unfortunately, this work was then lost, so I had to redo it again on Thursday! Plus, I prepared the presentation for Tuesday morning, and the engine file ready for Dom to work his magic to get the game-play working all fine n' dandy.

Perspective view, so you can just about see the right LODs' cross plane in the middle of it.

Some game-play elements (HUD/Text not working, so you can't see full effect):

Rabbit with the 'Pre-Quest' icon

Eat cake to shrink

Hole in the hedge

Entering the maze - key at the end

Camera transition for entrance & exit of the maze

Exit the maze with the key

Drink the Potion

Grown up again

Unfortunately, it is a shame I am unable to post screenshots of the working HUD as I don't know how to enable what Dom disabled on Friday - I will post some better ones when it is all working again.

Revelations don't come often, but when they do happen, it's amazing! Tuesday was a great day for our level...
The story puzzles were being put in, we cleared some things up with another clear-cut action plan of what we need to do over the next few days & weeks, plus, we had significant feedback from the tutors/pupils from our presentation which helped us to improve our level hugely.

From the presentation feedback, it was obvious that frame-rate is still an issue, but in terms of the aesthetics, the lighting in our level needs to be thought of more as a priority to enhance the experience for the player - Make more compositions with the assets & lighting to really make things stand out and pop.
As a result of the feedback, we decided to quickly mess around with the lighting for a bit, and this was what we came up with:

Before

After

As you can see, the colours work much better, and the assets seem to 'pop' more than they previously did. I transferred these over to the currently 'Active' engine file that Dom was working on, and handed it back with the lighting changes.

New starting position - Much better composition:

I also refined my character project's submission files to an acceptable state, ready to be submitted the next day, here's some before and after pictures to further emphasise why my last character was so bad:

Before = Left, After = Right

Before = Top, After = Bottom

Eyes & Dressaren't that blue, it changed upon upload...

Things changed:
-Proportions
-Clothing/colours
-Topology of some areas/Lower Tri-Count

I'm not saying that my new character is good... because it isn't (plus, I only had about a week to correct as much as I could about it), however, it is a huge improvement upon my last one.

Wednesday and Thursday were weird days because instead of doing anything on the Alice in Wonderland project, I had to fix my essay due on the 24th of April, and organise/submit my re-submission for my dichotomous character project.

I submitted my character project in the morning of Wednesday, then worked on my essay for the rest of the day, trying desperately to cut it down below the +/- 10% of 2500 words cap. Luckily, Andy was able to proof-read it and suggested bits for me to cut out which I am so grateful for! It is now an edgy 2738/2750 words, but at least it's all done and I don't need to worry about it any more.
There was a bit of a panic though, because before submitting, it said the file size was too large, so I quickly went into Photoshop and cut down the size/quality of my images to make the document go from 41MB to about 7MB... PHEW!

I did however manage to start modelling the paint brush and paint bucket for the final puzzle in our level, but not much progress was made on that part as I'm not sure what the team would want (This was in the evening after lab time).

I got the texturing complete for the paint bucket & brush, it looked al-right and it could be better, but I feel as though it is good enough for the moment anyway.

My thoughts on the reflective writing task:

Just a quick one to express some of my thoughts on the reflective writing task:

I found the essay a bit of a weird one to write because I wanted to include these things, but found it difficult to critically analyse each different aspect in detail and keep within the word count:

-What I want to be

-What I need to be able to do to get where I want to be

-What standard I aim to achieve and exceed

-My strengths & weaknesses/what needs improving

-How I've improved over the past year/in comparison to 1st year

-When I've encountered problems in 2nd year, how did I deal with them to grow me as a person?

-Where I can make improvements/My action plan for the summer

etc.

I don't think I've critically analysed or used references as well as I should have...

I wanted to talk about so many more things - it appears as though I wrote about random parts of the year, not thinking about what I was talking about and in-turn, not having a clear structure throughout.

I know I could have done a lot better, especially with the quotes & references, I realised I could have used (which would have been far better) after I'd already written my essay.
If I were to do this again, I would most definitely try to stick to a strict structure and headings in an appropriate order for the sake of clarity. - Plus, find some better things to reference!

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Lastly, Friday was spent trying to improve my paint bucket/brush textures, and looking through some potential sounds to put into our level:

Can you see the embossing? - "Alice In Wonderland, Off the Map 2015" :)

My job over the weekend is to collect a bunch of different sounds (that use the creative commons 0 licence), and organise them into different areas for use in our level; ready to show the group on Monday next week.

Two main websites I am looking through are:
https://www.freesound.org/
http://incompetech.com/

Alongside this, some other bits and bobs to look at and take into consideration, and I have made a list for when I get hold of the engine file of things that need to change, need fixing, or need improving.
We only have a small amount of time left on this before the DMU hand-in date... We're so close! C'mon team! :)

DMUGA - Post-Mortem + Holiday Blog post links!

Please find the links to all of my Post-Mortem & Holiday Blogs here:


Film Room:
http://markeastlanddmuga.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/dmuga-week-4-presenting-our-film.html

Sentry Gun:
http://markeastlanddmuga.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/dmuga-week-7-sentry-finalisation-post.html

Character Dichotomy:
http://markeastlanddmuga.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/dmuga-week-11-character-hand-in-post.html

Container City:
http://markeastlanddmuga.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/dmuga-week-18-propulation-finishing.html


Holiday Work Blogs:

Over Christmas Break:
http://markeastlanddmuga.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/dmuga-week-15-on-way-to-container-city.html

Summer Project Review:
http://markeastlanddmuga.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/dmuga-summer-project-personal-post-1.html

Over Easter Break:
http://markeastlanddmuga.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/dmuga-week-29-back-in-business.html

Account of blog writing:

-30 Weeks of recorded work during projects, including holidays.

-An extended piece about my Summer project.

-A small one on my thoughts about how my extended piece of writing went. (Un-posted)

-Post Mortems for all of my projects this year as mentioned above.

When separated, that equals:

-30 Weekly blogs
-4 Post-Mortem blogs + Alice in Wonderland PM (Not finished yet)
-Extended Personal Blog about my Summer Project

DMUGA Week 29 - Back in business!

I rather enjoyed the Easter break, I managed to get most of what I planned to do, done:
The reflective writing, presentation about 3D printing, 1 week of Alice In Wonderland, and started changing the character during my last week of the holiday.

First day back... and... great. Still a lot to do before the deadline, and I'm so unsure as to how good it will look now because we don't have long left to actually finish it, plus, we have the 2 weeks at the end to 'polish' & do the written documents! Things should have been further than they are at now, so currently... I'm not feeling like we will finish in time (Which is ridiculous as we've had so long!)

I did however, manage to finish unwrapping and texturing the key - I tried a few things, but it ended up just being nicer with a simpler texture on it. I would have liked to have done better in designing the texture of the key instead of putting on a simple brass texture, but I have to move on.
I also refined the river mesh material, and exported all of my things that need to be put into the engine.

Added tree details

Added Fountain details + water falling effects

Water splash particles

Key in 3 separate parts

I did some more on my character, and this is the stage I have got it up to so far:

Before = Left | After = Right

So, that was my Easter, and now onto the first week back!

Monday was a day we got together and discussed what needed doing, who needed the Engine file, what needs to be put in and some general team/file management.

Some good progress was made on Tuesday:
-Imported everything of mine, did some landscaping (soil, re-arranged flowerbeds, deleted some trees).
-Made Icons for the gloves, tart, and key parts.
-Started the bouquet of flowers.

Icons for the Pick-ups:

Textures were obviously scaled right down to a 256x256 - the 128x128 resolution was too blurry

Icons On-Screen

And for my character project:
-Re-done some parts of the hair, fixed mesh issues and re-unwrapped the model of the character

There is a lot of space that I feel could be put to better use...

I squeezed in some practice for my presentation on Wednesday morning, and I felt much more comfortable with it. The stairs at the end of the level which you really can't see very well were done in the afternoon, followed by the finishing of the nosegay flowers in the evening.

Thursday was presentation day...
It actually went alright! I felt very nervous at the start but as time went on, I became more comfortable with how I was speaking and what I was saying, so overall, not too bad!
Now that was out of the way, I could focus more on the level/assets again.

The nosegay flowers pick-up now had a little icon to go with it, & the LOD textures were a little out of whack in terms of their brightness, so I went and adjusted some to make the LODs a bit less obvious. Plus, I added a tiny bit of Gaussian blur to give the level some depth of field.

Without Gaussian blur

With Gaussian blur

It's very subtle, but it is more obvious if you focus on the difference between the trees in the top image compared to the bottom. I also spent a little bit of time in the evening just populating a tiny bit, plus, re-arranging some bushes & flowers.

Friday was a day of populating, I just went round and added a lot of things here and there:

There are still some things to put in, but that's it so far... There's so much to do, and I seriously hope we can achieve what we want to.

The week overall went quite well considering it is just after Easter, and the level is coming along, but we have to seriously get it to a finished, playable state ASAP.