Month: May 2023

Week 6: Personal Project

This week was a major leap forward in my project! Having concluded with my animations that I needed for my game and finished implementation of a game over, winner and retry functionality! With all that implemented it is at this point a fully functioning video game! Getting this far has certainly made me quite proud! The implementation of everything is…not the best. Lots of repeated code, variables needing to be updated in multiple places so in regards to its coding it could be improved and refactorized significantly. However as this is not the focus of my personal project it is not something I think I will be doing, at least for the foreseeable future. I also managed to implement a basic AI for the enemy to seek the player out and attack them! I met and exceeded my expectations for this week!

I had some struggles implementing the game over screens as after their implementation the mouse movement no longer functioned. After some research online though I discovered that when implementing a 2D screen on a 3D environment in the way I had done it would result in the mouse inputs being ignored. Luckily the same thing that told me that issue told me there was just a simple variable in the settings of the 2D nodes to change and then everything worked out fine! Next week I will spend it implementing some polish like texturing the models I have made and adding a hit flash so the player is more aware of when they make contact with the enemy.

Thesis

Week 6: Thesis Devlopment

Post author By Tim Schweizer
Post date 26th May 2023
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After my one on one with Nigel I left more confident in my thesis and what was required of me moving forward. Given how quickly the final june submission date was approaching I know now that what I need to do is move on from research and, with what I currently have, start to develop my thesis proposals. Part of that was developing the draft chapters. My current draft is like this. The next major step I need to take is develop my literature review and in that case I have been reviewing the resources given to us on writing a literature review as that was the weakest aspect of my report from the first semester.

Draft chapters:

Literature Review
Intro
Justify Games as art
- Arguments For
- Arguments Against
Define Anemoia
- What is it?
- Why relate it to nostalgia?
How is Anemoia carried in Video Games? (Vehicle)
- Player’s Perspective
- Developer’s Perspective
Why is Anemoia Present?
What does this interest in it mean?
Conclusion

Group

Week 7: Group Project

This week was spent on two major milestones. The first was, with the help of Daniel our CG Lead, reducing the cactus model’s poly count significantly by converting the bumps that were previously modeled with the spikes into bumps on a bump map for the cactus. As my previous model was detailed but had the poly count in the million range it significantly slowed down the scene. Since the camera never gets close enough to the cactus to show off its spikes we decided it would be best to remove them and create an illusion with the bump map. This would help significantly when it came to the render time of the scene.

Topology

Render

My second model needed, as per instruction from our cg lead, have its topology and UVs sorted out by the end of the week so that next week we could conclude it by giving it its texture. I managed to do that this week and stick to the schedule.

In regards to our group functionality we had a meeting this week to discuss when the final version of all our models should be finished by so that we have time to render things and fix any issues only discovered by the end process. We decided that two weeks before the deadline would be an appropriate window so that issue could be resolved without stressing everyone out.

We also prepared a story board as to give better visual reference to our group, especially the Compositors, on what we all believed the scene should look like

There was however an issue that occurred. As we discovered that, for the look devs, it was a minimum of three models that everyone needed to produce. Originally we had believed it was 2-3 and with there being 6 look dev artists we had assumed 2 was more than enough to fill the scene. Daniel and I then quickly worked together to find additional materials to add to the scene and collected them onto the moodboard and assigned them to people.

Of course the assigned works were purely just so everyone had something and could default onto it if there were no objections to what people wanted to do.

We have also developed a Story board.

Personal

Week 5: Personal Project

For this week I had two goals in mind. Complete the player’s health system so I could actually have the player lose the game and make the attack and walking cycle of the enemy that I have. This did not work out necessarily in the way I had hoped. While I did get an HP system and a walk cycle I have not yet implemented an attack animation for the creature. I still in future need to sort out the UVs and texture the weapon and the monster. I have however developed a hurt box that when it interacts with the player will take HP away from them and tested it to function properly to detect a player’s death. I am very close to having a function prototype for the game!

Next week I need to make the attack animation and implement a basic AI for the monster to seek out and attack the player!

Thesis

Week 5: Thesis Development

Post author By Tim Schweizer
Post date 20th May 2023
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As we are having one on ones this week and mine is scheduled for next week I instead spent the week preparing the template for my one on one with Nigel so that I can make the most the admittedly short time that I have with him.

OneonOneNigelTimSchweizer Download

Group

Week 6: Group Project

I was given the all clear on my model for the Cactus, I anticipated this so I already began on working with the next model I was assigned which is the portable radio/tv device based on the following image:

Modelling it has proven a challenge as I try to keep my poly counts lower and improve my topology work. These are all crucial skills that I struggle with and need to develop if I want to enter the industry as a modeler.

We also met up as a group again this week on monday to discuss where everyone is and what assistance anyone needed with what they were doing. We also discussed a regular meeting time so that we wouldn’t fall into the same trap as we had the last few weeks and not met up and properly organize ourselves as a group. We talked about using our reference padlet to better keep everyone up to date on current progress and function together more efficiently.

Personal

Week 4: Personal Project

After last week where I spent it modelling a sword and implementing other systems this week was spent solely on developing the ‘final boss’ enemy of my game. Starting off with a base cat model that maya includes I modified it to get closer to a reference image I am using for the creature.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/287737863680951214/

After making the model and creating a mouth on it the next major step was sorting out it’s rigging and painting the weights. This was a decently relaxing process as painting weights is simple and directly relevant. With it I was able to rig the model up and import it into Godot where I could now, when I choose to, animate it! With that in place next week should be spent getting a health system for the player sorted alongside the ability for enemies to damage the player. If time is there I can also start on its AI.

Thesis

Week 4: Thesis

After a meeting last week with Nigel he informed me that I needed to also make a decision on how I would like to approach games as a medium. Namely do I approach it as a form of art or from a purely commercial stand point. As I was dealing with the emotions of people and with this being a topic with very little hard data I can find, as the ‘brand’ of nostalgia I seek is still not properly defined in the general consciousness, I have opted to seek this out as a form of art. With that in mind Video Games ‘as art’ is still a hotly debated topic. As such I have had to go out and research for arguments and citations that could support my reading of games as an art form.

That is honestly a new experience for me. Coming off of film studies, a field that has unquestionably been integrated into an art form, I have never had to spend time justifying the medium of study as ‘art’. Though I was able to find some very useful papers to support my reading of games as art.

Their citations are:

Bourgonjon, J., Vandermeersche, G., Rutten, K. and Quinten, N., 2017. Perspectives on video games as art. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 19(4), p.1.

and

Smuts, A., 2005. Are video games art?. Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive), 3(1), p.6.

Both provide a wide range of arguments to support video games as an art form while also addressing counter-arguments. This will likely serve as the first part of my thesis after the introduction. Though I have to be careful as that question itself could be a thesis on its own.

Group

Week 5: Group Project

This week has been a struggle. With getting to grips with uploading the correct things to F-track with understanding how specifically they want f-track to be used and organizing my time amongst the work and preparing a group presentation. Needless to say this project is difficult and I think the greatest hurdle my group and I need to overcome is communication, due to the lack of Mondays the last few weeks because of various bank holidays we haven’t had a proper meeting in a while.

In regards to the work I have contributed to this group project I have organized the UVs of my cactus project and have fully textured the model including the base, I have used substance painter to make the spike and cactus body textures, I even textured the interior of the pot to with a dirt texture so that it would look like it is filled with dirt. The dirt and brass textures are from Quixel Megascans.

In addition to that I organized the presentation that we had on Tuesday to give updates on our project and where it currently is headed. In this instance I had sometime to plan ahead so I was quickly able to message the group chat and inform people of what they needed to provide me with so I could make the presentation. With the help of Daniel, the CG Lead, we were able to keep people ontop of sending me the information I needed and I was able to, with relative ease, make the presentation.

I also made some corrections to my Nuke 3DE scene at the request of my instructors.

Personal

Week 3: Personal

This week I had originally planned to model the sword the player would use and begin modelling the final boss enemy as I would want to as quickly as possible see about rigging it and see how that would transfer properly into Godot however other commitments prevented me from doing so. While I was able to create and implement the sword.

Sticking with the idea of emulating the older ‘retro’ aspects of the game I have stuck with a very simple model in terms of topology. Though I have made it a bit more complex than needed by adding damaged portions directly onto the model which I will emphasize later with texture work.

https://free3d.com/3d-model/sword-1-low-poly-5109.html

This model served as inspiration for the sword.

I was also able to add an enemy HP system and damage animation to my stand in enemies in my game test set up.

With the structure of the engine set up I should be able to apply these systems to future enemy instances via inheritance.

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