A2: Final Project - DONE

PROJECT START: 27/02/24

DEADLINE: 10/05/24

RESUBMISSION DEADLINE: 03/06/24

NOTE: NOT ALL DAYS BETWEEN SPECIFIED DATES ON INDIVIDUAL SEGMENTS WERE SPENT ON ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT BUT ARE GENERALISED START AND END POINTS FOR THOSE PIECES AS, UNLESS SPECIFIED, I WOULD MOST OFTEN ONLY WORK ON THINGS IN COLLEGE HOURS

Brief + Vocational Context: Make an Isometric game for Supergiant Games

• Keep within their tone and try to include some of their methods

Game Requirements:

• Must implement controller input
• One level minimum
• A player character OR Enemy character
• Must have an objective to complete
• Must include music and sound effects (can be royalty free pub domain or created)
• Feedback from testing
• Final Presentation

Individual Role Goals:

• ARTIST: Create one environment and a character with animations
• DESIGNER: Create at least three levels with a unique theme
• PROGRAMMER: Create 2 Enemies OR 2 Power-Ups OR 1 Enemy and 1 Power-Up

RESEARCH: 27/02/24 - 04/03/24

Before starting to make concepts for this project I had researched Isometric games and Supergiant Games to get an idea on what style and type of game I should make by looking at Supergiant's catalogue and examples of good Isometric Games. I had also looked into Supergiant's methodology and philosophy for the development process and design to get an idea of what principles people in the industry work using to possibly try applying to my own work.

Game Design Document

Concept Mood board: 04/03/24

To help me in visualize my project I have decided to make a mood board of what the concept of the game is so I know what I am making while I don't have a GDD and to also help make the GDD to get a refined image of what I want to make. This will also be covered in the GDD (obviously), but the base premise of the game for what I have in mind in this current moment based off the mood board is that it will be a sci-fi roguelike heavily based off of Hades with the main variation being the enemies, visuals, and kit the player has but the fundamentals of the game will likely be the same with the main enemy being an evil corporate entity that will have no further explanation or development.

First Trello Board for Project: 13/03/24

I have been struggling to come up with what I need to do and what takes priority for a while now and I have chosen to make the Trello board now in pre-production instead of main production to allow myself to more easily think of what I need to do and to help focus down on those things.

Viewpoint and Lighting experimentation: 13/03/24

To assist in visualizing the environment for concepts and for setting up the camera and lighting in the 2D project I set up a small scene in a 3D project using a camera with a 35 degree rotation on the X axis and a 225 degree rotation on the Y axis, a cube on a plane to cast a shadow, and the main directional light coming from the bottom right corner, a slight shade of grey, 0.5 intensity, and hard shadows in real-time.

Test Tiles, Test layout set-up, And the realization I should probably just stick to 3D: 13/03/24 - 18/03/24

From the top image you can see that I had made a test sprite sheet for a testing sprite tile map and environment. However, with some assistance from the bottom image, you can see how I quickly realized while importing this sprite sheet and looking at my experimentation in 3D that I wanted to switch to making a 3D game with an isometric viewpoint as that is what I am familiar with and I couldn't figure out the 2D isometric game set-up and development to save my life.

Player Character Concept Mood board: 13/03/24

For my player character I already have a good idea on their appearance as I have an OC that I could use to allow me to both develop that character's design and it would also allow me to use it in something instead of simply having it and not doing anything with it, this also means I already have a character for my game and I don't need to spend forever trying to think of a design.

Player Character Concept: 19/03/24 - 20/03/24

This is the original piece of concept art for the character that I had from home, I plan on using the 2nd attempt drawing for remaking the design of my character and I also plan on  using the concept scythe weapon as my character's melee weapon of choice instead of a knife as I think its cooler than a knife and it will allow melee attacks to have a logical larger range than what a knife would allow.

Using the original concept as a base I developed the concept art for my character with more refined details including layers to the body, attempts at ripples in the cloak, and more clear joints, including some full changes which include making the character shorter and removing the mouth from the screen making the character more eye reliant for expressions which I like. I also managed to include a piece of color theory known as analogous colors - in color theory, analogous colors are groups of colors that are next to each other on the color wheel which makes a nicer on the eyes set of complementary colors which was something that was unintentional but a nice touch nevertheless.

In Unity set-up/Isometric Camera with player controller: 20/03/24

For in Unity progress, I had finally gotten around to making a functional player character for testing. this scene includes an isometric camera which follows the player at a set distance and rotation and the scene also includes the third person player character from the Unity standard assets to allow me to test things like health and attacking, as well as configuring the movement to have those ready for when I implement my character once I have made it. For now however, I will be working on some rough concepts of enemies and environments while occasionally hoping into Unity to continue laying out the foundations for my game.

Character base Modelling difficulties: 25/03/24 - 26/03/24

While in the 3D modelling process for my character I had ran into difficulties with what was happening to the polygons around the stomach for adding detail to the fundamental base of the model and it ended up breaking the polygons on the model's left side and this continued into making the kneecaps. Even though this would cause a loss in time I decided to start over with making the character, including altering the concept further to make it have a more 3D modelling friendly blueprint to it with character being in T-Pose, without the cloak to show the shoulders for what they should look like, and a revision to the mid section of the character to make the torso less long while still retaining the detail.

Character Concept V2 and Base Model: 27/03/24 /*2 WEEK SCHOOL BREAK*/ 15/04/24 - 17/04/24

Revising on how I couldn't get a clear idea on what I wanted the character's shoulders to look like due to not having the visualization of them in the concept art I decided to remove the cloak and hood from the concept as to allow the shoulders to be visible so I can model them easily and so I can put the character in a T-pose so I can easily create the model from something like a schematic in the form of the concept in Maya. From this revised concept I created the base model through box modelling that I will be using in developing the more detailed model to then make the texture map for putting onto a lower poly model (likely this base model for better performance while, hopefully, still retaining the detail if my method works.

Post-Mudbox model, UV Fixing, and Post-Substance-Painter model: 17/04/24 - 08/05/24

Trello Board at the end of making the model - 09/05/24