Step 3 of 8 professional level design

Location and environment

The location and environment of the level will take place in an ancient city that has been long abandoned, although there still seems to be some kind of powers at play in the city. A good reference for how i can imagine the city would be something like old Jerusalem, lots of arches and passages leading into different corridors with large surrounding buildings that would be great focal points. I want this environment to be isolated like an island, something witch could be separate from the rest of whatever world it is in. I want this level to feature signs and monuments to drop hints of religion but without it being shoved in the players face so they will more subconsciously discover the story. This isolated city will also be empty, there will be no other characters around so this will also push the sense of mystery and loneliness, I am thinking about having maybe spirits that the player can interact with but that’s just an idea for now and nothing final. Now i have a basic understanding of what i want i will now gather references so i can develop these ideas into something more solid.

Step 2 of 8 professional level design

Step 2 Purpose and features

The purpose of this project is to try and understand faith and apply this to game play elements within the level design. Although I am an artist I really appreciate good level design while playing games, and it really interests me with the ideas behind them, it’s what makes a game fun to play and what makes the player want to put more hours into the game. Games even with a brilliant new mechanic would fail if the level designs were bad, the player just wouldn’t enjoy what they can do. I really enjoy coming across problems and figuring them out, that’s why UDK is such a great tool which has a visual scripting tool which enables artists or level designers to add playable function to levels without a programmer, and i will also use this project to increase my knowledge with UDK. 

I want my level to focus mainly around puzzles, making the player think about their actions and choices. I also want to focus on creating an environment that flows well without the player feeling bored and feels like their doing something repetitive. I will also focus on how the level will be organised such as focal points, using lighting and architecture to help the player along the level so I will research into how this is done in games. Thinking about the tempo and pacing of the level I would imagine it quite slow because puzzle games usually are because the player has to stop and think about a situation, although there could be areas where pacing if increased near the end of the level to increase tension.

1.Kayinworks (n/a) Game development. Retrieved from http://kayin.pyoko.org/?cat=6  2.Andrew Yoder (2012) CTF-Bird. Retrieved from http://mclogenog.wordpress.com/

Step 1 of 8 professional level design

The next project for games proposal is to create a professional level design, meeting with the tutor today we went over 8 steps to creating the pre-production for a level, i will be posting for each of these points to show the process and thoughts I've gone through while designing a level around my theme with is religion and the afterlife.

Step 1- Ideas

My theme for games proposal is religion and the afterlife, even though this is the main theme that I have chosen for this module it doesn’t mean that it has to be 100% to this idea, it’s just a starting point, a stimuli where ideas can be generated from and developed into something more interesting and original than they may have first seemed.  Even so I chose the theme of religion and the afterlife because it does interest me and I think it has hundreds of avenues to go down, religion is almost like a story but something people have faith in, even dedicate their whole lives to or start wars over their faith. Religion can do many things to people; maybe it’s the unknown that interests people as no one actually knows if there is an afterlife nor is there any proof, but people still choose to have faith in something, and to be honest I think most people weather they admit it or not want to believe there is something after death, something greater than life. 

One core idea that I want to play around with for my level design is faith, having faith in something you’re not exactly sure how it works or what it is but for some reason you believe in it or trust it. This is something that really interests me and intrigues me as a person, I am excited to explore and develop these ideas into something that is actually playable to see how different people react or to see if all people react the same when they are faced with challenges and obstacles. 

Definition: Faith is belief with strong conviction; firm belief in something for which there may be no tangible proof; complete trust in or devotion to. Faith is the opposite of doubt.

 Faith is possibly the single-most important element of the Christian life. Hebrews 11:6 states, "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

About.com (n/a) Faith, retrieved from http://christianity.about.com/od/glossary/g/faith.htm

 

 Example

Here i found an example of faith, i purposely chose an image that not about religion because that's the obvious part that could be implied in the level, but its more the idea of faith i want to explore, I've already looked into faith and what it means so i can see how this relates to many more things in life that everyday people could encounter even if their not religious, trust is a big part of faith. In the image below the young child could be afraid to jump but he will because he has a parent, someone he trusts to know that you will always be safe. i really want to push this idea of trust and having faith in something.

 

 

Final models and evaluation

High Poly model

 Here is the final render sheet for the high poly model, i am really happy with the overall result and how the texture turned out, it took a while but i think it paid off. I also managed to keep the model under the 600 Tri budget even with the hourglass accessory.

Evaluation

Here are a few images and renders of the final character for reference so i can explain and analyse the successful and the negative points about the character model. The actual 3d model was relatively easy to create, the only area i had a bit of trouble with was the hands, feet and creating the head. I tackled these by keeping each part separate from each other so i could easily change or even delete that part of the model such as the hand until i was happy with the result. Next i planned out which parts of the model i wanted to have symmetry so i could save of texture space and optimise it as much as possible so more detail can be added. I then unwrapped half of the model and used symmetry to duplicate the model so i then had all of the model unwrapped, i then unwrapped other pieces that i didn't want symmetry to affect. Texturing was a large step for me as this is where most of the detail can be added without using any Tris, i first encountered some problems with the head and the shoulder armour, because they had been mirrored i wasn't able to add the cracks i had in the concept art, because it looked to obvious that it was mirrored which was the only downside to the symmetry tool, although it was a great help for texturing the body which took the longest, but would of taken even longer if i had to texture it all and unwrap both sides. There were to minor problems with the unwrap that i noticed once i finished texturing, the hands were far to large in scale to the rest of the unwrap, they should have been much smaller saving more space to make other parts larger such as the cloth which is too small on the unwrap and could have been much bigger, even so everything turned out to be quite detailed, i painted the texture at the resolution of 2048 then downsized it to 1024, this held much more detail than trying to paint the texture at a smaller size. After finishing the texture i then wanted to do some final tweaks to make the renders much more interesting, the first thing i did was position the character so he didn't look so static, i positioned his cloth so that it looks like its breezing in the wind, i then also added a small textured base to make it look like it fits an environment or game. These final touches are what made it look much better and i am pleased with the result, apart from the small mistakes, but this will allow me check for these problems in the future.

Low Poly Model

This is the final render sheet for the low poly model, i am also happy with the result of this model, the model is a little over budget, due to the complexity of the design i couldn't cut out anymore Tris without affecting the overall design.

Evaluation

With the low poly model everything was pretty straight forward, the only tricky part is keeping everything tidy and using as little Tris as possible. The modelling part went fine, the only problem i had was that i had to many accessory's on the concept that a low poly model shouldnt really have so this is why i am slightly over the budget because i had to make the holy water bottle, the bible and the little scroll pieces that hang from the belt. I am also really happy with the unwrap, every things pretty efficient as i mirrored half of the body and also mirrored other sections such as the wing pieces so the most amount of detail could be applied to the model. I also added a specular map and a normal map to help define more details of the model and really make them pop, you can see in the UDK render below it works great on the back armour to 'fake' more detail and give it a metal appearance. I also created a presentation base and the weapon just to increase of the overall presentation and the believability that this is a game suitable character. With doing the high and low poly models i much preferred the high poly character mainly because more detail can be added to define the character more, although the low poly model was fun to make its far more tricky working with stricter restrictions and budgets which can affect the overall design.

High poly model wip 8

Heres a quick screen grab of the final model, he has been posed a little and a base has been added to make it a little more interesting, only thing i need to do now is finish texturing his weapon and sort out the lighting untill im happy with it before taking renders.

High poly model 7

Some more texturing progress on the high poly model, taking a long time to do.. will have to speed up as i still need to work on a normal and specular map.

High model wip 6

Some more progress painting the head and neck, looking forward to doing the normal and specular maps for the model to really make the cracks and muscles stand out.