Game Graphics Year 2 - Research Blog

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Filtro - Review

The first thing I noticed when playing was the game’s loading time was to slow. This could be due to the fact the amount of animations in the scene that increase the loading time as a result. Also, the sprite keeps facing right, even if the left directional button is pressed. Having said that, the game seems pretty simple and enjoyable for children between ages 5 and 11. Furthermore, it would be ideal if the level would randomly change scene once in awhile, therefore it will not be repetitive and players will not get bored of it after a few moments. A score system is a must and unfortunately the game does not have one.

 If the game were to be published on a handheld device, such as a tablet or smartphone, the controls seem well positioned. However, playing it on a PC is much more tedious since one must control the character’s attacks by pressing the on screen buttons using a mouse. It would have been much more efficient if the attacks were mapped onto keyboard keys instead. Furthermore, when the player selects an attack, to stop it the player must select the “stop” button. Personally, I would remove the “stop” button and program the action button to attack just once. The pause button simply freezes the screen and there is no visual reference or a title to show that the game has been paused.

 Audio is another crucial factor which enhances the game experience. Firstly, when the player opens the main menu, there is no track playing in the background. This could confuse the player as it could mean a lot of factors (for example: the game has no sound or the player has an issue with their audio output etc.) When the player selects the play button and they are directed to the instruction screen, once again there is no sound in the background. Also, when the player is in the main game screen, when they select the buttons there is no click sound effect either. I found the main track playing in the background during gameplay very annoying and to add insult to injury, the mute button option provided was not working. 

The art style for this game is simple and quite suitable for children. The environment is full of vibrant colours which attracts the player’s attention and the animations are also pretty simple. However, if the playable character were slightly bigger, personally I think it would have been much better. Having said that, the scene’s characters are clashing in style. Ideally, the characters and enemies should have been one style only. The tips at the bottom are a good idea, teaching children about the importance of water, gives the game the required educational theme.

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Walk Cycle:

I found this section very tedious to develop a proper fully functioning walk cycle. Since i did not create all the joints for the fingers, I should have created an IK handle that controls the whole arm, instead of stopping at the wrist, thus making it easier to move them. Also, I had some complications getting used to setting the key frames, which resulted in a rather poor walk cycle.

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Skinning & Weights

Skinning & Weights:

I skinned the character and assigned weights to the mesh. I had a problem which affected Maya terribly; when I used Interactive Bind to skin the skeleton to the upper body and the head, Maya kept crashing. I attempted this more than once, however to no avail. Instead I skinned those parts using Smooth Bind like I did with the lower body. This seemed to work, however the eyes were not linked to the mesh. When I tried to link them, using various approaches, I encountered several problems. I finally created a separate layer for them to deal with this issue after all the process is done. 

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Assigning Further Controls:

In this video, I added some  other essential controls to the rig. These will eventually be very useful when animating the rig to crate a walk cycle. After completing this video, I realized that it would be better to create a constraint to control the control the IK on the arms. 

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Assigning IK Handles & Constrains

Assigning IK Handles & Constrains:

After I arranged the skeleton and added more joints, I set up the IK handles for the legs and arms. After the IK handles were set, I started adding constraints. These are used to aid the animator to rig the character easily. I used the same process as shown in the video to create other constraints and non-renderable controllers.

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Assigning a Skeleton to the Mesh

Assigning a Skeleton to the Mesh:

In this video, I created a simple skeleton for the character. However, I realised I had forgotten to add some joints and I immediately arranged the skeleton, similarly to the process shown in this video.

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Critical Thinking - MACs VS PCs

Owning either a MAC or a PC, both come with their benefits and drawbacks. Most PC users, who grew up using Microsoft Windows, find it quite difficult to switch over and start using MACS. PC users may find shortcuts easier on a PC rather than a MAC, since they are more feasible on a Windows Operating System.

Even though MACs have a more stable platform then Windows, they are not capable of performing certain tasks a PC is able of doing. Both types of OS have their own basic primary applications, which can help the user do specific tasks, however, while MACs have certain office applications built in the system, Microsoft Office Applications have to be installed separately, which do not come for free. Recently, Microsoft Office Applications have released a version which are available for MAC as well. Online storage is obviously available for both devices nowadays, Windows accounts having One Drive as their primary cloud storage. MACs are also capable of running Microsoft Windows OS through a feature known as Bootcamp, where one could install this OS on a MAC and be able to run it with the same specs of the MAC.

Aesthetically, the design for Apple and/or MAC products is much more stylish and it is relatively simple for the user to use, most especially iPhones. Some Windows phones are not very attractive and as a matter of fact are somewhat in the minority in the market when compared to MACs. Hardware wise, the battery life of an iPhone is not as powerful as that of a Windows phone, which is a major drawback.

Although iPhones suffer from a poor battery life, MACs benefit of having all their hardware built in one complete structure. PCs usually have separate built structures; the PC itself (aka tower) and monitor. Unfortunately, MACs do not have a CD – ROM drive mostly because this technology is starting to die nowadays and is being replaced by flash drives, nevertheless, PCs could either have one already built in or could be customised to allow CDs or DVDs. Another drawback for MACs is they cannot be customised and rigged to the user’s requirements. This is mostly a disadvantage to gamers, which prefer to opt for a customisable gaming rig, allowing users to upgrade hardware freely. Thus, PCs are better for running games than MACs.

MACs are mostly used by businesses and professionals, which render them not applicable for certain people and/or organisations, especially where young children are involved. Since they are highly sophisticated, children would not admire their capabilities but rather treat them carelessly, which is why they are not featured in most schools.

In conclusion, it is up to the individual’s preferences and uses when choosing the appropriate device. Another factor which influences their decision is the price, while MACs are somewhat overpriced, PCs have a more reasonable price range.

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Very Basic Walk Cycle

This rig was far more tedious than rigging a hand. Working with IK, I’ve learned that in order for the rig to be easier to animate, IK handles are a must which unfortunately I forgot to implement them in this rig. Also, since this was my first walk cycle attempt, I didn’t put that much effort in adding characteristics to the character which makes him more unique. Instead, I focused on the process of creating a walk cycle and familiarise myself with the controls. Having said that, in future rigs I would definitely include more characteristic and uniqueness and associate the appropriate rig for the modelled character.

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Second attempt rigging a hand. Adding weights to make it look more realistic.

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First attempt rigging a hand in Maya.

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Evaluation - Idea Generation

Coming up with a new idea and concept is not easy, but this unit helped me to generate more new ideas and be as creative as possible. When I usually come up with ideas, most of them did not have very clear concept or seemed somewhat complicated to elaborate further.  Throughout his unit I not only found it better to come up with ideas, but also evaluating further and how they can be understood clearly by others.  The thinking hats method helped especially when developing complex ideas as one could go into additional detail about various aspects of the idea and how it could function.

Personally, I think that the most difficult part of this project was deciding what idea we should use.  At first we could not agree on the story as it seemed unoriginal and very complicated for nothing.  We decided it would be best to change the concept and go with something simpler and we finally had an agreement on a storyline for our game.  The second challenge was creating original characters and illustrating them using a graphics tablet since the both of us never had an experience using it before.  Although the graphics in our game are not top notch, they are still very clear illustrations and recognizable by the player.

Since we had limited time, we wished we were able to include more levels in the game.  Apart from that, we wanted to include treasure chests where the player could either find health points or some form of metal where the player could be able to forge his own weapon.  Another ability that did not go as planned was the character’s fighting style.  The intention was that the character initially uses a weapon in his hand (in our game the character’s first weapon is a stick) and uses melee attacks to destroy approaching enemies.  However we found its code to be very complicated and thus we went with a simpler theory, the character would simply stomp on enemies that could harm him.

Before we started developing the game, we defined roles on what each one of the two of us should be working on.  I was responsible to create the first level and most of the sketches, which included characters, traps, platforms and environment, while Xanthe was responsible to create animations, design cut scenes, program scripts and create the second level.  We both helped each other as much as possible and distributed work as fairly as possible.

I intend to keep on improving my ideas and skills to help me achieve the best results possible.  This project assisted me to learn from my mistakes and improve my knowledge on game development.  I plan to keep on researching on what game ideas the public would prefer and analyse the gathered information, from sources that include websites and books, and thus become a better video game developer.

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Evaluation - Character Design

Throughout this unit I managed to create an original character for a video game concept that I came up with.  Basically, the character is the trickster archetype throughout the story as he causes destruction and problems to the main protagonist for his own benefits.  Although I am quite satisfied with the story concept, I should have worked more on the selected character’s background and backstory.  The concept of having spiritual animals to each citizen really seemed to make sense and I really enjoyed the fact that I managed to work with this idea.

Given the limited time, since I worked mostly on creating a game concept and original story, I wished I could have worked more on the 3D model since I enjoyed creating 3D models rather than come up with a new video game concept.  Furthermore, if I had more time I would have also tried to render fur to my model however, it was quite difficult for me to do so and thus I just placed a fur texture and rendered that instead.  Even though this was not intended, the final result was still recognisable and the model managed to look like the spiritual animal that was intended in the story.

I realised that this unit has more than it has to offer to create a character as to create a character, one must go through several processes.  First  one must create a story to place the character and it gets much more detailed from there as then character must fit in the story perfectly and in a way that every piece of its body manages to fit to every tie in possible, thus having a great concept and character.

I mostly enjoyed creating a story for my character, even though I found it challenging at times.  Moreover creating a 3D model of my character also helped me further my skills in 3D modelling and as a result I realised that in the future I would like to work more on modelling objects since I found it the most intriguing part of the unit.

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Evaluation - UI

While designing the UI for our game, my preferred design would highly use icons as buttons instead of text. There are various reasons why I recommended this.

Firstly, since the game is aimed for children between the ages of 7 and 10, it would be ideal to use icons as they would not have a massive amount of text to read and at first glance, one could be able to recognize the symbol and its meaning without having to explain it. This would make it easier for the viewer’s eye and concentrate on only recognizing the icon.

Secondly, I also took into consideration children and/or players with a reading difficulty, such as dyslexia. If there would be a case where a child would play our game and happens to have such difficulty, it would be quite unfair to restrict them from understanding where they must click in order to play or comprehend the purpose of the game play. The cases of children suffering from reading difficulty has increased rapidly and this factor triggered the consideration to highly make use of icons rather than text. However in the final design for our UI, we used text based buttons.

Although we decided to use this approach instead, we still kept the factor about the reading difficulty in mind when choosing a font. We had to make sure that the font would not confuse some letters with each other. One particular example was the letters “o” and “a” where so similar that we decided not to use it to reduce the confusion.

To conclude, personally the over UI of the game looks quite organized and we kept the game’s theme by using pipes as icons and even for the title itself.  Having said that, the only thing I would change would be the use of icons rather than text for reasons already discussed above.

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Evaluation - VFX

This unit was extremely challenging since I have never had any experience like this before. Editing footage and adding effects was completely new to me and somehow I had to find a way to be able to edit footage and insert effects.   After we agreed on a script, we agreed to meet to film the required footage for our trailer. When we went to shoot our scenes for the first time, we tried to improvise with the limited amount of props we had which were a couple of cameras and a tripod.  We didn’t really know what we had to do exactly because this was all new to us.  We did not have the appropriate equipment and did not look as if we were during an apocalyptic era.  The second time we went to film our shots were much better. We had more equipment and light and we also had smudged our clothes with dirt. We also applied some makeup on our face to make it seem as if we have been through the rubble and dirt.   My scene was not complicated to shoot since it only involved a spaceship flying over some abandoned buildings.  To shoot my scene I placed my camera on a tripod and left it recording for a few minutes. I placed the recorded footage into After Effects and accelerated the time frame thus shortening the video from about seven minutes to six seconds. Next, I placed the rendered image of the spaceship into the scene, adjusted the position and scaled the image accordingly.  I placed a sound effect of a spaceship in the footage and after everything was complete, I gave the background a darker tone.   If I had more time and experience, I would have tried placing the 3D render rather than just an image. Moreover, if I had more experience with After Effects, I would have tried making the scene as realistic as possible.

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Evaluation - Production Modelling

Throughout this unit, we worked with 3D modelling once again however this time was slightly more difficult especially when creating the textures for the models. I still find creating textures quite difficult and thus this unit was a huge challenge for me. When creating the models, I found that I have improved from last year, however I had difficulty arranging the UV and exporting them to create realistic textures.   The pistol was my first attempt. I tried to create something different from what I previously did last year. The shape looks quite similar to the real thing however, when it came to texturing the model I found it quite difficult. Firstly, searching for the right texture is very time consuming and personally I think that the best way is to create the textures from scratch using Adobe Photoshop. This will suit more to the user’s needs. Provided that I am not an artist as it is not my strong point, I was not able to create the texture thus I had to find them myself. Another factor which I found difficult was when using Photoshop. After the renders of the uv texture maps were placed in Photoshop, to create the best looking textures, one must be highly skilled when using photo editing software and considering I have still yet to master this software, this raised a huge challenge for me. As I created more models, I started to grasp the whole concept and slightly improved with every model created.   When it came to sketching the 5 categories, I struggled when coming up with new categories to create. Knowing my limitations, I preferred creating something simple rather than something highly complicated. The sketches have various room for improvement however, I placed a higher importance on the 3D models since I wanted to try and improve my skills further.   Moreover, I found this task very tedious at times and searched online to fix some issues I encountered. I also realised that creating 3D models and texturing them is not my strong point thus I would make it a point to experiment on Maya more to try and improve.

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Evaluation - 2D Animation

Before developing the trailer, we agreed on a solid storyboard and concept. Each member of our team came up with their own idea and storyboard. After we shared our ideas, we chose the best storyboard and to keep it fair, we all included some of our own thoughts to improve it. Each of us agreed on which part to animate and distributed the work as evenly as possible. Animating a trailer in After Effects is still very new to me as I have never actually used this software to its full potential before.  Thus, I was constantly faced with several challenges.  Having said that, I tried my best to overcome these challenges. I searched online for some answers and manged to solve most of these problems. The first problem I faced was regarding the environment where the scene is set.  The scene is set in a kitchen of a small family of cats and one of the cats goes to open the tap behind him.  Since the kitchen is on a complete pre-composed layer, when I had to animate the cat to walk from the table to the sink, the cat looked like it was walking on top of it. This was obviously not right and thus to fix this minor error, I created a new separate layer and placed it on the top, therefore when the cat walks, it looks as if its legs are coming out from under the table, the right way. Another problem which I encountered was the regards the character animations.  One particular character in the scene has to do several actions, i.e. walk to the sink, open the tap etc. Hence, the character had to have several pre-composed animations which were very time consuming and had to be done in a way which had to make sense in the final scene.   After we had all our scenes finished, we combined them into one final animation. Throughout, we worked very hard as a team and we collaborated very well. We tried helping each other out were necessary and distributed the work equally.  While two of us worked mostly on the programming side of the game, I included, the other two worked on asset creation and finalised all the act work required for our game.  To keep the same style throughout, we agreed to share some assets and use them in our animations.   Personally, now that I have a better idea on how to use After Effects, I could be able to create better animations by using various techniques which I have not used in this project. Some tools and techniques would be mask tool and puppet tool which both help create the best looking animations.  Moreover, if I had more time I would experiment more in After Effects to be able to create unique aspirations.

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Evaluation - Game Design

Throughout this unit, we were tasked to create a game for children between the ages of 7 to 11.  What makes this game different from other games which we created throughout this course, is it is for a client, HSBC in collaboration with the Catch the Drop campaign.

 We assigned roles for each member in our group. Two of us took control creating the art for the game and two of us managed the programming. Even though I was mostly part of the programming rather than creating art and assets, we shared the assets since we had to do other tasks for other study units which involved us making use of these assets in order to to achieve the unit’s requirements.

 Personally, coding for this game was very tedious since most of the time we could not find online sources or tutorials which could greatly help us generate a game to it’s full potential.  Thus, we had to rely mostly on our previous experience with Unity and help from our lecturer, which helped us push the game forward.

Overall, we worked really well as a team. We agreed on almost every idea we came up with and we all worked very hard. When we asked for an asset to be created, they immediately created them without hesitation while we on the other hand, kept them constantly informed on the game development.  We tried to keep the game as simple and fun as possible and added characters which we thought would be really fun for the kids to enjoy seeing in the game.