Game Design Blog

The blog to help maintain my learning process through my time at university studying computer games design. I will post regular updates on my current university as well as personal projects I undertake in my spare time.

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Figured I'd try my hand at making one of these in 3dsmax. Simple block out stage almost done, Just getting primitives in order.

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Update

Quick update on regards to the inactivity and lack of posts and content, This is mainly due to a small hiatus from my projects to catch up on a few games as well as some Esports tournaments, and of course E3 that's happening this week. Additionally, i've been researching and arranging Advanced Games Dev team and my Final Year project to expand on it later.

More to come.

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Decided to up the complexity of the assets, as such I doubt I'll be making one per day as I'd get more out of trying complex geometry to learn more skills. As such, here's a tavern I'm working on.

Not the best image to see, but it's getting there.

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Two assets created from the last two days. Though they're simple, I'm learning quite a lot and picking up the techniques quite quickly.

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An asset a day

As the second year of uni has finished, I now have unlimited time to pursuit my own interests - This being 3ds Max. 

Originally I hated it during my first year, but being lazy back then I only had an eye for designing levels. the main reason for learning 3ds max properly is so I can create my own environments for play testing and add my own personal style to it - Mainly not having to rely on having a set asset list.

I'll be attempting to create assets - from tutorials firstly - just to get used to the modelling techniques. No textures, just basic models to begin with (And I mean very basic):

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Toybox Island - level 1 & 2 final renders in game.

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Level 1 of ToyBox Island - A University journeyman project where we make a proof of concept for a game. It's not finished and animations need more blending, but it's getting there.

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The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

I’ll give a brief overview of the many weeks that has gone into the development of some of our levels for the game. As we began researching and development from our original idea we went through a variety of additional features/ideas we wanted to implement into the game. First and foremost was a group discussion on the art theme for the game. Our aim was to base it off games similar to Fable 2, Trine 2 and The Cave. Each of these games has a vibrant colour palette as well as a fantasy style to the core assets.

First level block outs.

  Our initial idea was to have a very large level that the player progressed through, giving them a feel for the core mechanics as well as the art style of the game and ultimately trying the simple variations of puzzles. As you can see above, we decided to add a lot of rocks and walkways for the player to walk along, This gave the designers a lot of problems, as we had to place the assets one at a time, or as a work around, creating a prefab – The problem with the prefab was that it made the level as a whole seem very uniform which made it look rather strange. To remedy this we went back to the drawing board and created modular rock platforms that were easy ti implement and were visually more appealing:

  As the assets have started coming in thick and fast I was easily able to populate levels after the drastic changes. From a comparison of the original level, we split the game into three separate levels, Above is level 3 which I’m primarily working on. The level is visually more appealing, despite lacking assets and textures – which will be added later.  The flow of the level is simple to follow for the player, and when I add the lighting I will be able to guide them on their target destinations with subtle lighting hints.

There’s still a lot to do to the level, but after adding in a lot more assets, it’s starting to take more shape. (Some screenshots to show progression)

    I’ll be posting more R&D work and compare the original designs/ideas and levels to the current variations we’ve settled on.

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Progress updates from our Journey Uni project. Added more textures/static meshes into level 3 as well as the scripting for the puzzle plants in level 1.

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Level Design Project from uni

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Environmental Art

Need to decide whether to learn C++ or Becoming a better asset creator for #LevelDesign - Art side makes more sense, but scripting is valued

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Level update

As we've split the game into three levels, I've been assigned to fix up level 3, and level 1 afterwards. The level has changed a lot from the previous images, but it's starting to come together a lot more now. Rather than several hundred separate rocks, we made modular giant blocks, which need to be textured, but make it look a lot better already. Here's some screen shots with new assets created by the art team for level 3.

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Games, Design & General Ramblings of Industry

With the speed I’m progressing through university at the moment, I feel my knowledge base is both lackluster, yet expanding rapidly. The last several months alone I feel I’ve learnt a lot about creating games, designing levels and most importantly working with a group of people.

If it’s one thing i’ve noticed within our group of 20 artists & designers, it’s that not everyone is as motivated as others and everyone has different levels of talents/skills. Working within this group has allowed me a small insight to what working in the games industry would be like. From my personal perspective, If I’m leading a group with a wide variety of skillsets, I’d give different tasks to the unlikely members; Every team has unmotivated/lazy members, Give them the difficult jobs that take the longest, Often or not they will finish them quickly and in a simple way. Additionally, give the motivated and higher skilled members the quick and easy jobs, they’ll feel better about it and finish them promptly, allowing for more jobs to be created and completed.

As our 3 – 4 month project (Create a proof of concept/demo for a game) I feel comfortable in my ability as a designer for future projects. The more I learn about the industry the more excited I get about a potential career. However, I feel I like a core fundamental to my portfolio. Games! I’m meant to be a game/level designer, yet I have barely anything to show my passion – Naturally I could say my work load is mainly based around this gargantuan project, and that I have/had limited knowledge/skills. I’ve learned a wide variety of design techniques and software tools lately, and will firmly increase my knowledge base over the long summer break I have coming up.

My tendency is to create a game. or several if I’m feeling extra ambitious. My main priority is to learn coding, as much as I can, and put it to use when creating my game. Ideally I think i will work with a friend who is just as passionate and motivated as myself. Maybe this time I can find the drive to finish what I start.

//Donny

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Room Redone...since it looked vile.

As easter break has been underway for the most part I’ve not had anything new to upload, mainly due to being away from my computer for the most part, but a break was welcome. Just a quick over haul of the original childs room/start screen.

I’ve noticed a fundamental consistency when designing levels or spending too much time on one section of a game, that’s generally tunnel visioning. The original room was pretty awful in hindsight, the textures were not uniformed and seemed like something from the 80′s and for the most part, the room seemed to tidy and way to blue! Like, mega blue! We’ve changed most of the room now, I’m a lot happier with the outcome. A few things need changing, some objects are placed in random locations (*Scowls at artists*) But it looks more modern and not so “in your face”.

k

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Main Menu

Just a quick update as the assets/textures are coming to a finish quite quickly. This start hub/players room is almost done. This will serve as the main menu (with intractable) as well as the start of the game with a short cinematic to start the story off.

*This is all alpha stage and the assets/textures are not finalized*

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Continuing the WhiteBox

For the majority of the day I've been adding in and replacing assets. Trying to make the overall level look a bit better and the functionality working. The placement of the rocks was the most time consuming, trying to not make them look uniform was mostly tedious. Anyway, a few shots below of the progress I've made: